Caves of Terror by Talbot Mundy (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

The Gray Mahatma sat still, contemplating with apparent equanimity his end that should begin at midnight, and I sat contemplating him, when suddenly a new idea occurred to me.

"You intend to surrender to your executioners at midnight?" I asked him.

He nodded gravely.

"Suppose she keeps us locked in here; what then? You say you can't use your science to get out of here. What if you're late for the assignation?"

"You forget," he said with a deprecating gesture, "that they can see exactly where I am at any time! If they enter the cavern of vision and turn on the power they can see us now, instantly. They know perfectly well that my intention is to surrender to them. Therefore they will take care to make my escape from this place possible."

Five minutes later the door opened suddenly, and six women marched in. Two of them had wave-edged daggers, two had clubs, and the other two brought food and water. It was pretty good food, and there was enough of it for two; but the women would not say a word in answer to my questions.

They set the food and water down and filed out one by one, the last one guarding the retreat of all the rest and slipping out backward, pulling the door shut after her. Whereat I offered the Mahatma food and drink, but he refused the hot curry and only accepted a little water from the brass carafe.

"They will feed me special food to-night, for I shall need my strength," he explained; but the explanation was hardly satisfying.

I did not see how he could be any stronger later on for having let himself grow weaker in the interval. Nevertheless, I have often noticed this—that the East can train athletes by methods absolutely opposite to those imposed by trainers in the West, and it may be that their asceticism is based on something more than guesswork. I ate enormously, and he sat and watched me with an air of quiet amusement. He seemed to grow more and more friendly all the time, and to forget that he had made several attempts on my life, although his yellow eyes and lionlike way of carrying his head still gave you an uncomfortable feeling, not of mistrust but of incomprehension.

I began to realize how accurately King had summed him up; he was an absolutely honest man, which was why he was dangerous. His standards of conduct and motives were utterly different from ours, and he was honest enough to apply them without compromise or warning, that was all.

I was curious about his death sentence, and also anxious to keep awake, so I questioned him further, asking him point blank what kind of experiment they were going to try on him, and what would be the use of it. He meditated for about five minutes before answering:

"Is it within your knowledge that those who make guns seek ever to make them powerful enough to penetrate the thickest armor; and that the men who make armor seek always to make it strong enough to resist the most powerful guns, so that first the guns are stronger, and then the armor, and then the guns and then the armor again, until nations groan beneath the burden of extravagance? You know that?

"Understand, then, that that is but imitation of a higher law. A fragment of the force that we control is greater than the whole power of all the guns in the world, and forever we are seeking the knowledge of how to protect ourselves against it, so that we may safely experiment with higher potencies. As we learn the secret of safety we increase the power, and then learn more safety, and again increase the power. Perpetually there comes a stage at which we dare not go forward—yet—because we do not yet know what the result of higher potencies will be on our own bodies. Do you understand me? So. There will be an experiment to-night to ascertain the utmost limit of our present ability to resist the force."

"You mean they'll try the force on you?"

He nodded.

"Why not use an alligator? There are lots of creatures that die harder than a human being."

"It must be one who understands," he answered. "Not even a neophyte would do. It must be one of iron courage, who will resist to the last, enduring agony rather than letting in death that would instantly end the agony. It must be one who knows the full extent of all our knowledge, and can therefore apply all our present resources of resistance, so that the very outside edge of safety, as it were, may be measured accurately."

"And how long is the process likely to last?" I asked him.

"Who knows?" he answered. "Possibly three days, or longer. They will feed me scientifically, and will increase the potencies gradually, in order to observe the exact effects at different stages. And some of the more painful stages they will repeat again and again, because the greater the pain the greater the difficulty of registering exact degrees of resistance. The higher vibrations are not by any means always the most painful, any more than the brightest colors or the highest notes are always the most beautiful."

"Then you are to use your knowledge of resistance against their knowledge of force—is that it?"

He nodded.

"Isn't there a chance then that you may hold out to a point that will satisfy them? A point, I mean, at which you'll be more useful to them alive than dead? Surely if you should live and tell them all about it that would serve the purpose better than to have you dead and silent forever?"

He smiled like a school teacher turning down a promising pupil's suggestion.

"They will vibrate every atom of flesh and every drop of moisture from my bones before they have finished," he answered, "and they will do it as gradually as possible seeking to ascertain exactly the point at which human life ceases to persist. My part will be to retain my faculties to the very end, in order to exercise resistance to the last. So a great deal depends on my courage. It is possible that this experiment may carry science forward to a point where it commences a new era, for if we can learn to survive the higher potencies, a whole new realm will lie before us awaiting exploration."

"And if you refuse?"

"A dog's death!"

"Have they no use for mercy?"

"Surely. But mercy is not treason. It would be treason to the cause to let me live. I failed. I let the secret out. I must die. That is the law. If they let me live, the next one who failed would quote the precedent, and within a century or so a new law of compromise would have crept in. Our secrets would be all out, and the world would use our knowledge to destroy itself. No. They show their mercy by making use of me, instead of merely throwing my dead carcass to the alligators."

"If you will tell me your real name I will tell them at Johns Hopkins about your death, and perhaps they will inscribe your record on some roll of martyrs," I suggested.

I think that idea tempted him, for his eyes brightened and grew strangely softer for a moment. He was about to speak, but at that moment the door opened again, and things began to occur that drove all thought of Johns Hopkins from our minds.

About a dozen women entered this time. They did not trouble to tie the Mahatma, but they bound me as the Philistines did Samson, and then threw a silken bag over my head by way of blindfold. The bag would have been perfectly effective if I had not caught it in my teeth as they drew it over my shoulders. It did not take long to bite a hole in it, nor much longer to move my head about until I had the hole in front of my right eye, after which I was able to see fairly well where they were leading me.

Women of most lands are less generous than men to any one in their power. Men would have been satisfied to let me follow them along or march in front of them, provided I went fast enough to suit them, but those vixens hardly treated me as human. Perhaps they thought that unless they beat, shoved, prodded and kicked me all the way along those corridors and up the gilded stairs I might forget who held the upper hand for the moment; but I think not. I think it was simply sex-venom—the half-involuntary vengeance that the under-dog inflicts on the other when positions are reversed. When India's women finally break purdah and enter politics openly, we shall see more cruelty and savagery, for that reason, than either the French or Russian terrors had to show.

I was bruised and actually bleeding in a dozen places when they hustled me down a corridor at last, and crowded me into a narrow anteroom, where the two harridans who had handled me hardest had the worst of it. I gave them what in elephant stables is known as the "squeeze," crushing them to right and left against projecting walls; whereat they screamed, and I heard the reproving voice of the Mahatma just behind me:

"Violence is the folly of beasts. Patience and strength are one!"

But they were not sticking pins into his ribs and thighs to humiliate and discourage him. He was being led by either hand, and cooed to softly in the sort of way that members of the Dorcas Guild would treat a bishop. It was easy enough for him to feel magnanimous. I managed to tread hard on one foot, and to squeeze two more women as they shoved me through a door into a vast audience hall, and the half-suppressed screams were music in my ears. I don't see why a woman who uses pins on a prisoner should be any more immune than a man from violent retaliation.

When they had shut the door they stripped the silk bag off over my head and holding me by the arms, four on either side, dragged me to the middle of a hall that was at least as large as Carnegie Hall in New York, and two or three thousand times as sumptuous.

I stood on a strip of carpet six feet wide, facing a throne that faced the door I had entered by. The throne was under a canopy, and formed the center of a horseshoe ring of gilded chairs, on every one of which sat a heavily veiled woman. Except that they were marvelously dressed in all the colors of the