“Ai! Ai! Ai! Blood and love—blood and love! I, High Priestess of Ar, have spoken! Brothers, the white woman comes for her man! Brothers, the white man yearns for her—his body cries out to hers! Ai! Ai! Ai! Is the white woman’s magic greater than mine—I, High Priestess of Ar? This is she, brothers, a puny thing! Her flesh is white! But she is weak! Ai! Ai! Ai! She seeks a man, brothers, but shall she have mine?”
Boom! Boom! Boom! The muffled tom-toms. Sound of wailing voices came from beyond the cave entrance.
“Brothers! Brothers!” chanted the clear voice again. “She comes from across the great waters in search of her man! Beat up the drums! I, High Priestess of Love deny her right! Beat up the drums! She shall have him—if she can win him! Love or blood, brothers—love or blood! Ai! Ai! Ai!”
“Blood—love or blood!” sighed a chorus in answering echo.
The prancing priest threw a handful of chemical on the tiny fire. It flamed higher. Round and round it he danced, leaping, twirling, mumbling. Mumbo, jumbo, God of the jungle! Saliva dripped from his purple lips, from his withered toothless gums! Across the firelight Don saw his brother’s desperate eyes peering directly into his own. Lips moved, but words could not be heard above the roar of the drums.
Suddenly the white body of Wynne Dana sprawled into the circle of light, as if propelled by vicious, unseen hands. After her, triumphantly leaped the High Priestess of Ar, voodoo Queen of Love! If the first body was gleaming white the second was tawny yellow, almost phosphorescent in the firelight! Yellow loins quivered and trembled, muscles tautened and ridged beneath yellow sinew as the white woman was jerked bodily from the floor—yellow fingers twined in her hair.
“Your lover! Your lover!” shrieked the Priestess tauntingly. She pointed a long hand at John Martin. “Not yours! Mine! Mine, I tell you! My man! Your lover or your blood—your white body for him or for my followers!”
Wynne fell to her knees before her tormentor. Fire flamed higher. The hideous little priest danced closer and closer to the recumbent figure. “Take her!” screamed the High Priestess—“Take her, Germain!”
She leaped across the lighted circle to John Martin. Her voice rose madly, ending in a shriek. “See her! See her! The puny thing! The white flesh you’ve cried for—the body you’ve longed for! I’ve denied you nothing! I deny you nothing now! We shall see! We shall let Ar decide! You sought her—she sought you! We leave the issue to omnipotent Ar, the Goddess of Love! Watch me, Martain, watch me!”
Don Martin saw his brother’s eyes fixed despairingly upon those of the Priestess. She held his unwilling gaze like a snake holds that of its victim. His lips drew apart, his eyes grew dreamy, somnolent, like a doped man’s. Fascinated himself Don wrenched his gaze away with an effort to watch the withered priest and the shrinking Wynne. For the life of him he could make no sound, no move other than to toil and strain vainly at his bonds.
Round and round the fascinated, stiffly erect Wynne whirled the obscene Priest, his goatskin half revealing his dirty, bony body. His hands were like claws, talons, making strange passes, rhythmic gestures before her eyes.
“No! No!” screamed Don in anguish, realizing what was about to occur. No one heard him in the tumult. Slowly, surely the Priest hypnotized the woman. Her eyes became fixed, glassy and staring. Withered hands, claw-like, reached forth, snatched the remaining rags from her body. She stood there rigid, erect before her master, the undeniable master of her brain. Those withered talons caressed her, slid horribly across her white, gleaming thighs, the soft fleshiness of her hips. She trembled, slowly began to sway in time to the beat of the muffled tom-toms. Her flat abdomen, racked and twisted by deep breaths, stood rigid and arched beneath the claws. He reached to the altar, thrust his fingers into the dripping mass and streaked the red, red blood of the murdered gendarme across her pulsing, quivering breasts. Closer and closer he drew the crimsoned torso to his own hideous boniness. The yellow Priestess threw back her head, laughed raucously. Don Martin sank once more into shocked unconsciousness.
His eyes opened to an even more uncanny sight. John Martin weaved in rhythm to the mad beat of the tom-toms, a gleaming knife blade in his hand. Before him, supplicating, enticing, alluring, coaxing, danced the two women—a white body and a yellow body, Wynne Dana and the High Priestess. The bedraggled little Priest leaped and chanted amidst the three. First one then the other in turn surged toward the swaying white man, thrusting, arching her body, quavering, quivering in a mad dance of phallic passion, with life itself for a prize! Haughtily he rejected both, turning his head away, waving the gleaming knife above their heads disdainfully. Both women had set, fixed glares, eyes fixed only on those of the emaciated white man. Throb! throb! throb! the muffled beat of the tom-toms! The Priest snatched a leather lash from the altar. It swished, whistled through the air, fell across the posturing back of Wynne Dana. An angry welt leaped into view; she paid no attention, felt no pain. Swish! The whip descended on the tremulous, pear shaped breasts of the yellow woman. She neither paused in her mad gyrations, nor noticed. Round and round the white man they whirled.
Now Don Martin noted a peculiar thing. Closer and closer his brother came to him. Above the muffled throbbing of the tom-toms he made out a chant, issuing from his brother’s parched lips.
“Get-ready-get-ready-turn-on-your-side-roll-for-the-base-of-the-altar!”
Over and over John Martin chanted the words. The four figures turned and twisted. The lash fell, swished and fell, across white flesh, across yellow flesh, leaving angry red marks. Suddenly the gleaming blade of the knife shot aloft, flashed and fell in the firelight, once! twice! The little Priest gave an agonized scream of pain as the gleaming blade buried itself in his bony chest. His expiring body leaped frantically into the air, clutched convulsively at nothing and fell athwart the fire. Darkness.
Don turned on his side, half rolled, half scrambled for the black base of the altar. Screams echoed behind him; he felt himself dropping into space; a heavy body fell atop him, and for the third time he lost consciousness.
Daylight awakened him. Light filtered and crept through a cleft of rock, a fissure in the cave. A white body lay beside him—Wynne Dana. She moaned in her sleep. Breasts were striped and scarred with crimson, long angry welts from the lash. Don crawled stiffly to the cleft. Below lay a small clearing flooded with sunlight, a rough, stone altar in the center. Atop the altar lay a tapering, yellow body, still in death, the High Priestess of Ar! Before that altar, with bowed head, knelt John Martin, strange and chants and invocations pouring from his babbling lips. Beyond, peering through the bushes with ashy-hued faces, clustered Captain St. Remy and his frightened troopers.
“Ai! Ai! Ai!” came from the anguished John Martin.
Slowly Wynne Dana crept to the entrance of the cave, took her place beside the man of her heart. He cradled his bowed head against her bosom as her arms slid around his neck. Presently they stood wordlessly beside John Martin in the clearing, surrounded by the gendarmie.
John Martin looked up through tear-wet eyes. “Take me home, Don!” he said. “The spell is broken at last!”
From the far off purple hills—boom! boom! boom!
SUEZ SOUVENIR, by Jerome Hyams
Originally published in Spicy Detective Stories, September 1934.
Black midnight lay like a noxious blanket over the stifling, unlighted and stinking streets of Port Said. From out in the harbor a P. & O. steamer hooted through the lifeless August air like a tortured owl.
Cliff Downey, ace operative of the Consolidated Detective Agency of Chicago, U.S.A., turned an unlighted corner and found himself in a narrow street in the heart of the native quarter. Blank-walled houses crowded ominously on either side, windowless and menacing, their overhanging second stories frowning down upon the cobblestones below.
Before one such structure, larger than its neighbors and painted in bilious pinks and greens, Cliff Downey hesi
tated. And even as he inspected the house, out of the tail of his eye he noticed two shadowy figures further along the filth-littered street—two loitering fellahins or natives of the working class, skulking in the blackness. They were watching him.
The detective’s hairy right fist closed over the cold butt of the automatic in his coat pocket. His heavy jaw shot forward. The short red hairs at the nape of his neck bristled warningly.
He waited.
Cliff Downey had landed in Port Said that same afternoon. He had gone at once to the American consulate. He had found the consul away on vacation leave, and the consulate in charge of the vice-consul, Leo Sumner, a young, blonde, pleasant-faced American not ten months from the States.
To Sumner, Cliff Downey had presented his credentials. Vice-Consul Sumner had looked at Downey interrogatively. “Here on pleasure or business, Mr. Downey?” he had inquired in his pleasant Kentucky voice.
“Business. I’m searching for Wilda Rhodes, the young American girl who disappeared here in Port Said last month.” Downey drew a snapshot from his pocket “Here’s a picture of her.”
The photograph revealed a slender, virginal, black-haired young woman clad in a scanty bathing suit. Her eyes were dark and mysterious, and her month seemed warm, passionate. Her breasts were firm and pointed, her hips slimly feminine, her legs tapered and intriguing.
Downey said, “Her folks have plenty of money. They think she may have been kidnapped for ransom. They hired me to find her.”
Summer widened his forthright blue eyes. “I’m afraid that’s rather a hopeless undertaking. Many people vanish here in Port Said, but few ever return.” He lighted a cigarette. “Unescorted women have no business in a place like this. It’s the sink-hole of the world.”
“You mean other women have disappeared here recently?”
Sumner shrugged. “Wilda Rhodes is the first American girl to drop out of sight in Port Said since I’ve been here; but several nationals of other countries have mysteriously vanished during the past several months—two French girls, a Brazilian, a German girl—”
“Wilda Rhodes is the one I’m interested in,” Downey interrupted brusquely. “And I intend to find her!” The detective leaned forward. “What about the white-slave traffic here? Who’s the big gun?”
Sumner shrugged. “All that is supposed to have been wiped out. The Egyptian government, with the co-operation of the British, have made a fairly clean sweep. Of course,” he added confidentially, “it’s whispered that the flesh trade still goes on, underground. There’s a wealthy native named Azhar ibn Barakah who’s rumored to be at the head of it—but obviously that’s only hearsay. One never sees the man personally. He leads a totally sequestered life in his palatial house in the native section.”
“Where is this house of his?” Cliff Downey shot the query abruptly.
“It’s a pink-and-green affair on the Harah Takiyyah—the Street of the Monastery,” Sumner had answered.
“Thanks,” Cliff Downey had said. “That’ll be my starting point.”
And now, at midnight, the Consolidated operative walked slowly past the pink-and-green walls of Azhar ibn Barakah’s house—while two burly, shadowy native fellahin moved silently toward him.
They were husky brutes. One was tall, broad-shouldered, slightly stooping. The other was shorter, barrel-chested. The barrel-chested man moved with a slight limp.
Cliff Downey debated. He intended to get inside that pink-and-green house of Azhar ibn Barakah; but he didn’t want to be seen doing it. He had two courses open. He could turn and stroll away, to come back when the two loitering fellahin had gone about their business; or he could go forward, meet them face to face, and pass them.
Cliff Downey went forward.
Stench of camel dung and stale donkey sweat assailed his nostrils in the dead midnight air. The fellahin were within a few paces of him now. Downey’s hard muscles tightened under his coat.
And then the natives leaped.
A knife flashed in a deadly, descending arc. The American lunged sidewise like a cat, his broad back punching against the blank wall of Azhar ibn Barakah’s house. The detective’s right hand whipped out of his coat pocket, knuckles whitened around the automatic’s butt as he parried the blow of the knife in the brown hand of the barrel-chested fellahin. Steel clashed against steel as the blue barrel of Downey’s weapon met the sharp, descending blade. The knife went skittering into the filthy gutter.
“Now, you bastard!” Cliff Downey’s lips drew back in a snarling grin. He lashed out with his fist. His iron-hard knuckles met the point of the native’s jaw. The man shot backward, swayed, stiffened and fell like a heavy board, his head striking against the cobbled street with a sound like the splitting of a ripe cocoanut.
The American’s eyes were on the taller fellahin now. He could see the man’s hideous, pock-marked face as he closed in. “Aie! Death to the infidel!” the native hissed.
“Don’t be too sure!” the detective grunted. He stooped suddenly and launched himself forward in a vicious flying tackle. His hard arms closed about the fellahin’s sturdy legs. The native toppled forward, smothering the American under the stinking folds of his burnoose. Together the two rolled on the narrow pavement.
Downey fought savagely at the folds of the burnoose that engulfed and hampered him. He lashed out with his feet. His heel caught his assailant full in the mouth. The native grunted with pain, backed off and threw himself at Downey’s throat, spitting blood and teeth.
The detective tried to roll free. A hard brown hand closed about his windpipe; another hand pinioned Dowry’s gun arm. The Consolidated operative’s breath was cut off, strangled in his throat. Rivulets of sweat poured into his straining eyes. There was a throbbing roar in his ears; the overhanging jut of the house above him swayed dizzily.
“By my beard and by Mashhad, I have thee now!” the fellahin hissed. Then Downey’s free left hand came up, stiff-fingered. Desperately he jammed his nails into the native’s staring eyes. The man gasped thickly, and his fingers lost their tenacious hold on the American’s gun arm. The detective jammed the muzzle of his automatic into his attacker’s ribs and pulled the trigger.
The report was muffled, indistinct. The fellahin quivered all over, like a felled aspen. “Allah—il—Illaha!” he gurgled. Then abruptly his dead weight sagged down upon the American. Downey shoved himself clear and staggered to his unsteady feet. He looked down at the still form of the dead native. He slipped his still-smoking automatic back into his pocket.
“And that,” he muttered, “is that!”
He looked up and down the narrow street. There was no sign of life. His unequal struggle with the two natives had been soundless; the report of his single shot had been dampened by the gun-muzzle’s close contact with the tall fellahin’s straining body. On sudden impulse, Downey reached down and jerked the long folds of the native’s turban away from the man’s lolling head. He turned to the body of the barrel-chested thug and snatched that one’s turban also. Then he picked up the knife that had been knocked into the gutter.
He returned to the single wooden, iron-barred door that was the only break in the shadowy pink-and-green wall of Azhar ibn Barakah’s house. It was locked from the inside. Downey raised his fist and knocked softly, insistently.
He knew the native habit of keeping a servant in the winding passage-way behind the front door, day and night. He listened intently. He heard shuffling footfalls behind the thick wooden portal. A heavy bolt grated in its iron hasp. The door swung partially open.
Cliff Downey stared at a villainous-looking, one-eyed native whose single eye widened in amazement. The man’s hand plunged into the folds of his dirty gray burnoose and flashed out again with a curved knife.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” the American grunted. He raised his own knife and poised it with its point not a quarter-inch from the servant’s throat. “Drop that!�
�� Downey snarled.
The native’s hand slowly dropped. His knife clattered to the flag-stoned paving of the inner passageway. Downey leaped at him, bearing him backward to the paved blackness. He whipped the long folds of a turban around the man’s face, gagging him. Then with the other turban he had taken from the fellahin who had attacked him in the street outside, he bound the native servant’s wrists and ankles.
Cliff Downey stepped over the prone form of his prisoner and felt his way cautiously forward along the pitch-dark passage. He came to an abrupt turn. There was a closed door before him. He flashed on his electric torch for a brief instant. The door was barred from his side. He slid the bolt noiselessly and stared down a flight of precipitous stone steps leading into a black abyss below.
“Well—here goes!” the detective grunted. He drew a long breath. Then he descended the steep stone steps on soundless feet. A rank, fetid odor rose up at him like a nauseous wave; the stench of mildewed walls, of rank decay, of—of dead human flesh!
He reached the bottom of the precipitous stone steps. A feeling of oppression closed in about him. He snapped on his flashlight once more. He cast its rays in a wide sweeping circle. Then he went suddenly white.
“God in heaven!” the American said in a strangled whisper.
Chained to a torture-wheel in the center of this subterranean chamber of horrors was the lovely, naked, dead figure of a girl—a white girl!
Her slender legs and arms were stretched sickeningly on the rack. Her fair yellow hair, like spun gold, hung in cascades over the diabolic machinery of the torture-wheel. Her sightless eyes were wide with the terror that had visited her before merciful death had at long last ended her excruciating agonies. Buried to the hilt in the firm white flesh of her young, virginal, rounded left breast was a short Oriental scimitar. Coagulated blood formed a dark, viscid gout that marred the perfect symmetry of her molded bosom.
The Spicy-Adventure Page 4
