I believed him—I could not help but believe. Can anything be impossible, so long as man is gifted with free will for good and evil? Must he not have the ladder to scale Olympus, and thereby learn of heights beyond? I flung myself upon my knees before Sanson, like some poor father pleading for his son’s life, and implored him to draw back. As he stood watching me I babbled about the terror in the world, the boon of death, the long-linked chain of humanity, bound all together as a spiritual unit, which he would sever. I reminded him of the old days under Sir Spofforth, of the old, free world we had lost. How had he bettered it? I think I moved him, too, though, when I ended, he was regarding me with a cold smile of negation.
“You want me to turn back, Arnold,” he said. “Once there was a time when I hesitated. But ... can even that God of yours turn back? Come with me, Arnold, and for the sake of the old friendship to which you have appealed I will give you power. Defective as you are, you shall live your life to the full capacity of your talent. You shall not suffer because you came so unkindly into this world of ours. If your mind turns toward pleasures such as that foul defective Lembken enjoys, they shall be yours. If not, then you shall work with me as you used to do. When I and Esther rule the world together, immortal as the fabled gods, you shall sit at our feet and be our confidant.”
That I hoped still to win Esther had never entered the man’s mind. The sublimity of his egotism was the measure of his blindness. Just as he had entered the cellar, so self-absorbed that he had failed to see the benches and the crucifix, nor dreamed that here, where his evil dreams began, their end was planned, so, now, he did not see. The devilish will that had carried him thus far would bring him to destruction.
At my hands, if I played the part shrewdly. But I lost all self-command.
“Though you have all the world at your feet, Sanson,” I cried, “you can never hold me to obedience, nor Esther either. I love her, and we shall both die before we yield!”
For an instant I saw his face before me, twisted with all the passions of his thwarted will; then I saw the blinding white light leap from his Ray rod as he fired at me.
CHAPTER XX
THE SWEEP OF THE NET
“I am not at all afraid,” I retorted, nettled at Lazaroff’s sneer, “but how do I get in?”
A dog was yelping somewhere outside the Institute, and all the dogs in Croydon seemed to have taken up its challenge. It was difficult for me to make my voice audible above the uproar.
“I am not at all afraid,” I repeated, “but—”