Chapter II: A Strange Story

Shelby looked down at his companion. For a time she had been strangely quiet. Could it be that there was just a hint of a troubled look on her beautiful face? The young engineer felt himself drawn to her more than ever. He wanted to know more about his new Martian acquaintance, but he disliked to ask a direct question concerning him, for he feared vaguely that it might give her offense.

“Jan,” he said, “you look worried. Is anything wrong?”

She shook her head, slowly, absently, without looking at him. “No, I was just thinking.” She paused, and then in the same absent manner she continued: “Only Hekalu Selba is back, and I thought I was rid of him.”

Reassured somewhat by her words, but still taking care to conceal any hint of the menace he had sensed about the Martian, Shelby asked: “What possible difference can his presence in Chicago mean to you? He seemed to me to be a very ordinary Martian nobleman--evidently supplied with plenty of money, and having no other motive in life than to enjoy himself, and perhaps to help others enjoy themselves. A perfectly harmless individual.”

Janice’s face grew serious. “You say those things because you do not know Hekki,” she said. “Shall I tell you about him? It would relieve me to share my knowledge with someone.”

The young man nodded but made no comment.

“Two years ago,” she began, “I went to Taboor on Mars to study sculpture. Not long after my arrival at school, in the company of a number of other art students, I attended a ball given at a glorious old palace in the heart of the ancient Martian quarter. Our gracious host was Hekalu Selba himself. I met him, danced with him, and talked with him. From the first he was attracted to me and I to him, and so we were often together.

“Though some of his peculiar affectations were obnoxious to me, I thought that his good qualities far overbalanced his failings. He seemed always kind and considerate in his dealings with all about him; he was well informed on almost every possible subject; he painted pictures and played various musical instruments with a skill that was little short of genius, and his tales of his travels and adventures in the little-known region beyond the orbits of the minor planets could not fail to delight any listeners. Dreamer and brilliant artist--that was Hekki as I saw him then. Effeminate--yes, but brave and resourceful too.

“Our intimacy grew. He made frequent proposals of marriage to me, but I put him off, saying that I was not sure I loved him. I informed Father back here in Chicago of our friendship. His next letter showed plainly his enthusiasm over the idea of the possible marriage of his daughter with this young noble of the ancient Martian house of Selba. ‘Get him, Jan,’ he wrote. ‘He’d be the catch of a lifetime. Why, his total assets would make the treasure of Croesus look like a little piece of twisted copper wire.’ Poor practical old Dad! For once his business judgment was in the wrong. It was well that I did not follow his advice.”

At this point Jan’s story was interrupted by the sudden dropping of the plane. They had reached their destination. The craft descended vertically and landed with a light impact in the center of a small private roof garden at the summit of a great apartment building.

“Dad won’t be home now,” said Jan. “He was delayed in New York, and will not appear until tomorrow. There isn’t anyone else around here except old Rufus, so we needn’t go down stairs. Let’s sit over there instead.” She pointed toward a quaintly wrought bench beside a splashing fountain. The moon was shining, and the solitary cypress tree cast a spear-like shadow over the pool. There was a faint fragrance of flowers in the night.

Janice and Shelby seated themselves and the girl continued:

“Shortly after my meeting with Hekalu Selba rumors began to come to me. Men died mysteriously, and there were people who made vague hints that my noble friend was responsible. An uncle of Hekki’s had made him the principal heir to his fortune--shortly afterward the uncle contracted a virulent disease and passed away. On both planets men that were obnoxious to Hekki were murdered--capable business rivals and people who perhaps ‘knew too much.’ Always the circumstances of their deaths were peculiar. Frequently they were found in locked rooms to which an assassin could scarcely have gained entrance without breaking his way. But such violent methods had not been used. Never was there a shred of evidence to implicate the noble.

“But I was beginning to see Hekalu’s true color. The lavish display of his wealth--his estates and his art treasures, and the endless round of good times he sought to provide, were merely an attempt to cover up his wickedness. One afternoon that I was with him, he was under the influence of the Elar drug. His face was red and his eyes gleamed with a wicked light. He proposed to me again, and when I made an angry refusal he threatened me--said that if there was another whom I loved he would destroy him and me too.

“That, I assured myself, was the end. Hekki tried to make up, but when he found that I would have nothing to do with him he vanished. I think he went off into the outer regions of the solar system again. He was gone for a long time, and I devoted myself entirely to my studies.

“Then suddenly, out of the blue, I received a letter from Hekki. It came from a small village far to the west of Taboor. A gift accompanied it. Hekki informed me that in a valley far out in the unexplored Taraal desert he had run across a ruined city built by the Melbar kings some seventy-five thousand years ago. He hoped to make an enormous fortune from the art treasures he had found there.

“The gift and the small photograph he sent me, I shall show you at the first opportunity. They are packed away now. The former is a dagger with a flexible blade of a shiny black substance unknown to me. It does not seem to be metal. The hilt is a lump of platinum. It is carved to represent some strange animal with scores of coiling tentacles. Hekki says that the object is one of his treasures, found on the site of the ancient city. But I have doubted this. I know something of the art of the Melbar kings, and certainly the dagger does not resemble the products of their craftsmen. The same is true of those wares of Hekki’s which my friends have bought. They are strange--belonging neither to Earth nor Mars.

“The picture too is equally puzzling. It depicts a night scene in a desert valley. Jagged hills in the distance and the nearer moon of Mars in the sky. The floor of the valley is in shadow and things there are indistinct. There are shapes there--vast shapes, odd and grotesque. And there is something in the foreground which might be almost human!

“In his letter Hekki asked if he might see me again, and I immediately wrote and told him that I would. To you, Austin, this probably seems a crazy thing to do, but like most everyone who is young, I had a genuine love for intrigue and mystery, even though they might be dangerous things to meddle with.

“Hekalu came to Taboor, but I saw comparatively little of him. He seemed always to be tremendously busy. Sometimes he would be extravagantly jubilant, as though he had met with some tremendous success, or again he would apparently be worried almost to the point of madness. What these emotional changes meant, he would never tell me.

“Several times old Alka, his favorite slave, spoke to me. ‘The Master is not as he used to be, Miss Darell,’ he would say. ‘He works feverishly with odd mechanisms, and every night when he is at home he stares out into space toward the farther planets with his new super-telescope. Always, what he sees makes his face turn white and hard; sometimes, he smiles and sometimes his features look like a devil’s mask.’

“And still Hekki’s weird treasures continued, and still continue to come from the Taraal.

“A group of men was sent by the heads of the Place of Knowledge out into the desert to investigate. They disappeared. The officials of the Planetary Patrol made only a hasty and unsuccessful investigation.

“On the day of my departure from Mars, after having finished my course, I saw Hekki, believing that it was for the last time. He said he was going back into the Taraal. And then he popped up on the liner. And that, Austin, is all I know about Hekalu Selba. What do you make of it? What is he trying to do out there in the desert?” She placed her hand lightly on Shelby’s arm and looked up appealingly into his face. “Can’t you offer some suggestions, Austin? You know that when suspicious events are troubling you, a plausible explanation eases your mind even though you cannot know the truth. And I am afraid, afraid that he is deliberately following me to Earth!”