Max Pemberton - Murder Mysteries Boxed-Set - 40+ Books in One Edition

I shuddered at the spectacle—perhaps was unnerved by it. This instant brought home to me as nothing else had done the nature of the quest I had embarked upon and the price which it might be necessary to pay for success. What was life or death to this criminal company my imagination had placed upon the high seas and on such shores as this! They would kill me, if my death could contribute to their safety, as readily as a man crushes a fly that settles by his hand. All my best reasoned schemes might not avail against such a sudden outbreak of anger and reproach as discovery might bring upon me. This I had been a fool not to remember, and it came to me in all its black nakedness as I stood at the foot of the precipice and perceived that Okyada would have me mount. The venture was as desperate as any a man could embark upon. I know not to this day why I obeyed my servant.

Let me make the situation clear. The path through the wood had carried us to a precipice of the mountain, black and stern and forbidding. Against this a frail iron ladder had been raised and hooked to the rock by the ordinary clamps which steeplejacks employ. How far this ladder had been reared, I could not clearly see. Its thread-like shell disappeared and was quickly lost in the shadows of the heights; while far above, beyond a space of blackness, a glow of warm light radiated from time to time from some orifice of the rock, and spoke both of human presence and human activities. That the ladder had been closely watched, Okyada had already told me. Did I need a further witness, the dead body at the cliff’s foot must have answered for my servant’s veracity. Somewhere in that tremendous haze of light and shadow the two men had met upon a foothold terrible to contemplate; their arms had been locked together; they had uttered no cries, but silently, grimly fighting, they had decided the issue, and one had fallen horribly to the rocks below. This man’s absence must presently be discovered. How if discovery came while we were still upon the ladder from which he had been hurled? Such a thought, I reflected, was the refuge of a coward. I would consider it no more, and bidding Okyada lead, I hastened to follow him to the unknown.

We mounted swiftly, the felt upon our shoes deadening all sounds. I am an old Alpine climber, and the height had no terrors for me. Under other circumstances, the fresh bracing air above the wood, the superb panorama of land and sea would have delighted me. Down yonder to the left lay Villa do Porto. The anchor-light of my own yacht shone brightly across the still sea, as though telling me that my friends were near. The Villa San Jorge itself was just a black shape below us, lightless and apparently deserted. I say “apparently,” for a second glance at it showed me, as moving shadows upon a moonlit path, the figures of the sentinels who had been posted at its doors. These, had their eyes been prepared, must certainly have discovered us. It may be that they named us for the guardian of the ladder itself; it may be that they held their peace deliberately. That fact does not concern me. I am merely to record the circumstance that, after weary climbing, we reached a gallery of the rock and stood together, master and servant, upon a rude bridle-path, thirty inches wide, perhaps, and without defence against the terrible precipice it bordered. Here, as in the wood, Okyada crept apace, but with infinite caution, following the path round the mountain for nearly a quarter of a mile, and so bringing me without warning to an open plateau with a great orifice, in shape neither more nor less than the entrance to a cave within the mountain itself. I perceived that we had come to our journey’s end, and falling prone at a signal from my guide, I lay without word or movement for many minutes together.

Now, there were two men keeping guard at the entrance to the cave, and we lay, perhaps, within fifty yards of them. The light by which we saw the men was that which escaped from the orifice itself—a fierce, glowing, red light, shining at intervals as though a furnace door had been opened and immediately shut again. The effect of this I found weird and menacing beyond all experience; for while at one moment the darkness of ultimate night hid all things from our view, at the next the figures were outstanding in a fiery aureole, as clearly silhouetted in crimson as though incarnadined in a shadowgraph. To these strange sights, the accompaniment of odd sounds was added—the blast as of wind from a mighty bellows, the clanging of hammers upon anvils of steel, the low humming voices of men who sang, bare-armed, as they worked. In my own country, upon another scene, a listener would have said these were honest smiths pursuing their calling while other men slept. I knew too much of the truth to permit myself any delusion. These men worked gold, I said. There could be no other employment for them.

So with me shall my friends watch upon the mountain and share both the surprise and the wonder of this surpassing discovery. My own feelings are scarcely to be declared. The night promised to justify me beyond all hope; and yet, until I could witness the thing for myself, justification lay as far off as ever. Indeed, our position was perilous beyond all words to tell. There, not fifty paces from us, the sentries lounged in talk, revolvers in their belts, and rifles about their shoulders. A sigh might have betrayed us. We did not dare to exchange a monosyllable or lift a hand. Cramped almost beyond endurance, I, myself, would have withdrawn and gone down to the house again but for the immovable Okyada, who lay as a stone upon the path, and by his very stillness betrayed some subtler purpose. To him it had occurred that the sentries would go upon their patrol presently. I knew that it might be so, had thought of it myself; but a full twenty minutes passed before they gave us a sign, and then hardly the sign I looked for. One of them, rousing himself lazily, entered the cave and became lost to our view. The other, slinging his rifle about his shoulders, came deliberately towards us, stealthily, furtively, for all the world as though he were fully aware of our presence and about to make it known. This, be it said, was but an idea of my awakened imagination. Whatever had been designed against us by the master of the Villa San Jorge, an open assault upon the mountain side certainly had not been contemplated. The watchman must, in plain truth, have been about to visit the ladder’s head to ascertain if all were well with his comrade there. Such a journey he did not complete. The Jap sprang upon him suddenly, at the very moment he threatened almost to tread upon us, and he fell without a single word at my feet as though stricken by some fell disease which forbade him to move a limb or utter a single cry.

Okyada had caught him with one arm about his throat and a clever hand behind his knees. As he lay prone upon the rock, he was gagged and bound with a speed and dexterity I have never seen imitated. Fear, it may be, was my servant’s ally. The wretched man’s eyes seemed to start almost out of his head when he found himself thus outwitted, an arm of iron choking him, and lithe limbs of incomparable strength roping his body as with bonds of steel. Certainly, he made no visible effort of resistance, rather consenting to his predicament than fighting against it; and no sooner was the last knot of the cord tied than Okyada sprang up and pointed dramatically to the open door no longer watched by sentries. To gain this was the work of a moment. I drew my revolver, and, crossing the open space, looked down deliberately into the pit. The story of the Villa San Jorge lay at my feet. General Fordibras, I said, had no longer a secret to conceal from me.

I will not dwell upon those emotions of exultation, perhaps of vanity, which came to me in that amazing moment. All that I had sacrificed to this dangerous quest, the perils encountered and still awaiting me—what were they when measured in the balance of this instant revelation, the swift and glowing vision with which the night rewarded me? I knew not the price I would have paid for the knowledge thus instantly come to my possession.