In front of 1416 a knot of policemen, headed by Inspector Des Moines in person, waited stolidly, silently, in a suppressed fever of excitement, like soldiers waiting the signal for an attack. About them the crowd surged and stormed. But bent upon keeping the fiend from carrying out his threat, Des Moines had cleared the street for a space of nearly a hundred feet, holding the curiosity seekers back with his cordon of bluecoats.
Hundreds of automobiles were caught in the vortex of humanity, their drivers unable to either go forward or to back out. The officers were forced to let well enough alone; to handle the jam was a task beyond the power of the guardians of the law.
In one of the machines Des Moines recognized the pale, haggard face of Augustus Winters. The millionaire, huddled up in the back seat, his every movement showing the mental strain under which he was laboring, caught the inspector's eye and beckoned. Des Moines shouldered his way through the mass of humanity to the side of his automobile.
"I've been caught in the crowd, inspector, and we're unable to get out. Can't you help us? You can understand the awful agony that I am suffering at such a time."
Des Moines shook his head. "Don't you realize, Mr. Winters, that if it were humanly possible, I'd have this street cleared and keep it cleared? My men are working in from the outside — but it'll be a job of hours, I'm afraid."
"But, my God, man! You are not going to allow this murder to take place, are you?"
Des Moines shrugged his shoulders. "Out of the hundreds of thousands of people packed in this vicinity, Mr. Winters, show me how to pick out the one man — the man I want. My hands are tied. There is nothing for me to do. I must bide my time and wait for the fiend to strike."
Suddenly, the aged millionaire clutched the other's shoulder. His eyes dilated. He leaned forward, his muscles twitching, his face ashen and drawn. "Oh, God!" he shrieked. "It's happening! Look! Look!"
His long, skinny forefinger pointed far out over the heads of the crowd. And then he fell in a heap on the bottom of the car in a dead faint.
Des Moines leaped upon the running board of the machine and gazed in the direction Winters had pointed. Then, with a yell, he jumped to the ground, and, hurling people to the right and left, plunged through the mass of humanity like a maddened bull.
For Officer Ryan, a strapping figure of a man, with the muscular figure of an athlete, who, a second before, had been in the prime of health, had suddenly thrown his arms in the air. For an instant he wove backwards and forwards, his face twisted, every muscle tensed, as if struggling against the unseen hands that were pulling him down. Then he gave voice to a shrill, hideous, agonized scream, and, lurching like a drunken man for a pace or two, crumpled up in a heap on the pavement.
A dozen of his brother officers leaped to his assistance. They were hurled back as if by an electric shock. Arising, they fought against the invisible force that held them in its power, but without avail. Open-mouthed, their feet fastened to the pavements as by steel bands, they were forced to stand and watch the torture of their comrade.
As Des Moines broke through the, edge of the crowd, the unknown power that held them in check lessened. In a body they dashed to the stricken man's side and turned him on his back. His eyes were already glazing. His hands were cold and clammy. On his forehead was the sweat of death. He shivered spasmodically. Then his jaw dropped. Lessman had struck. "The Man Who Would Not Die" had won another victory.
Silence. Tense, nerve-racking silence. Eyes were peering, heads moving. On all sides excitement was visible on every face. But no one spoke a word. The agony was too great.
"Boom!" High up in a tower a clock was striking. Every eye was turned towards it. But still no word. Only the soul-straining, awful silence.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
The clock was striking ten. Lessman had kept his word to the minute. A woman screamed. Her shrill, hysterical shriek broke the spell.
Then over the heads of the silent, awe-filled crowd rang a burst of laughter — cold, haunting, diabolical laughter — weird, mysterious — the gloating of a fiend.
Pandemonium broke loose. Those in the front lines, frozen with supernatural terror, turned, white-faced, from the horror that they had witnessed and sought an avenue of escape. None knew but the arch-fiend might continue — that, any moment, others might fall, blasted like a tree after a lightning stroke.
Men fought and struggled to flee from the invisible. Who knew? Lessman might be he who stood beside you. Even now he might be seeking another victim! Nothing could stop him. He was omnipotent! Every man suspected his neighbor. The police labored with club and fist. It was like stemming the ocean's-tide with a shovel. It was a panic, a riot in which the stronger trampled the weaker under foot. There was no mercy — only a desire to escape from the spot. Men and women dropped, fainting, exhausted, dying where they fell, beneath the feet of their maddened fellows. Their dying screams only added to the fright of those who rushed over them. Automobiles, their drivers stricken by the fear that mastered all, dashed madly ahead, slaughtering and crippling. The pavement, covered with dead and wounded, was like a battlefield. It was a miniature hell — an inferno created by the diseased brain of a devil in human form.
When the officers had finally completed their task and the street was cleared — when the last ambulance had departed with its ghastly load — Des Moines looked about him for Winters. He was gone. An officer remembered seeing the millionaire's machine driving away, its owner huddled up in the back seat, shrieking and babbling, his shoulders shaking with hysterical sobs, his face wearing the look of a man who has just escaped from Hades.
The inspector stood deep in thought. "He said that he'd speak to me! And yet — dammit all! The man never lived who could act such a part. It can't be him!" And, with a shake of his head, he returned to his duties.
VIII
In a lonely house in one of the outlying districts — a house set down in the midst of great trees and gardens, surrounded by a high stone wall — dwelt a man of extraordinary powers. To his neighbors he was merely an Oriental gentleman of wealth and refinement, who preferred solitude in an alien country to a position of magnificence and power in his own. But to the initiate — that little band of followers selected from every walk of life — he was the ambassador of a tiny group of learned men who, for centuries before Jesus, the Christ, walked upon this earth, have been striving to bring about the regeneration of the world. Their representatives are to be found in every large center of population, working quietly, unostentatiously, teaching, preaching, gaining an occasional recruit, ever content to bide their time, knowing that years are but seconds in the general scheme of the universe.
Mohammed Gunga, the Master, as he was known to those who loved and obeyed him, was a truly wonderful man. Taken, when a child, by The Holy Ones, his life had been dedicated by them to the service of his fellow creatures. Masters of mystery, delving far beyond the comprehension of ordinary humans into the phenomena of life, they had poured their combined wisdom into his open ears. And, their task completed, they had sent him out into the world, as they had sent many others before him, to spread the propaganda of the great work to which they had pledged themselves.
None knew the limits of his power, none the depths of his great learning. To him all things were possible. To him life's mysteries were but commonplaces. Master of theosophy, philosophy, and the sciences, what, to the novitiate, seemed to savor of the weird, the mysterious, the occult, was to his mighty mind but the working of nature's laws.