Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
Then there came in a calm, penetrating voice, "Are you there?"
I reached upward and smote with my clenched fist upon the outside of the
bath. I heard a muttered exclamation, a slight splash, and then Bill
Rolston pulled over a lever, and half the ceiling of our room sank
towards us with a noise like the winding-up of a clock.
Midwinter was standing in one end of the bath, which hid him almost up
to his waist. His jaw dropped like the jaw of a dead man. Such baffled
hate and infinite malevolence stared out of his eyes that I gave a shout
of relief as Rolston lifted his arm and fired.
He must have missed the fiend's head by a hair's breadth, no more. Quick
as lightning he fired again, but he was too late. Midwinter bounded out
of the bath like a tennis ball, felled Rolston with a back-arm blow as
he leapt, and fled down the passage.
The loud thunder of the explosions in that underground place had not
died away before I had lifted Morse from under the water and dragged him
over the side of the bath.
His face was very pale, but his eyes were open and he could speak.
Truly the man was marvelous.
"The other," he whispered, "the brute Zorilla! Juanita!"
I understood one of the devils, desperate now, was still at large, and
even as I realized it, I saw a ghastly sight.
There was a noise above. I bent my head backward and looked up through
the aperture in the ceiling.
A man was crouching over it and I saw his face and neck--a big,
black-bearded face, with eyes like blazing coals, but _reversed_. His
eyes were where his mouth should have been, his nostrils were like two
pits, and for a forehead there was a grinning mouth full of gleaming
teeth. Any one who, when ill, has seen their nurse or attendant bending
over them from the back of the bed, will realize what I mean, though
they can never understand the horror of that demoniac and inverted mask.
I was pretty quick on the target, but not quick enough. The thing
whipped away even as I fired, and there was a thunder of feet running.
I think a sort of madness seized me, at any rate I was never in a
moment's doubt as to what to do. I shoved my pistol in my pocket, leapt
upon the edge of the bath, sprang upwards and caught the floor of the
room above with my hands.
The rest was easy for any athlete in training. I pulled myself up, lay
panting for a second and then stood upon the tiled floor of the
bathroom.
The door leading into the library was open. I dashed through to find the
place empty, rushed through the hall and out upon the steps of the main
entrance. And then, joy! A morning wind had begun and instead of a
white, impenetrable wall, a phantom army was retreating and, as if
pursuing those ghost-like sentinels, was the black, running figure of
Zorilla.
I had a clear glimpse of him as he plunged into the tunnel leading to
Grand Square, and I was after him like a slipped greyhound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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