THE GOLDEN PAVILION
When I opened my eyes it was to a conviction that I dreamed. I lay upon
a cushioned divan in a small apartment which I find myself at a loss
adequately to describe.
It was a yellow room, then, its four walls being hung with yellow silk,
its floor being entirely covered by a yellow Persian carpet. One lamp,
burning in a frame of some lemon coloured wood and having its openings
filled with green glass, flooded the place with a ghastly illumination.
The lamp hung by gold chains from the ceiling, which was yellow.
Several low tables of the same lemon-hued wood as the lamp-frame stood
around; they were inlaid in fanciful designs with gleaming green
stones. Turn my eyes where I would, clutch my aching head as I might,
this dream chamber would not disperse, but remained palpable before
me—yellow and green and gold.
There was a niche behind the divan upon which I lay framed about with
yellow wood. In it stood a golden bowl and a tall pot of yellow
porcelain; I lay amid yellow cushions having golden tassels. Some of
them were figured with vivid green devices.
To contemplate my surroundings assuredly must be to court madness. No
door was visible, no window; nothing but silk and luxury, yellow and
green and gold.
To crown all, the air was heavy with a perfume wholly unmistakable by
one acquainted with Egypt’s ruling vice. It was the reek of smouldering
hashish—a stench that seemed to take me by the throat, a vapour
damnable and unclean. I saw that a little censer, golden in colour and
inset with emeralds, stood upon the furthermost corner of the yellow
carpet. From it rose a faint streak of vapour; and I followed the
course of the sickly scented smoke upward through the still air until
in oily spirals it lost itself near to the yellow ceiling. As a sick
man will study the veriest trifle I studied that wisp of smoke,
pencilled grayly against the silken draperies, the carven tables,
against the almost terrifying persistency of the yellow and green and
gold.
I strove to rise, but was overcome by vertigo and sank back again upon
the yellow cushions. I closed my eyes, which throbbed and burned, and
rested my head upon my hands. I ceased to conjecture if I dreamed or
was awake. I knew that I felt weak and ill, that my head throbbed
agonizingly, that my eyes smarted so as to render it almost impossible
to keep them open, that a ceaseless humming was in my ears.
For some time I lay endeavouring to regain command of myself, to
prepare to face again that scene which had something horrifying in its
yellowness, touched with the green and gold.
And when finally I reopened my eyes, I sat up with a suppressed cry.
For a tall figure in a yellow robe from beneath which peeped yellow
slippers, a figure crowned with a green turban, stood in the centre of
the apartment!
It was that of a majestic old man, white bearded, with aquiline nose,
and the fierce eagle eyes of a fanatic set upon me sternly,
reprovingly.
With folded arms he stood watching me, and I drew a sharp breath and
rose slowly to my feet.
There amid the yellow and green and gold, amid the abominable reek of
burning hashish I stood and faced Hassan of Aleppo!
No words came to me; I was confounded.
Hassan spoke in that gentle voice which I had heard only once before.
“Mr. Cavanagh,” he said, “I have brought you here that I might warn
you. Your police are seeking me night and day, and I am fully alive to
my danger whilst I stay in your midst. But for close upon a thousand
years the Sheikh-al-jebal, Lord of the Hashishin, has guarded the
traditions and the relics of the Prophet, Salla-’llahu ’ale yhi
wasellem! I, Hassan of Aleppo, am Sheikh of the Order to-day, and my
sacred duty has brought me here.”
The piercing gaze never left my face. I was not yet by any means my own
man and still I made no reply.
“You have been wise,” continued Hassan, “in that you have never touched
the sacred slipper. Had you lain hands upon it, no secrecy could have
availed you. The eye of the Hashishin sees all. There is a shaft of
light which the true Believer perceives at night as he travels toward
El-Medineh. It is the light which uprises, a spiritual fire, from the
tomb of the Prophet (Salla-’llahu ’aleyhi wasellem!). The relics also
are radiant, though in a lesser degree.”
He took a step toward me, spreading out his lean brown hands, palms
downward.
“A shaft of light,” he said impressively, “shines upward now from
London. It is the light of the holy slipper.” He gazed intently at the
yellow drapery at the left of the divan, but as though he were looking
not at the wall but through it. His features worked convulsively; he
was a man inspired. “I see it now!” he almost whispered—“that white
light by which the guardians of the relic may always know its resting
place!”
I managed to force words to my lips.
“If you know where the slipper is,” I said, more for the sake of
talking than for anything else, “why do you not recover it?”
Hassan turned his eyes upon me again.
“Because the infidel dog,” he cried loudly, “who has soiled it with his
unclean touch, defies us—mocks us! He has suffered the loss of the
offending hand, but the evil ginn protect him; he is inspired by
efreets! But God is great and Mohammed is His only Prophet! We shall
triumph; but it is written, oh, daring infidel, that you again shall
become the guardian of the slipper!”
He spoke like some prophet of old and I stared at him fascinated. I was
loth to believe his words.
“When again,” he continued, “the slipper shall be in the receptacle of
which you hold the key, that key must be given to me!”
I thought I saw the drift of his words now; I thought I perceived with
what object I had been trapped and borne to this mysterious abode for
whose whereabouts the police vainly were seeking. By the exercise of
the gift of divination it would seem that Hassan of Aleppo had forecast
the future history of the accursed slipper or believed that he had done
so. According to his own words I was doomed once more to become trustee
of the relic. The key of the case at the Antiquarian Museum, to which
he had prophesied the slipper’s return, would be the price of my life!
But—
“In order that these things may be fulfilled,” he continued, “I must
permit you to return to your house. So it is written, so it shall be.
Your life is in my hands; beware when it is demanded of you that you
hesitate not in yielding up the key!”
He raised his hands before him, making a sort of obeisance, I doubt not
in the direction of Mecca, drew aside one of the yellow hangings behind
him and disappeared, leaving me alone again in that nightmare apartment
of yellow and green and gold. A moment I stood watching the swaying
curtain. Utter silence reigned, and a sort of panic seized me
infinitely greater than that occasioned by the presence of the weird
Sheikh. I felt that I must escape from the place or that I should
become raving mad.
I leapt forward to the curtain which Hassan had raised and jerked it
aside; it had concealed a door. In this door and about level with my
eyes was a kind of little barred window through which shone a dim green
light. I bent forward, peering into the place beyond, but was unable to
perceive anything save a vague greenness.
And as I peered, half believing that the whole episode was a dreadful,
fevered dream, the abominable fumes of hashish grew, or seemed to grow,
quite suddenly insupportable. Through the square opening, from the
green void beyond, a cloud of oily vapour, pungent, stifling,
resembling that of burning Indian hemp, poured out and enveloped me!
With a gasping cry I fell back, fighting for breath, for a breath of
clean air unpolluted with hashish. But every inhalation drew down into
my lungs the fumes that I sought to escape from. I experienced a
deathly sickness; I seemed to be sinking into a sea of hashish, amid
bubbles of yellow and green and gold, and I knew no more until,
struggling again to my feet, surrounded by utter darkness—I struck my
head on the corner of my writing-table ... for I lay in my own study!
My revolver, unloaded, was upon the table beside me. The night was very
still. I think it must have been near to dawn.
“My God!” I whispered, “did I dream it all? Did I dream it all?”