The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Di, why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could understand your craving alligator pears at three in the morning—I might have understood that, but hating a rug is really a new one on me—”

  “No, stupid, it’s nothing like that! I just hate the damned thing, and no more to be said.”

  “Well, lacking the infallible alibi”—Clarke glared and assumed his fighting face—“if you mean I choose between you and the rug, I’ll call a taxi right now.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll walk.”

  The door slammed.

  Clarke twisted his mustache, and achieved a laugh; not merry, but still a laugh. And then he sank back among the cushions.

  “Yellow Girl, I thought you were fantastic.…”

  * * * *

  Le Vieux Carre wondered when the next morning it was rumored that la belle Livaudaise had been seen hurrying down Saint Peter Street without speaking to any one of the several acquaintances she had met; but when at the Green Shutter and the Old Quarter Bookstore it was announced that Diane was living in a loft of the Pontalba Building, wonder ceased. For Diane’s friend Louise had been no less garrulous than she should have been, so that the habitués of the French Quarter were prepared for the news.

  And then it was said that to gain admittance to Clarke’s studio one must know the code of taps whereby someone who at times left a certain side door bearing bottles of Pernod announced his arrival; for Clarke answered neither doorbell nor telephone. The vendor of Pernod was certainly a discreet person; yet even a discreet seller of absinthe could see no harm in mentioning that his patron found enormous fascination in watching the play of sunlight and the dance of moonbeams on the golden buff pile of a rug that was more a sleeping, breathing creature than any sane child of the loom.

  Finally the courier failed to gain admittance, despite his tapping in code. And this he thought worthy of Diane’s ear.

  “He starves himself, petite—since three days now he has not admitted me. All the while she lies there, gleaming in the moon, that awful rug—mordieu, it is terrible.…”

  Diane had stedfastly denied that which had been clamoring for recognition. But when this last bit was added to what had gone before, logic gave way, and Diane’s fears asserted themselves. That rug was haunted, was bewitched, was bedevilling Clarke; logic or no logic, the fact was plain.

  Driven by that monstrous thought, Diane exhumed the little golden keyring and started up Royal Street, determined to cross the barrier before it became impassable. But her determination wavered; and before fitting the well-worn key into the lock, she applied her ear to the keyhole, listened, and heard Clarke’s voice.

  Diane resisted the temptation to use her key and stage a scene that even in the imperturbable Vieux Carre would be sensational for at least a week. Then her pride conquered, and she achieved a most credible smile of disdain.

  “Sly devil, pretending it was a rug. He was so absorbed in.…”

  And, since it was but an amorous escapade, Diane’s unbelievable speculations were replaced by thoughts reasonable enough not to be terrifying.

  * * * *

  That very night, Clarke was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his studio, full under the red glow of a tall bronze mosque lamp. Before him, shimmering in the moonlight that streamed in through the French windows, lay the rug from Samarcand, mysterious and golden, with its pale sapphire corner pieces glittering like a distant sea viewed through a cleft between two mountain crests.

  All the witchery and ecstasy that had ever been lost in the entire world were reassembled, pulsing in the silken pile which he contemplated. And this was the night, the Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite, resistless and unconquerable. Clarke had spent so many nights and days of staring that it was inevitable that there must be such a night. He saw more than the wonder before him: in place of the marvel woven by deft, forgotten hands, there gleamed enchantingly as through moon-touched mist a garden in the valley of Zarab-shan.

  Then came a faint, oddly accented drumming and piping, music to whose tune dead years reassembled their bones and danced forth from their graves. And their ghosts as they danced exhaled an overwhelming sweetness that made Clarke’s brain reel and glow, and his blood surge madly in anticipation of that which he knew must follow.

  Then out of the blackness just beyond the range of the ruddy mosque lamp and full into the moonlight that marched slowly across the rug came a slim Yellow Girl, diaphanously garbed and veiled. Her anklets clicked faintly; and very faint was the tinkle of the pendant that adorned her unusual coiffure.

  “All these many days I have sought you, my lord,” she began, as she extended her arms in welcome. “But in vain, until tonight, when at last I parted the veil and crossed the Border.”

  Clarke nodded understandingly, and looked full into her dark, faintly slanted eyes.

  “And I have been thinking of you,” he began, “ever since someone sent me this rug on which you stand. It is strange how this rug could bridge the gap of twenty years and bring into my very house a glimpse of the valley of Zarab-shan. And stranger yet that you could escape from your father’s house and find me here. Though strangest of all, time has not touched you, when by all reason you should be old, and leathery, and past forty.… Yet you are lovelier now than you were then, by that fountain in a garden near Samarcand.”

  “It is not strange,” contradicted the Yellow Girl, as she pirouetted with dainty feet across the moon-lapped silk. “For you see me now as I was when I wove my soul into this very rug.”

  Clarke smiled incredulously; which was illogical enough, since, compared with the girl’s presence, nothing else should be incredible.

  “How can that be, Yellow Girl, seeing that we two met one evening twenty years ago, whereas this rug was woven when the Great Khan sat enthroned in Samarcand and reproved the Persian Hanz for his careless disposal of the Great Khan’s favorite cities. This was the joy of kings hundreds of years before you and I were born—”

  “Before the last time we were born,” corrected the Yellow Girl. “But the first time—at least, the first time that I can recollect—the barred windows of a prince’s palace failed to keep you from me. And eunuchs with crescent-bladed scimitars likewise failed. But in the end—why must all loveliness have an end?—a bowstring for me, and a sword-stroke for you.…”

  The Yellow Girl shuddered as she stroked her smooth throat with fingers that sought to wipe off the last lingering memory of a cord of hardspun silk.

  “And from the first,” continued the girl, “I knew what our doom would be. So I started weaving, and completed my task before they suspected us and the bowstring did its work. My soul, my self, being woven cunningly and curiously into silk rich enough to hang on the wall of the khan’s palace, waited patiently and wondered whether you and I could have our day again. Thus it was in the beginning—”

  “Ah…now it does come back to me,” interrupted Clarke, “as in a dream dimly remembered. How compactly and stiflingly they would wrap me in a bale of silk and carry me past the guards and into your presence. And by what devious routes I would leave you…yes, and how painlessly swift is the stroke of a scimitar.…”

  The Yellow Girl shuddered.

  “A scimitar truly wielded is really nothing, after all,” continued Clarke. “I might have been sawn asunder between planks.… Well, and that meeting in the garden these short twenty years ago was after all not our first…it seems that I knew then that it was not the first. Though but for an evening—”

  “Yes. Just for an evening. So to what end were we spared bowstrings and the stroke of swift scimitars, since we had but an evening?” And thinking of the empty years of luxurious imprisonment that followed, she smiled somberly. “For only an evening. And then you forgot, until this rug—this same rug I wove centuries ago—interrupted your plea
sant adventuring, and reminded you.

  “Death stared me in the face. The end of life more vainly lived than the first. I knew that I was leaving this avatar after having lived but one stolen evening. So I sent a trusted servant to carry this very rug to Meshed. For when we met in the garden, you were hunting rugs for him who now seeks them for your delight. And I knew that he would find you if you still lived. Thus it is that I have crossed the Border, and stand before you as I did once before—this time on that wry rug which I wove centuries ago, while living in hope of another meeting and in dread of the bowstring I knew would in the end find me.”

  The moon patch had marched toward the end of the rug from Samarcand, and was cutting into the blue web at its end. Clarke knew that when there remained no more room for her tiny feet, she would vanish, not ever to reappear. But Clarke hoped against knowledge.

  “Yellow Girl,” he entreated, “my door will be barred to friend and acquaintance alike, if you will but return on whatever nights the moon creeps across our rug.…”

  Had Diane, listening at the door, understood, she would have used her key. But Diane merely heard:

  “And I shall wait for these nights as long as life remains in me. For all that has happened since then is nothing and less than nothing; and all has been a dream since that one night in a garden of Zarab-shan.”

  Very little remained of the moon patch. The Yellow Girl stepped a tiny pace forward, to prolong her stay yet another few moments. All but the moonlit strip of the rug from Samarcand glowed bloodily in the flare of the brazen mosque lamp.

  “No, forgetful lover,” eluded the Yellow Girl, “I can not return. I can not cross the Border again. In Samarcand, eight hundred years ago we mocked for a while the doom that hung over us, and in the end called the bowstring but a caress of farewell. Again, in the garden of Zarab-shan we met, we parted, and you forgot: so this time I take no chances. While I can not return, you at least can follow me…if you will…for it is very easy.…”

  She edged along the ever narrowing strip of moon-bathed silk, and with an embracing gesture, lured Clarke to rise and follow her.

  “It is so easy…move lightly…but be careful not to disturb your body or overbalance it.…”

  Had Diane not turned away from the door, were she not even now strolling insouciantly down Royal Street—

  “Yellow Girl, you and I have had enough of farewells!”

  Something left Clarke, tottered perilously on the two handbreadths of moonlight that remained, then caught the Yellow Girl by the hand and took the lead.

  The blue web of the rug from Samarcand gleamed for another moment in the moonlight, then sweltered in the red glow of the mosque lamp.

  THE PEACOCK’S SHADOW

  Originally published in Weird Tales, November 1926.

  “Mon vieux, what do you say to a bit of housebreaking?”

  This, from Pierre d’Artois, a gentleman of France and a master of the sword, seemed unusual, to say the least.

  “Well, why not?” I agreed, not to be outdone by the d’Artois nonchalance. “But whose house do we invade? What the devil, do you fear I will become homesick if from time to time there is not something to remind me of my own native land of liberty?”

  “Mais non! No, we are not going as prohibition agents. Not at all! And it is no ordinary house into which we are to break. We invade the château of Monsieur the Marquis de la Tour de Maracq,” announced Pierre as he stepped on the accelerator of his favorite car, the Issotta roadster.

  “But what of Monsieur the Marquis?” I suggested with what seemed to be a touch of reason.

  “He is very busy at Biarritz at a fencing tournament.”

  Well, this solved one riddle: I now knew why d’Artois, that fierce old ferrailleur, had overlooked a chance to demonstrate his exquisite mastery of the sword.

  “But, mon Pierre, what of the housebreaking? What loot are we after?” I ventured as we cleared Pont de Mousserole and left behind us the gray battlements of Bayonne.

  “The truth of it is, I am playing what you call the hunch,” he evaded, then continued: “But he is the good hunch. There has been an elopement, and it is for me to locate the lady.”

  Worse and worse yet! A quiet month in Bayonne…

  “Who is the girl?”

  D’Artois laughed.

  “A princess, and the daughter of a king.”

  “Not bad for a marquis. And young and beautiful?” I retorted to the mockery I saw in his keen old eyes.

  “Beautiful, yes; if you like such beauty. But young, no. In fact, older than I am.”

  “The devil!”

  “The truth! Thirty-seven hundred years old at least.”

  This was too much!

  “Mais non. I do not jest,” continued Pierre. “She was stolen from the Guimet museum of Lyons and carried all the way to the château of the marquis.”

  “Well, and that is a case for the police, is it not?”

  “No. For one is not really certain; it is but strongly suspected that he accomplished the almost impossible feat of looting the museum and carrying the mummy to his château. Monsieur the Prefect of Police, not being any too sure of himself, has taken me into his confidence and asked me to investigate unofficially. A false move would ruin him, since Monsieur the Marquis is a man of influence.”

  “But why should anyone steal a mummy, especially de la Tour de Maracq, who is rich as an Indian prince, and of a house as old as Charlemagne?”

  “A scholar, a soldier, a man of letters,” enumerated d’Artois, continuing my thought, “and a fantastic madman, if this report is correct. He is too talented for sanity.”

  “Even as yourself,” I hinted.

  “Touché,” acknowledged d’Artois. “But I do not elope with ladies 3700 years old.”

  He fingered a pack of Bastos, but thinking better of so foul a deed, decided to light the Coronado I had given him.

  “All very quaint. But let’s get to facts,” I urged. “What have you to work on in this love affair?”

  “I have the good hunch. And it is more of a love affair than you realize.”

  Which was logical enough. Those whom gold could not tempt, might indeed steal objects of art, jewels over which to gloat in secret, a relic, an antique rug; but a shriveled mummy! Well, tastes vary.

  And the case should be simple of solution, at least as regarded the marquis; for the missing lady could not be concealed with any degree of facility. A simple matter of walking or climbing into the château, and leaving again with our princess; or else reporting that she was not to be found, and that Monsieur the Marquis was not her abductor. A jewel could be hidden; but a mummy…

  The château was perched upon a crest some hundred meters off the road. We parked the Issotta and proceeded on foot.

  Instead of knocking at the door, as seemed to be his intent, despite his quip about housebreaking, d’Artois selected a key from his ring, tried it; selected another, picked at the lock, but to no avail. The third, however, was applied with more success; the heavy door yielded to his touch, admitting us into a vestibule, thence to a salon.

  “Welcome to Tour de Maracq,” murmured d’Artois with a courtly bow. “Quick about it, and we’ll be out of here long before he has fought his last bout.”

  “But the servants?” I suggested.

  “They are few in number. It seems the marquis has an aversion to women, so that there are no female domestics to contend with. Thus it is that one of the ménage has gone to Bayonne to negotiate with a stranger who sought to buy some rare vintages which are to be pilfered from the master’s cellars. Another is keeping a rendezvous with a demoiselle who hailed him a week ago and made an engagement for today. Each has some illicit engagement whereof he will not babble. Now it would have been inconvenient to arrange on short order for lovers for any female servants…praise be to the eccentricity o
f Monsieur the Marquis!”

  I noted the rich tapestries; the massive teakwood furniture; the floor of rare hardwoods partly masked by Chinese and Indian rugs. And on the walls were arms of infinite variety; wavy-bladed kresses, kampilans, scimitars; halberds, assegai, lances; maces and battle-axes in endless number, all grouped in clusters. Some of these arms were burnished; but many bore dark, ominous stains.

  And thus we roamed through the house, from one apartment to another, I wondering at the beauty, the grotesquerie, the oddness of the furnishings and adornments, d’Artois regarding all with an appraising glance that revealed nothing of whatever interest he might have felt.

  Strange gods in bronze and onyx and basalt glared at us, brandished their distorted arms in futile rage, mouthed threats with their twisted lips; resented our presence in every way possible to inanimate things; inanimate, yes, but enlivened with the spiritual essence absorbed from their centuries of devotees. But no mummies. Nevertheless, d’Artois studied his surroundings. But nothing seemed to arouse his interest, until…

  “Ah…look!”

  He indicated a tiny darabukeh, a small kettledrum whose body was of grotesque carven wood, its head of a strange hide; strange to me, at least.

  “Curious, yes. But what has this to do with mummies?”

  “Nothing at all. But I fancied that drumhead…”

  A smile concluded his remark. Now what the devil significance had that little tom-tom?

  “But no mummies, Pierre.”

  “True. But one can picture a man’s mind from the house he keeps. Fancy then the odd brain that twists in the skull of de la Tour de Maracq!”

  And thus, room by room, we searched the château proper, servants’ quarters, basements, passages and all. Toward the end of our tour we stumbled upon a stairway which led to an apartment which we had overlooked.

  It was a large room of contradictory appearance: a study, if one judged from its desk, table, bookcases; a bedroom, surely, if gauged by the lordly canopied bed of antique workmanship; or a museum, if one drew conclusions from the ornaments.