The Earth-Tube (18 page)

They heard the clatter as the police came hurrying around the last corner and looked into the hallway where they had been standing a moment before. They heard exclamations of surprise and rage. But the door closed inexorably upon them as the platform settled, and in the darkness of the shaft they moved downward without power to arrest their movement or knowledge of their destination.

Diane clung impulsively to King. “If this is the end. “ she murmured softly, “well. “

The sentence remained unfinished. As abruptly as it had started its descent, the platform came to a full stop, with a faint metallic sound, upon a landing. There was a sputter of automatic switches. King drew Diane close to him, closing his eyes, but no scythe of destruction descended upon them.

Instead, a small, phosphorescent light began to glow overhead, and they looked around to find themselves alone in a small, circular room from which, at a point almost directly opposite them, a small passage led off on a horizontal plane. There were benches and chairs in the room and additional lights which could have been turned on by the pressure of a finger. It was obviously fitted up as a place for resting or lounging, but King and Diane had no inclination to take advantage of its invitation. Moving uncertainly in the dim light and hardly able to realize that thus far they had escaped the dangers of the metal city, they cautiously approached the uninviting passage ahead and entered it.

IV

Even as King and Diane were moving silently along the uncharted cranny they had discovered in the shining city, events were taking place in North America, thousands of miles away, which were destined to have an important bearing on the outcome of that mad adventure.

The Secretary of War of the Pan-Americas was, for one thing, in a new quandary, or rather a new development of the old one. He had been making speeches of great promise with regard to the war and the success of the American defense against the metal tanks of the invaders. He had been in great demand at parties and dinners, and his thrice-daily talks over the radio had been received with interest and eagerness by more than two hundred millions of persons on two continents. The speeches had even been transmitted to Europe, where the governments of the petty countries which had survived the Second European War were greatly alarmed at the Asian invasion, reasoning that if the Americans could not stop them, the new forces from the Eastern Hemisphere would turn to Europe next.

For a time, it seemed, there was some truth in the War Secretary’s statements. The Asians had stopped their advance in the tangle of jungles north of the Amazon, and the American troops, deployed along a ragged line from Quito to Cayenne wherever the terrain permitted of occupation, were shelling the quiet tanks with all the valor and show of an equal battle along a deadlocked front. Millions of dollars worth of shells were being blown into the air to descend and lash the tangles of undergrowth with their explosions or to pop harmlessly off the gleaming sides of the huge enemy tanks which were resting on knolls here and there like giant saurians in siesta after a heavy meal.

But it was the speech which the Secretary made on the night of May 7, at nearly the same hour that King had selected for his landing at Tiplis, that brought him his greatest glory and nearly ruined his career. He made it in Chicago, where the citizens, realizing the importance of the man they were entertaining, had organized a banquet out of doors, in a new park which had been created for the occasion on the shore of the lake and which they had already named for the Secretary in a civic ceremony which lasted three hours.

It was, as the mayor of Chicago himself had said, in his capacity as presiding officer at the dinner, an occasion no less than auspicious. All Chicago, said the mayor, felt honored to have a great green park bearing the name of so learned a man, and in the center of that park, on the spot where the Secretary himself now sat, there would rise before the end of summer a modernistic tower of heroic design, commemorating the occasion and the presence of the Secretary.

“Folks,” said the mayor, holding high his glass of champagne, of which he had been drinking copiously, “I, for one, am glad to live in such an age as this,” and as he said it he smiled beatifically at the Secretary and drank his health for the ninth time that evening. His admiration for the official, it was clear, knew virtually no bounds. In addition to his political activities, the mayor was half owner of a munition plant, and shells from his factories were at that same hour brightening the night over the South American tangles.

There were many others present whose admiration for Dr. Angell was equally great. On all sides they cheered him and helped him to the wine. Filled with rich food, surfeited with oratory and flattery, and no little affected by the sparkling liquids, which were both good and plentiful, the Secretary rested serenely in his place until his time to speak should come.

It was a great sensation, he was thinking, to be surrounded by friends and admirers, to know that even the distant roar of the city was a clamor of approbation. These folk would be expecting a great speech from him to-night, something more than he had been giving all along, a definite promise of victory, perhaps. By secret information he had been assured that King had made the venture upon which so much depended. There was a young man who’d come home with the information he had gone to get! It would do no harm to capitalize a little in advance on the victory that King Henderson would bring back with him. It would be a fine thing to share with these Chicago folk, discreetly, of course, the assurance and confidence now felt by the War Council as to the outcome of the affair.

The Secretary stepped a little self-consciously before the microphones, glancing appreciatively toward the tableful of reporters, who had already received copies of his speech in advance. He began to talk. His voice was a little hoarse, but that, he reflected, added a great deal to its effectiveness. It gave him the proper ring and gruffness for a military man; he was filled with pride to hear the voice, which had crackled into so many microphones, rumble roundly as it came upward from his chest.

“To-night,” he began, after a proper pause, “we stand upon the turning point of the war; upon the hairline pivot between retreat. and victory. Thus far we have fought bitterly, with great losses; we have faced with misty eyes, albeit brave, what seemed like certain failure as the metal tanks of Asia rolled gory over the fair and crumpled forms of our brave defenders in the South. But now, to-night, my friends, amid the beautiful light which falls fresh upon the greens and bowers you have seen fit to name for me, amid the sparkle of the moon on yonder lake and the sweet purl of the fountain waters in the still, warm air of spring, I tell you that American ingenuity and military skill have at last outwitted the diabolical plans of our enemies, and victory is within our grasp!”

The Secretary was trembling with the effort of his oratory, perspiring with the warmth of wine and spring. He had not followed his set speech, which was conservative, only vaguely promising victory; it had seemed to him, as he stood before the microphones, that he had made that vague promise too many times before. Like a clever saying, too much repetition had worn it out. On a really big occasion, such as this, it needed dynamite to shake things up; something definite, something folks could get their teeth into.

“Oh, I have promised victory before,” he shouted suddenly, almost belligerently, “but never with the reason that I have to-night. Victory is now but a matter of weeks. it may be days. America will meet the Asians with their own weapons. America, meeting these invaders with the secrets they themselves have brought to us, will roll them back, metal against metal, ray against ray, into their fiendish earth-tube and down beneath the sea!”

He had discounted the chance that King might never come back, or that, returning, he would fail to have the Asian weapons he had gone for. In the lights, before the microphones, his imagination had leaped like lightning over days and weeks, over obstacles and delay, and when he had finished, amid cheers and screams and the bursting of fireworks, he was himself filled with belief and exaltation and buoyancy. The victory he had predicted seemed, indeed, already a reality; his was the triumph of a conqueror.

The spell of his oratory had been caught up and carried away on every side. The city already believed with him that the war was as good as won. A tremendous roar of applause arose, as the hundreds of thousands of persons who had been listening at their radios went out into the streets to celebrate. The hundreds at the dinner were not satisfied with hand-clapping and common noise. They broke their glasses on the boards, and tore the tables down, while the reporters, hastily catching up their notes, fled to the nearest telephones to report the prediction to the continents.

Chicago took the Secretary to the airdrome for his return journey to Washington in a new automobile, especially designed and covered with gold leaf at the expense of the city. Along the streets cheering millions threw confetti
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and screamed. Long streamers of colored paper drifted down from the windows high above, where even the charwomen paused in their work of cleaning the offices of Chicago to pour out cheers of victory and soiled paper into the night. And the Secretary, who had by this time calmed a little from the heat of the speech, smiled and bowed and smiled again as the sirens of the police cleared the way ahead for the triumphal procession. Surprised and a little alarmed by the demonstration, he wondered uneasily if, in his exuberance, he had not said too much.

A momentary surge of the crowd broke through the police lines ahead and stopped the procession until order could be restored. There was but one thing lacking to complete his triumph that night, the Secretary was thinking. That was the fact that the place beside him in the large gold car, where a woman might have sat, was occupied only by the mayor of Chicago.

“Even though I have become a figure of importance,” he was thinking, “I am a lonely man.”

The gay procession moved again slowly through the throng of his admirers, and in another moment he had forgotten his moody thoughts.

It was not until the next morning that he learned the trick fate had played on him. During the night the Asians, like patient but hungry worms along a leaf, had begun their advance again. Before daybreak they had taken Quito, and by the rising of the sun defending troops were fleeing in all directions to escape capture or death.

Not long afterward the Secretary was awakened by the hoarse shouts of a messenger, who had been ordered at all costs to reach the official with his tidings of general disaster. The Asian advance had apparently been resumed at a dozen points. The army of the defense was being hurled back along a two-thousand-mile front as helpless to stop the enemy as if it had been armed with pitchforks and pea-shooters.

The Secretary was a little late in getting the information, but the papers were not. Already, in the first morning editions, the story of the advance had come out in full. Many sheets maliciously ran the story of the Secretary’s prediction and the news of the new advance together on their front pages. Others pointed out the incongruity editorially and in cartoons. Scarcely had word of the new disaster reached him when the Secretary’s phone began to ring. The Washington correspondents wanted to know what explanation he had to offer.

“Tell the reporters I will see them. “ he commanded his aide, “at one o’clock, in my library. You might tell them that I have both an explanation and. an announcement.”

He walked up and down his library for three hours and a half. He had his lunch served to him there. A manicurist and a bootblack came in, and a valet with a fresh suit of clothes. By one o’clock he was dressed and barbered and shined and manicured. He looked fit and self-confident. As the bell rang, announcing the first of the reporters, he surveyed himself in the glass and approved of what he saw there.

“They will not find me upset and unnerved, at least,” he said to himself.

The correspondents took their places with formality around the library table, while operators of motion picture news cameras set up their machines for the interview. The Secretary smiled nervously. Reporters and news men generally, he was thinking, were very unpleasant fellows upon occasion. It was too bad that one sometimes had to handle them with respect.

“Gentlemen,” he began, when they were all seated, “your papers have been calling for an explanation of what happened last night, and why we appear to have been thrown back from our defenses.” He paused for
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moment, rubbing his hands. “I thought that maneuver might fool you gentlemen, as it was intended to fool the Asians. We have prepared a little surprise for them and for all the world; but we must drop back a little and let them walk into our trap.”

He smiled with a satisfied air as he watched the reporters taking his statement down. He was puzzled when they looked up at him again, expecting further revelations.

“What, specifically, is this trap you are preparing?” asked a rather tall young fellow with fiery red hair. “My paper has heard a lot about your defenses lately, but now we want specific details that will restore confidence.”

The other reporters nodded. The Secretary, thus forcibly reminded of his promise of the night before, and earlier, was taken aback by the audacity of these remarks. He flushed and then, recovering himself, smiled blandly.

“A trap which the enemy hears about in advance,” he fenced, “is something less than a trap.”

His inquisitors, unsatisfied with this obvious turning of the question, continued to stare at him in silence. A servant passed cigars, while the Secretary touched a fresh white handkerchief to his perspiring forehead. The jibes which had been aimed at him in the morning papers were still fresh and horrible in his mind; he saw a new batch of them being prepared in the notebooks which lay open on the table before him, as the reporters waited patiently for him to go on.

“Well,” he said at length, with the air of letting them in on a confidence, “we now have. or expect to have very soon, certain secret devices which will destroy their armor plate and reduce their tanks to powder. We will then close in on them from all sides and wipe them out.”