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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Door into Infinity, by Edmond Hamilton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Door into Infinity
+
+Author: Edmond Hamilton
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2010 [EBook #32847]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOOR INTO INFINITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       The Door Into Infinity
+
+                         By EDMOND HAMILTON
+
+[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales
+August-September 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
+that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+[Sidenote: _An amazing weird mystery story, packed with thrills, danger
+and startling events._]
+
+
+
+
+_1. The Brotherhood of the Door_
+
+
+"Where leads the Door?"
+
+"_It leads outside our world._"
+
+"Who taught our forefathers to open the Door?"
+
+"_They Beyond the Door taught them._"
+
+"To whom do we bring these sacrifices?"
+
+"_We bring them to Those Beyond the Door._"
+
+"Shall the Door be opened that They may take them?"
+
+"_Let the Door be opened!_"
+
+Paul Ennis had listened thus far, his haggard face uncomprehending in
+expression, but now he interrupted the speaker.
+
+"But what does it all mean, inspector? Why are you repeating this to
+me?"
+
+"Did you ever hear anyone speak words like that?" asked Inspector Pierce
+Campbell, leaning tautly forward for the answer.
+
+"Of course not--it just sounds like gibberish to me," Ennis exclaimed.
+"What connection can it have with my wife?"
+
+He had risen to his feet, a tall, blond young American whose
+good-looking face was drawn and worn by inward agony, whose crisp yellow
+hair was brushed back from his forehead in disorder, and whose blue eyes
+were haunted with an anguished dread.
+
+He kicked back his chair and strode across the gloomy little office,
+whose single window looked out on the thickening, foggy twilight of
+London. He bent across the dingy desk, gripping its edges with his hands
+as he spoke tensely to the man sitting behind it.
+
+"Why are we wasting time talking here?" Ennis cried. "Sitting here
+talking, when anything may be happening to Ruth!
+
+"It's been hours since she was kidnapped. They may have taken her
+anywhere, even outside of London by now. And instead of searching for
+her, you sit here and talk gibberish about Doors!"
+
+Inspector Campbell seemed unmoved by Ennis' passion. A bulky, almost
+bald man, he looked up with his colorless, sagging face, in which his
+eyes gleamed like two crumbs of bright brown glass.
+
+"You're not helping me much by giving way to your emotions, Mr. Ennis,"
+he said in his flat voice.
+
+"Give way? Who wouldn't give way?" cried Ennis. "Don't you understand,
+man, it's Ruth that's gone--my wife! Why, we were married only last week
+in New York. And on our second day here in London, I see her whisked
+into a limousine and carried away before my eyes! I thought you men at
+Scotland Yard here would surely act, do something. Instead you talk
+crazy gibberish to me!"
+
+"Those words are _not_ gibberish," said Pierce Campbell quietly. "And I
+think they're related to the abduction of your wife."
+
+"What do you mean? How could they be related?"
+
+The inspector's bright little brown eyes held Ennis'. "Did you ever hear
+of an organization called the Brotherhood of the Door?"
+
+Ennis shook his head, and Campbell continued, "Well, I am certain your
+wife was kidnapped by members of the Brotherhood."
+
+"What kind of an organization is it?" the young American demanded. "A
+band of criminals?"
+
+"No, it is no ordinary criminal organization," the detective said. His
+sagging face set strangely. "Unless I am mistaken, the Brotherhood of
+the Door is the most unholy and blackly evil organization that has ever
+existed on this earth. Almost nothing is known of it outside its circle.
+I myself in twenty years have learned little except its existence and
+name. That ritual I just repeated to you, I heard from the lips of a
+dying member of the Brotherhood, who repeated the words in his
+delirium."
+
+Campbell leaned forward. "But I know that every year about this time the
+Brotherhood come from all over the world and gather at some secret
+center here in England. And every year, before that gathering, scores of
+people are kidnapped and never heard of again. I believe that all those
+people are kidnapped by this mysterious Brotherhood."
+
+"But what becomes of the people they kidnap?" cried the pale young
+American. "What do they do with them?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Inspector Campbell's bright brown eyes showed a hint of hooded horror,
+yet he shook his head. "I know no more than you. But whatever they do to
+the victims, they are never heard of again."
+
+"But you must know something more!" Ennis protested. "What is this
+Door?"
+
+Campbell again shook his head. "That too I don't know, but whatever it
+is, the Door is utterly sacred to the members of the Brotherhood, and
+whomever they mean by They Beyond the Door, they dread and venerate to
+the utmost."
+
+"Where leads the Door? _It leads outside our world_," repeated Ennis.
+"What can that mean?"
+
+"It might have a symbolic meaning, referring to some secluded fastness
+of the order which is away from the rest of the world," the inspector
+said. "Or it might----"
+
+He stopped. "Or it might what?" pressed Ennis, his pale face thrust
+forward.
+
+"It might mean, literally, that the Door leads outside our world and
+universe," finished the inspector.
+
+Ennis' haunted eyes stared. "You mean that this Door might somehow lead
+into another universe? But that's impossible!"
+
+"Perhaps unlikely," Campbell said quietly, "but not impossible. Modern
+science has taught us that there are other universes than the one we
+live in, universes congruent and coincident with our own in space and
+time, yet separated from our own by the impassable barrier of totally
+different dimensions. It is not entirely impossible that a greater
+science than ours might find a way to pierce that barrier between our
+universe and one of those outside ones, that a Door should be opened
+from ours into one of those others in the infinite outside."
+
+"A door into the infinite outside," repeated Ennis broodingly, looking
+past the inspector. Then he made a sudden movement of wild impatience,
+the dread leaping back strong in his eyes again.
+
+"Oh, what good is all this talk about Doors and infinite universes doing
+in finding Ruth? I want to _do_ something! If you think this mysterious
+Brotherhood has taken her, you must surely have some idea of how we can
+get her back from them? You must know something more about them than
+you've told."
+
+"I don't know anything more certainly, but I've certain suspicions that
+amount to convictions," Inspector Campbell said. "I've been working on
+this Brotherhood for many years, and block after block I've narrowed
+down to the place I think the order's local center, the London
+headquarters of the Brotherhood of the Door."
+
+"Where is the place?" asked Ennis tensely.
+
+"It is the waterfront cafe of one Chandra Dass, a Hindoo, down by East
+India Docks," said the detective officer. "I've been there in disguise
+more than once, watching the place. This Chandra Dass I've found to be
+immensely feared by everyone in the quarter, which strengthens my belief
+that he's one of the high officers of the Brotherhood. He's too
+exceptional a man to be really running such a place."
+
+"Then if the Brotherhood took Ruth, she may be at that place now!" cried
+the young American, electrified.
+
+Campbell nodded his bald head. "She may very likely be. Tonight I'm
+going there again in disguise, and have men ready to raid the place. If
+Chandra Dass has your wife there, we'll get her before he can get her
+away. Whatever way it turns out, we'll let you know at once."
+
+"Like hell you will!" exploded the pale young Ennis. "Do you think I'm
+going to twiddle my thumbs while you're down there? I'm going with you.
+And if you refuse to let me, by heaven I'll go there myself!"
+
+Inspector Pierce Campbell gave the haggard, fiercely determined face of
+the young man a long look, and then his own colorless countenance seemed
+to soften a little.
+
+"All right," he said quietly. "I can disguise you so you'll not be
+recognized. But you'll have to follow my orders exactly, or death will
+result for both of us."
+
+That strange, hooded dread flickered again in his eyes, as though he saw
+through shrouding mists the outline of dim horror.
+
+"It may be," he added slowly, "that something worse even than death
+awaits those who try to oppose the Brotherhood of the Door--something
+that would explain the unearthly, superhuman dread that enwraps the
+secret mysteries of the order. We're taking more than our lives in our
+hands, I think, in trying to unveil those mysteries, to regain your
+wife. But we've got to act quickly, at all costs. We've got to find her
+before the great gathering of the Brotherhood takes place, or we'll
+never find her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours before midnight found Campbell and Ennis passing along a
+cobble-paved waterfront street north of the great East India Docks. Big
+warehouses towered black and silent in the darkness on one side, and on
+the other were old, rotting docks beyond which Ennis glimpsed the black
+water and gliding lights of the river.
+
+As they straggled beneath the infrequent lights of the ill-lit street,
+they were utterly changed in appearance. Inspector Campbell, dressed in
+a shabby suit and rusty bowler, his dirty white shirt innocent of tie,
+had acquired a new face, a bright red, oily, eager one, and a high,
+squeaky voice. Ennis wore a rough blue seaman's jacket and a vizored cap
+pulled down over his head. His unshaven-looking face and subtly altered
+features made him seem a half-intoxicated seaman off his ship, as he
+stumbled unsteadily along. Campbell clung to him in true land-shark
+fashion, plucking his arm and talking wheedlingly to him.
+
+They came into a more populous section of the evil old waterfront
+street, and passed fried-fish shops giving off the strong smell of hot
+fat, and the dirty, lighted windows of a half-dozen waterfront saloons,
+loud with sordid argument or merriment.
+
+Campbell led past them until they reached one built upon an abandoned,
+moldering pier, a ramshackle frame structure extending some distance
+back out on the pier. Its window was curtained, but dull red light
+glowed through the glass window of the door.
+
+A few shabby men were lounging in front of the place but Campbell paid
+them no attention, tugging Ennis inside by the arm.
+
+"Carm on in!" he wheedled shrilly. "The night ain't 'alf over yet--we'll
+'ave just one more."
+
+"Don't want any more," muttered Ennis drunkenly, swaying on his feet
+inside. "Get away, you damned old shark."
+
+Yet he suffered himself to be led by Campbell to a table, where he
+slumped heavily into a chair. His stare swung vacantly.
+
+The cafe of Chandra Dass was a red-lit, smoke-filled cave with cheap
+black curtains on the walls and windows, and other curtains cutting off
+the back part of the building from view. The dim room was jammed with
+tables crowded with patrons whose babel of tongues made an unceasing
+din, to which a three-string guitar somewhere added a wailing undertone.
+The waiters were dark-skinned and tiger-footed Malays, while the patrons
+seemed drawn from every nation east and west.
+
+Ennis' glazed eyes saw dandified Chinese from Limehouse and Pennyfields,
+dark little Levantins from Soho, rough-looking Cockneys in shabby caps,
+a few crazily laughing blacks. From sly white faces, taut brown ones and
+impassive yellow ones came a dozen different languages. The air was
+thick with queer food-smells and the acrid smoke.
+
+Campbell had selected a table near the back curtain, and now stridently
+ordered one of the Malay waiters to bring gin. He leaned forward with an
+oily smile to the drunken-looking Ennis, and spoke to him in a wheedling
+undertone.
+
+"Don't look for a minute, but that's Chandra Dass over in the corner,
+and he's watching us," he said.
+
+Ennis shook his clutching hand away. "Damned old shark!" he muttered
+again.
+
+He turned his swaying head slowly, letting his eyes rest a moment on the
+man in the corner. That man was looking straight at him.
+
+Chandra Dass was tall, dressed in spotless white from his shoes to the
+turban on his head. The white made his dark, impassive, aquiline face
+stand out in chiseled relief. His eyes were coal-black, large, coldly
+searching, as they met Ennis' bleared gaze.
+
+Ennis felt a strange chill as he met those eyes. There was something
+alien and unhuman, something uncannily disturbing, behind the Hindoo's
+stare. He turned his gaze vacantly from Chandra Dass to the black
+curtains at the rear, and then back to his companion.
+
+The silent Malay waiter had brought the liquor, and Campbell pressed a
+glass toward his companion. "'Ere, matey, take this."
+
+"Don't want it," muttered Ennis, pushing it away. Still in the same
+mutter, he added, "If Ruth's here, she's somewhere in the back there.
+I'm going back and find out."
+
+"Don't try it that way, for God's sake!" said Campbell in the wheedling
+undertone. "Chandra Dass is still watching, and those Malays would be on
+you in a minute. Wait until I give the word.
+
+"All right, then," Campbell added in a louder, injured tone. "If you
+don't want it, I'll drink it myself."
+
+He tossed off the glass of gin and set the glass down on the table,
+looking at his drunken companion with righteous indignation.
+
+"Think I'm tryin' to bilk yer, eh?" he added. "That's a fine way to
+treat a pal!"
+
+He added in the coaxing lower tone, "All right, I'm going to try it. Be
+ready to move when I light my cigarette."
+
+He fished a soiled package of Gold Flakes from his pocket and put one in
+his mouth. Ennis waited, every muscle taut.
+
+The inspector, his red, oily face still injured in expression, struck a
+match to his cigarette. Almost at once there was a loud oath from one of
+the shabby loungers outside the front of the building, and the sound of
+angry voices and blows.
+
+The patrons of Chandra Dass looked toward the door, and one of the Malay
+waiters went hastily out to quiet the fight. But it grew swiftly,
+sounded in a moment like a small riot. _Crash_--someone was pushed
+through the front window. The excited patrons pressed toward the front.
+Chandra Dass pushed through them, issuing quick orders to his servants.
+
+For the time being the back of the cafe was deserted and unnoticed.
+Campbell sprang to his feet, and with Ennis close behind him, darted
+through the black curtains. They found themselves in a black corridor at
+the end of which a red bulb burned dimly. They could still hear the
+uproar.
+
+Campbell's gun was in his hand, and the American's in his.
+
+"We dare only stay here a few moments," the inspector cried. "Look in
+those rooms along the corridor here."
+
+Ennis frantically tore open a door and peered into a dark room smelling
+of drugs. "Ruth!" he cried softly. "Ruth!"
+
+
+
+
+_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."
+
+Ennis gripped the inspector's shoulder. "Campbell, Ruth is in there! By
+heaven, we've found her and now we can get her out!"
+
+"Right!" said the officer grimly. "We'll go around to the front and in
+two minutes we'll be in there with my men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They climbed dripping to their feet, and hastened from the little
+floating dock up onto the shore, through the darkness to the cobbled
+street.
+
+The shabbily disguised men of Inspector Campbell were not now in front
+of Chandra Dass' cafe, but lurking in the shadows across the street.
+They came running toward Campbell and Ennis.
+
+"All right, we're going in there," Campbell exclaimed in steely tones.
+"Get Chandra Dass, whatever you do, but see that his prisoners are not
+harmed."
+
+He snapped a word and one of the men handed pistols to him and to Ennis.
+Then they leaped toward the door of the Hindoo's cafe, from which still
+streamed ruddy light and the babel of many voices.
+
+A kick from Inspector Campbell sent the door flying inward, and they
+burst in with guns gleaming wickedly in the ruddy light. Ennis' face was
+a quivering mask of desperate resolve.
+
+The motley patrons jumped up with yells of alarm at their entrance. The
+hand of a Malay waiter jerked and a thrown knife thudded into the wall
+beside them. Ennis yelled as he saw Chandra Dass, his dark face
+startled, leaping back with his servants through the black curtains.
+
+He and Campbell drove through the squealing patrons toward the back. The
+Malay who had thrown the knife rushed to bar the way, another dagger
+uplifted. Campbell's gun coughed and the Malay reeled and stumbled. The
+inspector and Ennis threw themselves at the black curtains--and were
+dashed back.
+
+They tore aside the black folds. A dull steel door had been lowered
+behind them, barring the way to the back rooms. Ennis beat crazily upon
+it with his pistol-butt, but it remained immovable.
+
+"No use--we can't break that down!" yelled Campbell, over the uproar.
+"Outside, and around to the other end of the building!"
+
+They burst back out through that mad-house, into the dark of the street.
+They started along the side of the pier toward the river-end, edging
+forward on a narrow ledge but inches wide. As they reached the back of
+the building, Ennis shouted and pointed to dark figures at the end of
+the pier. There were two of them, lowering shapeless, wrapped forms over
+the end of the pier.
+
+"There they are!" he cried. "They've got their prisoners out there with
+them."
+
+Campbell's pistol leveled, but Ennis swiftly struck it up. "No, you
+might hit Ruth."
+
+He and the inspector bounded forward along the pier. Fire streaked from
+the dark ahead and bullets thumped the rotting boards around them.
+
+Suddenly the loud roar of an accelerated motor drowned out all other
+sounds. It came from the river at the pier's end.
+
+Campbell and Ennis reached the end in time to see a long, powerful, gray
+motor-boat dash out into the black obscurity of the river, and roar
+eastward with gathering speed.
+
+"There they go--they're getting away!" cried the agonized young
+American.
+
+Inspector Campbell cupped his hands and shouted out into the darkness,
+"River police, ahoy! Ahoy there!"
+
+He rasped to Ennis. "The river police were to have a cutter here
+tonight. We can still catch them."
+
+With swiftly rising roar of speeded motors, a big cutter drove in from
+the darkness. Its searchlight snapped on, bathing the two men on the
+pier in a blinding glare.
+
+"Ahoy, there!" called a stentorian voice over the roar of the motors.
+"Is that Inspector Campbell?"
+
+"Yes. Come alongside," yelled the inspector, and as the big cutter shot
+close to the end of the pier, its reversing propellers churning the dark
+water to foam, Ennis and Campbell leaped.
+
+They landed amid unseen men in the cockpit, and as he scrambled to his
+feet the inspector cried, "Follow that boat that just went down-river.
+But no shooting!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With thunderous drumfire from its exhausts, the cutter jerked forward so
+rapidly that it almost threw them from their feet again. It shot out
+onto the bosom of the dark river that flowed like a black sea between
+the banks of scattered lights that were London.
+
+The moving lights of yachts and barges coming up-river could be seen
+gliding in that darkness. The captain of the cutter barked an order and
+one of his three men, the one crouched at the searchlight, switched its
+powerful beam out over the waters ahead.
+
+In a moment it picked up a distant gray spot racing eastward on the
+black river, leaving a white trail of foam.
+
+"There she is!" bawled the man at the searchlight. "She's running
+without lights!"
+
+"Keep her in the searchlight," ordered the captain. "Sound our siren,
+and give the cutter her head."
+
+Swaying, rocking, the cutter roared on through the darkness on the trail
+of that distant fleeing speck. As they raced down Blackwall Reach, the
+distance between the two craft had already begun to lessen.
+
+"We're overtaking him!" cried Campbell, clutching a stanchion and
+peering ahead against the rush of wind and spray. "He must be making for
+whatever spot it is in England that is the center of the Brotherhood of
+the Door--but he'll never reach it."
+
+"He said that within a few hours Ruth would go with the others through
+the Door!" cried Ennis, clinging beside him. "Campbell, we mustn't let
+them get away now!"
+
+Pursuers and pursued flashed on down the dark, broadening river, through
+mazes of shipping, the cutter hanging doggedly to the motor-boat's
+trail. The lights of London had dropped behind and those of Tilbury now
+gleamed away on their left.
+
+Bigger, stronger waves now tossed and pounded the cutter as it raced out
+of the river mouth toward the heaving black expanse of the sea. The Kent
+coast was a black blur on their right; the gray motor-boat followed it
+closely, grazing almost beneath the Sheerness lights.
+
+"He's heading to round North Foreland and follow the coast south to
+Ramsgate or Dover," the cutter captain cried to Campbell. "But we'll
+catch him before he passes Margate."
+
+The quarry was now but a quarter-mile ahead. Steadily as they roared
+onward the gap narrowed, until in the glare of the searchlight they
+could make out every detail of the powerful gray motor-boat plunging
+through the tossing black waves.
+
+They saw Chandra Dass' dark face turn and look back at them, and the
+cutter captain raised his speaking-trumpet to his lips and shouted over
+the roar of motors and dash of waves.
+
+"Stand by or we'll fire at you!"
+
+"He won't obey," muttered Campbell between his teeth. "He knows we
+daren't fire with the girl in the boat."
+
+"Yes, blast him!" exclaimed the captain. "But we'll have him in a few
+minutes, anyway."
+
+The thundering chase had brought them into sight of the lights of
+Margate on the dark coast to their right. Now only a few hundred feet of
+black water separated them from the fleeing craft.
+
+Ennis and the inspector, gripping the stanchions of the rushing cutter,
+saw a white figure suddenly stand erect in the boat ahead and wave its
+arms to them. The gray motor-boat slowed.
+
+"It's Chandra Dass and he's signaling that he's giving up!" Ennis cried.
+"He's stopping!"
+
+"By heavens, he is!" Campbell explained. "Drive alongside him, and we'll
+soon have the irons on him."
+
+The cutter, its own motors hastily throttled down, shot through the
+water toward the slowing gray craft. Ennis saw Chandra Dass standing
+erect, awaiting their coming, he and the two Malays beside him holding
+their hands in the air. He saw a half-dozen or more white-wrapped forms
+in the bottom of the boat, lying motionless.
+
+"There are their prisoners!" he cried. "Bring the boat closer so we can
+jump in!"
+
+He and Campbell, their pistols out, hunched to jump as the cutter drove
+closer to the gray motor-boat. The sides of the two craft bumped, the
+motors of both idling noisily. Then before Ennis and Campbell could jump
+into the motor-boat, things happened with cinema-like rapidity. Two of
+the still white forms at the bottom of the motor-boat leaped up and like
+suddenly uncoiled springs shot through the air into the cutter. They
+were two other Malays, their dark faces flaming with fanatic light, keen
+daggers glinting in their upraised hands.
+
+"'Ware a trick!" yelled Campbell. His gun barked, but the bullet missed
+and a dagger slit his sleeve.
+
+The Malays, with wild, screeching yells, were laying about them with
+their daggers in the cutter, insanely.
+
+"God in heaven, they're running amok!" choked the cutter captain.
+
+His slashed neck spurting blood and his face livid, he fell. One of his
+men slumped coughing beside him, another victim of the crazy daggers.
+
+
+
+
+_3. Up the Water-Tunnel_
+
+
+The man at the searchlight sprang for the maddened Malays, tugging at
+his pistol as he jumped. Before he got the weapon out, a dagger slashed
+his jugular and he went down gurgling in death. One of the Malays
+meanwhile had knocked Inspector Campbell from his feet, his knife-hand
+swooping down, his eyes blazing.
+
+Ennis' gun roared and the bullet hit the Malay between the eyes. But as
+he slumped limply, the other fanatic was upon Ennis from the side.
+Before Ennis could whirl to meet him, the attacker's knife grazed down
+past his cheek like a brand of living fire. He was borne backward by the
+rush, felt the hot breath of the crazed Malay in his face, the
+dagger-point at his throat.
+
+Shots roared quickly, one after another, and with each shot the Malay
+pressing Ennis back jerked convulsively. With the light of murderous
+madness fading from his eyes, he still strove to drive the dagger home
+into the American's throat. But a hand jerked him back and he lay
+prostrate and still.
+
+Ennis scrambled up to find Inspector Campbell, pale and determined, over
+him. The detective had shot the attacker from behind.
+
+The captain of the cutter and two of his men lay dead in the cockpit
+beside the two Malays. The remaining seaman, the helmsman, held his
+shoulder and groaned.
+
+Ennis whirled. The motor-boat of Chandra Dass was no longer beside the
+cutter, and there was no sight of it anywhere on the black sea ahead.
+The Hindoo had taken advantage of the fight to make good his escape with
+his two other servants and their prisoners.
+
+"Campbell, he's gone!" cried the young American frantically. "He's got
+away!"
+
+The inspector's eyes were bright with cold flame of anger. "Yes, Chandra
+Dass sacrificed these two Malays to hold us up long enough for him to
+escape."
+
+Campbell whirled to the helmsman. "You're not badly hurt?"
+
+"Only a scratch, but I nearly broke my shoulder when I fell," answered
+the man.
+
+"Then head on around North Foreland!" Campbell cried. "We may still be
+able to catch up to them."
+
+"But Captain Wilson and the others are killed," protested the helmsman.
+"I've got to report----"
+
+"You can report later," rasped the inspector. "Do as I say--I'll be
+responsible."
+
+"Very well, sir," said the helmsman, and jumped back to the wheel.
+
+In a minute the big cutter was roaring ahead over the heaving black
+waves, its searchlight clawing the darkness ahead. There was no sign now
+of the craft of Chandra Dass ahead. They raced abreast of the lights of
+Margate, started rounding the North Foreland, pounded by bigger seas.
+
+Inspector Campbell had dragged the bodies of the dead policemen and
+their two slayers down into the cabin of the cutter. He came up and
+crouched down with Ennis beside Sturt, the helmsman.
+
+"I found these on the two Malays," Campbell shouted to the American,
+holding out two little objects in his spray-wet hand.
+
+Each was a flat star of gray metal in which was set a large oval,
+cabochon-cut jewel. The jewels flashed and dazzled with deep color, but
+it was a color wholly unfamiliar and alien to their eyes.
+
+"They're not any color we know on earth," Campbell shouted. "I believe
+these jewels came from somewhere beyond the Door, and that these are
+badges of the Brotherhood of the Door."
+
+Sturt, the helmsman, leaned toward the inspector. "We've rounded North
+Foreland, sir," he cried. "Head straight south along the coast,"
+Campbell ordered. "Chandra Dass must have gone this way. No doubt he
+thinks he's shaken us off, and is making for the gathering-place of the
+Brotherhood, wherever that may be."
+
+"The cutter isn't built for seas like this," Sturt said, shaking his
+head. "But I'll do it."
+
+They were now following the coast southward, the lights of Ramsgate
+dropping back on their right. The waters out here in the Channel were
+wilder, great black waves tossing the cutter to the sky one moment, and
+then dropping it sickeningly the next. Frequently its screws raced
+loudly as they encountered no resistance but air.
+
+Ennis, clinging precariously on the foredeck, turned the searchlight's
+stabbing white beam back and forth on the heaving dark sea ahead, but
+without any sign of their quarry disclosed.
+
+White foam of breaking waves began to show around them like bared teeth,
+and there was a humming in the air.
+
+"Storm coming up the Channel," Sturt exclaimed. "It'll do for us if it
+catches us out here."
+
+"We've got to keep on," Ennis told him desperately. "We must come up
+with them soon!"
+
+The coast on their right was now one of black, rocky cliffs, towering
+all along the shore in a jagged, frowning wall against which the waves
+dashed foamy white. The cutter crept southward over the wild waters,
+tossed like a chip upon the great waves. Sturt was having a hard time
+holding the craft out from the rocks, and had its prow pointed obliquely
+away from them.
+
+The humming in the air changed to a shrill whistling as the outrider
+winds of the storm came upon them. The cutter tossed still more wildly
+and black masses of water smashed in upon them from the darkness, dazing
+and drenching them.
+
+Suddenly Ennis yelled, "There's the lights of a boat ahead! There,
+moving in toward the cliffs!"
+
+He pointed ahead, and Campbell and the helmsman peered through the
+blinding spray and darkness. A pair of low lights were moving at high
+speed on the waters there, straight toward the towering black cliffs.
+Then they vanished suddenly from sight.
+
+"There must be a hidden opening or harbor of some kind in the cliffs!"
+Inspector Campbell exclaimed. "But that can't be Chandra Dass' boat, for
+it carried no lights."
+
+"It might be others of the Brotherhood going to the meeting-place!"
+Ennis exclaimed. "We can follow and see."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sturt thrust his head through the flying spray and shouted, "There are
+openings and water-caverns in plenty along these cliffs, but there's
+nothing in any of them."
+
+"We'll find out," Campbell said. "Head straight toward the cliffs in
+there where that boat vanished."
+
+"If we can't find the opening we'll be smashed to flinders on those
+cliffs," Sturt warned.
+
+"I'm gambling that we'll find the opening," Campbell told him. "Go
+ahead."
+
+Sturt's face set stolidly and he said, "Yes, sir."
+
+He turned the prow of the cutter toward the cliffs. Instantly they
+dashed forward toward the rock walls with greatly increased speed, wild
+waves bearing them onward like charging stallions of the sea.
+
+Hunched beside the helmsman, the searchlight stabbing the dark wildly as
+the cutter was flung forward by the waves, Ennis and the inspector
+watched as the cliffs loomed closer ahead. The brilliant white beam
+struck across the rushing, mountainous waves and showed only the
+towering barriers of rock, battered and smitten by the raving waters
+that frothed white. They could hear the booming thunder of the raging
+ocean striking the rock.
+
+Like a projectile hurled by a giant hand, the cutter fairly flew now
+toward the cliffs. They now could see even the little streams that ran
+off the rough rock wall as each giant wave broke against it. They were
+almost upon it.
+
+Sturt's face was deathly. "I don't see any opening!" he yelled. "And
+we're going to hit in a moment!"
+
+"To your left!" screamed Inspector Campbell over the booming thunder.
+"There's an arched opening there."
+
+Now Ennis saw it also, a huge arch-like opening in the cliff that had
+been concealed by an angle of the wall. Sturt tried frantically to head
+the cutter toward it, but the wheel was useless as the great waves bore
+the craft along. Ennis saw they would strike a little to the side of the
+opening. The cliff loomed ahead, and he closed his eyes to the impact.
+
+There was no impact. And as he heard a hoarse cry from Inspector
+Campbell, he opened his eyes.
+
+The cutter was flying in through the mighty opening, snatched into it by
+powerful currents. They were whirled irresistibly forward under the huge
+rock arch, which loomed forty feet over their heads. Before them
+stretched a winding water-tunnel inside the cliff.
+
+And now they were out of the wild uproar of the storming waters outside,
+and in an almost stupefying silence. Smoothly, resistlessly, the current
+bore them on in the tunnel, whose winding turns ahead were lit up by
+their searchlight.
+
+"God, that was close!" exclaimed Inspector Campbell.
+
+His eyes flashed. "Ennis, I believe that we have found the
+gathering-place of the Brotherhood. That boat we sighted is somewhere
+ahead in here, and so must be Chandra Dass, and your wife."
+
+Ennis' hand tightened on his gun-butt. "If that's so--if we can just
+find them----"
+
+"Blind action won't help if we do," said the inspector swiftly. "There
+must be all the number of the Brotherhood's members assembled here, and
+we can't fight them all."
+
+His eyes suddenly lit and he took the blazing jeweled stars from his
+pocket. "These badges! With them we can pose as members of the
+Brotherhood, perhaps long enough to find your wife."
+
+"But Chandra Dass will be there, and if he sees us----"
+
+Campbell shrugged. "We'll have to take that chance. It's the only course
+open to us."
+
+The current of the inflowing tide was still bearing them smoothly onward
+through the winding water-tunnel, around bends and angles where they
+scraped the rock, down long straight stretches. Sturt used the motors to
+guide them around the turns. Meanwhile, Inspector Campbell and Ennis
+quickly ripped from the cutter its police-insignia and covered all
+evidences of its being a police craft.
+
+Sturt suddenly snicked off the searchlight. "Light ahead there!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+Around the next turn of the water-tunnel showed a gleam of strange, soft
+light.
+
+"Careful, now!" cautioned the inspector. "Sturt, whatever we do, you
+stay in the cutter. And try to have it ready for a quick getaway, if we
+leave it."
+
+Sturt nodded silently. The helmsman's stolid face had become a little
+pale, but he showed no sign of losing his courage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cutter sped around the next turn of the tunnel and emerged into a
+huge, softly lit cavern. Sturt's eyes bulged and Campbell uttered an
+exclamation of amazement. For in this mighty water-cavern there floated
+in a great mass, scores of sea-going craft, large and small.
+
+All of them were capable of breasting storm and wind, and some were so
+large they could barely have entered. There were small yachts, big
+motor-cruisers, sea-going launches, cutters larger than their own, and
+among them the gray motor-launch of Chandra Dass.
+
+They were massed together here, those with masts having lowered them to
+enter, floating and rubbing sides, quite unoccupied. Around the edges of
+the water-cavern ran a wide rock ledge. But no living person was visible
+and there was no visible source for the soft, strange white light that
+filled the astounding place.
+
+"These craft must have come here from all over earth!" Campbell
+muttered. "The Brotherhood of the Door has assembled here--we've found
+their gathering-place all right."
+
+"But where are they?" exclaimed Ennis. "I don't see anyone."
+
+"We'll soon find out," the inspector said. "Sturt, run close to the
+ledge there and we'll get out on it."
+
+Sturt obeyed, and as the cutter bumped the ledge, Campbell and Ennis
+leaped out onto it. They looked this way and that along it, but no one
+was in sight. The weirdness of it was unnerving, the strangely lit,
+mighty cavern, the assembled boats, the utter silence.
+
+"Follow me," Campbell said in a low voice. "They must all be somewhere
+near."
+
+He and Ennis walked a few steps along the ledge, when the American
+stopped. "Campbell, listen!" he whispered.
+
+Dimly there whispered to them, as though from a distance and through
+great walls, a swelling sound of chanting. As they listened, hearts
+beating rapidly, a square of the rock wall of the cavern abruptly flew
+open beside them, as though hinged like a door. Inside it was the mouth
+of a soft-lit, man-high tunnel, and in its opening stood two men. They
+wore over their clothing shroud-like, loose-hanging robes of gray,
+asbestos-like material. They wore hoods of the same gray stuff over
+their heads, pierced with slits at the eyes and mouth. And each wore on
+his breast the blazing star-badge.
+
+Through the eye-slits the eyes of the two surveyed Campbell and Ennis as
+they halted, transfixed by the sudden apparition. Then one of the hooded
+men spoke measuredly in a hissing, Mongolian voice.
+
+"Are you who come here of the Brotherhood of the Door?" he asked,
+apparently repeating a customary challenge.
+
+Campbell answered, his flat voice tremorless. "We are of the
+Brotherhood."
+
+"Why do you not wear the badge of the Brotherhood, then?"
+
+For answer, the inspector reached in his pocket for the strange emblem
+and fastened it to his lapel. Ennis did the same.
+
+"Enter, brothers," said the hissing, hooded shape, standing aside to let
+them pass.
+
+As they stepped into the tunnel, the hooded guard added in slightly more
+natural tones, "Brothers, you two are late. You must hurry to get your
+protective robes, for the ceremony soon begins."
+
+Campbell inclined his head without speaking, and he and Ennis started
+along the tunnel. Its light, as sourceless as that of the great
+water-cavern, revealed that it was chiseled from solid rock and that it
+wound downward.
+
+When they were out of sight of the two hooded guards, Ennis clutched the
+detective's arm convulsively.
+
+"Campbell," he said, "the ceremony begins soon! We've got to find Ruth
+first!"
+
+"We'll try," the inspector answered swiftly. "Those hooded robes are
+apparently issued to all the members to be worn during the ceremony as
+protection, for some reason, and once we get robes and get them on,
+Chandra Dass won't be able to spot us.
+
+"Look out!" he added an instant later. "Here's the place where the robes
+are issued!"
+
+The tunnel had debouched suddenly into a wider space in which were a
+group of men. Several were wearing the concealing hoods and robes, and
+one of these hooded figures was handing out, from a large rack of the
+robes, three of the garments to three dark Easterners who had apparently
+entered in the boat just ahead of the cutter.
+
+The three dark Orientals, their faces gleaming with strange fanaticism,
+quickly donned the robes and hoods and passed hurriedly on down the
+tunnel. At once Campbell and Ennis stepped calmly up to the hooded
+custodians of the robes, and extended their hands.
+
+One of the hooded figures took down two robes and handed them to them.
+But suddenly one of the other hooded men spoke sharply.
+
+Instantly all the hooded men but the one who had spoken, with loud
+cries, threw themselves forward on Campbell and Paul Ennis.
+
+Taken utterly by surprize, the two had no chance to draw their guns.
+They were smothered by gray-robed men, held helpless before they could
+move, a half-dozen pistols jammed into their bodies.
+
+Stupefied by the sudden dashing of their hopes, the detective and the
+young American saw the hooded man who had spoken slowly lift the
+concealing gray cowl from his face. It was the dark, coldly contemptuous
+face of Chandra Dass.
+
+
+
+
+_4. The Cavern of the Door_
+
+
+Chandra Dass spoke, and his strong, vibrant voice held a scorn that was
+almost pitying.
+
+"It occurred to me that your enterprise might enable you to escape the
+daggers of my followers, and that you might trail us here," he said.
+"That is why I waited here to see if you came.
+
+"Search them," he told the other hooded figures. "Take anything that
+looks like a weapon from them."
+
+Ennis stared, stupefied, as the gray-hooded men obeyed. He was unable to
+believe entirely in the abrupt reversal of all their hopes, of their
+desperate attempt.
+
+The hooded men took their pistols from Ennis and Campbell, and even the
+small gold knife attached to the chain of the inspector's big,
+old-fashioned gold watch. Then they stepped back, the pistols of two of
+them leveled at the hearts of the captives.
+
+Chandra Dass had watched impassively. Ennis, staring dazedly, noted that
+the Hindoo wore on his breast a different jewel-emblem from the others,
+a double star instead of a single one.
+
+Ennis' dazed eyes lifted from the blazing badge to the Hindoo's dark
+face. "Where's Ruth?" he asked a little shrilly, and then his voice
+cracked and he cried, "You damned fiend, where's my wife?"
+
+"Be comforted, Mr. Ennis," came Chandra Dass' chill voice. "You are
+going now to join your wife, and to share her fate. You two are going
+with her and the other sacrifices through the Door when it opens. It is
+not usual," he added in cold mockery, "for our sacrificial victims to
+walk directly into our hands. We ordinarily have a more difficult time
+securing them."
+
+He made a gesture to the two hooded men with pistols, and they ranged
+themselves close behind Campbell and Ennis.
+
+"We are going to the Cavern of the Door," said the Hindoo. "Inspector
+Campbell, I know and respect your resourcefulness. Be warned that your
+slightest attempt to escape means a bullet in your back. You two will
+march ahead of us," he said, and added mockingly, "Remember, while you
+live you can cling to the shadow of hope, but if these guns speak, it
+ends even that shadow."
+
+Ennis and Inspector Campbell, keeping their hands elevated, started at
+the Hindoo's command down the softly lit rock tunnel. Chandra Dass and
+the two hooded men with pistols followed.
+
+Ennis saw that the inspector's sagging face was expressionless, and knew
+that behind that colorless mask, Campbell's brain was racing in an
+attempt to find a method of escape. For himself, the young American had
+almost forgotten all else in his eagerness to reach his wife. Whatever
+happened to Ruth, whatever mysterious horror lay in wait for her and the
+other victims, he would be there beside her, sharing it!
+
+The tunnel wound a little further downward, then straightened out and
+ran straight for a considerable length. In this straight section of the
+rock passage, Ennis and Campbell for the first time perceived that the
+walls of the tunnel bore crowding, deeply chiseled inscriptions. They
+had not time to read them in passing, but Ennis saw that they were in
+many different languages, and that some of the characters were wholly
+unfamiliar.
+
+"God, some of those inscriptions are in Egyptian hieroglyphics!"
+muttered Inspector Campbell.
+
+The cool voice of Chandra Dass said, behind them, "There are
+pre-Egyptian inscriptions on these walls, inspector, could you but
+recognize them, carven in languages that perished from the face of earth
+before Egypt was born. Yes, back through time, back through mediaeval and
+Roman and Egyptian and pre-Egyptian ages, the Brotherhood of the Door
+has existed and has each year gathered in this place to open the Door
+and worship with sacrifices They Beyond it."
+
+The fanatic note of unearthly devotion was in his voice now, and Ennis
+shuddered with a cold not of the tunnel.
+
+As they proceeded, they heard a muffled, hoarse booming somewhere over
+their heads, a dull, rhythmic thunder that echoed along the long
+passageway. The walls of the tunnel now were damp and glistening in the
+sourceless soft light, tiny trickles running down them.
+
+"You hear the ocean over us," came Chandra Dass' voice. "The Cavern of
+the Door lies several hundred yards out from shore, beneath the rock
+floor of the sea."
+
+They passed the dark mouths of unlit tunnels branching ahead from this
+illuminated one. Then over the booming of the raging sea above them,
+there came to Ennis' ears the distant, swelling chant they had heard in
+the water-cavern above. But now it was louder, nearer. At the sound of
+it, Chandra Dass quickened their pace.
+
+Suddenly Inspector Campbell stumbled on the slippery rock floor and went
+down in a heap. Instantly Chandra Dass and his two followers recoiled
+from them, the two pistols trained on the detective as he scrambled up.
+
+"Do not do that again, inspector," warned the Hindoo in a deadly voice.
+"All tricks are useless now."
+
+"I couldn't help slipping on this wet floor," complained Inspector
+Campbell.
+
+"The next time you make a wrong step of any kind, a bullet will smash
+your spine," Chandra Dass told him. "Quick--march!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The tunnel turned sharply, turned again. As they rounded the turns,
+Ennis saw with a sudden electric thrill of hope that Campbell held
+clutched in his hand, concealed by his sleeve, the heel-hilted knife
+from his shoe. He had drawn it when he stumbled.
+
+Campbell edged a little closer to the young American as they were
+hastening onward, and whispered to him, a word at a time.
+
+"Be--ready--to jump--them----"
+
+"But they'll shoot, your first move----" whispered Ennis agonizedly.
+
+Campbell did not answer. But Ennis sensed the detective's body
+tautening.
+
+They came to another turn, the strong, swelling chant coming loud from
+ahead. They started around that turn.
+
+Then Inspector Campbell acted. He whirled as though on a pivot, the
+heel-knife flashing toward the men behind them.
+
+Shots coughed from the pistols that were pressed almost against his
+stomach. His body jerked as the bullets struck it, yet he remained
+erect, his knife stabbing with lightning rapidity.
+
+One of the hooded men slumped down with a pierced throat, and as
+Campbell sprang at the other, Ennis desperately launched himself at
+Chandra Dass. He bore the Hindoo from his feet, but it was as though he
+was fighting a demon. Inside his gray robe, Chandra Dass writhed with
+fiendish strength.
+
+Ennis could not hold him, the Hindoo's body seeming of spring-steel. He
+rolled over, dashed the young American to the floor, and leaped up, his
+dark face and great black eyes blazing.
+
+Then, half-way erect, he suddenly crumpled, the fire in his eyes
+dulling, a call for help smothered on his lips. He fell on his face, and
+Ennis saw that the heel-knife was stuck in his back. Inspector Campbell
+jerked it out, and put it back into his shoe. And now Ennis, staggering
+up, saw that Campbell had knifed the two hooded guards and that they lay
+in a dead heap.
+
+"Campbell!" cried the American, gripping the detective's arm. "They've
+wounded you--I saw them shoot you."
+
+Campbell's bruised face grinned briefly. "Nothing of the kind," he said,
+and tapped the soiled gray vest he wore beneath his coat. "Chandra Dass
+didn't know this vest is bullet-proof."
+
+He darted an alert glance up and down the lighted tunnel. "We can't stay
+here or let these bodies lie here. They may be discovered at any
+moment."
+
+"Listen!" said Ennis, turning.
+
+The chanting from ahead swelled down the tunnel, louder than at any time
+yet, waxing and waxing, reaching a triumphant crescendo, then again
+dying away.
+
+"Campbell, they're going on with the ceremony now!" Ennis cried. "Ruth!"
+
+The detective's desperate glance fastened on the dark mouth of one of
+the branching tunnels, a little ahead.
+
+"That side tunnel--we'll pull the bodies in there!" he exclaimed.
+
+Taking the pistols of the dead men for themselves, they rapidly dragged
+the three bodies into the darkness of the unlit branching tunnel.
+
+"Quick, on with two of these robes," rasped Inspector Campbell. "They'll
+give us a little better chance."
+
+Hastily Ennis jerked the gray robe and hood from Chandra Dass' dead body
+and donned it, while Campbell struggled into one of the others. In the
+robes and concealing hoods, they could not be told from any other two
+members of the Brotherhood, except that the badge on Ennis' breast was
+the double star instead of the single one.
+
+Ennis then spun toward the main, lighted tunnel, Campbell close behind
+him. They recoiled suddenly into the darkness of the branching way, as
+they heard hurrying steps out in the lighted passage. Flattened in the
+darkness against the wall, they saw several of the gray-hooded members
+of the Brotherhood hasten past them from above, hurrying toward the
+gathering-place.
+
+"The guards and robe-issuers we saw above!" Campbell said quickly when
+they were passed. "Come on, now."
+
+He and Ennis slipped out into the lighted tunnel and hastened along it
+after the others.
+
+Boom of thundering ocean over their heads and rising and falling of the
+tremendous chanting ahead filled their ears as they hurried around the
+last turns of the tunnel. The passage widened, and ahead they saw a
+massive rock portal through whose opening they glimpsed an immense,
+lighted space.
+
+Campbell and Ennis, two comparatively tiny gray-hooded figures, hastened
+through the mighty portal. Then they stopped. Ennis felt frozen with the
+dazing shock of it. He heard the detective whisper fiercely beside him.
+
+"It's the Cavern, all right--the Cavern of the Door!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They looked across a colossal rock chamber hollowed out beneath the
+floor of ocean. It was elliptical in shape, three hundred feet by its
+longer axis. Its black basalt sides, towering, rough-hewn walls, rose
+sheer and supported the rock ceiling which was the ocean floor, a
+hundred feet over their heads.
+
+This mighty cathedral hewn from inside the rock of earth was lit by a
+soft, white, sourceless light like that in the main tunnel. Upon the
+floor of the cavern, in regular rows across it, stood hundreds on
+hundreds of human figures, all gray-robed and gray-hooded, all with
+their backs to Campbell and Ennis, looking across the cavern to its
+farther end. At that farther end was a flat dais of black basalt upon
+which stood five hooded men, four wearing the blazing double-star on
+their breasts, the fifth, a triple-star. Two of them stood beside a
+cubical, weird-looking gray metal mechanism from which upreared a
+spherical web of countless fine wires, unthinkably intricate in their
+network, many of them pulsing with glowing force. The sourceless light
+of the cavern and the tunnel seemed to pulse from that weird mechanism.
+
+Up from that machine, if machine it was, soared the black basalt wall of
+that end of the cavern. But there above the gray mechanism the rough
+wall had been carved with a great, smooth facet, a giant, gleaming black
+oval face as smooth as though planed and polished. Only, at the middle
+of the glistening black oval face, were carven deeply four large and
+wholly unfamiliar characters. As Ennis and Campbell stared frozenly
+across the awe-inspiring place, sound swelled from the hundreds of
+throats. A slow, rising chant, it climbed and climbed until the basalt
+roof above seemed to quiver to it, crashing out with stupendous effect,
+a weird litany in an unknown tongue. Then it began to fall.
+
+Ennis clutched the inspector's gray-robed arm. "Where's Ruth?" he
+whispered frantically. "I don't see any prisoners."
+
+"They must be somewhere here," Campbell said swiftly. "Listen----"
+
+As the chant died to silence, on the dais at the farther end of the
+cavern the hooded man who wore the triple-jeweled star stepped forward
+and spoke. His deep, heavy voice rolled out and echoed across the
+cavern, flung back and forth from wall to rocky wall.
+
+"Brothers of the Door," he said, "we meet again here in the Cavern of
+the Door this year, as for ten thousand years past our forefathers have
+met here to worship They Beyond the Door, and bring them the sacrifices
+They love.
+
+"A hundred centuries have gone by since first They Beyond the Door sent
+their wisdom through the barrier between their universe and ours, a
+barrier which even They could not open from their side, but which their
+wisdom taught our fathers how to open.
+
+"Each year since then have we opened the Door which They taught us how
+to build. Each year we have brought them sacrifices. And in return They
+have given us of their wisdom and power. They have taught us things that
+lie hidden from other men, and They have given us powers that other men
+have not.
+
+"Now again comes the time appointed for the opening of the Door. In
+their universe on the other side of it, They are waiting now to take the
+sacrifices which we have procured for them. The hour strikes, so let the
+sacrifices be brought."
+
+As though at a signal, from a small opening at one side of the cavern a
+triple file of marchers entered. A file of hooded gray members of the
+Brotherhood flanked on either side a line of men and women who did not
+wear the hoods or robes. They were thirty or forty in number. These men
+and women were of almost all races and classes, but all of them walked
+stiffly, mechanically, staring ahead with unseeing, distended eyes, like
+living corpses.
+
+"Drugged!" came Campbell's shaken voice. "They're all drugged, and don't
+know what is going on."
+
+Ennis' eyes fastened on a small, slender girl with chestnut hair who
+walked at the end of the line, a girl in a straight tan dress, whose
+face was white, stiff, like those of the others.
+
+"There's Ruth!" he exclaimed frantically, his cry muffled by his hood.
+
+He plunged in that direction, but Campbell held him back.
+
+"No!" rasped the inspector. "You can't help her by simply getting
+yourself captured!"
+
+"I can at least go with her!" Ennis exclaimed. "Let me go!"
+
+Inspector Campbell's iron grip held him. "Wait, Ennis!" said the
+detective. "You've no chance that way. That robe of Chandra Dass' you're
+wearing has a double-star badge like those of the men up there on the
+dais. That means that as Chandra Dass you're entitled to be up there
+with them. Go up there and take your place as though you were Chandra
+Dass--with the hood on, they can't tell the difference. I'll slip around
+to that side door out of which they brought the prisoners. It must
+connect with the tunnels, and it's not far from the dais. When I fire my
+pistol from there, you grab your wife and try to get to that door with
+her. If you can do it, we'll have a chance to get up through the tunnels
+and escape."
+
+Ennis wrung the inspector's hand. Then, without further reply, he walked
+boldly with measured steps up the main aisle of the cavern, through the
+gray ranks to the dais. He stepped up onto it, his heart racing. The
+chief priest, he of the triple-star, gave him only a glance, as of
+annoyance at his lateness. Ennis saw Campbell's gray figure slipping
+round to the side door.
+
+The gray-hooded hundreds before him had paid no attention to either of
+them. Their attention was utterly, eagerly, fixed upon the stiff-moving
+prisoners now being marched up onto the dais. Ennis saw Ruth pass him,
+her white face an unfamiliar, staring mask.
+
+The prisoners were ranged at the back of the dais, just beneath the
+great, gleaming black oval facet. The guards stepped back from them, and
+they remained standing stiffly there. Ennis edged a little toward Ruth,
+who stood at the end of that line of stiff figures. As he moved
+imperceptibly closer to her, he saw the two priests beside the gray
+mechanism reaching toward knurled knobs of ebonite affixed to its side,
+beneath the spherical web of pulsing wires.
+
+The chief priest, at the front of the dais, raised his hands. His voice
+rolled out, heavy, commanding, reverberating again through all the
+cavern.
+
+
+
+
+_5. The Door Opens_
+
+
+"Where leads the Door?" rolled the chief priest's voice.
+
+Back up to him came the reply of hundreds of voices, muffled by the
+hoods but loud, echoing to the roof of the cavern in a thunderous
+response.
+
+"_It leads outside our world!_"
+
+The chief priest waited until the echoes died before his deep voice
+rolled on in the ritual.
+
+"Who taught our forefathers to open the Door?"
+
+Ennis, edging desperately closer and closer to the line of victims, felt
+the mighty response reverberate about him.
+
+"_They Beyond the Door taught them!_"
+
+Now Ennis was apart from the other priests on the dais, within a few
+yards of the captives, of the small figure of Ruth.
+
+"To whom do we bring these sacrifices?"
+
+As the high priest uttered the words, and before the booming answer
+came, a hand grasped Ennis and pulled him back from the line of victims.
+He spun round to find that it was one of the other priests who had
+jerked him back.
+
+"_We bring them to Those Beyond the Door!_"
+
+As the colossal response thundered, the priest who had jerked Ennis back
+whispered urgently to him. "You go too close to the victims, Chandra
+Dass! Do you wish to be taken with them?"
+
+The fellow had a tight grip on Ennis' arm. Desperate, tensed, Ennis
+heard the chief priest roll forth the last of the ritual.
+
+"Shall the Door be opened that They may take the sacrifices?"
+
+Stunning, mighty, a tremendous shout that mingled in it worshipping awe
+and superhuman dread, the answer crashed back.
+
+_"Let the Door be opened!"_
+
+The chief priest turned and his up-flung arms whirled in a signal.
+Ennis, tensing to spring toward Ruth, saw the two priests at the gray
+mechanism swiftly turn the knurled black knobs. Then Ennis, like all
+else in the vast cavern, was held frozen and spellbound by what
+followed.
+
+The spherical web of wires pulsed up madly with shining force. And up at
+the center of the gleaming black oval facet on the wall, there appeared
+a spark of unearthly green light. It blossomed outward, expanded, an
+awful viridescent flower blooming quickly outward farther and farther.
+And as it expanded, Ennis saw that he could look _through_ that green
+light! He looked through into another universe, a universe lying
+infinitely far across alien dimensions from our own, yet one that could
+be reached through this door between dimensions. It was a green
+universe, flooded with an awful green light that was somehow more akin
+to darkness than to light, a throbbing, baleful luminescence.
+
+Ennis saw dimly through green-lit spaces a city in the near distance, an
+unholy city of emerald hue whose unsymmetrical, twisted towers and
+minarets aspired into heavens of hellish viridity. The towers of that
+city swayed to and fro and writhed in the air. And Ennis saw that here
+and there in the soft green substance of that restless city were circles
+of lurid light that were like yellow eyes.
+
+In ghastly, soul-shaking apprehension of the utterly alien, Ennis knew
+that the yellow circles were _eyes_--that that hell-spawned city of
+another universe was _living_--that its unfamiliar life was single yet
+multiple, that its lurid eyes looked now through the Door!
+
+Out from the insane living metropolis glided pseudopods of its green
+substance, glided toward the Door. Ennis saw that in the end of each
+pseudopod was one of the lurid eyes. He saw those eyed pseudopods come
+questing through the Door, onto the dais.
+
+The yellow eyes of light seemed fixed on the row of stiff victims, and
+the pseudopods glided toward them. Through the open door was beating
+wave on wave of unfamiliar, tingling forces that Ennis felt even through
+the protective robe.
+
+The hooded multitude bent in awe as the green pseudopods glided toward
+the victims faster, with avid eagerness. Ennis saw them reaching for the
+prisoners, for Ruth, and he made a tremendous mental effort to break the
+spell that froze him. In that moment pistol-shots crashed across the
+cavern and a stream of bullets smashed the pulsing web of wires!
+
+The Door began instantly to close. Darkness crept back around the edges
+of the mighty oval. As though alarmed, the lurid-eyed pseudopods of that
+hell-city recoiled from the victims, back through the dwindling Door.
+And as the Door dwindled, the light in the cavern was failing.
+
+"Ruth!" yelled Ennis madly, and sprang forward and grasped her, his
+pistol leaping into his other hand.
+
+"Ennis--quick!" shouted Campbell's voice across the cavern.
+
+The Door dwindled away altogether; the great oval facet was completely
+black. The light was fast dying too.
+
+The chief priest sprang madly toward Ennis, and as he did so, the hooded
+hordes of the Brotherhood recovered from their paralysis of horror and
+surged madly toward the dais.
+
+"The Door is closed! Death to the blasphemers!" cried the chief priest
+as he plunged forward.
+
+"Death to the blasphemers!" shrieked the crazed horde below.
+
+Ennis' pistol roared and the chief priest went down. The light in the
+cavern died completely at that moment.
+
+In the dark a torrent of bodies catapulted against Ennis, screaming
+vengeance. He struck out with his pistol-barrel in the mad melee,
+holding Ruth's stiff form close with his other hand. He heard the other
+drugged, helpless victims crushed down and trampled under foot by the
+surging horde of vengeance-mad members.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clinging to the girl, Ennis fought like a madman through a darkness in
+which none could distinguish friend or foe, toward the door at the side
+from which Campbell had fired. He smashed down the pistol-barrel on all
+before him, as hands sought to grab him in the dark. He knew sickeningly
+that he was lost in the combat, with no sense of the direction of the
+door.
+
+Then a voice roared loud across the wild din, "Ennis, this way! This
+way, Ennis!" yelled Inspector Campbell, again and again.
+
+Ennis plunged through the whirl of unseen bodies in the direction of the
+detective's shouting voice. He smashed through, half dragging and half
+carrying the girl, until Campbell's voice was close ahead in the dark.
+He fumbled at the rock wall, found the door opening, and then Campbell's
+hands grasped him to pull him inside.
+
+Hands grabbed him from behind, striving to tear Ruth from him, to jerk
+him back. Voices shrieked for help.
+
+Campbell's pistol blazed in the dark and the hands released their grip.
+Ennis stumbled with the girl through the door into a dark tunnel. He
+heard Campbell slam a door shut, and heard a bar fall with a clang.
+
+"Quick, for God's sake!" panted Campbell in the dark. "They'll follow
+us--we've got to get up through the tunnels to the water-cavern!"
+
+They raced along the pitch-dark tunnel, Campbell now carrying the girl,
+Ennis reeling drunkenly along.
+
+They heard a mounting roar behind them, and as they burst into the main
+tunnel, no longer lighted but dark like the others, they looked back and
+saw a flickering of light coming up the passage.
+
+"They're after us and they've got lights!" Campbell cried. "Hurry!"
+
+It was nightmare, this mad flight on stumbling feet up through the dark
+tunnels where they could hear the sea booming close overhead, and could
+hear the wild pursuit behind.
+
+Their feet slipped on the damp floor and they crashed into the walls of
+the tunnel at the turns. The pursuit was closer behind--as they started
+climbing the last passages to the water-cavern, the torchlight behind
+showed them to their pursuers and wild yells came to their ears.
+
+They had before them only the last ascent to the water-cavern when Ennis
+stumbled and went down. He swayed up a little, yelled to Campbell. "Go
+on--get Ruth out! I'll try to hold them back a moment!"
+
+"No!" rasped Campbell. "There's another way--one that may mean the end
+for us too, but our only chance!"
+
+The inspector thrust his hand into his pocket, snatched out his big,
+old-fashioned gold watch.
+
+He tore it from its chain, turned the stem of it twice around. Then he
+hurled it back down the tunnel with all his force.
+
+"Quick--out of the tunnels now or we'll die right here!" he yelled.
+
+They lunged forward, Campbell dragging both the girl and the exhausted
+Ennis, and emerged a moment later into the great water-cavern. It was
+now lit only by the searchlight of their waiting cutter.
+
+As they emerged into the cavern, they were thrown flat on the rock ledge
+by a violent movement of it under them. An awful detonation and
+thunderous crashing of falling rock smote their ears.
+
+Following that first tremendous crash, giant rumbling of collapsing rock
+shook the water-cavern.
+
+"To the cutter!" Campbell cried. "That watch of mine was filled with the
+most concentrated high-explosive known, and it's blown up the tunnels.
+Now it's touched off more collapses and all these caverns and passages
+will fall in on us at any moment!"
+
+The awful rumbling and crashing of collapsing rock masses was deafening
+in their ears as they lurched toward the cutter. Great chunks of rock
+were falling from the cavern roof into the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sturt, white-faced but asking no questions, had the motor of the cutter
+running, and helped them pull the unconscious girl aboard.
+
+"Out of the tunnel at once!" Campbell ordered. "Full speed!"
+
+They roared down the water-tunnel at crazy velocity, the searchlight
+beam stabbing ahead. The tide had reached flood and turned, increasing
+the speed with which they dashed through the tunnel.
+
+Masses of rock fell with loud splashes behind them, and all around them
+was still the ominous grinding of mighty weights of rock. The walls of
+the tunnel quivered repeatedly.
+
+Sturt suddenly reversed the propellers, but in spite of his action the
+cutter smashed a moment later into a solid rock wall. It was a mass of
+rock forming an unbroken barrier across the water-tunnel, extending
+beneath the surface of the water.
+
+"We're trapped!" cried Sturt. "A mass of the rock has settled here and
+blocked the tunnel."
+
+"It can't be completely blocked!" Campbell exclaimed. "See, the tide
+still runs out beneath it. Our one chance is to swim out under the
+blocking mass of rock, before the whole cliff gives way!"
+
+"But there's no telling how far the block may extend----" Sturt cried.
+
+Then as Campbell and Ennis stripped off their coats and shoes, he
+followed their example. The rumble of grinding rock around them was now
+continuous and nerve-shattering.
+
+Campbell helped Ennis lower Ruth's unconscious form into the water.
+
+"Keep your hand over her nose and mouth!" cried the inspector. "Come on,
+now!"
+
+Sturt went first, his face pale in the searchlight beam as he dived
+under the rock mass. The tidal current carried him out of sight in a
+moment.
+
+Then, holding the girl between them, and with Ennis' hand covering her
+mouth and nostrils, the other two dived. Down through the cold waters
+they shot, and then the swift current was carrying them forward like a
+mill-race, their bodies bumping and scraping against the rock mass
+overhead.
+
+Ennis' lungs began to burn, his brain to reel, as they rushed on in the
+waters, still holding the girl tightly. They struck solid rock, a wall
+across their way. The current sucked them downward, to a small opening
+at the bottom. They wedged in it, struggled fiercely, then tore through
+it. They rose on the other side of it into pure air. They were in the
+darkness, floating in the tunnel beyond the block, the current carrying
+them swiftly onward.
+
+The walls were shaking and roaring frightfully about them as they were
+borne round the turns of the tunnel. Then they saw ahead of them a
+circle of dim light, pricked with white stars.
+
+The current bore them out into that starlight, into the open sea. Before
+them in the water floated Sturt, and they swam with him out from the
+shaking, grinding cliffs.
+
+The girl stirred a little in Ennis' grasp, and he saw in the starlight
+that her face was no longer dazed.
+
+"Paul----" she muttered, clinging close to Ennis in the water.
+
+"She's coming back to consciousness--the water must have revived her
+from that drug!" he cried.
+
+But he was cut short by Campbell's cry. "Look! Look!" cried the
+inspector, pointing back at the black cliffs.
+
+In the starlight the whole cliff was collapsing, with a prolonged,
+terrible roar as of grinding planets, its face breaking and buckling.
+The waters around them boiled furiously, whirling them this way and
+that.
+
+Then the waters quieted. They found they had been flung near a sandy
+spit beyond the shattered cliffs, and they swam toward it.
+
+"The whole underground honeycomb of caverns and tunnels gave way and the
+sea poured in!" Campbell cried. "The Door, and the Brotherhood of the
+Door, are ended for ever!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Door into Infinity, by Edmond Hamilton
+
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