CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Falling! Falling through deep waters, with a horrible sickening sense of utter helplessness and desolation; nerves, heart, mind--very being itself--awaited the crash of extinction. A slight jolt, a roaring of great waters in the air, and a voice, dim, thin and far away!

... In some mysterious way, the sense of sight was joined to that of sound and hearing. I was surrounded by blackness shot with gleams of baleful fire, shifting and changing until the black grew gray in furious eddies, the gray changed into the light of day, and a far-off voice became loud and insistent.

It was thus that I came to myself after the horror on the edge of the dizzy void.

The first thing I saw was the face of Juanita. There were tears in her eyes and her cheeks were brilliant. Then I heard, and even then with a start, a voice that I had never thought to hear again--the gentle, tripping accents of Pu-Yi.

"He will do now, Senorita. The doctor said that he would awake from his sleep with very little the matter except the shock--"

"Juanita!" I cried, and her cool hand came down upon my forehead.

"You are not to excite yourself, dearest," she said.

For a moment or two I lay there in a waking swoon of puzzled but entire bliss. Then I tried to move my position slightly upon the bed, for I was lying upon a bed in a large and airy room, and groaned aloud. Every muscle in my body seemed stretched as if upon the rack, and there was a pain like a red-hot iron in one ankle.

"It will hurt for a few hours," said Pu-Yi, "but you will shortly be massaged, Sir Thomas, and then--"

"You!" I cried, "but you are dead! Zorilla got you on the tower before--before--"

My mind leapt up into full activity. I was once more swaying upon the edge of infinity with my fingers locked in the bull neck of the assassin, and my voice died away into a whisper of horror.

"He stunned me, that was all, Sir Thomas. His bullet glanced away from my head. I came to myself just in time to see you struggling with him and gripped you just as you were falling off into space. The spirits of my ancestors were with me."

"And he--Zorilla?"

"Will never trouble us more. But you are not well enough yet to talk. You are in my hands for the present."

"Do exactly as Pu-Yi says, dear, and remember that all is well."

"Your father?" I gasped--why hadn't I thought of Morse before?

"All is well," she repeated in her low, musical voice, and as I lay back, trembling once more upon the edge of unconsciousness, her face left the circle of my vision.

Two deft Chinese _masseurs_ came. I was placed in a hot bath impregnated with some strong salts. I was kneaded and pummeled until I could hardly repress cries of pain. I drank a cup of hot soup in which there must have been some soporific, and sank into a deep, refreshing sleep.

It had been late afternoon when I first came to myself. When I woke for the second time, it was night. The room was brilliantly lit. Pu-Yi was sitting by my bedside, quietly smoking a long, Chinese pipe, and, for my part, though I was very stiff, I was in full possession of all my faculties and knew that I had suffered no harm.

I sat up in bed and held out my hand to the Chinaman.

"Pu-Yi, I'm all right now. I owe my life to you!" And as I realized my extraordinary deliverance in the very article of death, a sob burst from me and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes filled with tears. My hand is as strong as most men's, but I almost winced at the grip of those fragile-looking, artistic fingers.

"You did the same for me, my honorable friend," he said quietly, "and now--"

Before I knew what he would be at, he was feeling my pulse and listening to my heart with his ear against my chest.

At length he gave a sigh of relief. "We had a doctor to you," he said, "and he told us that, in his opinion, you would be little the worse. I am rejoiced that his opinion is confirmed."

"Oh, I am all right now, and ready for anything."

"You are sure, Sir Thomas? What you have been through may have given you a shock which--"

For answer, I held out my hand. It was as firm as a rock and did not tremble. I heaved myself off the bed, took a cigarette from a box upon a table, and began to smoke.

"Now then, Pu-Yi, I am just as I was before. First of all, where am I?"

"You are in the Palacete," he replied. "You were brought here at once."

Then I knew that I was in Morse's dwelling house, copied exactly, as I have said before, from the Palacete Mendoza at Rio.

"Now tell me exactly what has happened, in as few words as possible."

"I am only too anxious to do so, Sir Thomas. You were brought back here. Immediately after, Rolston descended by means of the outside stair and summoned the staff. They are all here now. The electric cables have been repaired. Lifts, telephones, electric light, and all the other machinery is in working order. The body of Zorilla has been brought up to the City and placed with that of Mulligan and my own servant. This house is strongly guarded by armed men, and the whole City is patrolled."

"No one else was hurt?"

"No one else at all, Sir Thomas."

His face changed as he said this, and he looked me full in the eyes.

Then, with a start, I understood. Every detail of the past came back in a vivid, instantaneous picture. Again I saw the silver bath descending from the ceiling and heard the loud explosion of Rolston's pistol. And as that furious noise resounded in my mental ear, once more the grinning, corpse-pale face of Mark Antony Midwinter passed close to mine and I felt the very wind of his passage as he rushed by and disappeared down the long underground corridor leading to the safety-room.

"Midwinter!" I almost shouted. The face of the Chinaman had gone a dusky gray--he told me afterwards that mine was white as linen.

"Vanished," he said--"disappeared utterly. And he is the master-mind! While Mark Antony Midwinter is alive, Mr. Morse, none of us, will know a moment of safety or of ease."

I could not quarrel with that. Zorilla was dead--a great gain--but no one who had been through what I had and who knew the whole situation as I knew it, could fail to appreciate the terrible seriousness of this news. To you who read this record in peace and safety, this may seem a wild or exaggerated statement, a product of over-strained nerves. But, believe me, it was not so. I knew too much! The securest fortress in the whole world had been already stormed. All the precautions that enormous wealth and some of the subtlest brains alive could take had already proved useless against the superhuman cunning, energy and ferocity of this being who seemed, indeed, literally, more fiend than man. No! we were no cowards, most of us, up there in the City of the Clouds, but we might well quail still, to know that this fury was unchained. I know that I sat down suddenly upon the bed with a groan of despair.

"Gone! Vanished! Surely he must be either in the City or has escaped! If he is in the City, I admit the danger is imminent. He must be utterly desperate, and will stick at nothing. If he has managed to get down to the earth, he is dangerous still, but we have a breathing space. Which is it?"

"We do not know, Sir Thomas. There is no trace of him anywhere, so far. But, as I have said, we have more than a hundred men, armed and patrolling the City. This house, at any rate, is secure for the moment. A great search is being organized. The whole area is being mapped out and it will be searched with such thoroughness before to-morrow's dawn that a rat could not escape. My own theory is, and Mr. Morse agrees with me, that Midwinter is still in the City. The most scrupulous inquiries below seem to prove that he never descended from the tower, and you know how minute and careful our organization is. And now that you are yourself again, it is Mr. Morse's wish that we hold a conference and settle exactly what is to be done. Do you think you are equal to it?"

"Perfectly," I replied, and without another word Pu-Yi led the way out of the room.

I found Mr. Morse sitting in his library. He was pale, and seemed much shaken. There were red rims round the keen, masterful eyes, but his voice was strong and resolute, and I could see that, whatever his opinion of his chances, he would fight till the end.

I need not go into details of the private conversation we had for a minute or two. His gratitude was pathetic, and I felt more drawn to him than ever before. When at length Juanita, followed by little Rolston, entered the room, all trace of his emotion had gone and we settled down round the table as calm and business-like as a board of directors in a bank. And yet, you know, no group of people in Europe stood in such peril as we did then. Behind the long, silken curtains, the shutters were of bullet-proof steel. The corridor outside, the gardens of the house, swarmed with men armed to the teeth. It was dark in the sky, but the City in the Clouds blazed everywhere with an artificial sunlight from the great electric lamps.

Two thousand feet up in the air we sat and spoke in quiet voices of the horror that was past and the horror that threatened us. Far down below, London was waking up to a night of pleasure. People were dressing for dinners and the theater, thousands upon thousands of toilers had left their work and were about to enjoy the hours of rest and recreation. And not a soul, probably, among all those millions that crawled like ants at our feet had the least suspicion of what was going on in our high place. They were accustomed to the great towers now. The sensation of their building was over and done, there were no more thrills. If they had only known!

I was not aware if strata of clouds hid us from the world below, as so often happened; but if the night were clear I do remember thinking that any one who cast their eyes up into the sky might well notice an unusual brilliancy in the pleasure city of the millionaire, that mysterious theater of the unknown, which dominated the greatest city in the world.

... "Well, Tom," said Mr. Morse, "Pu-Yi tells me that you are now acquainted with all the facts. The question we have to decide is, what are we to do?"

He turned to Juanita, and nodded. She left the room.

"The situation, as I understand it," I replied, "is that Midwinter"--I had a curious reluctance in pronouncing the name aloud--"is either concealed here in the City or has made his escape. If he is here, we shall know before to-morrow morning, shall we not?"

"Precisely. I have spent the last hour in going over the plans of the City with the chiefs of the staff. We have divided up the two stages into small sections, and even while I am talking to you the search has begun. The orders are to shoot at sight, to kill that man with less compunction than one would kill a mad dog. If he is really here, he cannot possibly escape."

"Very well, then," I said, "let us turn our attention to the other possibility. Assuming that he has got away, I think we may safely say that the danger is very much lessened."

"While we remain here in the City--yes," Morse agreed.

"And you are determined to do that?"

He took the cigar he had been smoking from his lips, and his hand shook a little. "Think what you like of me," he said, "but remember that there is Juanita. I say to you, Kirby, that if I never descend to the world again alive, I must stay here until Mark Antony Midwinter is dead."

Well, I had already made up my mind on this point. "I think you are quite right," I told him. "Still, he will not make a second appearance in the City. You can treble your precautions. He must be attacked down in the world."

Then a thought struck me for the first time. "But how," I said, "did he and Zorilla ever come here in the first instance? Treachery among the staff? It is the only explanation."

Pu-Yi shook his head. "You may put that out of your mind, Sir Thomas," he said. "That is my department. I know what you cannot know about my chosen compatriots."

"But the man isn't a specter! He's a devil incarnate, but there's nothing supernatural about him."

Then little Rolston spoke. "I've been down below all day," he said, "and though I haven't discovered anything of Midwinter, I am certain of how he and Zorilla got here."

We all turned to him with startled faces.

"Do you remember, Sir Thomas," he said, "that, shortly after your arrival, when you were looking down upon London from one of the galleries, there was a big fair in Richmond Park?"

I remembered, and said so.

"Among the other attractions, there was a captive balloon--"

Morse brought his hand heavily down upon the table with a loud exclamation in Spanish.

"Yes, there was, but--but it was quite half a mile away and never came up anything like our height here."

"No," the boy answered, "not at that time. But do you remember how during the fog last night I told you I had seen something, or thought I had seen something, like a group of statuary falling before my bedroom window?"

Something seemed to snap in my mind. "Good heavens! And I thought it was merely a trick of the mist! Nothing was discovered?"

"No, but in view of what happened afterwards, I formed a theory. I put it to the test this morning. I made a few inquiries as to the proprietors of the captive balloon and the engine which wound it up and down by means of a steel cable on a drum. I need not go into details at the moment, but the whole apparatus did not leave Richmond Park when it was supposed to do so. The wind was drifting in the right direction, the balloon could be more or less controlled--certainly as to height. I have learned that there was a telephone from the car down to the ground. Desperate men, resolved to stick at nothing, might well have arranged for the balloon to rise above the City--the cable was quite long enough for that--and descend upon part of it by means of a parachute, or, if not that, a hanging rope. More dangerous feats than that have been done in the air and are upon record. It seems to me there is no doubt whatever that this is the way the two men broke through all our precautions."

There was a long silence when he had spoken. Mendoza Morse leant back in his chair with the perspiration glittering in little beads upon his face, but he wore an aspect of relief.

"You've sure got it, my friend," he said at length, "that was how the trick was done! It was the one possibility which had never occurred to me, and hence we were unprovided. Well, that relieves my mind to a certain extent. We can take it that we are safe in the City, if Midwinter has escaped. How are we to make an end of him?"

"The difficulty is," I said, "that we are, so to speak, both literally and actually above, or outside, the Law. If that were not so, if ordinary methods could deal with this man, or could have dealt with the Hermandad in the past, Mr. Morse would never have planned and built the eighth wonder of the world. No word of what has happened in the last day or two must get down to the public--isn't that so?"

Morse nodded. "It goes without saying," he said. "We have our own law in the City in the Clouds. At the present moment, there are three bodies awaiting final disposal--and there won't be any inquest on them."

"That," Rolston broke in, "was something I was waiting to hear. It's important."

He stopped, and looked at me with his usual modesty, as if waiting permission to speak. I smiled at him, and he went on.

"It is an absolute necessity," he said, "to enter into the psychology of Midwinter. We may be sure that his purpose is as strong as ever. The death of Zorilla, and his present failure, will not deter him in the least, knowing what we know of him?"

He looked inquiringly at Morse.

"It won't turn him a hair's breadth," said the millionaire. "If he was mad with blood-lust and hatred before, he must be ten times worse now."

"So I thought, sir. He has lost his companion, as desperate and as cunning as himself, but we can be quite certain that he is not without resources. I think it safe to assume that he has practically an unlimited supply of money. He must have other confederates, though whether they are in his full confidence or not is a debatable question. That, however, at the moment, is not of great importance. We have him in London, let us suppose, for it is the safest place in the world for a man to hide--in London, determined, and hungering for revenge. We have no idea what his next scheme will be, and in all human probability he hasn't planned either. He must be considerably shaken. He will know, now, how tremendously strong our defenses are, and it will not escape a man of his intelligence that they will now be greatly strengthened. It will take him some time to gather his wits together and work out another scheme. The only thing to do, it seems to me, is to force his hand."

"And how?" Morse and I said, simultaneously.

"We must trap him--not here at all, but down there, in London"--he made a little gesture towards the floor with his hand, and as he did so, once more the strange and eerie remembrance of where we were came over me, lost for a time in the comfortable seclusion of a room that might have been in Berkeley Square.

"Here _we_, that is the Press, come in," said Rolston, smiling proudly at me.

I smiled inwardly at the grandiloquence of the tone, and yet, how true it was!--this lad who, so short a time ago had got to see me by a trick, was certainly the most brilliant modern journalist I had ever met. I made him a little bow, and, delighted beyond measure, he continued.

"Let it be put about," he said, "with plenty of detail, rumor, contradiction of the rumor and so on--in fact we will get up a little stunt about it--that Mr. Mendoza Morse has tired of his whim. For a time, at any rate, he is going to make his reappearance in the world. If necessary, announce Miss Juanita's engagement to Sir Thomas. Get all London interested and excited again."

Morse nodded, his face wrinkled with thought. "I think I see," he said, "but go on."

"When this is done, let us put ourselves in Midwinter's place. I believe that he will have no suspicion of a trap. He will argue it in this way. We are too much afraid of him to attack ourselves. Hitherto, all our measures have been measures of defense and escape. It will hardly occur to him that we have changed all our tactics. He will think that, with the failure of his attempt, the bad failure, and the death of Zorilla--which I have no doubt he will have discovered by now--we imagine he will abandon all his attempts. He will say to himself that we now believe ourselves safe and that his power is over, his initiative broken, that he will never dare to go on with his campaign. Everything seems in favor of it. I should say that it is a hundred to one that his line of thought will be precisely as I have said."

"By Jove, and I think so, too! Good for you, Rolston!" I shouted, seeing where he was going.

His boyish face was wreathed in smiles. "Thank you," he said. "Well, we are to lay a trap, and it is on the details of that trap that everything depends. I see, by to-day's _Times_, that Birmingham House in Berkeley Square, is to let. The Duke is ordered a long cruise in the Pacific. Let Mr. Morse immediately take the house and issue invitations for a great ball to celebrate Miss Juanita's engagement. If that house and that ball are not to Midwinter as a candle is to a moth, then my theory is useless! Somehow or other he will be there, either before or actually on the occasion. By some means or other he will get into the house."

He stopped, and with a little apologetic look took out his cigarette case and began to smoke. He really was wonderful. This was the lad, airily ordering one of the richest men in the world to take the Duke of Birmingham's great mansion, whose capital but a few short weeks ago was one penny, bronze. I remember how he was forced to confess it to me, even as I congratulated him.

We talked on for another half-hour, or rather little Bill Rolston talked, the rest of us only putting in a word now and then. He seemed to have mapped out every detail of the new campaign, and we were content to listen and admire.

Of course I am not a person without original ideas, or unaccustomed to organization--my career, such as it is, has proved that. But on that night, at least, I could initiate nothing, and I was even glad when the conference came to an end. Morse was much the same--he confessed it to me as we left the room--and the truth is that we were both feeling the results of the terrible shocks we had undergone. Rolston was younger and fresher, and besides his peril had not been as great as mine or the millionaire's.

Pu-Yi vanished in his mysterious fashion, and Morse, Rolston and I went to dinner. There was no question of dressing on such a night as this, but, if you believe me, the meal was a merry one!

It was Juanita's whim to have dinner served in a wonderful conservatory built out on that side of the Palacete which looked upon the gardens separating it from the eastern villa where Rolston and I were housed. The place was yet another of the fantastic marvels conjured up by Morse and his millions. It was an exact reproduction of a similar conservatory at my host's house in Rio de Janeiro, and had been carried out at a frightful cost by the greatest landscape gardener and the most celebrated scenic artist in existence.

We sat at a little table, surrounded by tall palm trees rising from thick, tropical undergrowth, a gay striped awning was over our heads, protecting us from what seemed brilliant sunshine. On every side was the golden rain of mimosa, masses of deep crimson blossoms, and wax-like magnolia flowers. From a marble pool of clear water sprang a little fountain--a laughing rod of diamonds. In the distance, seen over a marble balustrade, was the deep blue of the tropic sea dominated by the great sugar-loaf mountain, the Pao de Azucar.

It was an illusion, of course, but it was perfect. That sea, and the gleaming mountain, which, from where we sat, seemed so real, was but a cleverly painted cloth. The warm and scented air came to us through concealed pipes, and down in the lower portion of the City, patient, moon-faced Chinamen were at work to produce it. The sunlight, actually as brilliant as real sunlight, was the result of a costly installation of those marvelous and newly invented lamps which are used in the great cinema studios. Only the trees and the flowers were real.

Outside, it was a keen, cold night. We were perched on the top of gaunt, steel towers, more than two thousand feet in the air, and yet, I swear to you, all thought of our surroundings, and even of our peril, was banished for a brief and laughing hour. Like the tired traveler in some clearing of those lovely South American forests from which the wealth of Morse had sprung, we had forgotten the patient jaguar that follows in the tree-tops for a week of days to strike at last.

I dwell upon this scene because it was another of those little interludes, during my life in the City of the Clouds, which stand out in such brilliant relief from the encircling horrors.

Juanita was in the highest spirits. I had never seen her more lovely or more animated. Morse himself, always a trifle grim, unbent to a sardonic humor. He told us story after story of his early life, with shrewd flashes of wit and wisdom, revealing the keen and mordaunt intellect which had made him what he was. A wonderful pink champagne from Austria, looted from the Imperial cellars during the war, and priceless even then, poured new life into our veins--it was impossible to believe in the tragedy of the last few hours, in the shadow of any tragedy to come.

We adjourned to the music-room after dinner, an apartment paneled in cedar-wood and with a wagon roof, and Juanita played and sang to us for a time. It was just ten o'clock when Rolston looked at his watch and gave me a significant glance. I rose and said good-night, both Morse and Juanita announcing their intention of going to bed.

As we came to the outside door, Bill turned to me.

"Hadn't you better go back to our house, Sir Thomas, and sleep? Remember what you have been through."

"Sleep? I couldn't sleep if I tried! I feel as fit and well as ever I did--why?"

"I've promised to meet Mr. Pu-Yi in the office of the chief of the staff. Reports will be coming in of the search which has been going on all the evening. I am anxious to see how far it has got, though of course if Midwinter had been found, or any trace of him, we should have been informed at once. And there is something else, also--"

He stopped, and I made no inquiries. "Well, I'm with you," I said; for I felt ready for anything that might come, in a state of absolute, pleasant acquiescence in the present and the future. I hadn't a tremor of fear or anxiety.

One of those noiseless, toy, electric automobiles which I had already seen when Juanita first showed me the City, was waiting. We got in, and buzzed through the gardens, and down the tunnel which led to Grand Square. As we went, I saw shadowy figures patrolling everywhere. The whole place was alive with guards--my girl could sleep well this night!

As we came out of the tunnel I motioned to Bill to go slowly, and he pulled the lever, or whatever it was, that controlled the speed. In almost complete silence we began to circle the huge inclosure, the tires making no noise whatever upon the floor of wood blocks.

The air was keen, cold, and wonderfully pure. There was not a cloud in the heavens, and one looked up at a far-flung vault of black velvet spangled with gold. Never had I seen the stars so clear and brilliant in England, for the haze of smoke and the miasma of overbreathed air which is the natural atmosphere of London lay two thousand feet below. The Grand Square blazed with light. The buildings, with their spires, domes and cupolas, stood out with extraordinary clearness against the circumambient black of space. No outline was soft or blurred, everything was vividly, fantastically real. A veritable scene from the old Arabian Nights indeed! And something of the same thought must have come to my companion, for he looked up and said: "I once saw an extraordinary illustration by Willy Pogany of one of De Quincey's opium dreams--here it is, only a thousand times more marvelous!"

The fountain in the middle of the Square--a long distance away it seemed as we slowly skirted the buildings--made a ghostly laughter as it sprang from its dragon-supported basin of bronze. The gilded cupola of the observatory shone with a wan radiance, higher than all else, and a black triangle in the gold told me that the patient old Chinese astronomer surveyed the heavens, lost in a waking dream of the Infinite, probably loftily unconscious of all that had been going on in the magic city at his feet. I envied that serene, Oriental philosopher, Juanita's special friend and pet, who lived up there in his observatory, and, so I was told, hardly ever descended for any purpose at all. He was as inviolate a hermit as Saint Anthony. It was especially curious that I should have cast my glance heavenwards and have thought of that ancient sage at this moment. You will learn why afterwards.

We stopped at one of the white kiosks, from the interior of which the hydraulic lifts went down to the lower part of the City. It was in an upper story of that that the chief of the staff had his office, and, mounting a flight of steps, we entered, to find Pu-Yi sitting at a roll-top desk, scrutinizing a handful of paper reports.

"It is nearly over, Sir Thomas," he said, rising and placing chairs for us. "Almost every inch of the City has been searched, and but little remains to be done. There is not a single trace of the man, Midwinter."

I own that to hear this was a great relief. We were all of us fired with Rolston's plan of a trap down below in London. His theory seemed to be correct. Midwinter had somehow escaped, and we should meet him in due time--for I had never a doubt of that. Meanwhile, Juanita and her father were safe.

"It is only what I expected, though how on earth he managed to get away remains to be seen!"

"It will come to light in due course," Pu-Yi replied. "And now, Sir Thomas, are you prepared to accompany me and Mr. Rolston? There are certain things to be done, and I shall be glad to have you as a witness."

"Anything you like--but what is it?"

"You must remember that the bodies of three dead men await disposal," he replied. "What remains of Zorilla--he fell into the lake on the first stage, though of course he was dead, strangled in mid-air, long before the impact. Then there is Mulligan, who died in defense of the City; finally Sen, the boy from my own province in China, of whose terrible end you are aware."

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"We must keep to our policy of secrecy and noninterference by the outside world. The bodies must be destroyed, and by fire."

I gave a little inward shudder, but I don't think he noticed it, and in a minute more we were dropping to the lower City in a rapid lift.

It was in a furnace-room that provided some of the hot air for the conservatories on the stage above that I witnessed the ghastly and unceremonious finish of the mortal parts of the Spaniard and the Irishman, and it was cruel and sordid to a degree--or so it seemed to me. The long bundle of sacking which contained that which had housed the evil soul of Senor Don Zorilla y Toro--I resisted a bland invitation on the part of a stoker in a blue jumper and a pleased smile to examine the stiff horror--was slung through an iron door into a white and glowing core of flame. There was a clang as the long, steel rods of the firemen pushed it to, and I cannot say that I felt much regret, only a sort of shuddering sickness and relief that the door was closed so swiftly.

But it was different in the case of Mulligan. I blamed Morse in my heart. The man had been strangled when saying his prayers. He was of the millionaire's own religion, and there should have been a priest to assist at these fiery obsequies of a faithful servant. I learned afterwards, I am glad to say, that Morse had not been consulted, and knew nothing about the actual disposal of the bodies until afterwards. You see the shock came--Rolston felt it too--from the fact that these bland and silent Asiatics were utterly without any emotion as they performed their task. They were heathens, worshiping Heaven knows what in their tortuous and secret souls. As poor Mulligan--they had put the body in a coffin and it took eight struggling, sweating Orientals to hoist and slide it into the furnace--vanished from my eyes, I put my hands before my face and said such portions of the Protestant burial service as I remembered, and they were very few.

"They're nasty beasts, aren't they, Sir Thomas?" Rolston whispered, as we fled the furnace room. "Soulless, just like machines!"

We waited for Pu-Yi for a minute or two.

"I thank you, Sir Thomas, and Mr. Rolston," he said in his calm, silky voice. "It was as well that you saw the disposal of the dead, though it is only a remote contingency that there will ever be inquiry. And now, if you wish, I will send you up again. I, myself, must attend to the obsequies of my compatriot."

"Oh," I remarked, and I fear my tone was far from pleasant, "you propose to be rather more ceremonious in the case of the lad, Sen?"

For a single moment I saw that calm and gentle face disturbed. Something looked out of it that was not good to see, but it was gone in a flash. This was the first and last time that I had a shadow of disagreement with the man whose life I had saved and who saved mine in return. It was natural, I think--neither of us was to blame. "East is East and West is West," and there are some points at least at which they can never meet. Poor Pu-Yi! He had as fine an intellect as any man I ever met, and was a great gentleman. I wish I could look upon him once more as I write this, but, though I didn't know it, the sand in the glass was nearly out and our hours together dwindling fast.

We followed him through various twists and turns of the under City, among the huts and storehouses, thronged with silent people--it was like moving in the interior of a hive of bees--until, by means of an archway and a closed door, we emerged in a sort of courtyard surrounded on three sides by buildings. On the fourth was a rail, breast-high, and above and around was open night.

"We can't take his body to China," said our guide. "We must burn it here, and only the ashes will rest in the village of his ancestors. But it is well. Such cases are provided for in my religion."

We then saw that in the center of the yard there was a low funeral pile, apparently of wood. Two men in long, yellow gowns were pouring some liquid over it.

"If you will do me the honor to come this way," said Pu-Yi, and we entered a long, bare room. In the center of this place there was a large square box of painted wood, the lid of which was not yet in place. The body of the dead man was sitting in the box, the hands clasped round the knees. The nose, ears and mouth were filled with vermilion, which, to our Western eyes, gave a horrible, grotesque appearance to the brown, wrinkled mask of the face. Poor Sen's countenance was placid enough, but it was not like that of even a dead man, a fantastic image, rather.

A gong beat with a sudden hollow reverberation, and from another door a file of mourners entered.

At the far end of the room was a table upon which was a painted tablet. "It bears," whispered Pu-Yi, "the name under which Sen enters salvation."

Two men swinging censers stood by the table, and two others, a little nearer the corpse, held bronze bowls of water. First Pu-Yi, and then the other mourners, dipped their hands in the water to purify them, and then, producing paper packets of incense from their bosoms, they threw a pinch into the censers with the right hand and bowed low to the table, retiring backwards. It was all done with the precision of a drill and in absolute silence, and for my part I found it no less ghastly and unreal than the brutal scene in the furnace-room below.

"Come out," I whispered to Rolston, and we reentered the pure air, walking to the rail at one side of the square.

We leant over. Far, far below, so far that it was sensation rather than vision, was a faint, full glow, the night lights of London, but of the city itself nothing could be seen whatever. Even the burnished ribbon of the Thames had disappeared, and no sound rose from the capital of the world. There was a thin whispering round us as the night breezes blew through steel stay and cantilever, a faint humming noise like that of some gigantic AEolian harp. And once, as we bathed ourselves in the cool, the immensity and the dark, there was a rush of whirring wings, and the "honk-konk" of the wild duck from the great lake fifteen hundred feet below, as they passed in wedge-shaped flight on some mysterious night errand. We leant and gazed, filled with awe and solemnity, until a low, wailing chant and the thin, piercing notes of single-wire-strung violins made us turn to see the square box hoisted on the bier, a torch applied, and a roaring spitting column of yellow flame towering up above the buildings and throwing a ghastly light on a hundred round, mask-like faces, indistinguishable one from the other by European eyes.

As I read now, ten years afterwards, that scene among so many others comes back to me with extraordinary vividness. And it seems to me as I live my English life in honor, tranquillity, and happiness, that it was all a monstrous dream.

Surely--yes, I think I am safe in saying this--there will never again be such a place of horror and fantasy as the City in the Clouds.