 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
IX
Long after midnight John's body gave a nervous jerk,
and he sat suddenly upright, staring into the veils of
somnolence that draped the room. Through the squares
of blue darkness that were his open windows, he had
heard a faint far-away sound that died upon a bed of
wind before identifying itself on his memory, clouded
with uneasy dreams. But the sharp noise that had succeeded
it was nearer, was just outside the room—the
click of a turned knob, a footstep, a whisper, he could
not tell; a hard lump gathered in the pit of his stomach,
and his whole body ached in the moment that he strained
agonizingly to hear. Then one of the veils seemed to
dissolve, and he saw a vague figure standing by the door,
a figure only faintly limned and blocked in upon the
darkness, mingled so with the folds of the drapery as
to seem distorted, like a reflection seen in a dirty pane
of glass.
With a sudden movement of fright or resolution John
pressed the button by his bedside, and the next moment
he was sitting in the green sunken bath of the adjoining
room, waked into alertness by the shock of the cold
water which half filled it.
He sprang out, and, his wet pajamas scattering a
heavy trickle of water behind him, ran for the aquamarine
door which he knew led out onto the ivory
landing of the second floor. The door opened noiselessly.
A single crimson lamp burning in a great dome
with a poignant beauty. For a moment John
hesitated, appalled by the silent splendor massed about
him, seeming to envelop in its gigantic folds and contours
the solitary drenched little figure shivering upon the
ivory landing. Then simultaneously two things happened.
The door of his own sitting-room swung open,
precipitating three naked negroes into the hall—and,
as John swayed in wild terror toward the stairway, another
door slid back in the wall on the other side of the
corridor, and John saw Braddock Washington standing
in the lighted lift, wearing a fur coat and a pair of riding
boots which reached to his knees and displayed, above,
the glow of his rose-colored pajamas.
On the instant the three negroes—John had never
seen any of them before, and it flashed through his mind
that they must be the professional executioners—paused
in their movement toward John, and turned expectantly
to the man in the lift, who burst out with an imperious
command:
"Get in here! All three of you! Quick as hell!"
Then, within the instant, the three negroes darted
into the cage, the oblong of light was blotted out as the
lift door slid shut, and John was again alone in the hall.
He slumped weakly down against an ivory stair.
It was apparent that something portentous had occurred,
something which, for the moment at least, had
postponed his own petty disaster. What was it? Had
the negroes risen in revolt? Had the aviators forced
aside the iron bars of the grating? Or had the men of
Fish stumbled blindly through the hills and gazed with
bleak, joyless eyes upon the gaudy valley? John did
not know. He heard a faint whir of air as the lift
whizzed up again, and then, a moment later, as it descended.
It was probable that Percy was hurrying to
was his opportunity to join Kismine and plan an immediate
escape. He waited until the lift had been silent
for several minutes; shivering a little with the night
cool that whipped in through his wet pajamas, he returned
to his room and dressed himself quickly. Then
he mounted a long flight of stairs and turned down the
corridor carpeted with Russian sable which led to Kismine's
suite.
The door of her sitting-room was open and the lamps
were lighted. Kismine, in an angora kimono, stood
near the window of the room in a listening attitude, and
as John entered noiselessly she turned toward him.
"Oh, it's you!" she whispered, crossing the room to
him. "Did you hear them?"
"I heard your father's slaves in my—"
"No," she interrupted excitedly. "Aeroplanes!"
"Aeroplanes? Perhaps that was the sound that woke
me."
"There're at least a dozen. I saw one a few moments
ago dead against the moon. The guard back by the
cliff fired his rifle and that's what roused father. We're
going to open on them right away."
"Are they here on purpose?"
"Yes—it's that Italian who got away—"
Simultaneously with her last word, a succession of
sharp cracks tumbled in through the open window.
Kismine uttered a little cry, took a penny with fumbling
fingers from a box on her dresser, and ran to one of the
electric lights. In an instant the entire château was in
darkness—she had blown out the fuse.
"Come on!" she cried to him. "We'll go up to the roof
garden, and watch it from there!"
Drawing a cape about her, she took his hand, and they
found their way out the door. It was only a step to
them upward he put his arms around her in the darkness
and kissed her mouth. Romance had come to John
Unger at last. A minute later they had stepped out
upon the star-white platform. Above, under the misty
moon, sliding in and out of the patches of cloud that
eddied below it, floated a dozen dark-winged bodies in
a constant circling course. From here and there in the
valley flashes of fire leaped toward them, followed by
sharp detonations. Kismine clapped her hands with
pleasure, which, a moment later, turned to dismay as
the aeroplanes at some prearranged signal, began to
release their bombs and the whole of the valley became
a panorama of deep reverberate sound and lurid light.
Before long the aim of the attackers became concentrated
upon the points where the anti-aircraft guns
were situated, and one of them was almost immediately
reduced to a giant cinder to lie smouldering in a park
of rose bushes.
"Kismine," begged John, "you'll be glad when I tell
you that this attack came on the eve of my murder.
If I hadn't heard that guard shoot off his gun back by
the pass I should now be stone dead—"
"I can't hear you!" cried Kismine, intent on the scene
before her. "You'll have to talk louder!"
"I simply said," shouted John, "that we'd better get
out before they begin to shell the château!"
Suddenly the whole portico of the negro quarters
cracked asunder, a geyser of flame shot up from under
the colonnades, and great fragments of jagged marble
were hurled as far as the borders of the lake.
"There go fifty thousand dollars' worth of slaves,"
cried Kismine, "at prewar prices. So few Americans
have any respect for property."
John renewed his efforts to compel her to leave. The
by minute, and only two of the anti-aircraft guns were
still retaliating. It was obvious that the garrison, encircled
with fire, could not hold out much longer.
"Come on!" cried John, pulling Kismine's arm,
"we've got to go. Do you realize that those aviators
will kill you without question if they find you?"
She consented reluctantly.
"We'll have to wake Jasmine!" she said, as they hurried
toward the lift. Then she added in a sort of childish
delight: "We'll be poor, won't we? Like people in
books. And I'll be an orphan and utterly free. Free
and poor! What fun!" She stopped and raised her
lips to him in a delighted kiss.
"It's impossible to be both together," said John
grimly. "People have found that out. And I should
choose to be free as preferable of the two. As an extra
caution you'd better dump the contents of your jewel
box into your pockets."
Ten minutes later the two girls met John in the dark
corridor and they descended to the main floor of the
château. Passing for the last time through the magnificence
of the splendid halls, they stood for a moment
out on the terrace, watching the burning negro quarters
and the flaming embers of two planes which had fallen
on the other side of the lake. A solitary gun was still
keeping up a sturdy popping, and the attackers seemed
timorous about descending lower, but sent their thunderous
fireworks in a circle around it, until any chance
shot might annihilate its Ethiopian crew.
John and the two sisters passed down the marble
steps, turned sharply to the left, and began to ascend
a narrow path that wound like a garter about the diamond
mountain. Kismine knew a heavily wooded spot
half-way up where they could lie concealed and yet be
make an escape, when it should be necessary, along a
secret path laid in a rocky gully.
| Tales of the jazz age | |