Phil swung the plane, gave an anxious glance toward the clouds, then sent the plane sideslipping for the nearest.
The other plane followed, ripping machine gun bullets into the night. The cloud sent up welcoming streamers. Then the moonlight and stars vanished, swallowed in a sea of moisture. Phil kicked the rudder, swung the stick, glanced at the instruments, seeking to read the turn and bank indicator, get back to an even keel.
The plane righted, wobbled drunkenly, shot through the cloud and dived for the earth. Phil straightened her out, looked for another cloud. One loomed ahead and lower. From the white mist behind them shot the other plane, straight on their tail.
They flung into the second cloud, and Phil resorted to a desperate maneuver. He flung the stick over, kicked the rudder, banked, turned, whipped back the stick, and zoomed. For a moment he held himself braced. They had flipped about in a complete turn almost in a vertical bank. They stood a big chance of crashing into the pursuing plane.
But the danger passed. They shot out into the night, climbed back up into the first cloud, and then Phil turned at right angles. The cloud was thicker in this direction. They flew for more than a minute before they again debouched into the weak moonlight. The pursuing plane was nowhere in sight.
Minute after minute passed while they roared on this new course and then Phil swung sharply, back to the south. The tachometer showed the motor was performing at its best, hitting like a top. The air was bumpy along the clouds, but the plane rode through the bumps, handling splendidly. Phil knew that nothing vital had been touched by those deadly bullets.
Below appeared a cluster of twinkling lights. Farther ahead showed another blob of golden illumination. They were approaching settlements.
A mountain, jagging the glowing sky with distinctive turrets, gave Phil a landmark. Forbes pointed out a gray sweep of landscape and Phil nodded. The song of the motor died from a deep-throated roar to a monotone of droning power as the nose dipped and the ship settled toward the ground.
Below could be seen the terraced grounds of Crayson’s house. Farther on appeared the sweep of the field, somewhat to the west of where Phil had expected to find it. But the distinctive landmark of the towering mountain had served as an unfailing guide.
The plane settled, turned in a spiral, circled the field, and then came on in for an easy landing. A tawny native ran out to grasp the wing tip.
As he saw the occupants of the plane emerge into the moonlight, his features underwent a spasm of surprise. Then they settled into emotionless impassivity. He made no comment in answer to Phil’s question in English, or to Arthur Forbes’s sharp comment in the native tongue.
They lifted the still slumbering figure, carried her to the dark house. Through a back entrance they slipped and encountered a pacing figure, haggard of eye, blue of lip, pale of skin.
Arthur Forbes explained.
Colonel Crayson heard him in utter silence, then turned to Audrey Kent.
“Can you tell how you happened to arrive at that place?”
She shook her head, slowly, thoughtfully.
“I guess it’s just the same story of being drugged and kidnaped.”
“Humph!” snorted the colonel. “We’ll take it up with the authorities.”
“The thing that can’t help but impress you,” went on the girl, “is their utter sincerity. The old woman I’m not so sure about. She’s just a cracked old witch. But the rest are devoting their lives to a cause. Aside from the living exile of it, they treated me as a queen. Of course, they were grooming me, trying to get me to understand their life work, their ambitions, and there was the wedding that was to come—”
She broke off and shuddered.
“I think, Colonel,” she went on, “it’d be better not to let Jean know anything. Just let her sleep it off and ask no questions.”
The colonel fell to pacing the floor again, but it seemed that years had fallen from his shoulders. His lips were colored again, his eyes more clear.
“This is India,” he said at length.
“And those people are sincere,” muttered the girl. “After all, who can say there’s not something in their work?”
And the thoughts of all three turned to that last sight they had had of the man-ape, standing with head bowed in sorrow, while about him raged the boiling turmoil of maddened priests.
The rays of morning light shrouded the room on a soft, gray cloak. From without came the long-drawn drone of a high flying motor.
“Murasingh!” muttered Phil.
Colonel Crayson went to his desk, buckled on a heavy service revolver.
“We’ll meet him,” he said simply, but his eyes were pools of glassy menace.
They stepped out into the freshness of the dawn.
“Do you suppose there’s any possibility he thinks we’re shot down?” asked Forbes.
But Phil with puckered brows was watching the golden ribbons of streaming dawn, and the little man speck that was circling high overhead.
The plane circled, swung, hung poised.
The rim of golden sun that slipped over the eastern hills sent soft rays bathing the circling plane.
“I wonder—” began the girl, but broke off as the plane dipped forward, slowly circled down in a spiral that became tighter and tighter.
Phil knew, tried to pull the girl away. But she remained, calm, steady, watching the plane spinning down.
It crashed half a mile away. Murasingh was a gentleman in that. He did not bring the shock of his tragic death home too closely to the Crayson house.
They persuaded the girl to go back. The men went to the plane. That which had been Murasingh was a huddled bundle of shapeless flesh. But the paper which he had pasted to the instrument board had survived the crash. Upon it appeared a brief message:
For the good of the cause.
Murasingh, high priest of the secret cult of Hanuman, leader in the two-thousand-year long experiment to return an ape to human status, had offered his life in payment of his crimes against the British law, a mute plea not to let his acts bring disaster on the great experiment he held higher than life itself.
Phil turned back to the house, his soul sickened, face pale. The words of the girl came to him. “They’re so utterly sincere.”
At the entrance he met Jean Crayson, with sleep-dilated eyes.
“Something crashed? I was asleep and I felt the earth jar. It shook the house. In some manner I seem to have had a horrible nightmare, and... oh, who left me this?”
She looked with uncomprehending eyes at the golden tapestry that shrouded her limbs, then sank into a chair.
“A funny dream,” she said, and slipped off to sleep.
Phil gazed down at her face, noticed the peculiar contour of the eyes. After all, there was a something about them that reminded him faintly of the round eyes of the man-ape.
He reached in his pocket, pulled out the diamond ring with the strange characters engraved in its golden circlet.
Moved by some strange impulse, he stooped and pressed the ring upon the sleep-limpened fingers of the girl’s left hand.
Then he tiptoed from the room.
New Worlds
Chapter 1
Flood!
Phil Bregg was a stranger in the city, and felt the fact to the very utmost. He was heart-heavy and homesick, and he was sick of the rain. It had started the night before. On the Western cattle ranges he had seen occasional cloudbursts; never such a rain, however, as was sheeting down in the city. Being a stranger, he failed to realize that the rain was a phenomenal downpour. He took it much for granted, even when he had found the street curb-full.