Quickly Dimitrius sprang to her side, picked up the empty cup as it rolled from her hand, and called:
“Vasho!”
Instantly the tall Ethiopian appeared, and obeying his master’s instructions, assisted him to lift the prone figure and lay it on a bench near at hand. Then they both set to work to move a number of ropes and pulleys which, noiselessly manipulated, proved to be an ingenious device for lowering a sort of stretcher or couch, canopied in tent-like fashion and made entirely of the same sort of double stranded silk material in which Diana had clothed herself for her “sacrifice.” This stretcher was lowered from the very centre of the dome of the laboratory,—and upon it the two men, Dimitrius and his servant, carefully and almost religiously placed the passive form, which now had an appearance of extreme rigidity, like that of a corpse. Dimitrius looked anxiously at the closed eyes, the waxen pallor of the features, and the evident tension of the muscles of the neck and throat,—then, with a kind of reckless swiftness and determination, he began to bind the apparently lifeless body round and round with broad strips of the same luminous sheeny stuff which composed the seeming funeral couch of his “subject” in the fashion of an Egyptian mummy. Vasho, acting under orders, assisted him as before—and very soon Diana’s form was closely swathed from head to foot, only the eyes, mouth and ears being left uncovered. The laboratory was now illumined only by its own mysterious fires—outside was a dark summer sky, powdered with faint stars, and every lingering reflex of the sunset had completely vanished. With the utmost care and minutest attention Dimitrius now looked to every detail of the strange, canopied bier on which the insensible subject of his experiment was laid,—then, giving a sign to Vasho, the ropes and pulleys by which it was suspended were once more set in motion, and slowly, aerially and without a sound it swung away and across the dark pool of water to a position just under the great Wheel. The Wheel, revolving slowly and casting out lambent rays of fire, illumined it as a white tent might be illumined on the night blackness of a bare field,—it rested just about four feet above the level of the water and four feet below the turning rim of the Wheel. When safely and accurately lodged in this position, Dimitrius and his servant fastened the ropes and pulleys to a projection in the wall, attaching them to a padlock of which Dimitrius himself took the key. Then, pausing, they looked at each other. Vasho’s glittering eyes, rolling like dark moonstones under his jetty brows, asked mutely a thousand questions; he was stricken with awe and terror and gazed at his master as beseechingly as one might fancy an erring mortal might look at an incarnate devil sent to punish him, but in the set white face of Dimitrius there was no sign of response or reassurance. Two or three minutes passed, and, going to the edge of the pool, Dimitrius looked steadily across it at the white pavilion with its hidden burden swung between fire and water,—then slowly, but resolutely, turned away. As he did so, Vasho suddenly fell on his knees, and catching at his master’s hand, implored him by eloquent signs of fear, pity and distress, not to abandon the hapless woman, thus bound and senseless, to a fate more strange and perhaps more terrible than any human being had yet devised to torture his fellow human being. Dimitrius shook off his touch impatiently, and bade him rise from his knees.
“Do not pray to me!” he said, harshly—“Pray to your God, if you have one! I have a God whose Intelligence is so measureless and so true that I know He will not punish me for spending the brain with which He has endowed me, in an effort to find out one of His myriad secrets. There was a time in this world when men knew nothing of the solar system,—now God has permitted them to know it. In the same way we know nothing of the secret of life, but shall we dare to say that God will never permit us to know? That would be blasphemy indeed! We ‘suffer fools gladly,’—we allow tricksters such as ‘mediums,’ fortune-tellers and the like to flourish on their frauds, but we give little help to the man of spiritual or psychological science, whose learning might help us to conquer disease and death! No, Vasho!—your fears have no persuasion for me!—I am thankful you are dumb! There is no more to do—we may go!”
Vasho’s moonstone eyes still turned lingeringly and compassionately on the white pavilion under the Wheel of fire. He made expressive signs with his fingers, to which his master answered, almost kindly:
“She will die, you think! If so, my toil is wasted—my supreme experiment is a failure! She must live. And I have sufficient faith in the accuracies of God and Nature as to be almost sure she will! Come!”
He took the reluctant Vasho by the arm and led him to the mysterious door, which swung up in its usual mysterious way at his touch. They passed out, and as the portal swung down again behind them, Dimitrius released a heavy copper bar from one side and clamped it across the whole door, fastening it with lock and key.
“I do this in case you should be tempted to look in,” he said, with a stern smile to his astonished attendant. “You have been faithful and obedient so far—but you know the secret of opening this door when no bar is placed across it,—but with it!—ah, my Vasho!—the devil himself may fumble in vain!”
Vasho essayed a feeble grin,—but his black skin looked a shade less black, as he heard his master’s words and saw his resolute action. Gone was the faint hope the poor blackamoor had entertained of being of some use or rescue to the victim prisoned in the laboratory,—she was evidently doomed to abide her fate. And Dimitrius walked with an unfaltering step through the long corridor from the laboratory into the hall of his house, and then sent Vasho about his usual household business, while he himself went into the garden and looked at the still beauty of the evening. Everywhere there was fragrance and peace—innumerable stars clustered in the sky, and the faint outline of the snowy Alps was dimly perceptible. From the lawn, he could see the subdued glitter of the glass dome of the laboratory; at that moment it had the effect of a crystal sphere with the palest of radiance filtering through.
“And to-morrow is the longest day!” he said with a kind of rapt exultation. “Pray Heaven the sun may shine with all its strongest force and utmost splendour from its rising to its setting! So shall we imprison the eternal fire!”