Chapter 2: Death Trap

There was no answer. The light in the corridor behind him suddenly went out, plunging him into pitch-black darkness. He jumped back into the dark corridor, and as he did so, heard a sudden scuffle further along it.

“Campbell!” he exclaimed, lunging forward in the black passageway. There was no answer.

He pitched forward through stygian obscurity, his hands searching ahead of him for the inspector. In the dark something whipped smoothly around his throat, tightened there like a slender, contracting tentacle.

Ennis tore frenziedly at the thing, which he felt to be a slender silken cord, but he could not loosen it. It was choking him. He tried to cry out again to Campbell, but his throat could not emit the sounds. He thrashed, twisted helplessly, hearing a loud roaring in his ears, consciousness receding. Then, dimly as though in a dream, Ennis was aware of being lowered to the floor, of being half carried and half dragged along. The constriction around his throat was gone and rapidly his brain began to clear. He opened his eyes.

He found himself lying on the floor of a room illuminated by a great hanging brass lamp of ornate design. The walls of the room were hung with rich, grotesquely worked red silk Indian draperies. His hands and feet were bound behind him, and beside him, tied in the same manner, lay Inspector Campbell. Over them stood Chandra Dass and two of the Malay servants. The faces of the servants were tigerish in their menace, but Chandra Dass’ face was one of dark, impassive scorn.

“So you misguided fools thought you could deceive me so easily as that?” he said in a strong, vibrant voice. “Why, we knew hours ago that you, Inspector Campbell, and you, Mr. Ennis, were coming here tonight. We let you get this far only because it was evident that somehow you had learned too much about us, and that it would be best to let you come here and meet your deaths.”

“Chandra Dass, I’ve men outside,” rasped Campbell. “If we don’t come out, they’ll come in after us.”

The Hindoo’s proud, dark face did not change its scorn. “They will not come in for a little while, inspector. By that time you two will be dead and we shall be gone with our captives. Yes, Mr. Ennis, your wife is one of those captives,” he added to the prostrate young American. “It is too bad we cannot take you and the inspector to share her glorious destiny, but then our accommodations of transport are limited.”

“Ruth here?” Ennis’ face flamed at the words, and he raised himself a little from the floor on his elbows.

“Then you’ll let her go if I pay you? I’ll raise any amount, I’ll do anything you ask, if you’ll set her free.”

“No amount of money in the world could buy her from the Brotherhood of the Door,” answered Chandra Dass steadily. “For she belongs now, not to us, but to They Beyond the Door. Within a few hours she and many others shall stand before the Door, and They Beyond the Door shall take them.”

“What are you going to do to her?” cried Ennis. “What is this damned Door and who are They Beyond it?”

“I do not think that even if I told you, your little mind would be able to accept the mighty truth,” Chandra Dass said calmly. His coal-black eyes suddenly flashed with fanatic, frenetic light. “How could your poor, earth-bound little intelligences conceive the true nature of the Door and of those who dwell beyond it? Your puny brains would be stricken senseless by mere apprehension of them, They who are mighty and crafty and dreadful beyond anything on earth.”

A cold wind from the alien unknown seemed to sweep the lamplit room with the Hindoo’s passionate words. Then that rapt, fanatic exaltation dropped from him as suddenly as it had come, and he spoke in his ordinary vibrant tones.

“But enough of this parley with blind worms of the dust. Bring the weights!”

The last words were addressed to the Malay servants, who sprang to a closet in the corner of the room.

Inspector Campbell said steadily, “If my men find us dead when they come in here, they’ll leave none of you living.”

Chandra Dass did not even listen to him, but ordered the dark servants sharply, “Attach the weights!”

The Malays had brought from the closet two fifty-pound lead balls, and now they proceeded quickly to tie these to the feet of the two men. Then one of them rolled back the brilliant red Indian rug from the rough pine floor. A square trap-door was disclosed, and at Chandra Dass’ order, it was swung upward and open.

Up through the open square came the sound of waves slap-slapping against the piles of the old pier, and the heavy odors of salt water and of rotting wood invaded the room.

“The water under this pier is twenty feet deep,” Chandra Dass told the two prisoners. “I regret to give you so easy a death, but there is no opportunity to take you to the fate you deserve.”

Ennis, his skin crawling on his flesh, nevertheless spoke rapidly and as steadily as possible to the Hindoo.

“Listen, I don’t ask you to let me go, but I’ll do anything you want, let you kill me any way you want, if you’ll let Ruth--”

Sheer horror cut short his words. The Malay servants had dragged Campbell’s bound body to the door in the floor. They shoved him over the edge. Ennis had one glimpse of the inspector’s taut, strange face falling out of sight. Then a dull splash sounded instantly below, and then silence.

He felt hands upon himself, dragging him across the floor. He fought, crazily, hopelessly, twisting his body in its bonds, thrashing his bound limbs wildly.

[Illustration: “A shove sent his body scraping over the edge, and he plunged downward through dank darkness.”]

He saw the dark, unmoved face of Chandra Dass, the brass lamp over his head, the red hangings. Then his head dangled over the opening, a shove sent his body scraping over the edge, and he plunged downward through dank darkness. With a splash he hit the icy water and went under. The heavy weight at his ankles dragged him irresistibly downward. Instinctively he held his breath as the water rushed upward around him.

His feet struck oozy bottom. His body swayed there, chained by the lead weight to the bottom. His lungs already were bursting to draw in air, slow fires seeming to creep through his breast as he held his breath.

Ennis knew that in a moment or two more he would inhale the strangling waters and die. The thought-picture of Ruth flashed across his despairing mind, wild with hopeless regret. He could no longer hold his breath, felt his muscles relaxing against his will, tasted the stinging salt water at the back of his nose.

Then it was a bursting confusion of swift sensations, the choking water in his nose and throat, the roaring in his ears. A scroll of flame unrolled slowly in his brain and a voice shouted there, “You’re dying!” He felt dimly a plucking at his ankles.

Abruptly Ennis’ dimming mind was aware that he now was shooting upward through the water. His head burst into open air and he choked, strangled and gasped, his tortured lungs gulping the damp, heavy air. He opened his eyes, and shook the water from them.

He was floating in the darkness at the surface of the water. Someone was floating beside him, supporting him. Ennis’ chin bumped the other’s shoulder, and he heard a familiar voice.

“Easy, now,” said Inspector Campbell. “Wait till I cut your hands loose.”

“Campbell!” Ennis choked. “How did you get loose?”

“Never mind that now,” the inspector answered. “Don’t make any noise, or they may hear us up there.”

Ennis felt a knife-blade slashing the bonds at his wrists. Then, the inspector’s arm helping him, he and his companion paddled weakly through the darkness under the rotting pier. They bumped against the slimy, moldering piles, threaded through them toward the side of the pier. The waves of the flooding tide washed them up and down as Campbell led the way.

They passed out from under the old pier into the comparative illumination of the stars. Looking back up, Ennis saw the long, black mass of the house of Chandra Dass, resting on the black pier, ruddy light glowing from window-cracks. He collided with something and found that Campbell had led toward a little floating dock where some skiffs were moored. They scrambled up onto it from the water, and lay panting for a few moments.

Campbell had something in his hand, a thin, razor-edged steel blade several inches long. Its hilt was an ordinary leather shoe-heel.

The inspector turned up one of his feet and Ennis saw that the heel was missing from that shoe. Carefully Campbell slid the steel blade beneath the shoe-sole, the heel-hilt sliding into place and seeming merely the innocent heel of the shoe.

“So that’s how you got loose down in the water!” Ennis exclaimed, and the inspector nodded briefly.

“That trick’s done me good service before--even with your hands tied behind your back you can get out that knife and use it. It was touch and go, though, whether I could get it out and cut myself loose in the water in time enough to free you.”