Title Page
Author
Nightmare!
The Heads of Cerberus
About the Publisher
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Gertrude Mabel Barrows was born in Minneapolis in 1884, to Charles and Caroline Barrows (née Hatch). Her father, a Civil War veteran from Illinois, died in 1892. Gertrude completed school through the eighth grade, then attended night school in hopes of becoming an illustrator (a goal she never achieved). Instead, she began working as a stenographer, a job she held on and off for the rest of her life.
In 1909 Barrows married Stewart Bennett, a British journalist and explorer, and moved to Philadelphia. A year later her husband died during a tropical storm while on a treasure hunting expedition. With a new-born daughter to raise, Bennett continued working as a stenographer. When her father died toward the end of World War I, Bennett assumed care for her invalid mother.
During this time period Bennett began to write a number of short stories and novels, only stopping when her mother died in 1920. In the mid-1920s, she moved to California. Because Bennett was estranged from her daughter, for a number of years researchers believed Bennett died in 1939 (the date of her final letter to her daughter). However, new research, including her death certificate, shows that she died in 1948.
Gertrude Mabel Barrows (as she then was) wrote her first short story at age 17, a science fiction story titled "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar". She mailed the story to Argosy, then one of the top pulp magazines. The story was accepted and published in the March 1904 issue, under the byline "G.M. Barrows". Although the initials disguised her gender, this appears to be the first instance of an American female author publishing science fiction, and using her real name.
Once Bennett began to take care of her mother, she decided to return to fiction writing as a means of supporting her family. The first story she completed after her return to writing was the novella "The Nightmare," which appeared in All-Story Weekly in 1917. The story is set on an island separated from the rest of the world, on which evolution has taken a different course. "The Nightmare" resembles Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot, itself published a year later. While Bennett had submitted "The Nightmare" under her own name, she had asked to use a pseudonym if it was published. The magazine's editor chose not to use the pseudonym Bennett suggested (Jean Vail) and instead credited the story to Francis Stevens. When readers responded positively to the story, Bennett chose to continue writing under the name.
Over the next few years, Bennett wrote a number of short stories and novellas. Her short story "Friend Island" (All-Story Weekly, 1918), for example, is set in a 22nd-century ruled by women. Another story is the novella "Serapion" (Argosy, 1920), about a man possessed by a supernatural creature. This story has been released in an electronic book entitled Possessed: A Tale of the Demon Serapion, with three other stories by her. Many of her short stories have been collected in The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy (University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
In 1918 she published her first, and perhaps best, novel The Citadel of Fear (Argosy, 1918). This lost world story focuses on a forgotten Aztec city, which is "rediscovered" during World War I. It was in the introduction to a 1952 reprint edition of the novel which revealed for the first time that "Francis Stevens" was Bennett's pen-name.
A year later she published her only science fiction novel, The Heads of Cerberus (The Thrill Book, 1919). One of the first dystopian novels, the book features a "grey dust from a silver phial" which transports anyone who inhales it to a totalitarian Philadelphia of 2118 AD.
One of Bennett's most famous novels was Claimed! (Argosy, 1920; reprinted 1966, 2004, 2018), in which a supernatural artifact summons an ancient and powerful god to early 20th century New Jersey. Augustus T. Swift called the novel, "One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read".
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“PHILIP, did you notice that tall, thin man in the gray ulster, who was walking up and down the boat-deck just before dinner?”
“Yes, sir. I observed the gentleman. Very haristocratic appearance, if I may say so, Mr. Jones.”
“Exactly. He never bought that ulster in New York. When we reach London I want you to look around and see if you can find a tailor who will make me one of the same cut.”
“Very well, sir. Very good taste, if I may say so, Mr. Jones.”
“You may. And — let’s see — I need a few new golf sticks, and — a dozen new shirts. Why did you pack this automatic in this trunk, Philip? Put it in that suitcase.”
“Yes, sir. I ‘ardly thought you’d require it while on board the Lusitania, Sir, if I may say so, Mr. Jones.”
“Certainly you may. No, events requiring a pistol as stage-property are not frequent on a liner. By the way, you never showed me how to work the thing, Philip.”
“No, Sir. The shopman from whom I purchased it declared it simple of hoperation, but I ‘ave not found it so sir.”
“Well, find out in London and show me. I never met a burglar, but if I ever should it would be embarrassing to point a pistol at him and not be able to fire it off. I admire the heroes of burglar stories. They’re always such efficient people.”
“Hunder exciting circumstances, sir, one becomes much more efficient. They bring it out of a man, if I may say so, Mr. Jones.”
“By all means. Well, golf is exciting enough for me. Merridale and I are going to run over to the St. Andrews links. It’s been the dream of my life to play the St. Andrews, but something has always come up to prevent.”
“Nothing is likely to hoccur, I am sure, sir. Shall I repack the steamer trunk now, Mr. Jones?”
“Yes. And call me a little earlier, in the morning, Philip. I have an idea it’s going to be fine weather, and since it’s the last of the voyage I want to make the most of it. What time is it? Eleven, eh? Well, I’ll go to bed early for once and get a good night’s rest. Thank Heaven for a quiet life, Philip. Cribbage and the Times for you, golf and — ”
“Beg pardon for hinterrupting, sir, but do you want this book packed in the trunk?”
“‘Paradise Island’? Yes, pack the thing away. Did you ever read it, Philip?”
“No, sir. I don’t care for them himpossible stories, if I may say so, sir.”
“And welcome. Now, I’m thirty-two years old, I’ve yachted, ridden, motored and been about the world a good bit, and I’ve never had a real adventure in my life. People don’t have adventures unless they’re gentlemen in the filibustering line, or polar explorers, or something like that. This modern world of ours is as safe as a church, barring accidents, and they are never romantic. End in a hospital or a beastly morgue. Anybody I suppose, can find trouble by looking for it, but that’s not exactly in my line.”
“No, sir. Very bad form, sir, if I may say so, Mr. Jones.”
“You may indeed. Here, I’ll help you with that strap, and then — bed.”
Ragged fragments of cloud raced across a sky where great, brilliant stars beamed fitfully. The wind hurled the wave crests through space, so that the air was almost as watery as the wide waste of billows and creaming surges in the midst of which Mr. Roland C. Jones, of New York City, found himself most unexpectedly struggling.
How it could be that he was here battling for his life, with the stars, the wind and raging, tumbling seas for his sole companions, did not immediately trouble him. He was too thoroughly engaged in trying to get a breath that was not half or all salt water to concern himself about either past or future. The mere physical present was a little bit more than he could comfortably handle.
But the fight between man and sea was too unequal. Mr. Jones was a fair swimmer, but not being provided with gills he found it impossible to get a living modicum of oxygen out of the saturated air, even when the waves did not go clean over his head. Thoroughly exhausted, more than half drowned, he had just decided that he might as well throw up his arms and let the sea have its will of him, when he found himself rising upon the shoulder of a particularly mighty billow.
For an instant he caught a glimpse of something dark and huge looming above him. Then he was in the trough again, but only for a moment. Up, up he was borne in a long, swift, surging motion. The water seemed to fall away from under him. He was on his knees in sand and the receding breaker was trying to drag him back with it. The next wave, however, carried him much farther up the beach, dropping him with a vicious thud when it was done with him.
Barely conscious of his own efforts, Jones dragged himself along on hands and knees until he was actually out of reach of the ocean which had been so unappreciative as to spew him up.
For a time he lay still, gasping the water out of lungs and stomach, then rolled over and sat up. He felt like a man in a dream, yet the pain he suffered informed Mr. Jones that this was no dream, but a grim, incredible reality.
It was not alone the question, where was he, although that seemed pressing enough. But how had he gotten into the water at all? The last thing he remembered was a little, pleasant, white-finished room — a state room — ah, that was it. He was in his state room on board the liner. He was on board the Lusitania, and he was going to London to visit his cousin, the Hon. Percy Merridale. And he had — let’s see, he had been going over the things in his steamer trunk with his man, Philip. And then — then he was going to bed. He must have gone to bed, and then — He cudgeled his memory, but failed to beat out one single further recollection back of that dazed, strangling moment when he had found himself struggling with the waves.
Where was the liner? While in the water he could not recall having seen any lights, receding or otherwise. Stare earnestly as he might now across the sea, there were certainly no lights visible other than the stars, which storm-clouds now obscured at ever-increasing intervals.
Where was the Lusitania? And how had he come to part company with her so inexplicably? If the huge ship had melted away from about his slumbering form like a dream thing, instead of the vast solid steel hulk she was, she could not have vanished more thoroughly or mysteriously.
Only one explanation occurred to Mr. Jones, and even that was inadequate to explain the liner’s total disappearance. When a boy he had been given to the habit of sleep-walking. He had usually slept locked in, in those days, but had thought the habit long since dead and gone. Nevertheless, he must have risen in a dream, gone on deck, and in some way fallen over the rail without being seen by any one.
What an extremely awkward predicament! Where could he be? What land lay near enough for him to have reached it undrowned? In view of the approximate position of the liner, so far as he knew it, Ireland seemed the only possible answer to that question. Had he been cast upon some portion of the Irish coast? Certainly the only thing for him to do was to get up and walk along this lonely, God and man forsaken beach until he came to some place where he could get dry clothes and cable his friends in London.
His clothes! He was fully dressed, and he examined the garments as well as he was able by starlight. They seemed wrong, some way. They were not his clothes, at all, but the clothes of a stranger. Had he, in his sleep, wandered into a neighboring stateroom and robbed some innocent stranger? He recalled that he had been talking to Philip about burglars and pistols — lightly it is true, but perhaps the suggestion of that conversation had led him into such an astounding exploit.
Mr. Jones searched this hypothetical other person’s pockets, but all he brought to light were some wet, useless matches, a small penknife, an unmarked handkerchief, and a little loose change. There were no letters or anything by which the rightful owner could be identified.
By a mighty effort Jones forced the problem of the clothes out of his mind and fixed it upon the greater one of finding shelter and means of communication with London.
While he sat there the sky had completely cleared, and even by starlight he could make out that he was on a long, bare stretch of sand, which curved smoothly away on either side. From the inner edge of this strip a black wall of rock rose sharply, looming to the stars above Jones’s head. This enormous cliff also curved away on either hand, following the line of the beach.
Selecting a quarter from the small coins he had found, Mr. Jones flipped it into the air. “Heads to the right, tails to the left,” said he. The coin fell with the eagle uppermost and the castaway obediently started off in the direction indicated by Fate.
Walking was easy on the smooth, wet sand. The night air was so warm that even in his wet clothes Jones was not uncomfortably cold, and although the interminable breakers still roared in almost to his feet, the storm had evidently blown itself out. These rushing seas were only the aftermath.
Presently the beach dwindled away to nothing, and the cliff extended itself into the sea in a sort of long, sloping foot of jagged rocks. Mr. Jones managed to feel his way around this point, drenched again with spray, and wading through shallow pools of water. He tore his clothes and scraped his hands raw, but at last achieved the place where the beach began again.
“Halt!” commanded a stern, uncompromising voice.
Before him loomed the dark bulk of a figure which seemed to be pointing something at him. The figure came closer and the “something” developed into an unpleasant-looking rifle, along whose leveled barrel the starlight glimmered. Behind the figure, a hundred yards or so, Jones, saw a yellow gleam of lights, and not far out to sea, on the comparatively quiet waters of a little bay, some sort of vessel lay at anchor.
“Halt!” the man of the rifle again exclaimed in yet harsher tones.
“I have halted,” replied Mr. Jones mildly. “May I ask — ”
“None of your lip!” said the stranger ferociously. “Who are youse, and what do youse want around here?”
“Nothing — nothing at all. I was just walking along the beach — ”
“Ho! Takin’ y’r evenin’ stroll up Fift’ Avenoo, was youse? Well, just stroll along ahead of me now, and no more of your lip. I’ll turn youse over to the captain, see? Now, march!”
Perforce Jones marched. He was unarmed, but even if he had carried the automatic pistol (and known how to use it) he could not see what would be gained by opposing this determined and ruffianly person. He stumbled along ahead of his captor, who occasionally hastened his footsteps by prodding him in the back most uncomfortably with his rifle-muzzle.
Luckily it was not far to the lights, where Jones presently discovered that three small tents were erected on the sand.
Another man came forward to meet them. He was a tall, well set-up figure. Even by the dim light of three ship’s lanterns, set about in the sand, Jones could see that he was handsome, after a dark, foreign manner, and generally rather aristocratic in appearance. Neatly attired in white-ducks and of a fairly amiable expression, he seemed to Jones far preferable to his first acquaintance.
“What is this, Doherty?” inquired the gentleman in white.
“Youse c’n search me, y’r excellency,” replied the man with the rifle. “I found it up there by the point, and I brung it into camp for youse fellers to cut up or keep, just as you please. I don’t — ”
“That will do, Doherty,” broke in the other, a shade of annoyance in his even, cultivated voice. “You may return to your post And now,” turning to the castaway, “who are you, sir, and how did you come here?” He spoke courteously and with the slightest trace of foreign accent in his otherwise faultless English.
Several other men had now gathered about them. They were roughlooking fellows, unshaven, and with dull, uneducated faces. Their costumes were not elaborate, consisting mostly of a shirt and a pair of more or less ragged trousers, the only exceptions being the man in white and a tall, powerful-looking brute of a fellow who was dressed in a blue serge uniform, like a ship’s officer.
The moment had come for Mr. Jones to relate the tale of his strange misadventure and receive the aid and sympathy to which he knew himself entitled and which he fully expected to get, since rough clothes are by no means the natural insignia of unkind hearts.
“My name is Roland C. Jones,” he began. “I am an American, and during the storm I was cast up on the beach — over beyond that point. By the way, is this the coast of Ireland?”
“Is this — what?” exclaimed the man in white with a look of intense astonishment.
“Oh, isn’t it?” stammered Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by the stranger’s amazement. “Well, you see I couldn’t very well know what place it was. As I said, I was cast here by the storm, and of course I am very glad indeed to run across you fellows. That’s a yacht you’ve got out there, isn’t it? I thought by the look of her. I’m a yachtsman myself. My craft’s the little Bandersnatch, New York Yacht Club.”
These words should have been an open sesame to instant solicitude and hospitality, for to own a yacht is to belong to a sort of freemasonry, extending over the whole wide seas; but this stranger. only stared at Jones with increasing coldness and suspicion.
“Exactly,” he commented briefly, his lips curling in a curious little smile. “And how did you come to be cast away? Has your yacht been wrecked? Did no one else come ashore? Where are your companions?”
In the teeth of this fusillade of questions Mr. Jones launched once more into his explanation.
“My yacht was not wrecked. I was not on my yacht. I was on board the Lusitania, and Heaven knows where she is now.”
“Heaven probably does,” interrupted the stranger, smiling coldly. “The Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine early this morning. We have but just received the information by wireless. If you were one of the victims you are indeed to be pitied. You have been forced to swim a very long way — several thousand miles, I think. Did you come around the Horn, or through the canal, my friend?”
Jones stared at him blankly. Was the man insane? Torpedoed — by Germans — thousands of miles! He clasped his head in his hands and groaned. It must be he himself who was mad. Then raising a very white face he spread out his arms in a gesture of despair.
“I’ll have to admit that I don’t know what you are talking about. I— I am afraid something has happened to my head — or I don’t hear you correctly. No one could possibly torpedo the Lusitania — unless it were an anarchist, and I can’t imagine what you mean by several thousand miles.”
“That is sad. Yes, your brain must be affected, sir. You recollect that you are an American, and that is much, but I think you are mistaken about your name. Well, we will keep you with us. I do not really think it would be safe for you to stray about any longer alone in your pitiful condition. Captain Ivanovitch,” he turned to the tall man in blue serge, “I will turn this young man over to you. You have heard him and will agree with me that it is wise to guard him carefully — against himself, of course. Do you understand?”
He still spoke in English, and it was in broken English that the captain replied. He spoke with a grin.
“Excellency, I und’stand. He have forgot his name. He have forgot even that there ees war. Have you suggest a name which he know perhaps better than that one he say?”
“Not yet. My friend, if I should address you as Richard Holloway, would it arouse no recollections in your mind?” The words were pleasant enough, but the voice was keen and cold as a winter wind.
Jones looked at the man in increased bewilderment. For the sake of peace and until he could escape from these madmen, had he better accept this now cognomen? Before he could make up his mind, “his excellency” turned aside with a short laugh. “Take good care of Mr. Holloway, Ivanovitch,” he flung back over his shoulder. “It is just possible that we may arouse his memory and make him useful.”
“Eester way,” said the captain, with deceitful politeness, “eet is great pleasure to entertain you. So leetle we theenk Reechard Hol’way come to us so, free of weel. Weel you accept shelter from one of our leetle tents? Yes?”
Some inner instinct informed Mr. Jones that this Holloway personality was a dangerous one to assume. Playing himself off as another man did not appeal to him, anyway.
“I am not the person you seem to think I am,” he said rather doggedly. “But I’d go anywhere to get something to eat. I’m nearly starved.”
The captain grinned again, mockingly, hatefully. “At once, Meester Hol’way. We are all humbly servants. Dmitri — ” Here he turned to one of the seamen who stood by staring stupidly and launched a command in some language which was unfamiliar to Jones, although, judging by the captain’s own name and that of the man addressed, he assumed it to be Russian.
The sailor sprang to obey, and Captain Ivanovitch led Mr. Jones to one of the small tents. “Here,” said he, “weel Meester Hol’way, permit to lodge himself. The tent, he is leetle, but you not mind that. Eet is more better than the ocean, no?”
“Humph! Perhaps,” grunted Mr. Jones. He had taken an immediate dislike to the amiable captain. “By the way, you people seem to be very chary of introductions. Who is that gentleman I was just now speaking to? Your owner, I presume?”
“You not know? But of course. I forget you have jus’ been sheepwreck. That ees his highness, Preence Sergius Petrofsky. The name also — it call nothing to your mind?”
“Nothing but Siberia and — er — Russian cigarettes. So, he’s a connection of the royal family, is he? Now, tell me, what is all this fuss about, this man Holloway? There’s no particle of use in calling me Holloway any longer, you know. I never even knew one of that name.”
“So sad, Meester Hol’way. Perhaps you receive the blow upon the head — from wreckage, you und’stand? Eef you will show the place, we try to play the good part. We weel put upon eet the bandage.”
“My head is all right, I tell you. My stomach is the only part of me that is in need of attention.”
“Ver’ good. Here come my man now weeth the good food. We shall not starve you, my friend. Also comes once more hees excellency.”
The prince indeed came up at that moment. His features were set in a haughty frown, and he addressed himself immediately to Mr. Jones in a domineering tone.
“See here, Holloway, I have been considering this matter carefully, and can see no reason for your continuing the farce. How you came to fall into our hands is your own affair. But you must not rely upon the fact that your face is unfamiliar to us. There can be no question of your identity. You are the only man on the island — at least on the outside of it, for you yourself are theonly person who knows what is inside — who did not come here in the Monterey. Which places you beyond the shadow of a doubt as Richard Holloway. Now, answer me, yes or no. Will you tell me where lies the entrance to the caverns? If you help us we will make it well worth your while.”
“What caverns?” queried Jones impatiently and with rising anger. These Russians were intolerable.
“Your feigned ignorance will not help you in the least, my friend,” replied Petrofsky sternly. “I mean, of course, the caverns that lead beneath the cliffs. Out of all the caverns, the one which leads to that inner valley of yours. It was your story and yours alone which brought my brother across half a world to seek it.
“Come, sir, it is true that all of us here belong to the Brotherhood, and Paul has poisoned your mind against us. Also, by American eyes, I know that the great cause of nihilism is regarded askance.
“That is because you have experienced nothing of the evils which we plan to correct. But at least you know that I am a gentleman. If I give my word, I keep it. My brother has your trust.”
“I am glad to hear it,” murmured Jones wearily.
“What is that? I say that I, too, am a Petrofsky, and I swear to you that neither Paul nor those with him shall suffer the very least harm if you will help me. Nay, I will go further and promise that he shall receive his full share of the gains. The cause will not begrudge him that, although he has done his utmost to thwart our participation in this venture. But he and his little party can do nothing now. They have scarcely any provisions, hardly any arms or amunition. We could sweep down and annihilate them at this moment if I did not always remember that Paul is indeed my brother. Come, Mr. Holloway save him against himself and for the time at least cast in your lot with us. Will you give me your hand on it?”
Jones hesitated. To him this long rigmarole of nihilists and caverns failed to carry any meaning whatsoever.
“How can I convince you, Sir,” he said at last, “that I know nothing whatever of these matters? That all I desire is to get away from this place and continue my quiet, respectable journey to London. And last and most emphatically that my name is certainly not Holloway, but Roland C. Jones, of New York City. You are making a serious mistake, Prince Petrofsky, and a most absurd one, if you will pardon me.”
The Russian’s eyes flashed angrily.
“Ho! You are yet stubborn? We will see if we cannot loosen your tongue a bit. Now, listen to me, and remember that I pledge my word as a Petrofsky that this promise will be kept. If you persist in your present attitude you will be taken on board that yacht and triced up to the signal-mast. Then you will be beate — they beat criminals in Russia. With the knout. Do you know what the knout means? I can see by your expression that you do. Well, make up your mind which it is to be. You may expect either our gratitude or — the other! You have until morning to decide. While making up your mind you may remain in that tent. Ivanovitch, set a guard over this man and see that he does not escape. Mr. Holloway, I give you a very good evening!”
Sergius Petrofsky turned his straight white back upon the dismayed American and stalked off down to the shore. There he got into a waiting dingey and was rowed out to the yacht.
Jones started, shivering slightly, as the captain touched his elbow and said in a soft voice, “You are foolish man, Meester Hol’way. But do not be so foolish as try leave us to-night. You und’stand?”
And Mr. Jones was left with his guard of two bearded sailors.
“Good Lord!” he muttered to himself. “What a crazy mess! Is knouting any worse than drowning, I wonder? I’ll bet it is!”
MIDNIGHT found Mr. Jones sitting in his prison tent disconsolate.
There was a neat cot and blankets, but he had never felt less like sleeping in his life. He clung to his wakefulness and the few hours intervening between him and the morrow, like a sick man anticipating an extremely painful but inevitable operation. For something told him that Sergius Petrofsky was not the man to make empty threats.
Mr. Jones could see no way out of his predicament — unless he might anger the Russian into shooting instead of torturing him. The man certainly possessed a violent temper behind those haughty eyes of his.
While the captive was still revolving in his mind this desperate expedient, he suddenly felt something poke him sharply in the back. At the same instant some one said “Sh!” in a sharp, sibilant whisper.
The pain of the unexpected jab made Jones spring to his feet, crashing into the tent-pole and shaking the whole tent so violently that one of his guards appeared in the entrance. He thrust a large, hirsute countenance into the aperture and said something that sounded like the name of a Russian province.
“Get out, get out!” exclaimed Mr. Jones, gesturing violently to make his meaning clear. “It is nothing at all. Nothing. I bumped into the pole. Go away!”
The guard stared at him suspiciously for a moment longer, glanced about the little tent, which was dimly lighted by a lantern, and at last withdrew himself.
Once more the prisoner sat down, close to the canvas wall, and cautiously whispered, “It’s all right. He has gone. Who are you and what do you want? What did you poke me like that for?”
There was a moment’s silence, followed by a slight ripping sound. Through the canvas close by his shoulder Jones saw the point of a knife appear. It deftly cut two sides of a small triangle, then the flap so made was lifted and a face appeared. The face looked familiar. Then Mr. Jones recognized Doherty, the man who had captured him.
“Say, where are youse from?” The question was barely breathed in a voice which could not possibly have carried beyond the walls of the tent. Jones replied in the same bated tone:
“New York. Why?”
“That settles it, bo. Wait a jif.”
The face was withdrawn, and the knife came into use once more. This time, however, it sawed out an aperture about three feet square near the bottom of the canvas wall. “Come on out, bo,” whispered the rescuer.
Mr. Jones obeyed, moving as stealthily as he could, and having first made sure that the lantern would not cast the shadow of his escaping form upon the side of the tent. The situation required caution if ever a situation did.
Once outside he straightened himself, and felt a powerful hand grasp his arm. “This way, bo,” came the whisper, and rescuer and rescued crept softly across the sands, behind the tents, and away, keeping close to the cliff. Glancing seaward, Jones saw the riding lights of the yacht, otherwise a dim, black bulk upon the quiet waters of the bay.
His guide led him away from the camp, not in the direction of the point where the two had first met, but onward along the beach. As soon as they were out of ear-shot of his Russian companions Doherty halted and said:
“I don’t go no furder wid youse, see? G’wan on along until youse comes to a ravine. Go up there, and pretty soon youse comes to where dis other prince guy is, see? I don’t know whether youse and this Holloway feller are the same guy or not. If you are, then youse don’t need no more help from me. If youse ain’t, then take a tip and hold your jawr about comin’ straight from this camp, see? Now, beat it!”
“But see here!” exclaimed Jones, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder to stay him. “Why have you helped me out this way? I’m everlastingly obliged to you, and — ”
“Aw, ferget it!” snapped the other, shaking off the detaining hand roughly. “I ain’t no friend of youse, neither, see? But no Russian dook ain’t my boss when it comes to beatin’ up another N’York feller with that knout thing. See? Now, will youse beat it, or d’youse want t’go back there and get what’s comin’ to youse?”
“I’ll go. But, thank you, just the same. Say, can’t you tell me something about all this business — ”
But already Doherty had disappeared in the darkness, and with a slight sigh Roland C. Jones turned his face in the direction he had been instructed to follow. At any rate, the knouting was indefinitely postponed, and he could think of nothing much worse which could befall.
A short distance beyond the place where Doherty had left him the beach again ended in rocks. The man had spoken of a “ravine,” so Mr. Jones again climbed and scrambled, coming at last to where the cliff seemed to be split in two parts. How far this split penetrated into the rocky wall, he had no means of knowing, for it was all as dark as a pocket.
He discovered by stumbling into it that a little rill of water flowed down the middle of the split and into the sea. His best chance of exploring the ravine was to walk up the bed of this stream, which was no more than ankle deep. The water, he found, had the bitter chill of a glacier stream, and his feet were soon numb with cold. He had been offered no opportunity to dry his clothing, and it was still very damp and uncomfortable. He hoped that the extreme warmth of the night might prevent him from getting pneumonia.
Mr. Jones was not accustomed to such privations and hardships, and he found them extremely annoying.
Having no means of making a light, he stumbled along in the darkness, alternately cursing himself for having fallen overboard and the Hon. Percy Merridale as the (however remote) cause of all his misfortunes.
At length, however, the watercourse made a sharp bend, and rounding it, he beheld, a short distance ahead of him, a reddish glow upon the rocks. Then a black figure appeared in silhouette against the glow. He was considering how he could best make his presence known, for this he correctly surmised to be the place of that mysterious other encampment, when a voice exclaimed, “Hands up, there, or I’ll fire!”
“Twice in one night!” muttered Jones rebelliously.
“What’s that? Stranger, you’ve strayed onto the wrong range. Come into the light, and don’t make no false moves, or you’ll sure get perforated.”
The voice had now come close to his side, and Mr. Jones felt the hard muzzle of some sort of weapon pressing against his ribs.
“I assure you that I am not armed,” he said.
“I’ll assure myself in a minute,” responded the unsympathetic voice. “March, now!”
And again Jones marched. The light which Jones had seen reflected upon the cliff was cast by a fire built between two huge boulders in such a manner as to obscure its radiance so far as was possible. Emerging into the full glare, the unfortunate halted again, obedient to the pressure on his arm.
About the fire, which they were probably maintaining for the sake of illumination, since they were cooking nothing, and the temperature of the night was so high, several figures were gathered. All save one of these persons were men, the exception being a slender young girl, who at that moment turned her face and stared straight into the eyes of Mr. Jones.
“By Jupiter!” he murmured. “What’s a girl like that doing with this crowd?”
The young lady was attired in a somewhat dilapidated white yachting costume, which looked as if it had been soaked more than once and not pressed in a long time. But she was not of the type whose social standing or personal attraction would ever be judged by her clothes, however she might be dressed. Her crisply curling hair gleamed almost red in the firelight, though in daytime it would probably be no more than auburn. Her skin was of that clear, transparent whiteness which sometimes accompanies such hair; her features clean-cut and firm to a point which would have been almost masculine had they not been relieved by, a pair of blue eyes so pure, childish, and innocent that looking at them one could only be reminded of the eyes of a suddenly awakened baby.
For the rest, she was slight of figure, with small, tapering hands and feet, giving an impression of physical weakness which Mr. Jones later discovered to be deceptive.
He did not, of course, absorb all these details of appearance in that first brief meeting. At the moment he saw only that here was a beautiful, well-bred girl in the midst of surroundings entirely unsuitable — unless she happened to be a movie actress, which seemed improbable.
Of her companions, one was a tall, rather good-looking man with a sensitive mouth and slightly receding chin, also in yachting costume. Another was a rangy, lanky sort of fellow, attired in nothing more formal than a shirt and shabby trousers. The two remaining men were plainly of a lower class, probably seamen from their general appearance.
With a look of astonishment the girl glanced from Jones to his captor, who stood slightly behind him, and said:
“James, who is this person? How did he come here?”
Yes, she said it exactly as if she were standing in her own drawing-room, inquiring of the butler how some unknown vagabond had penetrated into her domain. Something humorous in the whole situation smote Jones abruptly, so that he laughed aloud, and she stared at him more haughtily than ever.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Jones, hastening to correct his involuntary rudeness, “I have had a rather trying evening, and — er — I did not expect to see a young lady in this place.”
“And why not, pray? You are one of Prince Sergius’ friends, are you not? Paul, this must be one of your brother’s men, although I for one have never seen him before. Do you know him?”
She addressed the handsome man with the weak chin, and Jones knew this must be the brother of the Russian who had imprisoned him.
“No,” he replied, rising lazily. “I have never seen the fellow before. Do you know him? Dick Holloway?”
“Not yet, but I’ve no objection. What is your name, anyway?”
So the man in the shirt and trousers was Holloway. Jones looked at him with considerable interest, since it was in his name that he had nearly suffered so much, and saw that he was a young man with a keen, rather strong face. Dressed differently, he might have been either a reporter or an automobile salesman — or a member of Jones’s own club.
“My name is Roland C. Jones,” stated the castaway, somewhat weary of reiterating that fact. “Some hours ago, early in the evening, I was cast up on the beach by the storm. I— think I had fallen overboard in my sleep. I was on my way to London. Then I— ” He suddenly remembered Doherty’s warning. He decided that he owed it to his benefactor to keep faith. “I came on up the beach and stumbled into this ravine and walked up it and — and here I am, you know.”
This simple statement was met by dead silence for a moment. Then the Russian asked: “You were going to London, you say? That sounds a little peculiar. And you say you were wrecked, some hours ago? Where were you, pray, in the interval? Do you mean you have met no one since that time?”
“Yes,” admitted Mr. Jones, realizing that his story lacked strength. “I met one man — or, rather, I saw a man; but as soon as he caught sight of me he made off. I chased him, but he was too quick. Then I wandered around a while, until I found my way here.”
“H— m What ship were you on?”
Jones started to reply, “The Lusitania,” but checked himself. He was actually afraid that these people, too, would insist on that nightmare tangle of German torpedoes and impossible distances. Then he would know that something had crone wrong in his brain. He did not want to know it just then. There was too much to attend to without that. “I was on my own yacht, the Bandersnatch. We were just cruising around, you know. We had thought of running over to the Azores.” (Jones was not at all sure by this time where in the Atlantic he might be, but the Azores, as occupying a fairly central position, seemed safe.) “I must have walked in my sleep, for first thing I knew I was in the water, and the only wonder is that I was not drowned. I am a New Yorker, but we sailed from Savannah.” He was rather proud of this touch of realism, but Holloway burst out laughing.
“First London, and now the Azores,” the latter remarked in a tone of goodnatured amusement. “You seem to have put out on a remarkable voyage.”
“For my part,” interposed the young lady, who, despite her infantile eye, seemed of very determined and decisive character, “I don’t believe a word of your story. If you were on a yacht, which I don’t doubt, it was the Monterey, and she lies in the bay now. I believe you were on board at the same time we were, although we didn’t see you. That about London and Savannah and the Azores is merely ridiculous. I can’t imagine your object in making such absurd statements. Paul, this man has been sent here by your brother to spy upon us and find out the secret of the caverns.”
Paul nodded his head, saying: “Holloway, do you not think that Miss Weston is right?”
“It’s a one best bet she is, prince. All that gas about his yacht and the rest of it was probably planned to make us think he’s a bit light in his upper story.”
“What?”
“Bats in his belfry — nobody home — you know.”
“Oh, you mean insane. But why should he wish us to think that?”
“So we won’t take too much pains to keep our cards face down. If you’ll take a tip from me, prince, you’ll keep this angel-faced little castaway tied right to mama’s apron-strings till time’s called.”
The prince laughed amiably, but the amiability was for Holloway, not Mr. Jones.
“Your expressions — your idioms — they are so very charming, Dick Holloway. But you are right. We cannot afford to be betrayed. James Haskins, you will kindly remain close to this gentleman’s side. Take him with you and return to your post. And now, my friends, we have already sat too long talking. Let us sleep for the two hours that remain of night. Remember, we start at dawn.”
AS IF stricken dumb, Mr. Jones obeyed the guiding hand of James Haskins, as it steered him back to the point whence he had first sighted the camp-fire. It seemed as though something even stronger than Fate were against him. Whatever he said was turned back upon him; whatever he did, it merely led him into fresh disaster. There was no use in fighting the tide. Henceforth he would keep still and permit events to shape themselves, unhelped or hindered by his efforts.
Perhaps, presently, he would wake up. Yes, this must be some unusually vivid nightmare which had him in its clutches.
“Squat right down on that rock, stranger, and make yourself at home.” Of course, it was Haskins who broke in on his reverie. “If any more mavericks stray off your range up this way, I’ll be right here to throw, tie, and brand ’em. Have a cigarette?”
“No — Yes, thank you, I believe I will.”
For a few moments the two smoked without speaking. The night was silent, save for the low, distant murmur of the sea and the occasional squeak of a bat. Overhead the great, brilliant stars, which hung so strangely low and near, seemed to wink at Jones, as if they were sharers in some huge joke of whose nature he was not yet informed, but of which he was unquestionably the butt.
“Strange,” he reflected. “I can’t remember ever having smoked in a dream before. I can taste the tobacco, too. And my hands hurt like the dickens, where I scraped ’em on the rocks. I wonder if I ever will wake up. That girl is a winner for looks, all right; but, oh, mama, I don’t like her disposition one little bit! Seems to have it in for me, all right. I wonder — ”
“Pleasant dreams!” It was James Haskins again. “Say, did you really get washed ashore like you told the bunch?”
“I certainly did,” said Jones with convincing vigor and promptitude. “Look here; if I should tell you the whole story about what has happened since I reached this place, would you believe me?”
“Fire away!” the other replied noncommittally.
Jones obeyed, and his jailer listened patiently and in silence to the full tale of his misadventures. Barring the fact that it was a liner and not his own yacht from which he had fallen, he adhered closely to facts; for, in the light of his reception, it seemed it was only for his own good that Doherty had warned him not to speak of the other camp. And in this opinion his listener presently confirmed him.
“So this man Doherty told you not to tell you’d been in his camp, did he?” was Haskins’s comment at the end of the recital. “Well, he, was dead right, friend castaway. Prince Paul has got just the same love for Prince Sergius that a grizzly has for a rattlesnake.
“But me, I think you’re straight. For one thing, you haven’t got the map of a bunco-steerer; and for another, I think you are because size thinks you ain’t. Do you get me? I never saw anything in skirts yet that you couldn’t copper her guess and be on the right trail. Only your swim seems to have twisted your geography some. It isn’t the Azores you mean — it’s the Philippines, or Hawaii. Now, if you and me should swap yarns, will you give me away to my outfit, or will you keep it under your hair?”
“Prince Sergius’ knout wouldn’t extract it from me,” sighed Mr. Jones, with the happy sense that here again, where least expected, he had found a friend.
“Well, to commence with, me, I’m riding a long way off my own range, which is Colorado, by rights, though I was born in Arizona. Arizona Jim, that’s me. Well, this prince fellow come along when I was on my uppers in Frisco, having gone up against a few large doses of redeye and an outfit of card-sharks some simultaneous. But, say, you fellows started from Savannah, you said. Did you get into the Pacific through the canal?”
The Pacific? Jones’s brain reeled again, but he managed to keep his voice steady and reply: “Yes, of course we went through the canal.”
“I asked because I know a fellow that runs a cafe in Colon. Did you stop there?”
“I didn’t go ashore there. But how did you meet the prince?”
“Oh, yes. Well, as I was saying, he met up with me, and he offers me a job. Says he’s goin’ on a big trip and wants a guy with a good gun-eye. That’s me, all right; so I joins the outfit immediate. Then’s when I meet this brother of his, they bein’ on good terms then, just like an owl and a prairie-dog.
“So brother Sergius, it seems, he’s gone right ahead and chartered a yacht without waiting for brother Paul to approve the deal. This annoys us some, but not half so much as when we get away out on the broad, be-yutiful, lonesome Pacific Ocean and finds that the captain and the crew are all ‘brothers’ of his, too. Yes, little Annie, Sergius is in with the anarchists, saddle, bridle, and spurs, and the great and noble cause has got to get its share in the profits, even if brother Sergius has to knife brother Paul to do it. Oh, yes, it was some rotten deal, take it from me.”
“But where does this Miss . . . Miss — ”
“Weston come in? Not yet but soon. We picks Miss Weston up out of an open boat, along with a couple of half-dead sailors. She’s a Boston young lady that’s been taking lessons in nursing. She aims to join the Red Cross, but she’s some foxy, so she comes clear across to Frisco and takes a boat for Japan, figurin’ to get into the festivities by the back gate, so to speak. No German torpedoes in hers.”
(Jones gave a mental groan. Again!)
“And right then, was when the lid blew off the kettle for keeps. I never did see two brothers take a shine to the same girl quite so simultaneous and sudden. Gee, they ought to have been twins, their tastes are so similar. Was she going to be Princess Sergius or Princess Paul? I suggests to Paul, casual-like, that they cut her in two and divide her up, it being my idea that there ain’t any female woman born that’s any real good in a round-up like this one. But he didn’t seem to take to it.
“So brother Paul, he reveals to her the perfidy of brother Sergius, and right away that swings her. No nihilanarchists for hers. In which she shows more sense than I’d expected.
“Right about then we sights this here Joker Island. Some name, Joker; but she’s some Island, too, believe me. There being considerable hard feeling, what with one thing and another, me and Prince Paul and this Weston girl and her two sailors, we thinks it wise and becoming to withdraw ourselves from evil associations, and we drops off the yacht the first dark night. Then Prince Paul he says there’s a guy on the island expecting him, which is the first I heard of Holloway. As near as I can make out, this is Holloway’s island, by right of being wrecked here and finding out some darn thing about the inside of it. These cliffs go all the way around, you know, but there’s a cave runs under ’em, and Mr. Holloway, he’s the only one that knows where it is.”
“I shouldn’t think it would be very difficult to find a cave in a wall of rock like this, if one hunted for it,” suggested Jones, deeply interested in the narrative.
“Oh, no, it’s dead easy — like three guesses at which is the right hole in a colander. There’s about fifteen hundred other caves, and they all run back under the cliffs, and there’s only one that goes clear through. And if you get lost in a blind lead — good night!”
“But what is there inside, anyway?”
“Me not being Prince Paul’s confidential secretary, I don’t know, nor I don’t know how Sergius thinks he’s going to get there without dear brother Paul and friend Holloway. But it’s plain he knows something about Holloway, or he wouldn’t have made that nice, kind offer to persuade you when he thought you was Holloway. One thing, it’s clear he don’t know him by sight. The way I figure it is that when Holloway was wrecked here, after he comes out of the inside again, he was taken off by some ship, and then he hikes right after Prince Paul, who, it seems, is his dear old college chum. It must be some secret, all right; for Paul, he gets leave immediate from his regiment by the Czar’s special permit.