succumbing to the sorcery of that murmuring voice and those burning
eyes asserted itself, and he knew that it was illusion. As he sought to
resist and deny, he felt a terrific impact as of a physical substance.
A mighty, implacable will bludgeoned him as with hammer blows. He knew
that if he continued assenting he would be for ever enslaved.
"There is no Garden. It is illusion," he asserted to himself, and
forced his lips to move and silently enunciate the negation. He
trembled with an all-compelling fear, the awful fear of losing his very
identity. That devastating will behind the cloud-veil was crushing him.
How easy to assent, and end the agony!
Great beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His face was drawn and
haggard with the torment of his battered will. But to surrender would
betray Antoinette into the hands of the enemy.
"There is no Garden," he persisted. "His hand is _empty_. EMPTY. EMPTY!"
He forced his last vestige of strength into that final declaration. The
trees dwindled to pin-heads of green, and with them vanished the gray
mists. The hand _was_ empty!
Farrell sighed from mortal weariness and relief. Then he smiled
triumphantly. He had withstood the terrific psychic assault that would
have made him a slave, and a vassal of that old man and the murderous
heritage of Asia.
Hassan smiled as at an ancient jest.
"You have withstood my will as no man before you," he said. "There was
one who resisted to the uttermost, but he dropped dead."
Hassan, the heir of Maymun the magician, the sorcerer, the heretic,
took his defeat gracefully. Then his smile became ominous and mocking.
"Who but you would have had the wit to slay Shirkuh, the chief of my
servants, then so arrange the body of another you slew, that it would
seem that they had died quarrelling over _Al Asfarani_? Subtle serpent,
you erred in putting the dagger in the right hand. That Kurd was
left-handed."
As those words hammered home, Farrell wondered if his heart would ever
again start beating. He was lost, and with him, Antoinette. Doomed by
his own cunning.
But thus far, no word about his imposture; therefore Farrell laughed
full in Hassan's face, as became the honor of the Durani clan.
"_Wallah_, you put a premium on slayers! Now what award do you give me,
seeing that I was unarmed when I slew Shirkuh?"
Hassan regarded him admiringly for a moment.
"_Billahi_, but you do belong to us! Not as a hasheesh-besotted fool to
slay and be slain, but as an Associate, and finally, an Initiate. It is
such as you that we seek, and seek in vain."
A fierce light flamed in Hassan's eyes.
"Yet your victory over my will is your doom. In the fullness of your
effort to deny the illusion, you finally spoke your negation aloud.
_And you spoke in English!_"
For an instant Farrell was dazed by the horror that had been heaped
on the soul-racking triumph he had just won. Doom was at hand--doom
inescapable, else that old man would not dare confront him alone.
With a cry of rage, Farrell sprang to throttle Hassan despite what
unseen allies he might have. But the floor sank beneath his feet as
Hassan, smiling and unmoved, fingered a knob near the jamb of the
arch. Farrell clutched at the edge of the opening through which he was
dropping. His fingers sustained him for a moment, but the momentum of
his body swinging free into vacancy broke his slender hold. He fell
into the impenetrable blackness below.
_8. Monsters of the Pool_
Instead of an interminable drop to the bottom of an abyss, Farrell
landed in less than a second, and feet foremost, on slippery flags.
He noted that the air was not as stagnant as one would expect in an
oubliette.
"Plenty of circulation ... just put me in temporary storage until
they get around to organizing a committee to finish me with pomp and
ceremony," he muttered as he struck a match.
Farrell saw that the walls of the dungeon were curved. He strode toward
the center, and by the light of a second match saw a massive column of
masonry which rose from floor to ceiling. He remembered the pool he had
seen on the floor above, and concluded that the pillar before him was a
hollow shaft which led to some subterranean spring in the heart of the
knoll on which Bayonne was built.
"All in one piece, unhurt, and no enemy in sight--yet!" he reflected as
he skirted the column.
Among the inevitable rubbish with which the dungeon would be littered
Farrell hoped to find some fragment of rock, scrap of wood, anything,
in fact, which would give him the means of meeting the enemy with more
than bare hands. But before he could strike his next match, Farrell saw
a glow of light at a considerable distance to his right. It faintly
outlined a low archway, and suggested possible escape from the dungeon
into which he had been dropped by Hassan. That same light, however,
betokened the immediate presence of the enemy, and perhaps an armed
sentry. Farrell therefore crept on in darkness until he was well out
of line with the source of light, then left the column and progressed
toward the wall.
His knee came into contact with something hard and metallic. He struck
a match, and saw that he had found a chain, one end of which was
attached to a massive leg-iron, and the other secured to an eye-bolt
sunk into the wall. The shank of the eye-bolt was badly corroded where
it entered the masonry. A few minutes of wrenching and tugging sufficed
to separate the chain from its anchorage. The result was a crude flail
which in a strong hand could shatter whatever skull it struck.
Farrell was armed again, and his spirits rose accordingly.
He retraced his course and crept down the passageway toward the light.
As he halted in the shelter of a jamb he saw that the vault ahead of
him was illuminated by a glowing brazier; and the scene gave him a
foretaste of what his own fate might be.
The black, oily form of a muscular negro crouched beside the brazier.
The bellows in his hands wheezed from his vigorous efforts to fan the
charcoal fire to a white heat. Tongs or other long-handled implements
projected from the incandescent mass.
Limned in harsh highlight and black shadows Farrell saw two white-robed
Ismailians whose predatory, Semitic features were stern from the
contemplation of their task. Both were armed with simitars and pistols.
The object of their scrutiny was a man who sat crouched by a pilaster.
Farrell could distinguish no features beyond the aquiline curve of his
nose, and the black, spade-shaped beard. The hands, clasped about the
knees, were fettered at the wrists.
"God!" muttered Farrell as the red glow became a dazzling whiteness.
"That lad sitting there looks for all the world like an innocent
bystander. Either that party isn't for him, or he has more guts than
any ten men I've ever seen.... I've not been here long enough for that
to be my reception committee...."
Farrell appraised the situation, and gaged the distance between his
lurking-place and the group at the brazier.
"Too far! They'd get wise before I got within striking distance ...
now if this piece of chain were only a solid bar so that I could slug,
swat, and parry instead of having to use it like a whip ... now what?"
The taller of the Ismailians glanced up, and with a gesture indicated
the ceiling. Farrell could not distinguish his words, but it was
evident that he had addressed the negro, who set aside his bellows,
picked up a length of thin rope, and rose.
Then Farrell understood. They were going to slip the cord through a
ring in the low ceiling, lash the prisoner's ankles, and suspend him so
that the white-hot irons could be applied without interference from the
victim's agonized writhing.
"Missed my chance!" growled Farrell. "They were all off guard, and I
could have cold-calked them! Too late, now."
The Ismailian on the right addressed the prisoner; but the other
was looking in Farrell's direction, though not directly at his
lurking-place. The negro was shifting the implements that projected
from the bed of coals.
Then Farrell tested the idea that came to him an instant after his
expression of disgust. He reached into his pocket and found a large
silver coin the size of an American dollar. He sent it spinning across
the vault. It struck the opposite wall and tinkled to the floor.
As the Ismailian at the left of the group started, caught the gleam of
silver, and stooped to pick it up, Farrell, whirling his flail, leaped
from cover and charged.
* * * * *
The startled cry of the crouching negro was simultaneous with the
impact of the swinging fetter against the skull of the stooping enemy.
The massive circlet of iron crunched home as the other white-robed
enemy whirled from confronting his prisoner and drew a pistol. Farrell
knew that he could not lash out with a second blow of his flail. He
ducked as the pistol flashed, gripped the Ismailian's wrist as the
pistol cracked again, and back-heeled him. They crashed to the flags,
Farrell striving to keep the pistol out of effective action and to
disable his enemy before the giant negro recovered his wits enough to
overwhelm him.
With a fierce wrench, Farrell disarmed the Ismailian and sent the
pistol flying against the wall. And then the negro took a hand.
They pounded and crushed Farrell as they sought to drive home with
knife-thrusts which he evaded in his struggles to drive in with boot or
knee. He finally, thrashing about, seized the shackle end of his flail;
and as the Ismailian's knife darted in, Farrell jabbed the ponderous
iron to the enemy's jaw with a crushing blow.
Then the negro crushed Farrell to the paving. Farrell's struggles
were futile; the cumulative effect of previous combats was telling.
In another moment his breath would be completely cut off by those
relentless black hands....
Then an agonized yell, and the stench of burning hair and flesh. The
pressure relaxed as a shower of white-hot charcoal rained from the
frenzied enemy and seared Farrell's hands and face. But the respite,
though brief, sufficed. Farrell's boot laid the enemy out flat.
Then he rose, recovered the pistol that lay against the wall, and
turned to confront the fettered prisoner.
"Fortunately," said the prisoner, "I was able to reach the tongs and
flip that brazier into the party."
The mutual benefactors regarded each other a moment.
"_Monsieur_," began Farrell, recognizing the prisoner as a Frenchman,
"I am more interested in getting out of here than exchanging
compliments. Judging from the preparations I interrupted, you were in
for a pleasant evening, morning, or whatever it may be."
"Unfortunately," came the reply, "these fetters are rivetted, and none
of the tools they brought----"
"I'll tend to that," assured Farrell. He turned and set the brazier
right side up, then with the tongs collected the still glowing
charcoal, and fanned it once more to a white heat. "Get your chains hot
enough," he explained, "and we can break them by hand."
"_Magnifique!_" Then, regarding Farrell more intently, "But I
don't recognize you as any of the Brethren who might be kindly
disposed--though those fellows lying on the floor prove the case."
"I'm not quite what I seem," admitted Farrell as he arranged the chains
so that they could get the full heat of the brazier. Then, staring for
an instant at the prisoner and at the device engraved on the emerald
set in his massive ring, Farrell hazarded a guess that seemed warranted
by the absence of the host who had issued the invitations to the
_soirée_ at the château.
"Are you by any chance the Marquis----"
"_C'est moi!_ Des Islots, and everlastingly at your service!" The
saturnine features brightened for a moment.
As Farrell pumped the bellows, he wondered at the fortuitous meeting.
"Did Hassan put you in here?"
"No. Shirkuh, his second in command, arranged this. Hassan is too busy
to bother with details----"
"He had plenty of time for me," countered Farrell.
"Hmmm ... then Shirkuh must be occupied with some important mission,"
began the Marquis.
"The _late_ Shirkuh," corrected Farrell with a grim smile.
"_Sacré bleu!_" ejaculated the Marquis. "Did you----"
"I have the honor--and pleasure," admitted Farrell.
"Thank God! He was my evil genius. Years ago, in Syria, I joined
the Ismailians as an Associate. I was a student of the occult, you
understand. Their aim at the time was harmless enough: the overthrow of
Islam, and the pursuit of mystic speculations. For centuries the order
has had no secular significance, you comprehend.
"I advanced to the rank of Initiate, then returned to France and
organized a thaumaturgical society which was to carry on with the
researches I had made in Syria, and in High Asia. And this was all
well until fellow Ismailians came to Bayonne, one by one, and ended by
converting the thaumaturgical society into a chapter of Ismailians.
"Shirkuh was the chief of these, a prior. And then they reverted to
the tactics of the Twelfth Century. To augment the _hasheeshin_ that
they sent over, they recruited cutthroats from the underworld of Paris.
Various actresses and women of the _demi-monde_ were led to believe
that they had been admitted as Associates, and were set to work as
spies.
"There is a plot even now under way which, if successful, will upset
the French colonial empire and end in a _jihad_ that will stir up the
entire Moslem world.
"Another chapter has been organized in Lyons, with a prior in charge;
and Hassan is Grand Prior of France, acknowledging only the supreme
chief in Damascus.
"At all events, when I saw the political aspect of the Ismailians
who had gained their foothold through my thaumaturgical society, I
protested to Shirkuh--and here I am. Hot irons and other pleasant
devices were to make my end most colorful."
"Where," wondered Farrell, "does La Dorada fit into the picture?"
"Eh? La Dorada? Why, a sort of chief female spy--she is friendly with
many high officers and civilian dignitaries, you comprehend. She is----"
"_Was_," interrupted Farrell. "Three assassins finished her."
"_Diable!_" exclaimed the Marquis. He was amazed rather than grieved.
"You take it calmly, for a lover," remarked Farrell.
"Lover?" The Marquis laughed sourly. "I, her lover? Camouflage, to
account for her presence down here, and along the Riviera. As to her
being assassinated, that is easily explained: her mission must have
been completed. So she was killed to insure her continued secrecy, and
also to warn her dupes that they would follow suit if they relented or
weakened in the course dictated by Hassan. And that move makes it all
the more conclusive that France is due for an explosion."
The confusion was being untangled. Farrell wondered at Antoinette
Delatour's connection, and the source of the dreams that had haunted
her; but the chains that bound the Marquis were white-hot and ready to
break, so that conversation would have to wait.
"All right, heave!" directed Farrell.
The chains parted.
* * * * *
They stripped the bodies of the white-robed Ismailians, and armed
themselves with their simitars and pistols, as well as taking the
extra cartridges that studded one of the belts. And the keys that had
admitted the executioners completed the equipment. As the hot ends of
the chain cooled, the Marquis bound them to his limbs so that they
would not clank.
"I wonder," said Farrell as they turned toward the iron-bound door, "if
those lads are completely out."
"_Cordieu!_ But I am absent-minded!" growled the Marquis. He drew the
simitar at his side.
As Farrell unlocked the door, he heard the sword-strokes that assured
beyond all doubt that three more had entered _al jannat_.
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Farrell as the door closed behind them. "We
may run into a detachment on the way down here to finish me. Do you
know of any other way except the passage used by your executioners?"
The Marquis reflected for a moment as he wiped and sheathed his blade.
"I do," he replied. "But we'd stand a good chance of getting lost
and perishing in a labyrinth. This network is older than the Roman
occupation. We have reclaimed but a fraction of it. It is the sanctuary
of some awful, prehistoric past. And there were living proofs...." The
Marquis shuddered at the recollection of what he had seen. "We killed
most of them. But--as for me, I prefer to face men like ourselves!
Anyway, if Shirkuh is dead, Hassan will be busy until another Prior is
appointed. Shirkuh was an adept who studied in Tibet. A necromancer----"
Farrell shivered, and as they advanced up the passageway, told the
Marquis what he had seen at the château.
"_Canaille!_" muttered the Marquis. "The night I was imprisoned! Just
like him. And as you suspect, enough assassins in the crowd to spread
the rumor of his miracle.
"Our best chance," he resumed, "is to go to the vault where you saw
Hassan unveiled, thence to the assembly hall of the assassins. Then cut
our way out--if we can! The chances are slender----"
"How about passing by the Garden?" wondered Farrell.
"Out of our way," protested the Marquis. "But why?"
"A ... friend," replied Farrell. "Mademoiselle Delatour----"
"What?" exclaimed the Marquis with a start. "_Dieu de Dieu!_ How----"
Then he controlled his agitation, beckoned for silence.
They emerged from the darkness and turned into an upward-sloping branch
passage illuminated by torches thrust into sconces on the wall. Ahead
of them they heard the measured tread of a sentry walking his post.
"Hang back," whispered the Marquis as he fingered the hilt of the
broad-bladed knife that kept his simitar company. "I know the
passwords. And he may not know I'm a prisoner--but be ready for trouble
if he does!"
The sentry challenged the Marquis. There was an exchange of sign and
countersign. Then as the sentry saluted, the Marquis' right hand
flashed to the right; his body jerked forward. As Farrell advanced, he
saw the sentry collapse and sprawl across the tiles in a grotesque heap.
"So far, so good," muttered the Marquis as he wiped his blade, and led
the way.
A barred door yielded to the Marquis' touch on a concealed lever. They
continued on their upward march. They halted finally before a door
whose panels were of heavy and elaborately carved woodwork.
"_Diable!_" growled the Marquis as he tried the door. "Barred from the
other side. The release this side does not help us."
The mutter of drums and the plucked strings of a _sitar_ were plainly
audible.
"Better wait until the place is vacant," whispered the Marquis. "And in
the meanwhile, let's cut a loophole and see what's happening."
They drew their knives and set to work.
* * * * *
Peering through the loophole, Farrell could see the arched niche from
whose foot he had been precipitated into the dungeon below. Hassan was
again, or perhaps still, at his post. He was veiled, but there was no
mistaking the posture and the expression of the eyes.
Sitting cross-legged along the curved wall of the vault were a score of
Ismailians in white ceremonial robes. They wore white turbans, scarlet
slippers, and belts of the same color: and all were armed with the
richly adorned simitars suitable to a formal assembly.
A group of musicians squatted on the floor, along the coping of the
circular pool, whose dark water reflected the spectral glow that
pervaded the vault. The wind instruments joined the music with a
demoniac sobbing and moaning, and a brazen gong clanged.
Four litter-bearers emerged from an entrance. Attendants followed them,
bearing tripods of bronze. Farrell shuddered at the similarity of that
scene to the horrible beauty of the resurrection of La Dorada. Then he
noted that the figure on the litter was that of a man.
As the shroud was lifted, he recognized Shirkuh of the clan of Shadi.
The Prior of the Ismailians was to receive the final homage of his
subordinates. The pipes wailed mournfully in honor of that desecrator
of the dead. Farrell sighed with relief, and glanced at the Marquis.
He peered once more through the loophole.
"Good God!" he gasped in dismay.
Four more litter-bearers were filing into the vault, and after them
came attendants with tripods. The tiny feet and the feminine curves
that the shroud revealed unmistakably betokened a woman's body.
Farrell's cheeks whitened beneath their stain as he caught the glint of
red-gold hair.
An attendant stripped the brocaded shroud from the body.
Antoinette Delatour, sleeping--or dead.
With an inarticulate growl of rage, Farrell gathered himself to charge
the door with his shoulder. But the hand of the Marquis gripping his
arm restrained him.
"Wait!" whispered the Marquis. "It is hopeless, now. But later--stand
fast. I will tell you--you see, I am acquainted----"
Farrell stared somberly at his companion. He saw that the Marquis' face
was white and that his eyes flamed with wrath. The hand on Farrell's
arm trembled.
"All right," he conceded. He wondered at the Marquis' incoherence
and agitation in excess of what he would expect of a right-minded
gentleman. He gained assurance from the Marquis' apparent knowledge of
what was to be; but with it came the dread of some new peak of horror.
"Great God!" muttered Farrell, remembering once more the necromantic
ritual at the château. "Is she----" Then, in a flare of rage and grief,
"I'm going through!"
"Restrain yourself!" commanded the Marquis. "I know."
Farrell shook his head, and turned to the loophole.
The attendants and the litter-bearers were filing out of the vault.
The Grand Prior, Hassan, rose from his cushions.
"Brethren and servants of the Seventh Imam," he began, "your Prior, the
learned Shirkuh, has crossed the Border. He who could raise the dead
can not resurrect himself. But we, _inshallah_, can send a courier to
lead him back to us."
As his upraised hand dropped to his side, a monstrous peal of bronze
echoed and reverberated through the vault. The assembled Ismailians
stirred, and corrected their posture, so that their feet and hands were
placed with ritual precision. Even their features assumed a oneness of
expression: an intent, solemn stare. The silence became absolute. The
musicians sat motionless, awaiting the signal to sound off.
The Grand Prior nodded.
The single-stringed violins, the moaning pipes and the purring drums
wove a harmony that sighed and sobbed like a fallen angel bewailing his
lost estate. The great gong pealed with mighty, brazen reverberations.
Acolytes filed into the vault, and paced in cadence to the music, and
rhythmically swung fuming censers as they passed thrice in procession
about the dead, and the exquisite unclad beauty of the living woman.
And as the acolytes retreated, Hassan descended from his dais.
He drew on the floor with a piece of chalk a circle several paces in
diameter, and within it a pentacle. Each of the five points he marked
with cabalistical symbols. Then with a ceremonious gesture he summoned
three Initiates from among those who sat waiting beside the dais. Each
Initiate took his post at his assigned station; then all four bowed to
the fifth vertex and the Presence that was to be summoned.
Hassan intoned a sentence; and the Initiates, beginning at his left,
each in turn chanted a line of the invocation. Those without the circle
solemnly pronounced a fifth sonorous phrase.
"For the vacant corner," whispered the Marquis to Farrell. "They are
representing the One they are calling to occupy the fifth angle."
And thus they continued their prodigious utterances, four verses
riming in succession, with the surge and thunder of the unrimed,
antiphonal response from without. Each time the circle was completed,
the riming syllable changed; and from the Arabic with which they had
started, they shifted to Himyaric, and then to obscure, antique tongues
whose sound was an elemental roar of deep gutturals. Then finally came
a primal, bestial murmuring and muttering, a chirping and clucking of
the tongues that were spoken by those who wandered through the Void
before the first man walked the earth. And recurring through the entire
progression was a portentous name that is seldom pronounced above a
whisper.
The very features of the Initiates changed as they pronounced those
rustling, shivering syllables. They were achieving a unity with that
which crept and crawled and loathsomely slunk through chaos and reviled
the unborn stars, and mocked the light that was to be....
* * * * *