Jan of the Jungle Page 18

  During the following week, a circular trench about four feet wide and eight feet deep was dug around the tree which held Jan's hut. A few inches of the top soil and sod were retained, but all other soil taken out was dumped into the stream.

  Then many copper wires were stretched about in the trench, after which it was covered with crossed sticks barely strong enough to sustain the earth and sod laid on them. Running from this trench to the doctor's cabin, slightly below the surface of the soil, was a concealed insulated electric cable.

  His trap completed, the doctor settled down to await the arrival of his victim. His Indians supposed the trench to be an animal trap. Every time a tapir blundered into it, Bracken pretended to be highly elated, made the necessary repairs, and covered the surface as before.

  One night the doctor returned to his cabin, tired out after a long march. He had been to the hacienda on the occasion of Ramona's home-coming from school.

  The doctor climbed into his bunk and was just closing his eyes in slumber when the alarm bell sounded on the wall near him. He got up, struck a light, and shut off the alarm. By this time several of his Indians had responded.

  "I suppose another confounded tapir has fallen into the pit," he grumbled, as he got into his clothing. "But we'll see."

  Carrying flash lights, he and the Indians left for the trap. Walking in the lead, the doctor quickly saw a hole in the thin covering between the tree and the river.

  The air was heavy with mingled odors of gas and ether.

  The doctor stepped up to the hole, and flashed his light within. Then he gasped in astonishment. His trap contained a victim!

  Two Indians came up with stout looped ropes. When they saw what lay in the bottom of the pit, they too 'gaped in amazement. For it was the body of a man clad from head to foot in shining golden armor.

  One loop was dropped around a foot, and pushed into place with a long pole. The other was dropped around the helmeted head. In a few moments the armored body lay on the surface of the ground.

  With his long pole, the doctor shut off the machinery that was flooding the interior of the trench with ether-spray and gas. Then he raised one of his victim's eyelids to note the degree of anaesthesia.

  Under his directions, a crude litter was constructed, and in this the insensible one was conveyed to his cabin. The Indians were told to go to their bunks.

  As soon as they were gone, the doctor stripped Jan of his armor and clothing. Then he fashioned a crude garment for him from one of his jaguar skins, and dragged him into the cage. From his medicine case, he took a bottle marked with the Latin name, "Cannabis indica."

  When Jan showed signs of returning consciousness, Bracken prepared a solution of the hashish, which he gave him to drink. Then the victim relapsed into a drugged slumber, and the doctor went back to his bunk.

  For more than two weeks the doctor kept Jan under the influence of hashish, that drug which changes the gentlest of men to dangerous, insane killers. Hashish, the mind-destroyer, from which we have derived our word "assassin."

  It was his purpose to undermine Jan's mentality by drugs and hypnotic suggestion, until Jan had reverted to the stage at which he escaped from the menagerie and would be therefore subject to the doctor's control as he had been during his life behind the bars of a cage.

  Dr. Bracken also constructed a cage on wheels, a narrow affair that could be dragged along the jungle paths cleared by machetes. When all was ready, he traveled north until he came within striking range of his victim, Georgia Trevor. An Indian was dispatched to circle the plantation and come back from the north with the report that Jan had been seen in that direction.

  From his place of concealment, the doctor grinned his triumph as he saw Harry Trevor and Don Fernando leave with a party of searchers, following their false informant.

  He waited for darkness, then saw to it that his stage was properly set. Georgia Trevor, he observed, was alone in the living room of the cottage they were occupying while the big house was being built.

  After leaving instructions with Santos and the two Indians who waited in the shadows with the caged Jan, he walked boldly up to the front door and entered.

  Georgia Trevor, who had been reading, started up in astonishment at his abrupt entrance.

  "You!" she said. "I thought it was Harry, coming back."

  "I have a surprise for you," he announced. "Remain where you are."

  "You don't mean-?"

  "But I do. I've found your son. I've found Jan."

  There was the sound of shuffling feet-something sliding across the porch toward the door.

  The doctor clapped his hands. A figure shambled into the room, walking ape-like on toes and knuckles-a redheaded youth whose sole garment was a tattered jaguar skin.

  Georgia Trevor gazed at the figure, horrified, fascinated, as a bird gazes at a serpent about to devour it. Jan's eyes stared wildly back at her-devoid of reason, menacing.

  "Madame," said the doctor, "behold your son." Then he suddenly clapped his hands, and cried:

  "Mother! Kill!"

  He watched gloatingly as with a horrible bestial roar, the drug-crazed Jan charged straight for the woman who had borne him.

  Ramona Suarez drew the prow of her canoe up on the dock in front of the Trevor cottage. The dona had gone to bed with a headache, leaving Ramona to her own devices, and the girl had decided that she would cross the river and spend the evening with Georgia Trevor.

  As she walked up the sloping lawn toward the house, she noticed a shadowy something on the front porch.

  There seemed to be a cart at the bottom of the steps, and from this two men were sliding a tall, narrow cage toward the door. She walked closer, then gave a little gasp of surprise for by the lamplight that streamed out from the house she saw that Jan was in the cage. It was being moved by Santos and one of the Indians who had abducted her. Although she had no inkling of the purpose behind these actions, she knew that it could not be other than evil. She must warn Jan's mother.

  Keeping in the shadow of the shrubbery, she ran lightly around to the side of the house. A French window stood open, and there was a screen door on that side of the porch. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and stepped silently inside. Through the French window she saw Georgia Trevor, pale and frightened, standing beside her chair. Advancing toward her with a peculiar, ape-like walk and the look of an insane killer in his bloodshot eyes, was Jan.

  She heard the words of the doctor: "Madame, behold your son," and his command, "Mother! Kill!"

  As Jan emitted his terrible roar and charged, Ramona ran between him and his mother.

  "Jan! Jan!" she cried. "What are you doing? Stop!"

  Jan paused, stood erect, staring fixedly at her as if trying to evoke some lost memory.

  The doctor seized her by the arm, jerked her roughly aside.

  "Keep out of this, you little foot!" he snarled.

  Some thought, some suggestion penetrated Jan's hypnotized, drug-fogged mind as the doctor dragged the girl aside. This girl was his. Some one-it must be an enemy-was hurting her.

  With a second roar as thunderous as the first, he charged again, but this time at the doctor.

  Ramona covered her eyes with her hands. There were groans, snarls, thuds curses-the snapping of human bones and the rending of human flesh. Then an ominous stillness, broken only by some one's loud, labored breathing.

  Suddenly Ramona was caught up as lightly as if she had been a child and carried out of the house, across the lawn, through the rows of young rubber trees, into the darkness of the jungle.

  Weeks later, Harry Trevor and his wife were following four Indians who carried in a litter, a hideous, misshapen wreck of a man. One eyelid sagged in an empty socket.

  An ear was missing. Where the nose should have been, a small square of surgical gauze was held in place by bits of crossed tape. The arms and legs were twisted and useless.

  When it was found that the mangled form of Dr. Bracken had some life in it an Indian
had been dispatched for Padre Luis. But he had returned with the news that the good padre had gone on a mission in the interior, and would be gone for weeks. It was a journey of two weeks to the nearest surgeon, and it would take him two more weeks to return. By that time it would be too late to set the doctor's broken arms and legs. And he was so near death that he could not travel.

  So the woman and man he had devoted the best years of his life to injuring, nursed him and did the best they could to maintain his flickering spark of life.

  He had recovered sufficiently in six weeks to stand travel in a litter, and Harry Trevor was sending him to Bolivar for surgical attention.

  As the Indians carefully deposited the litter in the boat, a canoe drew up beside it and grounded against the sloping landing. A tall straight clean-limbed young man with the features of a Greek god crowned by a tumbling mass of auburn curls sprang lightly out. He stood for a moment, smiling at the couple who stood on the dock staring at him as if they could not believe their eyes.

  His silken garments, decked with gold and jewels worth a fortune, were those of another age. Jewels blazed from the golden hilts of the sword and dagger that hung from his belt.

  "Father! Mother!" he said, holding out his arms. "I am your son, Jan. I have come back to you because-because we need each other."

  The hideous wreck in the litter cocked its good eye up at the little group on the dock-saw Jan embrace his father, kiss his mother, whose auburn head barely reached to his shoulder. With a shudder Dr. Bracken turned away from the sight of his ruined plan for revenge.

  "Where is Ramona?" Jan's mother asked.

  "She is with her father and mother," replied Jan. "Her real father and mother. She's a royal princess, you know. I just came from the hacienda. Carried a message to the don and dona for her. She will live with her own parents, but has promised' to visit them often."

  "And you, Jan-my son! My boy! You will stay with us, won't you, now that we've found you after all these years? Think of it! I have always thought of you as a baby, for all those years, but I find you grown up-a man."

  "Of course I'll stay, mother, for a while. And I'll come back often. But next month you must come with me for a visit. Preparations are being made for a royal wedding, and I wouldn't want to keep Ramona waiting."

  "Jan! You mean that you two are going to be married?"

  "Of course. And mother, other than you, she is the most wonderful girl in all the world."

  THE END