"Wait until it fairly starts," countered d'Artois in a whisper. "This
is primitive magic. Very primitive, but deadly. They are imitating that
which they design to accomplish.
"_Pardieu_, hear that damnable pipe--_her_ very voice, now. They
imitate in music and symbolize in their chant the triumph of the dead
as they return from Beyond."
That satanically sweet voice was now almost articulate. Farrell
strained his ears as he leaned forward, clutching the arms of his
chair. He sought to distinguish the words that it spoke. And then
another instrument came into play: a hoarse, reverberant roaring like
the lustful bellowing of pre-Adamite monsters. The hall trembled with
that terrific bestial blast.
The fumes of the censers were swirling and twining like fantasmal
serpents in the ghastly blueness, weaving arabesques, spiralling
in vortices, gathering about that hellish sextet and its leader
like shapes from beyond the border clamoring at the periphery of a
necromancer's pentacle.
A luminous haze was gathering and drawing to itself the censer fumes.
The nebulous iridescence pulsed and quivered like a sentient thing.
It throbbed with the slow, persistent beat of a turtle's heart after
it has been removed from the body. It elongated; then as it slowly
settled, that amorphous luminescence took shape: the graceful form of
La Dorada.
The pipe that mimicked a woman's voice was articulating now in unison,
joining the necromancer's antiphonal answer to the chanting adepts and
the minotaurean bellowing of that monstrous horn.
The master had called her, and she was there.
The phantom presence slowly merged with the nacreous body of La
Dorada. The dead woman shivered for a moment, extended her shapely
arms, sat erect on the bier. Her cry was a mingling of exultation and
bewilderment; then she accepted the hand that Shirkuh offered her, and
splendid in her unclad beauty, sprang gracefully to the dais.
[Illustration: "_The dead woman shivered for a moment, then sat erect
on the bier._"]
The music and the chanting and the bestial roaring of that terrific
horn had ceased. The assembled thaumaturges sat fixed and staring as
though their life and their spiritual essence had been torn from them
and given to the dead who saluted them with a gesture and a bow.
Shirkuh smiled triumphantly.
"You have seen, Brethren. I called her and she came. And I am but
Shirkuh, the least of the slaves. See, she is alive, with the warmth
and beauty that at noon of this very day was a coldness, and a sister
of the dust."
The red-gold head inclined in affirmation, and her smile was a slow,
curved sorcery.
"Good God, that's the awfulest blasphemy!" muttered Farrell. "Or is it
an illusion?"
"It is all too real," whispered d'Artois.
* * * * *
And then she spoke: "I have come back from the shadows and from the
blackness of death. I have come to greet you and to say that there is
a Garden to which I must soon return. And those who meet me there need
not ever think of farewell.
"I came from across the narrow bridge, and back across it I must go.
Yet not this time to any blackness, but to the Garden, to be the Bride
and the reward and the welcome of those who believe. Oh, _Fedawi_ ...
Devoted Ones...."
La Dorada, lovely in death, and more alluring than ever in life: yet a
cold horror clutched Farrell as he heard that dead woman's caressing
voice entrance the thaumaturges with promises that no human woman
could fulfill or even imagine. Her voice was a poison sweetness, a
full-throated richness that pronounced the beguilements of Lilith
chanting to the Morning Star.
"Death so loved me that he has allowed me to leave," she said in that
wondrous voice that had made her the darling of Paris. And then her
exultant tones became a poignant sorrow as she continued, "But the
beloved of death must return...."
"_Cordieu!_ That is a foulness beyond mention!" growled d'Artois. Then:
"Let's go! Before we go utterly mad----"
He leaped to his feet and thrust back his chair. And as Farrell
followed, he expected at any instant a fanatical outburst, the flash
of blades, the crackle of pistols. But the thaumaturges sat like the
ancient dead awaiting the newly died.
La Dorada was ascending the bier. Her motions were graceful, but very
slow, as though the animation was being drained from her body. She was
dying a second time.
This as they paused at the threshold for a backward glance; then,
advancing, Farrell and d'Artois sighed deeply, and strode to the
Renault. The hideous life-like unreality had dazed them.
"_Dieu de Dieu!_" muttered d'Artois as he glanced at Farrell's lean,
drawn features, and shoulders drooping as though from the weight of the
Persian mail they had so needlessly worn. "What did that blasphemous
monster want with us? Did he hope to drive us to madness?"
"No," said Farrell wearily. "He was mocking us. Certainly he didn't
withhold his cutthroats because he was afraid to try."
* * * * *
The long beam of the headlights swept the château, then picked up the
winding road as the car headed back toward the city. D'Artois sat
hunched behind the wheel. Farrell shivered at the memory of that
ghastly loveliness that had greeted them from the grave.
"I know she was dead," reiterated Farrell. "She couldn't have been
alive. Not with that dagger I saw jammed into her breast this
afternoon. But why did he invite you? What everlastingly damned
mummery--there's something behind all this--she's going to greet them
in the Garden and there will be no farewell--was that all illusion,
or----"
Farrell slumped back against the cushions and made a gesture of
bewilderment and futility.
They left the river road, passed through the Mousserole Gate, and
threaded their way through the unsavory quarters between there and the
Nive. As they crossed the first of the seven bridges that span the
river, d'Artois suddenly jerked back from his crouch behind the wheel.
"_Nom de Dieu!_" he exclaimed.
Farrell, aroused by the note of alarm, glanced at his companion and saw
that the horror on his face was in keeping with the consternation in
his voice.
The car leaped forward as d'Artois stepped on the accelerator.
"Death and damnation!" he shouted above the full-throated roar of the
motor. "We sat there like dummies. _That_ is what he wanted!"
"What?" demanded Farrell, tense, and alarmed by d'Artois' contagious
excitement. A sudden fear seized him.
"A trap. Not for your worthless head nor mine, but for her!
Thaumaturgy! If there is but one greater damn fool than Glenn Farrell,
it is Pierre d'Artois!"
They passed the plaza, and with a screech of brakes slowed down enough
to make the turn at rue Port Neuf. Then up rue d'Espagne, around the
hairpin turn, and thence down the street along the city wall. Again the
brake linings smoked their wrath and squealed their protest. Fuming
and cursing in a high rage, d'Artois leaped to the curbing, dashed up
the steps, and pounded Antoinette Delatour's door with the butt of his
pistol.
"_Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?_" cried the terrified, bewildered maid.
"Flames and damnation! Open, quick!" demanded d'Artois. "_C'est moi!_"
"But she is sleeping," protested the maid, still half asleep.
"Hasten, then. If she sleeps, wake her--is she indeed----"
And as the door yielded, d'Artois, pistol in hand, charged up the
stairs, taking them three at a time. Farrell was but a jump behind him.
They pounded on Antoinette's door. No response.
"The key----" began d'Artois.
But Farrell stepped back, gathered himself, and charged the door. It
resisted the shock; but a second assault burst it open, tearing the
lock from its socket.
The floor of Antoinette's room was covered with fallen plaster. Her bed
was empty. A hole two feet square yawned in the ceiling. The turquoise
and silver slippers mocked them.
"Gone!" muttered Farrell.
"While we sat there ready for an ambush that didn't materialize," added
d'Artois.
Farrell turned to the door. D'Artois seized him by the arm.
"_Tenez!_ If you are going to tear the château to pieces," he said,
"spare yourself the trouble. They have taken her elsewhere. No effort
was made to detain us when we left because none was necessary. And they
will not be at the château, not any of them."
Farrell's eyes were cold as sword-points as they flashed back again to
the empty, canopied bed. Then the slaying rage left him.
"Right, Pierre," he admitted. "It's your move. With some head-work."
"Head-work, indeed!" retorted d'Artois with a bitter, mordant laugh.
"It was my head-work that led to this. We should have watched her."
_5. Ibrahim Khan_
"Now, where do we start?" demanded Farrell the following morning, as
he tasted the strong coffee that was to banish the remains of the
nightmarish sleep from which sunrise had awakened them. "You've got the
_Sûreté_--that's what you call your detective bureau, isn't it?--on
the trail. But there's a lot of this that no honest policeman could
swallow."
"It is indeed a madhouse," admitted d'Artois. "But let us sum up for
a moment: Antoinette is evidently _en rapport_ with some one in that
Garden; some one with whom she identifies herself, and whose savage
beatings in some way leave marks on Antoinette's body.
"By means of clairvoyance or other unusual perception, she recognized
the Marquis in her dream garden, her description of which tallies
closely with the traditional paradise devised by the higher Ismailians
for the deluding of their fanatical assassins.
"Assassins operating very much like the _fedawi_ of five centuries ago
murdered La Dorada, the sweetheart of the Marquis. La Dorada bears a
marked resemblance to Antoinette, though far from enough to make her a
double, except under the most favorable conditions.
"The terribly resurrected La Dorada last night spoke of a Garden. And
the dying La Dorada pronounced the name Hassan just before she expired
in the plaza. Through the whole chain of horror and deviltry, we see a
continuous linkage of the Ismailians and the _hasheeshin_ of accursed
memory.
"Antoinette," continued d'Artois, "must in some way be involved in a
mesh of necromancy and murder that hinges on her resemblance to La
Dorada. It is not impossible that she was kidnapped to double for La
Dorada in that accursed Garden.
"And finally," concluded d'Artois, "this society of thaumaturges, which
has made such overgrown fools of us, is obviously allied to or even
an integral part of the society of Ismailians and its higher orders,
adepts, occultists, necromancers, and devil-mongers of all degrees."
"Now that you've summed it up, what are we going to do?" reiterated
Farrell.
"You will take the trail at once," replied d'Artois.
Farrell brightened perceptibly at the hint of direct action.
"Shoot," he said bruskly.
"_Mais non_," countered d'Artois, "it is you who will shoot if my plan
is right. You are deft at disguise, and you speak several Oriental
languages like a native."
D'Artois paused, intently studied the lean, bronzed features of his
friend, and his cold gray eyes.
"An Arab," he muttered. "Possible, but not so good. A Kurd ... yes,
that would be better."
"Wrong!" contradicted Farrell. "There were some Kurds at the château
last night, notably that hell-hound of a Shirkuh. And the first of the
assassins I shot down in the plaza was a Kurd. Too many of them in the
picture. I might be tripped on their dialect."
"An Afghan, then," compromised d'Artois. "They are Aryans, and our
blood brothers, those Afghans. You will loiter around the waterfront. I
will warn the _Sûreté_ to arrest you at times, but to release you for
lack of evidence; so be careful not to be too brazen in building up a
local background of feuds and slayings to substantiate your supposed
reason for having left your native hills.
"It is a slim chance; but it is possible that you will stumble across
some Ismailian who will favorably mark your possibilities. In the
meanwhile, I will keep in touch with you as much as possible.
"But remember, one false move will betray your mission. And the first
warning you will receive will be a dagger jammed very deeply into your
back. You are flirting with sudden death the moment you leave this
house."
* * * * *
That afternoon Farrell lurched from a doorway that the most vivid
imagination could not have associated with the house of Pierre
d'Artois. The shape of his eyebrows had been changed by judicious
plucking. His hair had been dyed, and the cut of his mustaches altered.
Tenacious, finely powdered pigments had been rubbed into his eyelids
and about his eyes so as to change their expression: all trifles,
yet the total effect, aided by the drunken swagger, the gestures,
the reek of _'araki_ and foreign tobacco, was that Glenn Farrell had
disappeared, and that a hard, haggard, quarrelsome Afghan sobering
up from a spree strode muttering down rue Saint Augustin, and thence
toward the _quai_ along the Adour.
He found fishing-vessels, tramps from Algiers, and a _zaroug_ that had
sailed all the way from the Red Sea with its crew of stout Danakils.
Husayn, its _nakhoda_, was a lean, grizzled Arab whose manner suggested
pearl-poaching, smuggling, or slave-running from the Somali Coast to
Arabia, with piracy thrown in for good measure.... Husayn spoke of his
health, which forbade further traffic on the Red Sea....
There was a Levantin, oily and cringing, who peddled narcotics....
There were brawls along the waterfront. No true Afghan would or could
abstain. A fight was a fight.
Very soon the waterfront boasted a new character, a quarrelsome Afghan,
drunken, bawdy, stranded, swearing loudly by the honor of the Durani
clan, and ready for any skulduggery. Ibrahim Khan, they called him.
Once in a while some whining cadger of drinks would mutter as Ibrahim
Khan reviled him and tossed him a franc. That was a member of the
_Sûreté_ giving, and receiving, the lack of news that is falsely said
to be good news. Sometimes it was warning, but never encouragement.
The quarter of the city that lies between the Nive and the Mousserole
Wall is so disreputable that during the war it was out of bounds for
soldiers. It is a district of narrow, dingy streets, dirty cafés,
bawdy-houses of the lowest order; it abounds in cheap wine, cheaper
women, and all the scum and riffraff of a polyglot border-and-seaport
town.
While the upper stratum of the enemy was doubtless of high degree, the
foundation layer would be in the mire. The underworld of France would
furnish its quota for the lower order of assassins. The master mind
needed dirty tools for dirty work; and here, among the thieves, pimps,
cutthroats of beyond the river, the trail might be picked up.
Ibrahim Khan sat in one of the dingiest of those unsavory resorts,
muttering in Pushtu and Arabic and broken French, alternately gross
and poetic as he courted the attention of Marcelle, the barmaid whose
coarse, buxom loveliness drew trade for all departments of the house.
"Tie your husband to a rope, Bimbar,
Tie the rope to a tree;
Throw the tree in the river, Bimbar,
And come to your lover."
Thus he chanted in amorous, wine-muddled accents, the whole stanza
in one breath, and, in the Afghan fashion, ending in a high-pitched,
gasping cry, a full octave higher.
The girl did not understand the words; but there was one sitting in the
corner who did.
"Oh, my brother," he murmured, and spat contemptuously, "are such as
that sister of pigs fit for the pride of the Durani clan?"
Ibrahim Khan's hand flashed to the hilt of one of the knives that
bristled in his belt. But before he could draw, the thin-faced man
smiled.
"Put that knife away, brother," he said. "I have news for you."
"Well?" interrogated Ibrahim Khan a little less belligerently. "Out
with it."
"Softly, softly," murmured the stranger. Ibrahim Khan had never seen
him along the waterfront, or in the Mousserole quarter. "I am Nureddin.
I have been interested in your handiness in certain matters ... and
Husayn, the _nakhoda_, speaks well of you----"
"He should, Allah blacken him!" admitted Ibrahim Khan, who under his
layer of grime was Glenn Farrell, trembling with eagerness to follow
up what he sensed was the first open move to take the bait he had so
patiently and thus far vainly offered the enemy.
"There are women," continued Nureddin, "lovelier than the brides of
paradise."
Farrell laughed contemptuously, and made an insulting remark that left
little doubt as to his opinion of Nureddin's profession: but that was
to play his part as a truculent Afghan.
"Nay, by Allah!" protested Nureddin with a good-humored laugh. "It is
not what you think. Follow me, if you have courage."
Farrell scrutinized Nureddin for an instant. Whatever game Nureddin
might be playing, it would certainly not be for small counters. Then
Farrell, still feigning skepticism, drew from the pocket of his grimy,
ill-fitting suit a small pouch, hefted it so that the gold it contained
clinked softly. He tossed the money to Marcelle.
"_Ya_ Nureddin, I will fight as eagerly for my naked hide as for a
pouch of gold. Now if you still want me to meet your friends, I will
entertain them royally, _inshallah_!"
Nureddin smiled and stroked his chin.
"By Allah, O Afghan, you are suspicious. Follow me."
"Lead on," agreed Farrell.
* * * * *
He followed Nureddin to the street and thence to an alley so narrow
that with his outstretched arms he could at the same time touch the
buildings on both sides: and the narrowness was exceeded only by the
stench. Nureddin halted at the end of the alley. A heavy, iron-bound
door barred further progress.
"From here you must go blindfolded," said Nureddin.
"By your beard!" mocked Farrell as his hand flashed into view with a
pistol whose cavernous muzzle gaped ominously. "Perhaps you would like
to bind my hands also? Now, forward! Or I will blow thy teeth right and
left ... if it so please Allah," he concluded piously.
"Fire!" retorted Nureddin. "The Master would give me a less pleasant
death for disobeying his orders."
In the moonlight Farrell could see the perspiration that glittered on
Nureddin's forehead; but he did not flinch.
"_La, billahi!_" ejaculated Farrell after a moment. "Were there a blood
feud between us, I would. But as it is----" He shrugged, holstered his
pistol, and turned, to stalk down the narrow alley.
Farrell was certain, now, that he was on the right trail. But since
spies are notoriously eager to agree to anything and everything to gain
admittance to forbidden doors, Farrell had to play the blustering,
alternately suspicious and fool-hardy Afghan. He swaggered away in his
lordly fashion, presenting his back as a fair target for hurled knife,
or pistol fire.
"_Ya_ Ibrahim!" protested Nureddin. "Be reasonable. _He_ ordered. It is
on my head----"
"_He_, whoever he is," retorted Farrell, "may then seek me himself and
I will induce him to change his rules. _Wallah!_ And your head, that is
no more than a ball to play with!"
"Oh, well, have it your own way," agreed Nureddin resignedly as Farrell
again turned. Then he clapped his hands sharply.
Farrell sensed his danger; but before he could whirl and draw,
something soft and clinging enveloped him. It was a net whose fine,
stout silken cords bound his limbs and entangled him.
"God, by the Very God, by the One True God!" he swore, struggling
with the soft, relentless thing that enmeshed him like a monstrous
spider-web, and seeking to draw a knife. "Pig and father of pigs!"
Something emerged from the shadow of the pilaster that buttressed the
wall. Farrell dropped flat, still striving to extricate himself and
tackle his enemy. He secured a footing and leaped up, butting his
shoulder with a terrific jolt into his enemy's stomach.
A grunt and a gasped curse. A warning cry from Nureddin. The knife in
Farrell's hand slashed a dozen meshes in the net. Then, before he could
follow up and extricate himself, a form dropped from a window directly
above, driving him flat against the paving. His knife dug vainly
between the cobblestones. He recovered, thrust upward....
Smack! Something hard and heavy and swiftly moving swept his senses
away as he felt his blade bite home.
_6. Satan's Garden_
The slow, steady drip-drip-drip of water dropping against stones crept
into Farrell's consciousness and finally became an impression distinct
from the trip-hammer throbbing of his battered head. He stirred, and
found that he was not bound. The holster under his left arm was empty.
One of his knives, however, remained.
"If they wanted my hide, they could have taken it in the alley," he
reflected as he pieced together his recollections of the encounter. "So
far, it looks as if I've got 'em fooled."
Then, in Arabic, "_Aie_ ... my head! O dogs and sons of dogs, come out
and fight! _Ya_ Nureddin, thou son of a strumpet, thou uncle of camels!
Thou eater of unclean food!"
The cell echoed with his bellowing. As he paused for breath, he reeled,
clutched at the wall from whose base he had arisen, and supported
himself. A torch flared smokily in the distance, from its sconce in the
wall of the passage that opened into his cell.
"Father of many pigs!" he stormed as he kicked the iron grillework that
barred his advance, and rattled the chain and lock that secured the
door.
The clattering and jangling finally drew a protest from beyond
Farrell's field of vision. Then a fat, white-bearded fellow with bleary
eyes and a bloated, sottish face emerged from a cross passage.
"Silence a moment!" he croaked as he took the torch from its sconce and
advanced toward the grille.
"Bring me that dog of a Nureddin!" raged Farrell.
"One thing at a time," replied the warden. "Calm down and I'll promise
you action."
"Oh, very well, then," agreed Farrell. "Lead on, Uncle."
Uncle drew a pistol and, keeping Farrell covered, unlocked the door.
"Now, wild man, forward!" he ordered. "And no false moves."
The slimy, glistening sides of the passage indicated that they were far
beneath the surface of the city; perhaps in that labyrinth of vaults
and connecting tunnels of which local tradition has murmured darkly and
vaguely. Although his head ached from contact with material weapons
wielded by physical enemies, Farrell shuddered at the evil that brooded
about that archaic masonry and muttered of that which had emerged to
defile the dead with obscene necromancies, and torment the living with
monstrous hallucinations that came in the guise of dreams. The aura of
age-old menace overpowered the terror of the Ismailian assassins.
"To your left," commanded the warden.
As Farrell rounded the turn, he saw ahead of him a glow of light and
smelled the heavy, lingering fumes of incense. An Arab, and a bearded
man whose race he could not determine, stood watch at the farther
archway. Their hands rested on their belts, ready to draw knife or
pistol. Their eyes stared fixedly from immobile features. They were
drugged, or entranced: and Farrell shivered at the necessity of
convincing himself that they were not dead.
"Pass on," commanded the warden as Farrell hesitated at the threshold.
"The Master, our lord Hassan, will receive you."
The lord Hassan--the one whose name the dying La Dorada had with her
last breath pronounced. She had known who had ordered her death.
A thrill of exultation was mingled with the flash of dread that
assailed Farrell as he stepped into the reception hall of Hassan, that
slayer of women and master of necromancers.
The room was long and narrow, and sweltering in a red glow of light. A
Persian carpet ran down the center toward the divan in an arched alcove
at the farther end. A man wearing a silken kaftan sat cross-legged
among heaped cushions. His face was veiled, but his fierce eyes,
smoldering in their deep sockets, were more menacing for being all that
was visible.
Farrell halted midway between the alcove and the entrance. From the
corner of his eye he saw a row of men, dressed in European clothes,
sitting cross-legged along the wall on either side of him. Their arms
were crossed on their breasts, and their eyes stared as glassily as
those of the guards at the entrance. They were drugged, or deep in a
hypnotic trance.
Farrell offered the peace.