The Glass Mountain

CHAPTER XII The Labyrinth

The Avenger came back from Cloud Lake Ranch to find a pretty grim situation in the camp.

Nellie Gray had vanished — gone no one knew where. The only clue to her whereabouts was that the last workman out of the flooded bore had thought he heard a woman scream, back in there. And that was pretty improbable.

Smitty had also vanished. He had dived into a place that could hardly be anything other than a watery tomb, and hadn’t been heard from since.

It looked as if The Avenger’s aides were dead. In addition, work on the Mt. Rainod tunnel seemed to be permanently stopped, so there could be no attempts made to retrieve the bodies.

The crew looked furtively at the face of the gray steel man whom they had come to regard with such respect in so short a time. They wondered how he would take the news — this man whispered to be a murderer.

The dead, white countenance, of course, told them nothing. The brilliant, colorless eyes were as unreadable as the face.

Benson turned to Todd, the chief engineer.

“Order ammonia coils and apparatus flown here at once.”

“Amm—” repeated Todd, looking bewildered. Then he nodded. “Why, of course! Just the thing! I’ll wire for the necessary stuff immediately.”

Benson looked around for Mac and Josh. But he didn’t see the Negro and the Scotchman. They were nowhere around, it seemed—

They weren’t in sight at the moment, because they were sloshing in the water of the flooded tunnel. There was a bond among the Avenger’s aides much stronger than among most associates. One would sacrifice all for the others, at any time. Similarly, the rest would risk death in an instant to help any one of them in trouble.

Mac and Josh were preparing to give up their lives for Smitty and Nellie — even though it was a thousand-to-one that Nellie and Smitty were dead and past all help.

The two were near the end of the bore. The water, it appeared, had found its permanent level, which was several inches lower than it had been when Smitty came in. It exposed the newly cracked tunnel roof a half a dozen feet farther than the giant had been able to see.

In the exposure, the end of a fissure showed, where it had not showed before.

“Look,” said Mac, puzzled. “Whether Nellie was ever in here or not, we dinna know. But we do know that Smitty was in. The whole crew saw him come in. Now — where’s his body?”

Josh shook his head. It was quite a puzzle. The end of the bore should be blank rock at the point where the work had stopped. There was no way out there for a floating corpse. There was no place for it to float to but, eventually, back toward the entrance.

Yet there was no corpse in evidence. And surely this one should be big enough to see.

It was then that Josh saw the end of the fissure. The fissure was widening where it hit the top of the water and disappeared from sight.

The roof was still dripping from the slightly higher level of the water a short time before.

“The flood was higher, before we came in,” Josh observed. “It’s possible Smitty’s body jammed up through that fissure. I’ll go and see.”

“I’ll go!” said the Scot quickly.

“No. I’m thinner than you. I can go through a narrow place easier.”

“Whoosh!” complained Mac. “Ye’re just takin’ the dangerous part, that’s all.”

But Josh’s logic was unanswerable. So, biting his lips, with only his head above water, Mac saw the Negro draw a deep breath and disappear under water, swimming toward the unseen spot where the fissure probably widened.

So that made two who dove into the black depths — and didn’t come back. First Smitty, then Josh. For Josh did not reappear.

Mac watched with growing fear, as the minutes lengthened.

“Josh!” he yelled. “Josh!”

He dove in himself, and hunted for the broader part of the fissure in the roof. He couldn’t find it. He dove a score of times, and still couldn’t locate any such place.

Apparently the roof as well as the end wall was blank, with no place to admit a human body. Yet Josh was gone, seemingly through solid rock.

The reason Mac couldn’t find the broader part of the fissure was that the fissure, after extending under water so it couldn’t be seen anymore, turned almost at right angles. So the place where a body could go up was at least eight feet to the right of where you would expect it.

Mac hadn’t found it because his sense of direction was too good. He had dived too accurately for the place where the fissure should be — and wasn’t.

Josh had found it with the first groping upthrust of his hands, because he had gotten off-line and didn’t know it.

His hands had gone up into air, felt the sides of the fissure, and then his head had emerged.

He trod water and breathed air again, with his head stuck up through the crack in the tunnel roof. The air seemed plenty fresh. What had he blundered into? Was there another opening in the glass mountain, right above the line where the tunnel was being bored, that no one had known of till now? It looked like it. Josh began worming up the fissure to find out.

He was able to crawl up it, like a small bug up a crack in a thick floor, for fifteen feet or so. Then his bleeding hands felt the upper edge of it.

He pulled himself up — and instantly tentacles coiled around him with crushing force. He yelled once, then hadn’t the strength to yell any more. Utter horror filled him — grabbed like this by some vast monster in the heart of Mt. Rainod. But his yell saved him.

“Oh, it’s you, Josh,” the monster said. “Glad you sounded off. I thought you were one of the gang.”

Josh and Mac had come into the water-filled bore equipped with small phosphorus pellets, about the size of cherries, which were the refined and perfected products of Mac’s pharmaceutical laboratory. Their function was to glow when wet.

Josh took one of these from his dripping pocket and dropped it. It glowed like a little, cold lantern, revealing a small cavern that seemed to be merely an enlarged space in a tunnel of unguessable length, for there was a hole out of each end.

In the center of the space were Smitty and Nellie.

“What on earth—” gasped Josh.

“Sh-h-h-!” snapped the giant.

He listened. They all listened; though Josh didn’t know what for.

Smitty explained.

“I think we’re in a jam. It begins to look as though I was allowed to hear Nellie scream so I’d come in here and be caught. Maybe the plan was to draw all of us, including the chief, into a trap. If so, it’s successful to the point of getting two of us.”

Josh looked at Nellie, who told of her bizarre capture after the “cliff” had fallen on her, and of the place to which she had been taken.

“When I saw that old Indian who looked like a reincarnation of the Rain God,” she shuddered, “I ran. How I ran — across the big cave and out a tunnel on the other side from the one in which he came. I ended up here, and heard water and men beneath, and yelled. So pretty soon Smitty heaved up through the fissure beside me, and we’ve been here ever since, alone in the darkness, till you came.”

“If you were allowed to run here so that your cry could draw the rest of us,” said Smitty grimly, “and if it is a trap, then we won’t be alone long! We’ll have company!”

A voice suddenly sounded from one of the tunnels, beyond the gleam of the phosphorus ball.

“See?” the voice jeered. “I told you they was smart. They caught on just like that. Only a little too late to do anything about it.”

Josh jumped for the fissure, to drop back through to the tunnel. A blinding beam of light stabbed at him. It was more light than could come from any flashlight! It was a regular spotlight.

Along with the beam came a bullet. The bullet kicked up basalt chips between Josh and the fissure; so he stood still.

“You fool!” came another voice. “That shot might be heard outside—”

“We’re in the heart of a mountain, dummy. Who’s going to hear shots? Besides, I had to stop the guy from getting away, didn’t I?”

Nellie and Smitty and Josh stood still, raging but impotent in the powerful white glare. The light was so strong that they couldn’t see a thing in the tunnel behind it. There might be two men there — there might be twenty. Meanwhile, if one of the three moved, he could be shot down as easily as a fish is speared by flashlight.

The man who had remonstrated over the shot, spoke up.

“You three — go straight ahead, down the tunnel there.”

“Where are you taking us?” demanded Nellie, a little wildly. “Not back to that hideous Rain God—”

“That’s exactly where we’re takin’ you, blondie,” sneered the unseen speaker. “And the Rain God’ll be glad to see you again. He’ll be glad to see the Scotchman and the white-haired guy when we get ’em in here, too.”

The three went ahead. There was nothing else they could do. Behind them sounded the steps of the man with the light, and others. If only they could know how many, or how few, others!

Nellie went first, then Josh, then Smitty, then the man with the light. They marched in silence for what seemed half an hour. And gradually other light grew into existence along the tunnel.

It came from their goal ahead. Nellie had seen that goal, and marveled over the light that filled the vast cave in which stood the Rain God’s statue. But Josh and Smitty hadn’t. All they knew was that it was getting lighter as they went along the tunnel.

The man with the light behind them decided it was unnecessary to flash it any longer. So he turned it out.

And that was his mistake.

In the first place, for a second or two after that powerful beam went out, nobody’s eyes were ready for the much dimmer illumination ahead. In the second place, Smitty was only a little ahead of their captors.

It wasn’t the first time an enemy had underestimated Smitty. You never underestimated his strength, after one glance at his vast body. But almost everybody badly underestimated the giant’s quickness. You simply wouldn’t believe the way he could whip that near-three-hundred pounds of his around.

The instant the light went out, Smitty whirled and charged like a runaway locomotive back along the way they had come. And the move wasn’t appreciated till too late by the men there because they were blinking and focusing their eyes for the dimmer light.

There was a yell of pain as Smitty crushed over one man like a juggernaut. There were shots, and more yells as the giant crashed into several other men. The shots went wild — and so did Smitty!

He could see, now, a little. He saw that there had been five of their captors. Now there were three, because two lay where they had been knocked, like broken dolls, by the giant’s fists. The other three were retreating hastily toward a bend in the tunnel.

Smitty started to follow, tripped on one of the men he had felled, and was delayed so that the three reached their objective.

A shot smacked from a gun poked around the bend.

“Run!” yelled Smitty to Nellie and Josh. “Straight ahead! They’ll cut us down from behind that bend—”

Nellie screamed. It sliced across Smitty’s command.

“The Indian!” she screamed. “The Rain God—”

Smitty turned. In the mouth of the tunnel ahead, was a solitary figure. It wasn’t a very big figure, but it had something more frightening than size or armaments.

Around the figure were beginning to form little shreds of greenish mist, building up into a high pillar.

Behind the three were lead bullets and sure death! Ahead of them was this fantastic apparition, unexplainable, but no less deadly for all that!

Josh yelled suddenly.

“Here’s a side hole. Follow me!”

He disappeared as if taken into the solid rock. Nellie went after him. Smitty got to the place with slugs caroming off the tunnel walls all around him, and saw a smaller hole into which his comrades had jumped. He squeezed in, too.

The shooting behind them stopped. The slight hissing noise accompanying the dread formation of the green pillar stopped, too. There was no noise.

And no sounds of pursuit.

“That’s bad,” said Josh. “It’s as if they don’t care how far we go along this hole in the mountain. As if they know we’ll fall into something in here that’ll make it unnecessary for them to settle our hash, in person.”

“Well, no matter what’s ahead of us,” said Smitty, “there’s nothing for us to do but go on. If we go back we surely die.”

So they went on. They went by feel, since Josh had only a limited number of the phosphorus pellets and didn’t want to use them, save in emergency.

They went on, it seemed, forever, groping a step at a time. It was a nerve-racking business: at any moment they might walk into space and fall countless yards down a chasm.

They went till a blank wall barred them, at last. No one knew how many subterranean turnings they had taken. Water sounded faintly beyond them and to their right.

“I… can’t go… any more,” said Nellie apologetically. “Sorry.”

Smitty shrugged in the darkness.

“We’re getting nowhere, fast. And we’re all tired out. There’s just one thing to do — rest.”

They were hungry and thirsty, but exhaustion was more potent.

They slept.

They slept for many hours, though they didn’t know the passage of time, of course.

They slept till a slight, but dreadfully familiar hissing woke them up. Then Josh, catlike, scrambled to his feet. He jerked a phosphorus pellet from his pocket and dashed the damp thing to the floor. A ghastly bluish light blared out.

They saw why they had heard the sounds of water. They were in the very place, above the end of the water-filled tunnel-bore, where they had started from! There was the place where they had been captured. There was the fissure through which Smitty and Josh had come!

Between themselves and the fissure, which represented the sole way of escape, was the thing that had been hissing.

The greenish pillar of mist. The little cloud in which walked the Rain God, striking down humans with lightning bolts.

Nellie cried out, with the sound of her voice echoing loudly in the confined space. The pillar of greenish mist, towering to the ceiling, came slowly, methodically, toward them.