The suit was withstanding the pressure. Would it hold out for long enough? His ears strained for the slightest sound which would betray the creak of metal; the faintest groan of steel.
Then Curtis's casting beam illuminated something brighter than bleak rock.
It was silver. A great orb of silver light.
He'd found the sphere.
"Hold it!" he ordered. His descent suddenly ended. He hung in the water, w swaying gently from side to side.
Above him was blackness, and somewhere far away, the surface.
Beneath him was blackness again - and a drop of over five miles!
But he wouldn't drop that far if the cable gave out under the strain. Before he'd fallen a thousand feet he would be pulverised and smashed like an eggshell.
Slowly he worked his metal arms out towards the rocks on his left. The sphere lay on a narrow ledge where it had lodged.
Curtis's metal claws touched the walls of rock. He made them grasp a projection and by careful manipulation worked his way towards the ledge.
On one side of the vessel's ledge there was a space of about three feet, while on the other side sheer rock face soared up into the gloom.
Curtis worked with painful slowness. He got one foot on the ledge and pulled himself upwards.
After what seemed like an age, he was able to touch the sphere. He worked round it slowly, taking care not to disturb its position. Then at length, his face-plate was opposite the bathysphere's porthole.
He pressed his face forward, raised his lamp and shone the beam into the dim interior.
On the research ship, Vasquez was watching the dials and praying. They were two things he could do simultaneously. His heart pounded and perspiration stood out on his brow.
Suddenly Curtis's voice cracked over the radiophone:
"I'm beside the sphere now. I'm looking in. The equipment has taken some hard knocks but the sphere is okay apart from a small hole near the top - not much bigger than my fist. Can't be sure what caused it. We can salvage the sphere, I think."
His tone lowered. "I can see one body - not a nice sight - it's badly crushed by pressure…"
Silence.
Then: "That's strange…" Curtis sounded puzzled.
Again silence…
"Great Heavens! It's not possible!" He suddenly shouted: "There's only one body! The other one has gone! It's unbelievable - but it's true! One of them's disappeared! No-one could get out of here at this depth -"
His voice broke off suddenly, then. There was a long and heavy silence. When finally he spoke again, Curtis's voice was pitched high with a new note - a note of hysteria:
"God Almighty! I don't believe it! I must be going mad! I can't believe my eyes-!"
"What is it, sir?" Vasquez cut in with a voice that was shaking with terror. "What have you seen?"
"This body!" Curtis's voice rose to a scream. "This man's been murdered! He's been stabbed in the back! I must be going insane, but I can see it! I can see the knife! He's been stabbed in the back!"
Vasquez made no reply to that. In the silent sunlight of the research ship's control cabin he had suddenly ceased to feel the heat of the Caribbean afternoon. Cold sweat had broken out all over his body.
Icicles of fear clutched at his heart and bowels as the uncanny implications of the Professor's words registered in his mind.
One dead body was floating in the sphere - murdered. And the other man had defied the laws of nature and disappeared.
But how?
3. SWEET PERSUASION
Sexton Blake sat at the desk of his office in Berkeley Square and stirred his mid-morning coffee with an abstracted, thoughtful expression on his lean, incisive face.
In one hand he held the latest edition of the Daily Post and the puckered frown of his dark, satanic eyebrows was focussed on a front page article headed:
TERRORISM INCREASES IN MALIBA
PRESIDENT NONALES TO SEEK US AID
The Rebel Army of Juan Callas last night struck a new blow at the Government of the trouble-torn island of Maliba, where a party of the "People's Commandoes" pulled off a well-planned raid on the Carabanos Army garrison, only a few miles from the Carabanos Army garrison, only a few miles from the capital of this latest Caribbean trouble spot. Charles Fleming reports:
A spokesman of the island's government said tonight: "This is the fifth successful raid by subversive infiltrators this month. In view of these increasing outrages, the President, Doctor Nonales, is to consult with American representatives with a view to seeking US aid to defend our national sovereignty."
The spokesman claimed that this latest attack, like others preceding it, was communist-inspired and accuses Cuba of interfering in Maliba's domestic affairs.
After the attack tonight the city lay under the an uneasy silence and the streets were deserted except for the rumbling of army tanks as security forces patrolled the capitol…
Blake's eyes ran to the bottom of the column where it said: "See pictures on page 3. More about Maliba in Around and About, p. 6."
Blake frowned thoughtfully and turned to page six.
Around and About was the column written and compiled by his old friend Arthur "Splash" Kirby, one of the Post's top journalists.
The column ran along usual lines. Blake swiftly scanned through reports of social gossip and bright observations on London life before coming to the sub-heading which read:
MALIBAN MYSTERY
From the latest Caribbean trouble-spot of Maliba comes this report on the latest events in the life of the famous "boy-professor" and marine biologist Hoddard Curtis. Curtis is the man who perfected a new kind of bathsphere in the United States some months ago.
Two of the professor's assistants took the bathysphere out for a joy-ride in the deep, yesterday morning - while Professor Curtis was away on a trip to Florida. Although they hadn't their boss's permission to use the deep-sea sub, they thought that a quick trip to the ocean-bed and back would do no harm.
Just how wrong they were is shown by the fact that they failed to come back.
Investigating the loss of his bathysphere, Curtis risked his life in an untested deep-sea diving suit and located his brain child more than a thousand feet down.
Then came shock number two for the young professor. When he shone his under-sea torch through the port-hole of the bathysphere, one of its two occupants had disappeared - leaving the other with a knife in his back!
Experts agree that no-one could escape alive from the bathysphere at even half the depth.
How one man came to be stabbed in the back and the other spirited away, presents a mystery worthy of a Holmes or a Blake.
Maliban authorities have so far refused to comment, and in view of the blanket of silence our diplomatic correspondant points out that a political motive might well be involved.
Sexton Blake allowed himself a brief smile at the reference to himself, but as he came to the end of the article his smile became a puzzled frown.
For a moment his fingers drummed thoughtfully on the top of his desk. Then he picked up the telephone.
The company's telephonist and receptionist, Marion Lang, came on the line.
"Yes, Mr. Blake?"
"Marion, get me splash Splash Kirby's office at the Post, will you?"
"Right away, Mr Blake!"
Blake replaced the receiver on its cradle and glanced up as his secretary came in.
Paula Dane was the epitome of everything the perfect secretary should be - and more.
She was tall, sophisticated and extremely beautiful.
The blue, summer dress she was wearing had a wide skirt which swayed gently from the hips of her fine, well-moulded figure as she walked.