CHAPTER XVI
HOW TWO, IN THE LABYRINTH OF MIRRORS, WATCHED DISTANT HAPPENINGS
An oppression such as he had never known fell upon Kendric. Nor wasthe depressing emotion an emanation alone of his growing dread onBetty's account; the atmosphere of the place through which he movedbegan to weigh him down, to crush the spirit within him. They left thetreasure chamber which was six times doubly locked after them. Theywent through the ancient empty rooms and out into the gardens.Kendric, looking up, saw the small ragged patch of sky and felt asthough upon his own soul, stifling him, rested the weight of the hollowmountain. To him who loved the fresh, wind-swept world, the open seawith its smell of clean salt air, the wide deserts where the sunshinelay everywhere, this pleasure grove of a long dead royalty was becomemusty, foul, permeated with an aura of a great gilded tomb. Hissensation was almost that of a drowning person or of one awaking from atrance to find himself shut in the narrow confines of a buried coffin.The air seemed heavy and impure; he fancied it still fetid with all theblood of sacrificial offerings which the ravening soil had drunk.
But he knew that now was no time for sick fancies and he shook them offand bent his mind to the present crisis. Zoraida was retracing thesteps which had led them here; she had spoken of Betty. It was likelythen that they were returning through the long passageways to thehouse. Dark hallways to thread, the dark mind of his guide to seek toread. Now, while darkness outdoors was well enough, the black gloom ofa maze at any corner of which Zoraida might have placed one or a dozenof her hirelings, had little lure for him. She did not mean to let himgo free; she had kept him all day immured in his own room; she would nodoubt seek to lock him up again.
"It's tonight or never to make a break for it," he decided as hefollowed her.
They were passing the block of jasper, the ancient stone of sacrifice.Zoraida went by first; Kendric was passing when an impulse prompted himto put out a sudden hand for the keen edged knife of obsidian. Heslipped it into his belt and hid the haft with his coat. If it came toan ambush, to an attack in the dark, a revolver bullet might fly wildwhile the wide sweep of a knife blade would somehow find a sheath insomething more palpable than thin air.
They went on, returning along the way they had come. When the gardensof the golden Tezcucan were behind them and a door barred Kendricexperienced a sense of relief, even though the tunnels were ahead ofhim. He kept close to Zoraida, prepared for any sort of trickery andwith no desire to have her whisk suddenly through a door somewhere andslam it in his face. His one urgent prayer was for a breath of theopen; just then the consummation of human happiness seemed to him to befreedom on horseback somewhere out in the mountains with the whole ofthe wide starry sky generously roofing the world. He thought ofBetty--and he thought, too, of the six little boys doomed to countthemselves happy back yonder where at most the sun shone down upon thema few minutes of the day.
Never once did Zoraida turn, not once did she speak as they hastenedon. What little he saw of her face where there was lamplight showedhim hard set muscles. At last they were again in the house which washushed as though untenanted or as though its occupants were asleep ordead. He could fancy Bruce in some remote room, tricked by some falsemessage of Zoraida's, eagerly expecting her, hungering for her lyingexplanations; he could picture Barlow, glowering, but awaiting her,too. Well, the time had passed when he could largely concern himselfwith them and what they did and thought. Tonight he must servehimself, and Betty. If she would listen to him.
Presently he saw where it was that Zoraida was conducting him. Heremembered the dim ante-room in which they paused a moment whileZoraida fastened the door behind them; then, the curtain thrown aside,they were again in that barbaric, tapestry-hung chamber in which, thefirst night here, he had been brought before her. As before the rubyupon the thin crystal stem shone like a burning red eye.
Now, for the first time since they had turned away from the goldenTezcucan's treasure chamber, was Kendric given a full, clear view ofZoraida's face. During their progress many thoughts had come and goneswiftly through his mind; now as they two stood looking steadily ateach other, he realized clearly that one matter and one alone hadoccupied her. No abatement of cruelty had come into her long eyes; noflush of color had swept away the cold whiteness of her cheek. She wasset in a merciless determination, relentlessly hard; the colorless faceresulted from a frozen heart. Before now Kendric had seen murderstaring out of a man's widened eyes; now he saw it in a woman's.
For the instant only she had looked at him as though she were probinginto his secret thought and there swept over him the old, disquietingsensation that each thought in his mind lay as clear to her look as awhite pebble in a sunlit pool. Then her eyes passed on, beyond him.He turned and saw the hangings parted at that spot where Zoraida hadappeared to him that other time; one of the brutish, squat forms whichKendric remembered, stood in the opening.
Zoraida spoke with the man swiftly, her voice hard and sharp. A quickchange came into the heavy, thick-lipped face; the stupid eyesbrightened; the face was distorted as by some hideous anticipation.Zoraida ended what she had to say; the man spoke gutturally, noddinghis head. Then he dropped the curtain and was gone.
Zoraida went to her black chair with the crystal balls for feet and satstiffly, her ringed fingers tapping restlessly upon the wide arms.Presently the man returned, carrying a wide flat box. Thereafter,while Zoraida watched him impatiently, he occupied himself after afashion which Kendric found inexplicable. From the box the man took anumber of rectangular mirrors, fine clear glass framed with thin bandsof ebony. Deftly, into a groove made in the back of each mirror, heslipped the end of a tall ebony rod. Then he rolled back the heavy rugfrom two thirds of the floor. The floor was of stone, laid fancifullyin colored mozaic; here and there, seemingly placed utterly at random,were smooth round holes in the stone blocks. Into each hole the haftof one of the rods was thrust so that when the man stepped back tosurvey his handiwork there was a little forest of mirrors on glisteningstems grown up in apparent lack of design, like young pines on atableland.
Then Zoraida rose and went from one of the glasses to another, turningthem a little to right or left, adjusting painstakingly, seeming toread the meaning of some fine lines scratched in the stone floor. Hereyes were like a mad woman's. She herself moved her chair, shoving itfrom the rug to the bare floor, careful that each supporting crystalsphere rested exactly upon a chosen spot. Her retainer handed her asmall stool; she placed it and, since it was near the spot where hestood, Kendric made out the four crosses where the four legs were togo. Then Zoraida went swiftly back to her chair.
As she sat down she called again sharply to the squat brute who servedher. His broad ugly teeth showed white in his animal grin; he ranacross the room and swept back the curtains draping the wall. Theywere laced to rings along the upper edge and the rings ran on a longrod. As they were whipped back they disclosed no ordinary wall but agreat expanse of mirror extending from floor to ceiling, from corner tocorner. When two other walls were exposed they too resolved themselvesinto clearly reflecting surfaces.
"Clap-trap again," muttered Kendric, beginning to feel a strange dreadin his heart and growing angry with it and determined that Zoraidashould not guess.
"Be seated," commanded Zoraida sternly. "If you would see whatamusement is being offered a friend of yours!"
One by one the lamps were being put out by the hasty hand of the fellowwhom Kendric began to long to strangle; he could hear a low gutturalgurgling sort of noise rising from the thick throat, issuing from themonstrous mouth. Zoraida did not appear to hear but sat rigid,waiting. At last, when all but one opaque shaded lamp wereextinguished and the room was cast into shadowy gloom, Kendric,impelled by environment, a curious dread and perhaps the will ofZoraida, sat down on the stool.
"Clap-trap, you say!" scoffed Zoraida. "Watch the first mirror!"
At first the mirror reflected nothing save the shadowy room and avague, half-s
een line of other mirrors. But while Kendric watchedthere came a swift change. Somewhere a lamp had been lighted--severallamps, for there was a brilliant light. He saw reflected what appearedto be a small room with a door in one wall. He saw the door open and aman come in; it was either the man who just now had obeyed Zoraida'scommands or his twin-fellow. The man began hooking together whatappeared to be several frames of steel bars. Working swiftly he shapedthem into a steel cage hardly larger than to accommodate a manstanding. Kendric's heart leaped and then stood still. He rememberedwords which Juanita, terrified by idle threat from him, had spoken.
He sat like a man in a trance. The dim mirrors seemed unreal. What hesaw elsewhere--was it a reflected reality or was his mind under thespell of Zoraida's? Was she through hypnosis projecting a lying imageinto his groping consciousness? Absolutely, he did not know. He drewhis eyes away from the vision of that room and turned themquestioningly upon Zoraida. Stern she was and rigid and white, a dimfigure in that dim light save alone for her eyes; they burnedominously, glowing like a cat's.
A quick shifting of the image in the glass jerked back his strayingattention. The man had completed his brief labors with the steelframes which now made a strong cage; he shook the bars with his hand asthough trying them, and they were firm in their places. He opened asection which turned on hinges so that a narrow door swung back. Thenhe drew away and across the room. And now the remarkable thing wasthat though he moved several paces, still he remained in full view atthe center of the mirror.
Plainly in a complicated series of reflectors there were mirrors whichwere being turned as the man moved, cunningly and skilfully adjusted tohis slow progress; otherwise would he have passed out of the scope ofKendric's vision. As it was, the cage slid away out of view, anuncanny sort of thing since it had the appearance of gliding under awill of its own.
Presently, however, the man opened a door in the wall and was gone.For an instant the mirror darkened; then the light flashed back andKendric was treated to a broken procession of images which set himmarveling. First he saw straight into the heart of the gardens of thegolden Tezcucan; he saw the sacrificial stone; he saw one of the oldmen approach it and pass by; he saw the treasure chamber. Again hestared at Zoraida, again the fear was upon him that she had masteredhis mind with hers, that what he fancied he saw was but what she willedhim to imagine. For he could not ignore the long tunneled distancethey had traversed, the dark passageways, the heavy doors with theirmassive locks. And yet his reason told him that to a mind likeZoraida's as he began to believe it, a brain filled with ancient craftand perhaps a strain of madness, actuated by such dark impulses ascertainly must abide there, the actual physical accomplishment of thissort of parlor magic was a thing in keeping. There would be smalltube-like holes through walls, angled with reference to other mirrors;there would be scientific arrangement; there would be, somewhere in thegreat house, a sort of operating room, a room of mirrors with a trainedhand to manipulate them. Perhaps, with modern reflectors, she butimproved on some fancy of an ancient king who sought to guard himselfagainst treachery or his hoardings against the hand of his treasurers.
Again and again, as Kendric sat watching, the mirrors darkened and grewbright again, with always a new image. He saw the room in which he hadspent a long day immured and knew then that had Zoraida been of themind she could have sat here in her private room and have observedevery move he made. He saw still another room and in it Bruce pacingup and down, up and down, swinging suddenly to look eagerly at hisdoor; he saw Barlow's back as Barlow stared out of a window--somewhere.
"Thus Zoraida knows what goes forward in her own house," said Zoraida,speaking for the first time. Kendric, struck with a new thought,looked about the room everywhere, seeking to locate the necessaryopening in the wall through which came the reflections from mirrors inother places. But the great glasses covering three of the wallspresented what appeared to be smooth, unbroken surfaces; where thefourth wall was tapestry-draped there was no sign of an opening;neither floor nor ceiling, places offering no detail but blurred withvague shadows, showed him what he sought.
"Watch closely!" said Zoraida.
Again it was the small room of the steel cage. The savage-looking manin the short tunic was there again. He looked watchful, tense, notaltogether at his ease. In one hand was a heavy whip; in the other apistol. Kendric thought of the animal trainers he had seen atcircuses. The man's eyes were on the door through which he had come.So vivid were old images bred now of associations of ideas that Kendrichad no doubt of what small head with fierce eyes would appear next; hecould prevision the lithe puma, in its quick nervous movements, thelashing of the heavy tail and the glint of the teeth. And so when hesaw what it was that entered, he sat back for a moment limp and thenext sprang to his feet. It was Betty.
Betty clothed strangely and with a face dead white, with eyes to haunta man. She wore a loose red robe, sleeveless, falling no lower thanher ankles; her bare feet were in sandals. Her hair was down; abouther brows was a black band that might have been ebony or velvet; intoit was thrust a large white flower.
Betty was speaking. Kendric had dropped back into his chair, havinglost sight of her when he stood. He saw that she was speaking swiftly,supplicatingly; her hands were clasped; all this he could see but noslightest sound came to him. He could not tell if she were near orfar. He began to realize the exquisite torture which Zoraida mightoffer a man through her mirrors.
He saw the squat brute's wide grin that was as hideous as the puma'scould be; all of the teeth he saw and they were glistening and sharp,unusually sharp for a human being. And then he saw Betty pushedforward though she shrank back at first with dragging feet and thoughthen, suddenly galvanized, she fought wildly. But two big hands lockedtight on her arms and as powerless as a child of six she was thrustinto the steel cage, the door snapped after her. She stood lookingwildly about her; her lips opened as she must have screamed; shedropped her face into her hands. Kendric saw the white flower fall.
Again the man looked to the door through which he and then Betty hadentered. And now came the puma. It ran in, snarling; it was lookingback over its shoulder as though someone had whipped it into the room.It saw another enemy armed with whip and pistol and sidled off withstill greater show of dripping fangs. All this in dead silence so faras Kendric was concerned; never the faintest sound coming to him. Thewhip was flung out and snapped, and there was no sound; the puma'steeth clicked together on empty air, and no sound; Betty, looking up,shrieked, and no sound. They looked to be so close to Kendric that hefelt as if with one stride he could hurl himself among them; and yet heknew that they might be shut off from him by innumerable walls andlocked and barred doors. He saw Betty so plainly that until hereasoned with himself he felt that she must see him.
"A puma will not attack a human being." Kendric sought to speak asthough merely contemptuous of Zoraida's entertainment. "They arecowardly brutes."
"The puma," said Zoraida, "is starving. Further, he has been drivenmad by men who whipped and then appeared to run, frightened of him.Watch."
The man threatening the puma slipped out through the door behind him.The door closed. Betty and the animal were alone. The great cat laydown and looked at her with its hard, unwinking eyes, only its slowtail moving back and forth like a bit of mechanism clock-regulated.Presently the puma lifted its head and began a horrible sniffing; itlifted itself gradually from the floor; it drew a step nearer Betty'scage and sniffed again. Kendric could see Betty draw back the fewinches made possible by the narrow confines of the cage, could see thatagain she screamed.
"A little fresh blood has been sprinkled on the floor of the cage,"said Zoraida. "A little of it is on the gown she wears. It will notbe overlong to watch. Are you growing impatient?"
"Are you mad?" he burst out. "Good God, do you mean to let this go on?"
"Am I mad?" Her eyes, slowly turned to his, looked it. "Perhaps. Whothat is mad knows he is mad? An
d who, my friend, is sane? Do I meanto let this go on?" She laughed at him, and the sound was as hard asthe tinkle of bits of jangling glass. "You have but to be patient toknow."
The puma sniffed again, again drew closer. Betty was tight pressedagainst the far bars shutting her in, and even so had the great catthrust a claw forward she could not withdraw beyond the reach of theripping talons. The cat circled her. Always Betty turned with it, hereyes upon its eyes, her eyes that were large and fixed with terror.
"A puma is patient, more patient than a man," said Zoraida. "It may bean hour; it may be all night before it strikes. It may be a night anda day, and still another night and day. Its hunger does not diminishas time passes! Or," and she shrugged with a great showing of herindifference, "it may strike now, at any moment. That is one of thethings that makes the moment tense for that white-faced little fool inthere. Imagine when she is worn out, if it lasts that long; when sleepwill no longer flee because of terror; and when I command that thelight shall be extinguished where she is! You see, she must bethinking all those things."
The sweat broke out on Kendric's forehead, he felt as though ice ran inhis veins. If he only knew where all this was going on! Was it abovehim or below, to right or left? Ten steps or a hundred yards away?
"By God----" he shouted. But only Zoraida's merciless laughteranswered him.
"I had to choose between this and the ancient stone of sacrifice," shetold him. "Have I not chosen well?"
The puma had been still. Now again it moved and its feet hadquickened, it glided with ever-increasing swiftness, it came close tothe steel bars, it showed more of its sharp, tearing, dripping teeth.
"Betty!" shouted Kendric. "I----"
He knew that Betty could not hear, that he could do nothing. Nothing?As the thought framed he leaped to his feet and in the grip of such arage as even he had never known, hurled himself across the few pacesbetween him and Zoraida.
"You have the way to stop this damned thing!" His hands, like claws,were thrust before her face. "You will stop it."
Even in his headlong rage there were cool cells in his brain. He sawthe quick significant look Zoraida shot over his shoulder and turned;there behind him stood one of the squat brutes who did her bidding.Kendric saw something in the man's hand but did not reck whether it wasgun or knife or club or something else. He whipped about and struck.As the man staggered under the unexpected blow, Kendric snatched up theheavy stool on which he had been sitting and struck again, so swiftthat the blow landed while the figure was yet staggering backward. Theman fell, stunned, and then, as quick as light, before Zoraida couldlift a hand, Kendric was upon her again.
"Call off your cat!" he shouted at her.
She lifted her head defiantly.
"Never has man dictated to me!" she cried angrily. "Here I dictate.If you dared put a hand on me----"
He saw her own hand creeping out toward the table. What it sought hedid not know; a hidden bell, perhaps. Or a dagger. He remembered herswift attack upon Ortega. He seized her wrist, his fingers locked hardabout it; she struggled and he held her back in her chair. Suddenlyshe relaxed and shrugged and laughed at him.
"You add to the entertainment!" she mocked him. "For, mind you, whileyou make large commands, the puma draws nearer and nearer. If youwill, between your great commands, but glance into the mirror----"
"I say you can put a stop to that infernal torture," he said fiercely."And you will!"
"Yes?" she sneered at him. "And you will make me, perhaps? You, acommon adventurer will dictate to Zoraida!"
For the moment he felt powerless in face of her cold taunting. Butthere was too much at stake for him to yield now to a feeling ofpowerlessness. One hand was on her wrist; the gripping fingers of theother shut about the haft of the ancient obsidian knife. The old knifeof sacrifice. His face was white and stern, his eyes no whit lessdeadly than Zoraida's.
"You threaten my life?" she gasped. "_You_?"
He made no answer. He was beyond speech. Slowly he lifted the greatknife, slowly as in a dream he set the thin point against the softflesh of Zoraida's throat. As a tremor shook his hand Zoraida whippedback.
"You would not dare! You would not dare!"
His hand was steady again. He held her still, and the point of theknife crept a hair's breadth closer to the life within her. A littlemore and it would have slipped into the skin it was pricking.
"You could not do it," she whispered.
Then he spoke.
"I can do it." His lips were dry, his voice very harsh. "You havesaid that you know me for a man of my word. Well, then, I swear to youthat little by little I'll drive that knife in unless you set that girlfree."
Still she sought to brave it out, sought to defy him; her eyes, on his,told him that his will was less than hers, and that this could neverbe. But Kendric knew otherwise. It was given him to know that ifBetty died, he did not care to live. Like men of his stamp it wasunthinkable to him that he should lift his hand against a woman. Butwoman for the moment Zoraida was not. Fiend, rather; reincarnatedsavage; a thing to stamp into the earth. What he had said he meant.He was giving her time because on her rested Betty's fate. He pressedthe knife a little deeper. So steady was his hand, so stiff Zoraida'sbody, so gradual the increased pressure, that the knife point made inthe white flesh a tiny, shadow-filled dimple.
Now came into Zoraida's eyes a swift change, a look which in all of herlife had never been there until now. A look of terror, of realizationof death, of frantic fear. She sought to speak, and words failed her.The knife pressed steadily. A piercing scream broke from her.