Part 17 (1/2)

With a choked, gasping scream the white girl of the toilers crumpled and fell.... She lay motionless, at the feet of the crimson murderess.

CHAPTER VIII

”Why, This Is Treason!”

There was a gasp. The audience sat frozen. On the stage, with no one lifting a hand to stop her, the crimson murderess made a leap and vanished. A moment, and then the spell broke. A girl in the audience screamed. Some one moved to stand up and overturned a seat with a crash.

The amphitheater under the canopy broke into a pandemonium. Screams and shouts, cras.h.i.+ng of seats, screaming, frightened people struggling to get out of the darkness. The torches on the stage were dropped and extinguished. The darkness leaped upon us.

Derek and I were gripping Hope. We were struck by a bench flung backward from in front. People were rus.h.i.+ng at us. We were swept along in the panic of the crowd.

I heard Derek shout, ”We must keep together!”

We fought, but we were swept backward. We found ourselves outside the canopy. Torchlight was here. It glimmered on the pool of water. People were everywhere rus.h.i.+ng past us, some one way, some another. Aimless, with the shock of terror upon them. Under the canopy they were still screaming.

I was momentarily separated from Derek and Hope. I very nearly stumbled into the pool. A girl was here, crouched on the stone bank. Her wet crimson veils clung to her white body. Her long, wet hair lay on her. I stumbled against her. She raised her face. Eyes, wide with terror. Mute, painted red lips....

I heard Derek calling again, ”Charlie!” I shoved my way back to him. The crowd was thinning out around us. Girls were climbing from the pool, rus.h.i.+ng off in terror, to mingle with the milling throng. Among the crowd now, down by the edge of the bay, I saw the sinister figures of men come running. The toilers, miraculously appearing everywhere! I saw, across the pool, a terrified girl crouching. A huge man in a black cloak came leaping. The colored lights in the trees glittered on his upraised knife blade as it descended. The girl fell with a shuddering scream. The murderer turned and whirled away into the crowd.

”Charlie!”

I was back with Derek and Hope. Hope stood trembling, with her hand pressed against her mouth. Derek gripped me.

”That cloak, get it off!” He ripped his crimson cloak from him and tossed it away. He jerked mine off. ”Too dangerous! That's the crimson badge of death to-night.”

We stood revealed in the clothes of our own world. My business suit, in which that day I had worked in Wall Street. Derek in his swagger uniform. He stood drawn to his full height, a powerful figure. The wires of our mechanism showed at his wrists. They dangled at the back of his neck, mounting to that strangely fas.h.i.+oned electrode clamped to his head. Strange, awe-inspiring figure of a man!

We were momentarily alone under the colored lights of the trees. Hope murmured, ”But they will see us-see you....”

Derek's face was grim, but at her words he laughed harshly. ”See us! What matter?” He swung on me. ”It forces our hand; we've got to come out in the open now! This murder-this king! My G.o.d, what a fool to let himself get into such a condition as this! His people-this chaos-what a fool!”

He had drawn his dirk. I realized that I was holding mine. Near us the body of a crimson n.o.ble was lying under a tree. A sword was there on the ground. Derek sprang for it, waved it aloft.

I think that no more than a minute or two had pa.s.sed since the murder. Down by the water the boats were hastily loading and leaving the dock. One of them overturned. There were screams everywhere. Red forms lay inert upon the ground where they had been trampled, or stabbed. But the prowling figures of the toilers now seemed to have vanished.

Derek gestured. ”Look at the palace! The garden!”

Beyond the canopy I could see the dim gardens surrounding the palace. I glimpsed the high fence, and the gateway in front. A mob of toilers was there. The guard at the gate had fled. The mob was surging through. Men and women in the vivid garments of the fields, armed with sticks and clubs and stones and the implements of agriculture. They milled at the gate; rushed through; scattered over the garden. Their shouts floated back to us in a blended murmur.

We were standing only a dozen feet from the edge of the pavilion. No one seemed yet to have noticed us. A few straggling lights had come on under the canopy. I could see the dead lying there in the wreckage of overturned seats.

Derek said, ”We can't help it-it's done. Look at them! They're attacking the palace!”

This mob springing miraculously into existence! I realized that the toilers had planned that if Sensua were chosen they would attack the festival. The murder of Blanca had come as big a surprise to them as to us....

”Come on! Can you get into the palace, Hope? The king must have gotten back there. Get your wits, girl!” Derek stood gripping her, shaking her.

”Yea, there's an underground pa.s.sage. He probably went that way.”

From the palace gardens the shouts of the mob sounded louder now. And from within the building there was an alarm bell tumultuously clanging.