_8. Black Wisdom_
"By thought a crawling ruin,
By life a leaping mire,
By a broken heart in the breast of the world
And the end of the world's desire."
--Chesterton.
The terrible spectacle drove for the instant all thoughts of rebellion
from my mind. My very blood froze in my veins and I stood motionless.
I heard Hassim laugh grimly behind me. The eyes in the cadaverous face
blazed fiendishly at me and I blanched from the concentrated Satanic
fury in them.
Then the horror laughed sibilantly.
"I do you a great honor, Mr. Costigan; among a very few, even of my own
servants, you may say that you saw my face and lived. I think you will
be more useful to me living than dead."
I was silent, completely unnerved. It was difficult to believe that
this man lived, for his appearance certainly belied the thought. He
seemed horribly like a mummy. Yet his lips moved when he spoke and his
eyes flamed with hideous life.
"You will do as I say," he said abruptly, and his voice had taken on a
note of command. "You doubtless know, or know of, Sir Haldred Frenton?"
"Yes."
Every man of culture in Europe and America was familiar with the travel
books of Sir Haldred Frenton, author and soldier of fortune.
"You will go to Sir Haldred's estate tonight----"
"Yes?"
"_And kill him!_"
I staggered, literally. This order was incredible--unspeakable! I had
sunk low, low enough to smuggle opium, but to deliberately murder a
man I had never seen, a man noted for his kindly deeds! That was too
monstrous even to contemplate.
"You do not refuse?"
The tone was as loathly and as mocking as the hiss of a serpent.
"Refuse?" I screamed, finding my voice at last. "Refuse? You incarnate
devil! Of course I refuse! You----"
Something in the cold assurance of his manner halted me--froze me into
apprehensive silence.
"You fool!" he said calmly. "I broke the hashish chains--do you know
how? Four minutes from now you will know and curse the day you were
born! Have you not thought it strange, the swiftness of brain, the
resilience of body--the brain that should be rusty and slow, the body
that should be weak and sluggish from years of abuse? That blow that
felled John Gordon--have you not wondered at its might? The ease with
which you mastered Major Morley's records--have you not wondered at
that? You fool, you are bound to me by chains of steel and blood and
fire! I have kept you alive and sane--I alone. Each day the life-saving
elixir has been given you in your wine. You could not live and keep
your reason without it. And I and only I know its secret!"
He glanced at a queer timepiece which stood on a table at his elbow.
"This time I had Yun Shatu leave the elixir out--I anticipated
rebellion. The time is near--ha, it strikes!"
Something else he said, but I did not hear. I did not see, nor did
I feel in the human sense of the word. I was writhing at his feet,
screaming and gibbering in the flames of such hells as men have never
dreamed of.
Aye, I knew now! He had simply given me a dope so much stronger that
it drowned the hashish. My unnatural ability was explainable now--I
had simply been acting under the stimulus of something which combined
all the hells in its make-up, which stimulated, something like heroin,
but whose effect was unnoticed by the victim. What it was, I had no
idea, nor did I believe anyone knew save that hellish being who stood
watching me with grim amusement. But it had held my brain together,
instilling into my system a need for it, and now my frightful craving
tore my soul asunder.
Never, in my moments of worst shell-shock or my moments of
hashish-craving, have I ever experienced anything like that. I burned
with the heat of a thousand hells and froze with an iciness that was
colder than any ice, a hundred times. I swept down to the deepest pits
of torture and up to the highest crags of torment--a million yelling
devils hemmed me in, shrieking and stabbing. Bone by bone, vein by
vein, cell by cell I felt my body disintegrate and fly in bloody atoms
all over the universe--and each separate cell was an entire system
of quivering, screaming nerves. And they gathered from far voids and
reunited with a greater torment.
Through the fiery bloody mists I heard my own voice screaming, a
monotonous yammering. Then with distended eyes I saw a golden goblet,
held by a claw-like hand, swim into view--a goblet filled with an amber
liquid.
With a bestial screech I seized it with both hands, being dimly aware
that the metal stem gave beneath my fingers, and brought the brim to
my lips. I drank in frenzied haste, the liquid slopping down onto my
breast.
_9. Kathulos of Egypt_
"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And Heaven an iron cope."
--Chesterton.
The Skull-faced One stood watching me critically as I sat panting on
a couch, completely exhausted. He held in his hand the goblet and
surveyed the golden stem, which was crushed out of all shape. This my
maniac fingers had done in the instant of drinking.
"Superhuman strength, even for a man in your condition," he said with a
sort of creaky pedantry. "I doubt if even Hassim here could equal it.
Are you ready for your instructions now?"
I nodded, wordless. Already the hellish strength of the elixir was
flowing through my veins, renewing my burnt-out force. I wondered
how long a man could live as I lived being constantly burned out and
artificially rebuilt.
"You will be given a disguise and will go alone to the Frenton estate.
No one suspects any design against Sir Haldred and your entrance into
the estate and the house itself should be a matter of comparative
ease. You will not don the disguise--which will be of unique
nature--until you are ready to enter the estate. You will then proceed
to Sir Haldred's room and kill him, breaking his neck with your bare
hands--this is essential----"
The voice droned on, giving its ghastly orders in a frightfully casual
and matter-of-fact way. The cold sweat beaded my brow.
"You will then leave the estate, taking care to leave the imprint of
your hand somewhere plainly visible, and the automobile, which will
be waiting for you at some safe place near by, will bring you back
here, you having first removed the disguise. I have, in case of later
complications, any amount of men who will swear that you spent the
entire night in the Temple of Dreams and never left it. But there must
be no detection! Go warily and perform your task surely, for you know
the alternative."
I did not return to the opium house but was taken through winding
corridors, hung with heavy tapestries, to a small room containing only
an Oriental couch. Hassim gave me to understand that I was to remain
there until after nightfall and then left me. The door was closed but
I made no effort to discover if it was locked. The Skull-faced Master
held me with stronger shackles than locks and bolts.
Seated upon the couch in the bizarre setting of a chamber which might
have been a room in an Indian zenana, I faced fact squarely and fought
out my battle. There was still in me some trace of manhood left--more
than the fiend had reckoned, and added to this were black despair and
desperation. I chose and determined on my only course.
Suddenly the door opened softly. Some intuition told me whom to expect,
nor was I disappointed. Zuleika stood, a glorious vision before me--a
vision which mocked me, made blacker my despair and yet thrilled me
with wild yearning and reasonless joy.
She bore a tray of food which she set beside me, and then she seated
herself on the couch, her large eyes fixed upon my face. A flower in a
serpent den she was, and the beauty of her took hold of my heart.
"Steephen!" she whispered and I thrilled as she spoke my name for the
first time.
Her luminous eyes suddenly shone with tears and she laid her little
hand on my arm. I seized it in both my rough hands.
"They have set you a task which you fear and hate!" she faltered.
"Aye," I almost laughed, "but I'll fool them yet! Zuleika, tell
me--what is the meaning of all this?"
She glanced fearfully around her.
"I do not know all"--she hesitated--"your plight is all my fault but
I--I hoped--Steephen, I have watched you every time you came to Yun
Shatu's for months. You did not see me but I saw you, and I saw in you,
not the broken sot your rags proclaimed, but a wounded soul, a soul
bruised terribly on the ramparts of life. And from my heart I pitied
you. Then when Hassim abused you that day"--again tears started to her
eyes--"I could not bear it and I knew how you suffered for want of
hashish. So I paid Yun Shatu, and going to the Master I--I--oh, you
will hate me for this!" she sobbed.
"No--no--never----"
"I told him that you were a man who might be of use to him and begged
him to have Yun Shatu supply you with what you needed. He had already
noticed you, for his is the eye of the slaver and all the world is his
slave market! So he bade Yun Shatu do as I asked; and now--better if
you had remained as you were, my friend."
"No! No!" I exclaimed. "I have known a few days of regeneration, even
if it was false! I have stood before you as a man, and that is worth
all else!"
And all that I felt for her must have looked forth from my eyes, for
she dropped hers and flushed. Ask me not how love comes to a man; but
I knew that I loved Zuleika--had loved this mysterious Oriental girl
since first I saw her--and somehow I felt that she, in a measure,
returned my affection. This realization made blacker and more barren
the road I had chosen; yet--for pure love must ever strengthen a
man--it nerved me to what I must do.
"Zuleika," I said, speaking hurriedly, "time flies and there are things
I must learn; tell me--who are you and why do you remain in this den of
Hades?"
"I am Zuleika--that is all I know. I am Circassian by blood and birth;
when I was very little I was captured in a Turkish raid and raised in a
Stamboul harem; while I was yet too young to marry, my master gave me
as a present to--to _Him_."
"And who is he--this skull-faced man?"
"He is Kathulos of Egypt--that is all I know. My master."
"An Egyptian? Then what is he doing in London--why all this mystery?"
She intertwined her fingers nervously.
"Steephen, please speak lower; always there is someone listening
everywhere. I do not know who the Master is or why he is here or why
he does these things. I swear by Allah! If I knew I would tell you.
Sometimes distinguished-looking men come here to the room where the
Master receives them--not the room where you saw him--and he makes me
dance before them and afterward flirt with them a little. And always
I must repeat exactly what they say to me. That is what I must always
do--in Turkey, in the Barbary States, in Egypt, in France and in
England. The Master taught me French and English and educated me in
many ways himself. He is the greatest sorcerer in all the world and
knows all ancient magic and everything."
"Zuleika," I said, "my race is soon run, but let me get you out of
this--come with me and I swear I'll get you away from this fiend!"
She shuddered and hid her face.
"No, no, I can not!"
"Zuleika," I asked gently, "what hold has he over you, child--dope
also?"
"No, no!" she whimpered. "I do not know--I do not know--but I can
not--I never can escape him!"
I sat, baffled for a few moments; then I asked, "Zuleika, where are we
right now?"
"This building is a deserted storehouse back of the Temple of Silence."
"I thought so. What is in the chests in the tunnel?"
"I do not know."
Then suddenly she began weeping softly. "You too, a slave, like me--you
who are so strong and kind--oh Steephen, I can not bear it!"
I smiled. "Lean closer, Zuleika, and I will tell you how I am going to
fool this Kathulos."
She glanced apprehensively at the door.
"You must speak low. I will lie in your arms and while you pretend to
caress me, whisper your words to me."
She glided into my embrace, and there on the dragon-worked couch in
that house of horror I first knew the glory of Zuleika's slender form
nestling in my arms--of Zuleika's soft cheek pressing my breast. The
fragrance of her was in my nostrils, her hair in my eyes, and my senses
reeled; then with my lips hidden by her silky hair I whispered, swiftly:
"I am going first to warn Sir Haldred Frenton--then to find John
Gordon and tell him of this den. I will lead the police here and you
must watch closely and be ready to hide from _Him_--until we can break
through and kill or capture him. Then you will be free."
"But you!" she gasped, paling. "You must have the elixir, and only
he----"
"I have a way of outdoing him, child," I answered.
She went pitifully white and her woman's intuition sprang at the right
conclusion.
"You are going to kill yourself!"
And much as it hurt me to see her emotion, I yet felt a torturing
thrill that she should feel so on my account. Her arms tightened about
my neck.
"Don't, Steephen!" she begged. "It is better to live, even----"
"No, not at that price. Better to go out clean while I have the manhood
left."
She stared at me wildly for an instant; then, pressing her red lips
suddenly to mine, she sprang up and fled from the room. Strange,
strange are the ways of love. Two stranded ships on the shores of life,
we had drifted inevitably together, and though no word of love had
passed between us, we knew each other's heart--through grime and rags,
and through the accoutrements of the slave, we knew each other's heart
and from the first loved as naturally and as purely as it was intended
from the beginning of Time.
The beginning of life now and the end for me, for as soon as I had
completed my task, ere I felt again the torments of my curse, love and
life and beauty and torture should be blotted out together in the stark
finality of a pistol ball scattering my rotting brain. Better a clean
death than----
The door opened again and Yussef Ali entered.
"The hour arrives for departure," he said briefly. "Rise and follow."
I had no idea, of course, as to the time. No window opened from the
room I occupied--I had seen no outer window whatever. The rooms were
lighted by tapers in censers swinging from the ceiling. As I rose the
slim young Moor slanted a sinister glance in my direction.
"This lies between you and me," he said sibilantly. "Servants of the
same Master we--but this concerns ourselves alone. Keep your distance
from Zuleika--the Master has promised her to me in the days of the
empire."
My eyes narrowed to slits as I looked into the frowning, handsome face
of the Oriental, and such hate surged up in me as I have seldom known.
My fingers involuntarily opened and closed, and the Moor, marking the
action, stepped back, hand in his girdle.
"Not now--there is work for us both--later perhaps;" then in a sudden
cold gust of hatred, "Swine! ape-man! when the Master is finished with
you I shall quench my dagger in your heart!"