The Greatest Sci-Fi Books of Erle Cox. Erle Cox
have any more of your damned nonsense." The mutineer recognised two things promptly. One was that here was a man whose leg it was not safe to pull, and the other that the pay was better than was offering elsewhere. So, putting the best face he could on the matter (and it was not much of a face, even after it had been bathed copiously), he accepted the offer. After that episode the work went with a swing.
At last the final dray left, and Alan paid off his unwelcome help. Never was a vine-grower more disgusted with such a bounteous crop. It was the reward of a year's hard work, and at another time would have been the source of unbounded satisfaction. Now he anathematised it as a bar to his one absorbing interest. Alan wrote a note to Bryce, asking him to collect his cheque from the winery, and enclosing an order. Then with the vineyard finally off his mind, he felt himself free for the great work at last.
A week of exasperating and futile search for the missing key followed the return of Dundas to the task. As day followed day without result, his despair of success changed into a grim determination to continue until he had mastered the riddle. However, as it eventually happened, his victory came from the least expected quarter, and at a time when he had temporarily relaxed his efforts. Until the day in question, he had been in the habit of returning to the homestead for his lunch, but his dislike for that one-hundred-and-sixty feet of treadmill gave him a brain-wave. He reflected that it would be a good plan to take some food with him, in order to save himself the climb. About midday, therefore, he looked about for a comfortable seat on which to rest while eating his meal. He found the fragments of cement that had been detached by the explosion from the machinery-room too "nubbly" for his liking, and he wandered into the great library.
He seated himself at the table nearest the door and ate his food. When he had finished, instead of immediately returning to the corridor to continue his search, he filled his pipe, and leaning back, looked idly round him as he smoked. Since the day he had at first discovered the library, he had scarcely entered it, although it had really a greater fascination for him than any of the galleries. Now, however, the thought came to him that he might at least glance at a few of the books. It was whilst considering which of the shelves he would first give his attention that his eye was taken by a variation in colour of one single book-cover in all the rows within range of his vision. While every other shelf in sight showed dull, metallic covers uniformly, one the nearest to the door, was broken by one single volume cased in bright white metal.
The distinction was so great as to invite attention, and Alan knew well that there was some special object in the alteration. Without hesitation he rose from his seat, and having obtained the volume, he returned to the table. He slipped the book from its casing, and spread it open before him. The first glance at its contents galvanised him into quivering excitement. The page he had opened showed what was undoubtedly a sectional plan of the whole of the subterranean building. With trembling fingers he turned to the beginning, and went from page to page with burning interest. As his eye scanned each plan in turn, he found each section, from the entrance door at the surface onwards, marked, with its means of entrance set out in detail. Finally, he turned to the page showing the closed door in the corridor. It was pictured in minute detail so as to be quite unmistakable. On the opposite page was a picture showing part of the interior of the library. It was the rear wall containing the small entrance. Each of the great bookcases against the wall was clearly shown in detail, even to the white-cased book he was holding in his hand. There was this difference, however; in the far left-hand corner in the diagram was a small square of books blocked out with a red blot.
Carrying the book with him, Alan went to the corner but could see nothing unusual in the spot indicated by the red mark. Comparing the diagram carefully with the shelves before him, he attempted to draw from its place one of the marked volumes. For a moment it resisted his efforts, until with a stronger tug he pulled not the book, as he intended, but a small door about two feet square, which had been made to imitate the surrounding books. Even the closest examination failed to indicate its existence until it was actually opened, so carefully had the imitation been carried out. With a cry of pleasure. Dundas looked into the secret cavity. "At last! At last!" he said to himself, again and again; for let into the wall at the back of the recess was a short, heavy lever. Without waiting to consider results, he grasped the handle before him, and drew the lever down in the slot that held it. As he did so there came a deep metallic boom from the corridor outside, and Alan scarcely waited to push the book he held back into the open cupboard before running out to see the effect of his act. When he had arrived at the passage, and gained the scene of his weeks of tormenting search, his delight found vent in a loud hurrah. The metal door had disappeared into the pavement beneath, and the path was open before him.
Taking his stick, he stood in the doorway and surveyed the new territory with eager eyes. Beyond the wall the corridor widened out into a vestibule about forty feet square. It was empty except for an object that Alan looked at with very little satisfaction. It was another statue of the domineering figure in the outer vestibule. He had looked at it too long and too often on the door to have much admiration left for it. Bare as it was, the new chamber had a beauty that was indescribable. Walls, floor, and ceiling were composed of the most exquisite coloured marble and precious decorative stone that were ever gathered together. The great lustrous globes that blazed from the ceiling were reflected from thousands of multi-coloured surfaces, The whole effect was one of barbaric splendour, but so perfectly had the blending of the colours been carried out that in the whole wonderful decorative scheme there was not one inharmonious note. As his eyes drank in the beauty of the chamber before him, Dundas became aware of one feature that drew his attention from the gorgeous colouring around him. The left wall of the chamber was broken by an arched doorway that differed from all the others he had yet seen. In the first place it was quite double the size of those opening on to the corridor, and again it was already open. From where he stood he could see that, instead of a door, it was closed by a curtain of some beautiful scarlet shimmering fabric that cut off the view of the gallery beyond. Everything seemed to indicate that his way was now open to the solution of the final mystery, and Alan would have accepted the position as such but for the presence of the forbidding statue that stared at him from its pedestal with an intensity that was almost hypnotic.
Testing the pavement as he advanced, Dundas walked slowly towards the figure in the centre of the chamber. When he reached it and paused beneath it he was standing with the curtained archway right before him. So far so good, but he knew now from experience how little reliance could be placed on appearances, so he advanced with unabated caution. Prepared as he was for surprises, the one that overtook him was perhaps the one furthest from his thoughts. Without a sound or warning, and with overwhelming suddenness, he found himself in total darkness. It was not the misty darkness of night, but a dense impenetrable rayless blackness that could be almost felt. It was overpowering in its intensity. The shock of its coming held him motionless and petrified. On the instant he realised the peril of his position. He felt for his matches, and as he did so remembered they were lying on the table in the library where he had eaten his lunch. Holding himself well in hand, he tried to recollect his bearings from the entrance in order to try to regain the corridor. But even as he stood–and it could not have been for more than a few seconds– something else happened. Close beside him, so close that he almost cried out in amazement, was the sound of a long, deep human sigh. He swung round. Again it came, this time further away, but intensely real. Then he stood straining his senses in that horrible black stillness to catch the sound again, and, waiting, he realised that his movements had made him lose his bearings for the corridor.
How long he stood there he could not afterwards remember. It seemed ages until the crowning terror came and wiped all sense of time from his stricken mind. Suddenly the air about him seemed full of tremulous palpitating sound. It seemed as if, all about him, thronged a whispering ghostly multitude. For a little while the sound rose and fell, and seemed to die away in unmeasured distances. Then again came a little space of silence. Then the stillness was broken by a sound so awful that Dundas felt a cold sweat break out over his body. It was a shriek, inhuman and evil, that cut into the darkness again and again. The sound broke off suddenly, and was followed by a burst of horrible laughter. Then came a trampling and scuffling of feet around him, bestial snarls, shouts of laughter, and again silence. Alan stood with clenched hands fighting back the cry that rose to his lips. He dared not move. A single step in any direction might mean death, and yet he knew that his racked nerves