have made a test of you."
"_Tawil ul 'Umr_," demanded Farrell with a touch of respect such as
even a blustering Afghan would concede an old man; "Prolonged of Life,
how am I to be tested?"
The old man reflected for a moment. His glittering eyes narrowed to
slits.
"Tell me, can you obey as well as slay?"
"How should I know, Prolonged of Life?" proposed Farrell. "By your
beard, I have never tried obedience. I am of the Durani clan."
"You will learn," said Hassan. "I will set you an example." He glanced
to his left and clapped his hands. "Asad!" he called sharply.
One of the staring figures rose from his place along the wall. He moved
as one receiving will and animation from some external source.
"Harkening and obedience, _ya sidi_!" he acknowledged as he halted
before the dais.
"Your canjiar," murmured Hassan.
The curved blade flashed from its sheath.
"That knife is your gate to Paradise, _ya_ Asad," said Hassan in his
gentle, purring voice. Yet beneath its suggestion Farrell sensed a
relentless command.
Asad inclined his head as he touched his fingertips to his forehead,
his lips, and his breast. A pause--the blade flashed again as Asad
thrust it full into his own chest. He stood for a moment fingering the
hilt; then he tottered and sank to the tiles, to relax and lie sprawled
face down in the dark pool that slowly spread across the paving.
Farrell knew that beneath his grimy skin his cheeks were bloodless. It
was horrible to see even a _hasheeshin_ spill his life carelessly as
a glass of wine to humor that old man who peered over the edge of his
veil.
"There, _ya_ Ibrahim, is obedience."
Farrell collected his courage and demanded boldly, "And why should any
man yield such obedience?"
"Because," came the reply, "I am the keeper of the gateway. He is even
now in Paradise, and exempt from any recall."
Farrell grimaced.
"No more than any true believer gains for slaying an infidel," he
retorted.
"You will enter the Garden, _ya_ Ibrahim," murmured Hassan, "and see
for yourself. Then you may accept or reject."
To the Garden! There, unless all d'Artois' deductions were wrong, he
would find Antoinette. But Farrell restrained his eagerness, and
pondered a moment, as became the rôle he played.
"I am ready, Prolonged of Life," he finally replied, as he advanced a
pace.
"Softly, softly," said Hassan. "Are you armed?"
"_Ay, wallah!_" replied Farrell, drawing his remaining knife.
Hassan again clapped his hands.
"_Ya_ Suleiman! Yusuf!"
Two rose from the ranks and approached.
"Harkening and obedience, my lord," they said as they bowed.
"This one claims to be a man of valor, O Devoted Ones!" said Hassan.
"Draw!"
Their blades were drawn as one. The slayers stood like panthers poised
and ready to close in on their prey. Their eyes glowed in the red
glare like beasts lurking in the shadows beyond a fire. Slaves to the
mesmeric power of Hassan, and to the hypnotic hasheesh, they were men
in form only.
Hassan glanced at Farrell.
"You may decline without penalty or dishonor," said the old man. "You
are free, and owe us no obedience."
"They are your men, _ya sidi_," replied Farrell with a shrug. "If you
can spare them."
The old man chuckled, and his eyes for a moment smiled.
"Strike!" he commanded.
They paused for an instant before closing in. One of them, Farrell was
certain, would go down before his first thrust, but the other would
slay him. Farrell's success depended upon finesse. He shifted his feet
as if to test the footing. He glanced over his shoulder as if to assure
himself that he had room to retreat. All in a flash: and then they
sprang, blades thirsty and a-glitter.
Farrell's leap took him to the left instead of to the rear. He dropped
his knife and snatched the wrist of the nearest enemy, who, missing
his quarry, plunged forward abreast of his comrade.
His own momentum was his ruin. There was the snap of a breaking bone,
and Yusuf pitched in a heap before the dais. And Farrell, picking his
knife from the tiles, confronted Suleiman, who despite his fanatic
frenzy was profiting by Yusuf's mishap.
They circled, feinting and thrusting, seeking to shake each other's
guard. Suleiman avoided Farrell's efforts to close in to make it a test
of strength. Nor would rushing in to exchange thrusts suffice: for
if they slew each other, the Master would still not have the test he
ordered. They wove in and out, shifting and side-stepping, each seeking
an opening in the other's defense.
Then Farrell made a desperate feint at his enemy's throat. As
Suleiman's blade rose to parry, Farrell evaded, and stretched out in
a full lunge, point forward and arm extended as with a rapier. The
unexpected play caught Suleiman off guard. His downward thrust came
an instant too late: Farrell's knife sank to the hilt in the enemy's
stomach, ripping upward.
* * * * *
Farrell, bleeding from the cut on his shoulder, emerged from the
engagement empty-handed as Suleiman collapsed.
"Well done, _ya_ Ibrahim!" approved Hassan. Then he smote a gong beside
the dais.
"_Ya_ Musa! Abbas! Khalil!" he shouted.
A panel opened at right of the dais, and three tall negroes entered.
They made no expressions of obedience; only the inarticulate gurglings
of those whose tongues have been removed.
Hassan indicated the two dead, and the one whose arm was snapped.
"To the black pool with them. All three!" Then, as two stepped forward
to execute the command, Hassan spoke to the third: "Take our new
aspirant, Ibrahim, to the Garden."
Musa bowed, and at the Master's gesture of dismissal, led Farrell
into a dimly lighted room which was arranged after the fashion of a
_majlis_, or reception hall of an Arabian house.
A narrow divan extended the full length of the wall. At the end
farthest from the entrance were the customary coffee hearth and
polished brass pots. And save for those, and the cushions and rugs with
which the divan was covered, there were no furnishings.
Farrell noted that he was not alone. Those who lay sprawled on the
divan were, apparently, likewise to visit the Garden.
"Dead-drunk ... drugged ... or spies to watch me," reflected Farrell.
Musa, who after indicating that Farrell was to seat himself, had left,
presently returned with a tray on which was a goblet and flagon. These
he set on a small tabouret, bowed, and left Farrell to refresh himself.
The proof of hand-to-hand fighting had been severe enough; but the
flagon of wine, fragrant but reeking of hasheesh, represented a more
subtle and dangerous test. If under the influence of the drug Farrell
made one remark or gesture that would betray his imposture, the
awakening would be death, either swift, or else by torture administered
to find out how much the outside world knew of the Ismailians.
Nevertheless, Farrell dared not abstain from the drugged wine. He knew
not what eyes might be regarding him through loopholes in the wall.
"_Bismillahi!_" he ejaculated, and seized the flagon, draining it
at a draft. He hoped that despite the insidious drug, his years of
wandering in the forbidden places of Asia had impressed upon him enough
of his assumed character to insure him against a fatal slip.
Farrell wondered at the suicide ordered by Hassan. The value of Ibrahim
Khan as a _fedawi_ could scarcely balance the self-slain and the two
killed in action. He reconciled this point, however, when he considered
the probability of the slain being offenders against the discipline of
the order....
The intoxication of hasheesh was gripping him. Then an artifice
occurred to Farrell. He might still save the day and avoid complete
intoxication.
"_Ya_ Musa! _Shewayya' khamr!_" he bawled drunkenly. "More wine!"
The slave came hurrying with a full flagon. Farrell's chance was to
drink so much of the drugged liquor that his stomach would rebel, and
expel it; and such sottishness would be quite in character. He seized
the flagon with unfeigned eagerness.
But the saving thought had come too late.
His heart-beat became terrifyingly slow. His arm seemed so long that
the weight of the flagon, already the size of a cask, and momentarily
becoming larger, would exert a leverage that would upset him. The room
was expanding to allow for the abnormal length of the arm that sought
to raise the wine to his lips.
Farrell became aware of a duality of identity. Half of him was
struggling fiercely to assert itself and overcome the confusion of his
senses; the other half was yielding to a languorous drowsiness, and a
soporific humming which pervaded the room.
There came finally a rustling of wings, and a piping, haunting music
that sighed amorously. All sense of time had ceased. Farrell did not
know whether he was being carried through an archway into a vast domed
vault, or whether he had floated in on clouds of overwhelming sweetness.
A fountain was bubbling, and splashing him with its spray. He stared
up at the ceiling. Its luminous blue was dusted with stars that were
arranged in unfamiliar constellations.
Drums muttered somewhere in the shifting, warm fragrance. He heard the
silvery clink-clinking of anklets. He rolled over on his side, and as
he glanced along the rose-hued tiles, he saw dainty feet with hennaed
nails stepping in cadence to the whining notes of a _kemenjah_, and the
moan of pipes.
As he made an effort to sit erect, a warm, soft arm supported his
head, and slender, golden-brown hands offered him a bowl of cold,
aromatic liquid. He drank it, and found that his reeling senses became
more stable. The girl who smiled at him had great dark eyes with
kohl-blackened lids.
Another heaped cushions behind him.
Paradise indeed; _al jannat_, temporarily offered as the reward of
whatever infamy the lord Hassan demanded, and promised for all eternity
to the fanatic _fedawi_ who died executing his commands.
There were other guests scattered about the jasmine and rose clustered
garden, and the brides of _al jannat_ were reviving them with flagons,
cold drinks, and warm caresses.
* * * * *
Farrell made an effort to fight the illusion of distorted time and
distance, and the sensuous allure of the music and hasheesh. He rose,
and ignoring his amorous companions, set about exploring the garden.
Strange birds flitted about among the orange and pomegranate trees and
mocked him with their almost articulate cries. A parrot mimicked in a
loud voice the endearments that a Malay girl murmured in the ear of one
of the Devoted Ones.
"Where is the Golden One?" he heard a swarthy Kurd demand as he thrust
aside his slant-eyed Eurasian companion.
The last of Farrell's intoxication left him. The Golden One--Antoinette!
The girl laughed.
"She'll scratch your eyes out! Let her alone!"
"But the Master, our Lord Hassan, promised she'd greet us in Paradise,"
protested the Kurd.
Farrell knew now beyond any doubt that Antoinette had been kidnapped
to double in this satanic garden for the murdered La Dorada, to prove
to the _hasheeshin_ that the Lord Hassan indeed held the keys to the
garden of resurrection.
"_Al Asfarani_, the Golden One----" Farrell seconded the Kurd's inquiry.
"Snarling and spitting in her alcove, O Strong Man!" smiled the girl.
Farrell left her to entertain the Kurd, and wandered past the rows of
potted trees that paralleled the walls of the garden. The walls were
pierced with deep niches that formed small rooms whose arched entrances
were scarcely shoulder-high. As he glanced into each in succession, he
noted the trinkets and cosmetics and perfumes, and articles of feminine
apparel. Each bride of _al jannat_ seemed to have her own lupanar; but
they apparently preferred to lounge among the fountains and arbors.
Finally, however, Farrell found an occupied alcove. A woman lay face
down among a heap of cushions. Her hair was copper-golden, and her bare
shoulders were latticed with long, bluish stripes.
Farrell knelt at her side.
"Antoinette!" he whispered.
At the touch of his fingers on her shoulder, she started and with a
quick motion drew away. Her hand emerged from the cushions clutching a
long sharp steel skewer used in Syria for grilling meat.
It was Antoinette, wide-eyed with terror. She cried out, and stabbed
at Farrell with the skewer. The point raked his cheek as he seized her
wrist.
"'Toinette! Don't you recognize me?" he whispered hoarsely.
She regarded him for a moment, puzzled and incredulous. The skewer
dropped from her fingers. But before she could cry out in amazement,
Farrell continued, "Not a word! If any one passes by, start raising the
devil! Don't seem to recognize me ... understand?"
She nodded, but he saw that she did not grasp the point that might make
the difference between life and death. She was still bewildered.
"Oh, Glenn...." She stroked his cheek and regarded him, still
incredulously. "Are you--isn't this--my dear, this is that awful garden
I dreamed of. Only, now I have my own body, and I don't wake up----"
"Pipe down!" he commanded in a low, tense voice. "I'm supposed to be
one of these devils! You're not dreaming. Pull yourself together----"
He heard footsteps approaching. They were steady, not the jerky
lurchings of wine and hasheesh intoxication. Whoever it was, was for
Farrell a death sentence if Antoinette in her hysteria spoke one false
word.
"Scream! Claw me! As you treated the others!"
Then he seized her in his arms and murmured drunken endearments in her
ear.
But Antoinette was too dazed by the meeting to play her part. She
clung to Farrell as the one fragment of reality in all that unending
nightmare of hasheesh-drugged assassins who courted her favor, and
pawed her, and abandoned their advances only at the suggestion of more
amiable brides of _al jannat_. Instead of clawing and defying Farrell,
she clung to him, sobbing hysterically.
* * * * *
That deliberate tread of doom, soft slipper shod, drew nearer, paused.
Farrell trembled like a trapped animal. He sought with his own feigned
drunken, amorous approaches to drown her betraying sobs and murmurs.
The swish-slap of slippers ... another halt. Farrell felt the
intentness of the gaze at his back.
He broke from Antoinette's embrace and turned. Standing just within
the entrance of the tiny room was Shirkuh the necromancer. He had seen
Farrell at the château, face to face. And he had heard. He knew.
"Ah ... La Dorada has lured you to the Garden?" he murmured with deadly
emphasis on the dead woman's name.
The smile was slow and mocking; the relentless eyes burned with a
fanatical hatred. For a moment Farrell was paralyzed with terror, and
horror at the doom from which Antoinette had no further chance of
escape.
Shirkuh relished the encounter, and gloated--but just an instant too
long.
Farrell sprang from his crouched position in one swift, fluent motion.
Shirkuh, taken cold-footed, could not draw his knife. They crashed to
the floor. But once Shirkuh recovered from the surprize of the assault,
he was more than a match for Farrell, who was battered, weary from
combat, and shaken by the drugged wine. The iron fingers of the Kurd
sank into his throat and throttled him. Shirkuh whipped his lithe body
aside, avoiding Farrell's frenzied efforts to drive home with his knee.
As Farrell's struggles subsided to a futile gasping for breath, the
Kurd's hand flashed to his belt and drew a knife----
But before the stroke descended, there was a crash and a splintering
of glass. Shirkuh toppled over, felled by a decanter that Antoinette
had broken across his head. Farrell gasped, and caught his breath, then
slowly dragged himself clear of his enemy.
Antoinette, still clutching the neck of the broken decanter, regarded
him with terror-widened eyes. Then she gestured toward Shirkuh, who
muttered and stirred.
Farrell's fingers closed about the hilt of the knife the Kurd had
dropped.
"Me or him," muttered Farrell. "If you don't want to see it, look the
other way."
The blade flashed thrice.
Farrell wiped the red steel and slipped it into his empty scabbard.
Then he sighed wearily and despairingly.
"Finish anyway ... they'll miss him ... and no place we can hide him."
Antoinette stared at the dark pool that spread across the silken rug.
"Can't cut my way out," muttered Farrell. "But you have a chance.
Pierre and the _Sûreté_ are on the job--is there any place we could
hide that fellow?"
Antoinette shook her head.
"Nowhere. The pool of the fountain isn't deep enough----"
"Never mind the fountain!" interrupted Farrell, as he leaped to his
feet. "I have a hunch. We're not quite ready to hang old man Farrell's
youngest son!"
At the entrance Farrell turned, reassured Antoinette with a gesture,
then stalked out into the Garden, chanting a bawdy song in Turki.
* * * * *
Beside the fountain he found the object of his search: a bemuddled
Kurd, and the Eurasian girl who had finally convinced him that the
Golden One was best left to the blustering Afghan.
"Get us more wine, O Moon of Loveliness," said Farrell with his most
engaging smile. He nudged the Kurd.
The girl laughed softly.
"You look as though she gave you your fill of clawing!"
"_Ay, wallah!_" agreed Farrell with a broad grin. Then, as the girl
picked up an empty flagon, he said in a low voice to the Kurd,
"Brother, you fellows didn't approach _al Asfarani_ the right way."
He winked and beckoned.
The Kurd clambered to his feet and followed Farrell. They paused at the
arched entrance of Antoinette's alcove.
"She's in there now," whispered Farrell. "She'll not claw you."
Thus encouraged, the Kurd stepped in, Farrell following.
"_Ya sitti_," he began, addressing Antoinette. Then he started, seeing
the body of Shirkuh.
Farrell slipped past, and toward Antoinette's divan.
"Out of my way, O shamelessly Besotted!" growled the Kurd, pausing to
nudge the body with his toe.
During that instant Farrell found what he sought; and as the Kurd
decided to ignore the supposed sot, the steel skewer drove home, its
point projecting beyond his shoulders.
"Sorry, old man," muttered Farrell as he regarded the Kurd twitching
and coughing his life out in a bloody foam. Then he rapidly searched
the body.
He found no weapons.
"Disarm 'em when they come in here ... leaves me handicapped...."
He thrust Shirkuh's knife into the hand of the dying Kurd and closed
the fingers about it. Then he guided the hand of Shirkuh and clenched
it about the blunt end of the skewer.
"This may save the day," he explained to Antoinette. "Remember, they
fought and killed each other. That may give me a long enough lease on
life to come back and get you out of this hell's hole, or get word
to Pierre. Now I've got to go out into the Garden and do some quick
thinking. Something else may turn up ... no, I can't stay here with
you ... and I've got to leave the bodies where they are."
Then, as he kissed her, "Hang on. There's still a chance for you. Maybe
for us."
He strode out into the Garden, and washed his blood-stained hands
at the fountain. The Eurasian girl had not yet returned with the
replenished flagon. And as Farrell glanced about, looking for her, and
preparing to divert her from any thought of her former companion, Musa
the mute negro approached with a jar on his shoulder and a cup in his
hand.
This, Farrell surmised, would be the end of the visit to Paradise.
The negro would administer a sleeping-potion; the devoted ones would
drink, and upon awakening would find themselves lying in the _majlis_,
mysteriously translated from the empyrean realm of the Lord Hassan, and
ready for whatever butcheries he could assign them.
As Musa offered him the cup, Farrell extended his own flagon, saying,
"Fill this one, Father of Blackness. That cup of yours is too small."
The negro grinned, emptied the cup into the larger vessel, and went his
way to minister to the other guests.
The Eurasian beauty, who returned at that moment, was easily diverted,
so that Farrell contrived to spill most of the drugged wine over his
shirt-front and into the fountain. Then, as he saw the _fedawi_ succumb
to the effects of the drug, he himself lurched forward, feigning
unconsciousness.
"No chance to look around ... no chance of cutting my way out," he
reflected as he thought of Antoinette and her ghastly companions. "And
maybe the Shirkuh versus drunken Kurd formation will hold water long
enough to give me time to qualify as an assassin and be sent out to do
a bit of slaying!"
The negro was making the rounds, taking the _fedawi_ one by one from
the Garden. He picked Farrell from the paving as though he were a
bag of meal, shouldered him, and deposited him on the divan in the
anteroom, beside his drugged companions.
And from sheer weariness and the futility of further thought, Farrell
fell asleep.
_7. A Left-Handed Kurd_
When a cold sponge on his forehead and the rim of a copper bowl pressed
to his lips awoke Farrell, he had no idea as to the length of his sleep.
Musa helped him to his feet and led the way down a narrow passage
whose floor sloped perceptibly upward. The negro halted before a panel
and tapped thrice. As the panel slid aside, he gestured and flattened
himself against the wall so that Farrell could pass him and enter the
chamber ahead.
Farrell stepped into a circular vault fully twenty yards in diameter.
In its center was a pool, likewise circular, and surrounded by a coping
about a foot high. A dark splash on the tiles near the pool convinced
Farrell that this must be the place into which the bodies of the
victims of his test before Hassan had been tossed.
Farrell wondered if as a matter of convenience he had been conducted
to the vault before the master cut him down. One slip would suffice....
Directly opposite Farrell was an arched niche in which sat an old man
whose head was bowed in contemplation. Suspended from the crown of the
arch was a cluster of crystalline prisms that slowly rotated, giving
the effect of a glowing, coruscating ball of light.
As Farrell advanced, the door behind him slid silently into place. He
skirted the edge of the pool in the center, and wondered from what
abyss its black, untroubled waters emerged; what creatures lurked in
its darkness to devour the bodies tossed into their pit. Then, leaving
the pool, Farrell continued toward the bearded sage who still ignored
his approach.
"At thy command, _ya shaykh_!" said Farrell as he halted some five
paces from the Presence.
"Step forward," directed the ancient one, looking up and indicating a
small hearth-rug that lay at the foot of the steps that ascended to the
niche. "Look, _ya_ Ibrahim: hast thou seen me before?"
As the smoldering eyes narrowed, Farrell recognized Hassan, now
unveiled. He returned the old man's unblinking stare, and strove to
remain unperturbed by its intent concentration; but his effort was
vain. He felt a sense of futility and weakness creeping over him.
The rotating cluster of prisms now flamed and flashed with an
adamantine fire that expanded and contracted and pulsed like a living
thing. It seemed now to be glowing between the eyes of Hassan. An
overwhelming weariness assailed Farrell.
The old man's voice intoned sonorously, and as from a great distance.
"I am the keeper of the gateway ... even in the hollow of my hand I
hold _al jannat_ and its coolness to the eyes.... Yea, behold my
hand...."
Farrell regarded the outstretched hand of Hassan.
"In the hollow of my hand, even in this hand I hold _al jannat_...."
A mistiness was gathering about Hassan, and his features became
obscured so that only his glittering eyes peered through. The
outstretched hand was expanding; and strangely enough, it seemed
fitting to Farrell that this should be so, and that there should be
hazy figures, and clots of greenness appearing in the blankness above
the hand. Trees were taking root. Their outlines were hazy, and through
their immaterial substance he could just distinguish the jambs of the
niche, and the swirling mists that veiled Hassan.
The voice was now murmuring softly and compellingly.
"Even in this hand I hold the Garden.... I am the keeper and the
warden.... I accept and I reject...."