CHAPTER XVI
THE PLACE OF SKULLS
Cyrus Hammer, as he was forced along beside Jenson, was aware that the crisis had come in the twinkling of an eye and that he had proven wanting. Sara Helmuth had met it in his place—and Krausz had proven victor.
On the surface, at least. But, as he heard Sara Helmuth telling the scientist the tale of the real fort, Hammer smiled to himself. She might reveal the secret of the fort and treasure and all else—for Krausz had done the very thing which Hammer had never for an instant dreamed that he would do in releasing John Solomon.
The American recollected that, to Krausz, Solomon was no more than a mere pudgy little man who had shoved himself into the affairs of others, and for whom a day of wandering in the jungle would be veritable torture.
Krausz had woven his own net, for the only man there able to warn him against Solomon was Jenson, and from Jenson he would receive no warning. Moreover, Hammer saw that vengeance was like to be taken from his hands, since Jenson's punishment was slowly but surely drawing in upon him.
His exultation did not last long, however. He soon saw that, short of a murderous volley which would cut down all four askaris and Krausz with them, Solomon could not do much to help them just at present.
The girl was telling Krausz of the treasure now as they stood among the trenches on the hill, where tools lay flung about as the natives had deserted them.
Krausz had done a good deal, thought Hammer; in that week he had found out for himself that he was on a false scent—and that despite Solomon's prediction to the contrary.
Behind them the camp lay quiet, smoke curling up from the fires, the seamen and the four remaining askaris looking after the party. In front stretched the jungle, deep green and yellow tangles of vines and trees and bamboos. The girl turned to Hammer.
"Do you know just how to get in there, Hammer?" she said wearily. "I've promised to guide the doctor there, and——"
He saw that she was trying not to betray the secret of the camp from which she had come, but with Solomon gone to his men, as he plainly was, there was naught to be feared.
"Lead us by the path you came," he reassured her, Krausz paying no heed, but searching the jungle with eager eyes. "The ruins ought to be straight back from these, about two hundred yards or so."
She caught the meaning of his words and his quick smile and, with an answering flash in her eyes, turned back to Krausz, who still bore the whip taken from the askari. Though he carried no gun, Hammer caught a bulge in the coat-pocket of the big Saxon and knew that he was not unarmed.
Now, without further hesitation, Sara Helmuth led the way across the half-trenched lines of ruins. The American saw that when she had come to the camp that morning out of the jungle-hid fort it had been with little fear of such a result as this.
Perhaps trusting in John Solomon or himself, perhaps determined, if necessary, to force the doctor's hand by threat of exposure—any one of a hundred reasons flashed through Hammer's mind; but the central thought was that she had borne herself far better than had he.
Bound, helpless, marched at the side of the staggering, moaning Jenson, he found himself forced into a narrow path, and the jungle closed around them.
Krausz was not careless, however. Finding that the path was actually walled in by trees, bamboos, and creepers, and doubtless suspicious at seeing it recently cleared, he sent an askari ahead, then Sara Helmuth, and followed himself, with another askari behind, his long whip ready for action, and ordered Hammer and his guard immediately behind, while Jenson and the fourth Masai brought up the rear.
Barely had they got well in shelter of the jungle than Hammer, with Jenson's moans coming from behind like the inarticulate cries of a trapped beast, felt the hand of his guard fumbling with the cords that bound his wrists.
He half-turned in surprise, when a hand on his shoulder pressed him about again; with the fingers of his other hand the Masai tapped gently on the little silver ring Hammer still wore, and the latter understood.
This Masai fighting man, brought by Jenson from Zanzibar to defend Krausz, with the German eagle on tunic and fez, had recognized the sign of John Solomon, and had made answer to it!
Almost as the unbelievable thought found its way into his brain he felt that his bonds were loosened; a warning hand pressed his wrist again, and was gone. He comprehended that for the present he was not to free himself, and though the impulse was in him to leap on Krausz from behind, he held it in check and followed blindly.
In one respect at least the scientist seemed sincere, and that was in his belief, inspired by Jenson, that Hammer had stabbed Harcourt. Indeed, in matters foreign to his calling Krausz was probably all that could be wished.
But he, too, beginning at the comparatively innocuous point of taking the papers belonging to the dying Helmuth, had been wound in the skein of cumulative wrong-doing, reflected Hammer. He was not weak like Jenson, however; his wrong-doing was aggressive, determined, positive, while that of Jenson was decidedly negative.
Where the hiding-place of the relics and papers was the American himself did not know, though Solomon and the girl did. Now Krausz knew as well, or soon would, for Hammer divined Sara's intention perfectly.
She would give up all in order to appease the Saxon, depending on Solomon to eventually overpower the latter, if he did not first prevent the disclosure of the secret.
Hammer spared no thought on himself. That he was in any present danger did not occur to him, since he could not suspect the thoughts behind the doctor's heavy-lidded eyes and throbbing band of muscle.
For the jungle smell had entered into the nostrils of the scientist—and whether it be in jungle or forest or sand reaches, no man can taste the loneliness of Nature and hold to his veneer of man-learning.
It is the same whether he be beside the Mackenzie or the Mahakkam, under Kilimanjaro or Tacoma. Once away from his kind, man forgets his kind, for the despotism of the wild overbears all else.
It was so with Krausz and, to a certain sense, with Sara Helmuth; it was so with Hammer, though he did not comprehend it; but if it was so with John Solomon no man could say.
"We are here," exclaimed the girl dully.
The party halted. Without perceiving it in the half-gloom of the overhanging masses of vegetation, they had suddenly come among half-fallen walls, ruined stone structures that loomed far up and were held in place by thigh-thick vines.
Through some had pierced old trees and limbs of trees, yet the walls still held in grotesque mimicry; no roofs were there, but only walls and ruins of walls. And over the place brooded silence, with never a chattering of monkey or parrot's screech to quiver hollowly up.
Hammer felt a twitch at his arm, but shook off the hand of the askari. If the man thought he was going to run for it and leave Sara Helmuth in the lurch, he was much mistaken. Slowly, very slowly, the American saw that men had been here not long before, since in amid the ruins were evidences of clearing—lopped branches piled up in places, flickering shadow-gleams of sunlight that filtered down from somewhere above, and queer white fragments that strewed the ground in spots.
If Krausz saw this, however, he paid small heed, but clambered over a smoothed-out pile of stones, the others following.
"Gott! Truly thiss iss the real place!"
He stood looking around, caressing the handle of the whip with his fingers. On three sides towered walls and trees and vines, inextricable and undefined; where walls ended and trees began it was impossible to say, for the growth of two hundred jungle years is not to be lightly set aside by a few Arabs in a week's time. Jenson sank down where he stood, cowed into silence by the silence around.
Suddenly, as if the echoes of the doctor's words had worked through the interstices of the leafy roof, a great burst of shrill chattering arose somewhere overhead.
Hammer jumped, startled; at the same instant two or three white objects shot down from nowhere, apparently. Two burst into shreds, the other struck a mossy wall and rebounded to the feet of Krausz, who leaped back in alarm.
One half-stifled shriek burst from the first askari and stilled the clamour above. Sara Helmuth stared at the thing, as did everyone else, her face very pale; and Hammer knew, at last, that Omar ibn Kasim had spoken truth indeed—for the object was a skull.
An oath from Krausz recalled the frightened askaris to their vigilance. He stood mopping his brow and staring from the unbroken skull to the trees above, and, as Hammer glanced up, he saw one or two dark forms flitting about the top of the nearest wall and vanishing in the trees.
"Monkeys!" exclaimed Sara Helmuth, her eyes unnaturally large, but her voice firm. "Are you afraid of monkeys and skulls, Herr Doctor?"
For answer Krausz snorted and picked up the skull. He flung it away instantly.
"Pah! It iss mouldy—it hass been the ground in. Monkeys—pigs of scavengers! Yess, thiss iss the place."
For a moment he stood silent. Then, for the gruesome thing must have wakened the depths of him, he swiftly changed the whip to his left hand, drew a revolver with the other, and turned on the group behind him.
Hammer started at the change in the man. His great brow was mottled, as were his cheeks, save for the panting band of muscle that stood out deep red, and his black eyes gleamed with something that was near akin to ferocity. Never had Hammer seen such a face on a man, and now, for the first time, a strange alarm stirred within him.
Krausz tried to speak, but could not for a moment; lips and tongue were dry, and his voice came in a hoarse growl that betrayed how that monkey-flung skull had got on his nerves.
"You tricked me, yess!" he cried at length. "You tricked me, Sigurd Krausz! You, fräulein, you, and Adolf here! But no more shall you trick me, no. I——"
He paused quickly, plainly fighting for his lost self-control, meeting the firm eyes of Sara Helmuth. Hammer, fearing that the man would break out into violence, tensed his muscles and measured the distance between them, but Krausz lowered his revolver as slow sanity crept back into his eyes.
The girl still faced him, though she had shrunk back before that mad outburst, and in reply her voice came low, but with a note that seemed to calm his rage, so cold and self-contained was it. Hammer noted that she made no gesture as for a weapon; she must have come unarmed, probably on the impulse of the moment.
"Yes, you were tricked, Her Doctor—tricked by a girl. And you are called the greatest archaeologist in Europe! Dresden will laugh when it hears the story, doctor—the story of how you dug for a week in the ruins of a storehouse, while the fort you were in search of lay under your nose here. And then the treasure!
"Now free me and Mr. Hammer there, and I promise you that this shall never be known in Europe, Dr. Krausz. If the story came out it would blast your reputation, and you know it well."
Krausz looked at her, frowning as if in hard thought. Hammer saw that the strain was telling heavily upon her, and breathed a sigh of relief when the scientist replied:
"Yess, it would my reputation blast, fräulein. That iss very right—very. But listen. You have told me that the treasure was in two parts, yess, and the relics and papers, I do not know where they are. But you know, fräulein. Now tell me, take me to thiss place also, then will I free you and Mr. Hammer and Adolf—yess, you shall go free with Adolf, both of you!"
As he made this offer, there was something about the narrowed eyes of the man that Hammer did not like. Sara Helmuth studied him for a moment, but she was plainly weakening fast.
Something of the fetid aspect of the place seemed to be in the face of Krausz, and she palpably distrusted him; but he forced quietude into his features and stared stolidly at her, waiting.
Another white object fluttered down from above with a chattering that floated away amid the tree-tops, and the girl shuddered as the skull struck the wall behind her and shivered rottenly.
"How—how if I refuse?"
"If you refuse, fräulein, the whip—and no promise."
He gestured with his hand toward Hammer. The girl flung the latter one helpless glance, and bowed her head as she turned.
"Come."
Krausz, with triumph beaming from his massive features, motioned the others to fall in line, and they went as at first, out across the fallen wall. To the American the place was shapeless, formless, but Krausz cast quick nodding glances about him, and Sara Helmuth did not hesitate.
Hammer felt his heart throbbing—the atmosphere of the jungle-hid ruins was oppressive, stultifying. The girl led them across fallen walls and past cleared spaces to a great heap of ruins overgrown thickly.
Through it led a hard-beaten path, and with half-darkness about them she paused at what seemed to be a square hole in the ground, perhaps a dozen feet across, with trees roofing all in overhead. Here the path ended.
"It is there," she said simply.
Krausz growled something at the askaris, and went forward. Hammer, watching, saw him stop suddenly as though listening. Then, at the edge of the hole, he laid down revolver and whip and went to his knees, and so flat on his belly, his hands gripping roots on either side of him.
Here he stayed motionless for what seemed ages to the overwrought American. When, at last, he crawled upright, his hands were shaking tremulously, his face was ghastly white, and he clutched at a near-by tree for support.
"Mein Gott!" he said thickly, staring at the girl. "Mein Gott! Mein Gott!”