"The Russian had gone fast and far. They talked of Lugur as emperor of all Europe, and Marakinoff under him. They spoke of the green light that shook life from the oldster; and Lugur said that the secret of it had been the Ancient Ones' and that the Council had not too much of it. But the Russian said that among his race were many wise men who could make more once they had studied it.

"And the next day I wrestled with a great dwarf named Tahola, mightier far than Valdor. Him I threw after a long, long time, and his back also I broke. Again Lugur was pleased. And again we sat at table, he and the Russian and I. This time they spoke of something these _Trolde_ have which opens up a _Svaelc_--abysses into which all in its range drops up into the sky!"

"What!" I exclaimed.

"I know about them," said Larry. "Wait!"

"Lugur had drunk much," went on Olaf. "He was boastful. The Russian pressed him to show this thing. After a while the red one went out and came back with a little golden box. He and the Russian went into the garden. I followed them. There was a _lille Hoj_--a mound--of stones in that garden on which grew flowers and trees.

"Lugur pressed upon the box, and a spark no bigger than a sand grain leaped out and fell beside the stones. Lugur pressed again, and a blue light shot from the box and lighted on the spark. The spark that had been no bigger than a grain of sand grew and grew as the blue struck it. And then there was a sighing, a wind blew--and the stones and the flowers and the trees were not. They were _forsvinde_--vanished!

"Then Lugur, who had been laughing, grew quickly sober; for he thrust the Russian back--far back. And soon down into the garden came tumbling the stones and the trees, but broken and shattered, and falling as though from a great height. And Lugur said that of _this_ something they had much, for its making was a secret handed down by their own forefathers and not by the Ancient Ones.

"They feared to use it, he said, for a spark thrice as large as that he had used would have sent all that garden falling upward and might have opened a way to the outside before--he said just this--'_before we are ready to go out into it!_'

"The Russian questioned much, but Lugur sent for more drink and grew merrier and threatened him, and the Russian was silent through fear.

Thereafter I listened when I could, and little more I learned, but that little enough. _Ja!_ Lugur is hot for conquest; so Yolara and so the Council. They tire of it here and the Silent Ones make their minds not too easy, no, even though they jeer at them! And this they plan--to rule our world with their Shining Devil."

The Norseman was silent for a moment; then voice deep, trembling--

"Trolldom is awake; Helvede crouches at Earth Gate whining to be loosed into a world already devil ridden! And we are but three!"

I felt the blood drive out of my heart. But Larry's was the fighting face of the O'Keefes of a thousand years. Rador glanced at him, arose, stepped through the curtains; returned swiftly with the Irishman's uniform.

"Put it on," he said, bruskly; again fell back into his silence and whatever O'Keefe had been about to say was submerged in his wild and joyful whoop. He ripped from him glittering tunic and leg swathings.

"Richard is himself again!" he shouted; and each garment as he donned it, fanned his old devil-may-care confidence to a higher flame. The last sc.r.a.p of it on, he drew himself up before us.

"Bow down, ye divils!" he cried. "Bang your heads on the floor and do homage to Larry the First, Emperor of Great Britain, Autocrat of all Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, and adjacent waters and islands! Kneel, ye scuts, kneel."

"Larry," I cried, "are you going crazy?"

"Not a bit of it," he said. "I'm that and more if Comrade Marakinoff is on the level. Whoop! Bring forth the royal jewels an' put a whole new bunch of golden strings in Tara's harp an' down with the Sa.s.senach forever! Whoop!"

He did a wild jig.

"Lord how good the old togs feel," he grinned. "The touch of 'em has gone to my head. But it's straight stuff I'm telling you about my empire."

He sobered.

"Not that it's not serious enough at that. A lot that Olaf's told us I've surmised from hints dropped by Yolara. But I got the full key to it from the Red himself when he stopped me just before--before"--he reddened--"well, just before I acquired that brand-new brand of souse.

"Maybe he had a hint--maybe he just surmised that I knew a lot more than I did. And he thought Yolara and I were going to be loving little turtle doves. Also he figured that Yolara had a lot more influence with the Unholy Fireworks than Lugur. Also that being a woman she could be more easily handled. All this being so, what was the logical thing for himself to do? Sure, you get me, Steve! Throw down Lugur and make an alliance with me! So _he_ calmly offered to ditch the red dwarf if I would deliver Yolara. My reward from Russia was to be said emperorship! Can you beat it? Good Lord!"

He went off into a perfect storm of laughter. But not to me in the light of what Russia has done and has proved herself capable, did this thing seem at all absurd; rather in it I sensed the dawn of catastrophe colossal.

"And yet," he was quiet enough now, "I'm a bit scared. They've got the _Keth_ ray and those gravity-destroying bombs--"

"Gravity-destroying bombs!" I gasped.

"Sure," he said. "The little fairy that sent the trees and stones kiting up from Lugur's garden. Marakinoff licked his lips over them.

They cut off gravity, just about as the shadow screens cut off light--and consequently whatever's in their range goes shooting just naturally up to the moon--

"They get my goat, why deny it?" went on Larry. "With them and the _Keth_ and gentle invisible soldiers walking around a.s.sa.s.sinating at will--well, the worst Bolsheviki are only puling babes, eh, Doc?

"I don't mind the Shining One," said O'Keefe, "one splash of a downtown New York high-pressure fire hose would do for it! But the others--are the goods! Believe me!"

But for once O'Keefe's confidence found no echo within me. Not lightly, as he, did I hold that dread mystery, the Dweller--and a vision pa.s.sed before me, a vision of an Apocalypse undreamed by the Evangelist.

A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of peoples pa.s.sing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into s.p.a.ce upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the a.s.sa.s.sins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every pa.s.sion of h.e.l.l--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold this devil-G.o.d for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!

And then a world that was all colossal reek of cruelty and terror; a welter of l.u.s.ts, of hatreds and of torment; a chaos of horror in which the Dweller waxing ever stronger, the ghastly hordes of those it had consumed growing ever greater, wreaked its inhuman will!

At the last a ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless, mindless dead-alive, their sh.e.l.ls illumined with the Dweller's infernal glory--and flaming over this vampirized earth like a flare from some h.e.l.l far, infinitely far, beyond the reach of man's farthest flung imagining--the Dweller!

Rador jumped to his feet; walked to the whispering globe. He bent over its base; did something with its mechanism; beckoned to us. The globe swam rapidly, faster than ever I had seen it before. A low humming arose, changed into a murmur, and then from it I heard Lugur's voice clearly.

"It is to be war then?"

There was a chorus of a.s.sent--from the Council, I thought.

"I will take the tall one named--_Larree_." It was the priestess's voice. "After the three _tal_, you may have him, Lugur, to do with as you will."

"No!" it was Lugur's voice again, but with a rasp of anger. "All must die."

"He shall die," again Yolara. "But I would that first he see Lakla pa.s.s--and that she know what is to happen to him."

"No!" I started--for this was Marakinoff. "Now is no time, Yolara, for one's own desires. This is my counsel. At the end of the three _tal_ Lakla will come for our answer. Your men will be in ambush and they will slay her and her escort quickly with the _Keth_. But not till that is done must the three be slain--and then quickly. With Lakla dead we shall go forth to the Silent Ones--and I promise you that I will find the way to destroy them!"

"It is well!" It was Lugur.

"It _is_ well, Yolara." It was a woman's voice, and I knew it for that old one of ravaged beauty. "Cast from your mind whatever is in it for this stranger--either of love or hatred. In this the Council is with Lugur and the man of wisdom."

There was a silence. Then came the priestess's voice, sullen but--beaten.

"It is well!"

"Let the three be taken now by Rador to the temple and given to the High Priest Sator"--thus Lugur--"until what we have planned comes to pa.s.s."

Rador gripped the base of the globe; abruptly it ceased its spinning.

He turned to us as though to speak and even as he did so its bell note sounded peremptorily and on it the colour films began to creep at their accustomed pace.

"I hear," the green dwarf whispered. "They shall be taken there at once." The globe grew silent. He stepped toward us.

"You have heard," he turned to us.

"Not on your life, Rador," said Larry. "Nothing doing!" And then in the Murian's own tongue. "We follow Lakla, Rador. And _you_ lead the way." He thrust the pistol close to the green dwarf's side.

Rador did not move.