I could feel his hand tremble as he clutched my arm.
“Don’t tell me that,” he panted. “You don’t know what it is to be differently made from other men. My friend, I have been through this sort of thing before—one cannot always hope to escape.”
“Before matters come to a crisis they shall have the opportunity of looking down the muzzle of my revolver,” I answered. “Look, here we are on the wrong street—we must cut across somehow to the next.”
“And then?”
“Then we shall be directly in front of the consulate.”
“It must be done. Look behind there—you can see we have only a moment. Shall we try this alley? It may take us through.”
The alley was a narrow passage between two of the largest houses I ever remember observing in Panompin. It was dark at the entrance and barely wide enough for us both to walk abreast, but down at the further end a flickering light dimly burned.
Positively I can’t say whether I gave assent or not; I only remember that the next moment we were running along the alley and I was beginning to fancy that we had given our pursuers the slip, when my hopes were dashed by hearing their shouts behind us. Klings, Chinamen and Cambodians were pouring into the alley like sheep.
The situation had now grown desperate. My singular companion saw this as well as I.
“Too bad! too bad!” he muttered. “My plans are ruined. See, friend, we’ve made another blunder. Here’s a wall which neither of us can climb.”
I gave an exclamation of disgust, for directly in front of us stretched the wall, a good twelve feet high, cutting off our retreat completely. We had run into a veritable cul-de-sac.
“It means fight now!” I exclaimed. “I’ll stand by you. Are you armed?”
“No, no! If I was I would not shoot down one of those poor wretches for the world.”
“You must do something quickly.”
“And you?”
“I am not afraid of them.”
“I wish I could help you,” he said, eyeing me strangely. “If you do not fear for yourself, I fear for you. I am the taller. Perhaps I can spring up and catch the top of the wall and so pull you after me.”
He dropped the hand bag upon the ground and leaped up, missing the coping of the wall.
“No use!” he exclaimed. “They are here! May God help you my friend, I cannot—therefore I leave you. A thousand thanks for your kind intentions. Farewell!”
What ailed me—what ailed my man with the parti-colored face?
It would have been useless to ask me then, for at that time even the claims of the Buddhist adepts were unknown to me.
If any one had attempted to describe what happened as something actually having taken place, who would have been readier than I to set him down as a lying imposter or a fool; and yet—
But I find it quite impossible to speak as I could wish. Here is what occurred under the wall at the end of the alley, as I saw it—nothing less, nothing more.
Astonished at the words of my strange companion, knowing as I knew that the next moment must bring me face to face with the mob even then rushing down the alley, I was about to speak, when it suddenly struck me that the man's face had undergone a change.
It was growing thin and shadowy, his whole body also seemed to be assuming a certain vapory indistinctness, to become etherealized, so to speak.
As he stood there motionless before the wall, I gazed at him in speechless amazement. Was it actually as I saw it, or was the trouble with my own brain?
He seemed to be sinking slowly downward, his feet and legs disappeared, seemingly dissolving as he went, until nothing but the head rested on the ground.
I was horrified, amazed beyond all telling.
Meanwhile every surrounding object retained its distinctness—the lantern above the wall burned as brightly as before.
From that dreadful head I struggled to remove my gaze in vain. Thinner and still more shadowy it became, until suddenly, as a puff of wind wafts away the last flickering flame of a burnt-out candle, it vanished.
The man had faded away before my eyes, leaving me to face the mob alone.
CHAPTER II. THE SHADOWS OF THE NAGKON WAT.
The mists still hung thick above the forests when we reached a resting place on those seemingly interminable steps and leaned panting for breath against the embrasure of one of the little windows up near the top of the grand central pagoda of the Nagkon Wat. Far below us—two hundred and fifty feet is said to be the height of the pagoda—lay the tropical jungle, with its nodding atap palms alive with the screams of monkeys, the notes of peacocks, quails and parrots, a dense mass of green stretching off as far as the eye could reach. At our feet was the inner court of that strange old temple, the very name of whose builders is lost in the mists of ages, the sloping roofs, projecting cornices and crumbling columns gilded by the first rays of the rising sun.
“Too late!” exclaimed Maurice De Veber; “too late George; old Sol is up before us. Next time you arouse me from my peaceful slumbers to witness a Siamese sunrise, I shall know enough to refuse to lend myself to your mad schemes. Why there’s not a particle of breath left in my body, to say nothing of the condition of my legs.”
“Peaceful slumbers, indeed!” I replied, contemptuously. “For my part, what with the mosquitoes and the howling of the jackals I haven’t slept a wink all night. Who was it, pray, that insisted upon dragging me two hundred miles into the wilderness to visit those miserable ruins? And now you complain because I make you share my discomforts. Come, Maurice, that’s not fair.”
Maurice laughed.
“My friend,” he said, “I take it all back. It’s grand, it’s glorious! I am beginning to breathe now, and my legs are rapidly returning to their normal condition. It is worth two years of a man’s life to gaze upon this view ten minutes. I for one do not regret my climb.”
But as for myself, I was indifferent. Two months had elapsed since my singular adventure in the streets of Panompin. Two months more had been given me to forget my troubles, yet they had not been forgotten. I needed something besides the dreamy existence I had been leading in the society of my friend Maurice De Veber to drive them from my thoughts.
On that night my escape from the mob had been less difficult than might be supposed.
It was not me they were after; besides they took me for a Frenchman, I fancy, and to interfere with a Frenchman in Cambodia would be a very dangerous matter.
When at last I succeeded in pushing my way through the excited throng and found myself at the door of the American consulate, I discovered that I still held the little hand bag which had been dropped by the stranger and which I must have picked up, although I have no recollection of having done anything of the sort.
I was dazed—absolutely confounded.
What I had seen I had seen. In one moment that man with his peculiar face had stood before me; his eyes had looked into my eyes; he had spoke; he had pressed my hand; and in the next he had disappeared as completely as if he had never been.
Where? How?
Absolutely there was no explanation of the mystery; and the next day when I visited the alley, making a most critical examination, I found myself still further