The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  And now behind the imperturbable, heavy mask of his face I glimpsed the Chinese. Perceptibly the slant of the eyes had accentuated, the high cheek bones became more prominent. I nodded, thoughtfully.

  “But if again you are—” I had meant to add “disappointed.”

  He caught me up with a touch of that demonic fury he had shown at the ordeal of Cartright.

  “Do not dare say it! Do not dare think it! Her first-born shall be a son! A son, I say!”

  What I might have answered, what have done, I do not know. His sudden deadliness, his arrogance, had set my smoldering wrath ablaze again. Consardine saved me. I heard the door open and the menacing gaze turned from me for a moment. It gave me my chance to recover myself.

  “All is prepared, Satan,” Consardine announced. I arose eagerly, nor was that eagerness feigned. I was conscious of the beginning of a curious excitement, a heady exaltation.

  “It is your moment, James Kirkham.” Satan’s voice was again expressionless, his face marble, his eyes sparkling. “But a few minutes—and I may be your servant. The world your plaything! Who knows! Who knows!”

  He stepped to the farther wall and opened one of the panels.

  “Dr. Consardine,” he said, “you will escort the neophyte to the temple.”

  He brooded upon me, almost caressingly—I saw the hidden devil lick its lips.

  “Master of the world!” he repeated. “And Satan your loyal slave! who knows!”

  He was gone. Consardine drew a deep breath. He spoke, in carefully matter-of-fact fashion.

  “Want a drink before you try it, Kirkham?”

  I shook my head, the tingling excitement increasing.

  “You know the rules,” he said briskly. “You step on any four of the seven footprints. You can stop at any one of them you choose, and abide by the consequences. One of Satan’s gives you to him for one—service; two give you to him for a year; three—and you are his forever. No more chances for you then, Kirkham. Hit the four fortunate ones and you sit on the top of the world, just as he promised you. Look back while you’re on the climb, and you have to begin all over again. All clear?”

  “Let’s go,” I said, somewhat huskily—my throat felt oddly dry.

  He led me to the wall and through it into one of the marble-lined corridors. From that we passed into a lift. It dropped. A panel slid aside. Consardine leading, I stepped out into the webbed temple.

  I was close to the base of the steps, just within the half-circle of brilliant light that masked the amphitheater. From it came a faint rustling and murmuring. Foolishly, I hoped that Eve had picked out a good seat. I realized that I was trembling. Cursing myself silently, I mastered the tremor, praying that it had been too slight to be noticed.

  I looked up at the black throne, met Satan’s mocking eyes and my nerves steadied, my control clicked into place. He sat there in his black robe, just as I had seen him the night before. The blue jeweled eyes of his stone counterpart glittered behind him. Instead of the fourteen white-robed, pallid-faced men with the noosed ropes there were but two, midway up the steps. And something else was missing. The black-visaged fiend of an executioner!

  What did that mean? Was it Satan’s way of telling me that even if I trod upon his three prints he would not have me killed? Or at least that I need not fear death until I had finished the work for which he had picked me?

  Or was it a trap?

  That was the more likely. Somehow I could not conceive Satan thus solicitously though subtly reassuring me of a suspended sentence. Was it not, rather, that by cutting down his guards and eliminating his torturer he had schemed to plant that very thought? Lure me on to make the full gamble and go the limit of the four steps in the belief that if I lost I was sure of a reprieve that might give me time to escape him?

  Or, admitting that his present purpose was benevolent, if I did lose, might it not suddenly occur to him that he would derive greater amusement from evoking his hellish servant with the cord of woman’s hair and giving me to him—like Cartright.

  As Cartright had, I studied his face. It was inscrutable, nothing in it to guide me. And now, far more vividly than when I had watched that despairing wretch being hauled in to his torment, did I realize the infernal ingenuity of this game. For now it was I who had to play it.

  I dropped my eyes from Satan’s. They fell upon the seven shining footprints and followed them up to the golden throne. Crown and scepter glittered upon it. Their gem fires beckoned and called to me. Again the excitement seized me, tingling along every nerve.

  If I could win them! Win them and what they stood for!

  Satan pressed down the lever between the two thrones. I heard the whirring of the controlling mechanism and saw the seven marks of the childish foot shine with intenser light.

  “The steps are ready,” he intoned, and thrust his hands beneath his black robe. “They await their conqueror, the chosen one of fortunel Are you he? Ascend—and learn!” I walked to the steps, mounted and set my foot unhesitatingly upon the first of the prints. Behind me, I knew, its symbol glimmered on the telltale of the luminous globe—

  On Satan’s side—or mine?

  Again I ascended, more slowly, and paused at the next print. But it was not to weigh its probabilities of good or evil that I halted. The truth is that the gambler’s fever was rising high within me, crazily high, undermining my determination to limit this first game of mine with Satan to only two of the footsteps.

  Common sense bade me go slow and get back my grip upon my judgment. Common sense, fighting for time, moved me past that mark and slowly on to the next.

  I trod upon it. There was another symbol on the telltale—mine—or Satan’s?

  Now the fever had me wholly. My eyes were bright with it as Satan’s own. My heart was thumping like a drum, my fingers cold, a dry electric heat beating about my head. The little feet of fire seemed to quiver and dance with eagerness to lead me on.

  “Take me!” beckoned one.

  “Take me!” signaled another.

  The jeweled crown and scepter summoned. On the golden throne I saw a phantom—myself, triumphant, with crown upon my head, scepter in my hand, Satan at my beck and the world at my knees!

  It may be true that thoughts have form, and that intense emotion or desire leave behind something of themselves that persists, lives on in the place where it was called forth and wakes, ravening, when some one moved by the same impulses that created it appears in that place. At any rate, it was as though the ghosts of desire of all those who had ascended those steps before me had rushed to me and, hungering for fulfillment, were clamoring to me to go on.

  But their will was also my will. I needed no urging. I wanted to go on. After all, the two prints upon which I had trodden might well be fortunate ones. At the worst, by all the laws of chance, I should have broken even. And if so then there would be no more risk in making one more throw than I had already resolved to incur.

  What did the telltale show?

  Ah, if I could but know! If I could but know!

  And suddenly a chill went through me, as though the ghosts of despair of all those who had mounted before me and lost had pressed back the hungry wraiths of desire.

  Glitter of crown and scepter tarnished and grew sinister.

  For an instant I saw the seven shining prints not as those of a child’s foot, but as of a cloven hoof!

  I drew back up and looked up at Satan. He sat head bent forward, glaring at me, and with distinct shock I realized that with full force of his will he was commanding me to proceed. Instantly after that apperception came another. It was as though a hand touched my shoulder, drawing me still further back, and clearly as though lips were close to my ear I heard a counter-command, imperative—

  “Stop! Stop now!”

  The voice of—Eve!

  For another minute I stood, shaken by the two contending impulses. Then abruptly a shadow lifted from my mind, all fever fled, the spell of the shining prints and lure of crown an
d orb broke. I turned my face, reeking with sweat, once more to Satan.

  “I’ve had enough…for this…time!” I panted.

  He stared at me silently. I thought that behind the cold sparkle of his gaze I read anger, thwarted purpose, a certain evil puzzlement. If so, it was fleeing. He spoke.

  “You have claimed the player’s right. It was yours to stop when you willed. Look behind you.”

  I swung around and sought the telltale globe.

  Both of the prints upon which I had trodden had been—Satan’s!

  CHAPTER TEN

  I was Satan’s bond servant for a year, bound to do whatsoever he commanded me.

  The balance of that afternoon I had spent in my room, alternating between intensive thought and hope of Barker cat-footing it out of the wall. It was plain that my liberty was still limited. Not yet might I run with the pack. Tentative overtures to Consardine following my retreat from the steps, a hint that perhaps I ought to make a tour of this citadel of the Prince of Darkness now I was enlisted among his legionaries, had met courteous but firm rebuff. He had gravely prescribed, as a doctor, the quietness of my chamber as a sedative for the nervous strain I had just undergone.

  What I had hoped for, of course, had been a chance to run across Eve. Reflection assured me that it was much more important at the moment to get in touch with the little cockney burglar.

  As I waited I tried to analyze the fever that had so swept me off my feet. I had thought myself cooler headed, better balanced. The fact is that I was both ashamed of myself and uneasily puzzled. If I admitted that the intensity of the passion I had felt had been due to Satan’s will, an actual compelling force pouring down upon me as I climbed the steps—well, at least that was an explanation to soothe my smarting pride.

  But if it left me with the comforting thought that my will was quite as strong as I had deemed it, it involved the humiliating alternative that it was far weaker than Satan’s. I took no credit for abstaining from that next step which might have given me to him forever. It had been the warning whisper, whether from Eve’s mind or my own subconscious one, that had pulled me back.

  And Satan’s attitude puzzled me. Why had he been so bent on forcing me upward? Had it been simply the natural instinct of the gambler? The urge to win? Had the sight of those two symbols flashing out one after the other on his side of the telltale aroused the blood-lust in him? If one or both of them had been on my side of the globe would he have shown the same eagerness?

  Or had he from the beginning willed me to go the limit and lose?

  And if so—why?

  I could find no answer to the questions, nor did Barker appear. And at last, Thomas aiding, I dressed and was escorted by way of walls and lifts to still another immense and vaulted chamber that in size and trappings might have been a feast hall of the Medicis in the golden prime of that magnificent clan. There were a score or more men and women at a great oval table with Satan at the head, his flawless evening dress giving him an oddly accentuated sardonic note. Plainly I was late, but as plainly informality was the custom.

  “Our newest recruit—James Kirkham.”

  With no more introduction than this, Satan waved me to my appointed place. The others smiled and nodded and went on talking.

  As I seated myself I saw with secret amazement that my right-hand neighbor was a certain famous actress whose name was seldom missing from Broadway’s electrics. My rapid glance around the table showed me a polo player of enviable American lineage and international reputation, and a brilliant attorney high in the councils of Tammany Hall. The others were unknown to me, but one and all bore the stamp of unusual intelligence. If this were a representative slice of Satan’s court, then indeed his organization must be quite as extraordinary as he had boasted. Eve was not there. Cobham was.

  Walter sat at the actress’s right. As the dinner went on I exerted myself to be pleasant to him. For my own reasons, I wanted no lurking enemies just then. He was a bit stiffish at first, then mellowed. He drank freely, but, I noted with interest, not so freely as he would have liked. Very clearly Walter loved to look upon the wine when it was not only red, but all along the rainbow. I thought at first that it was the restraint he had placed upon himself as to the rate of his consumption that stirred up in him antagonism against other inhibitions, and particularly that of discretion in expression of opinion. Then I realized it was the drink itself that bred in Cobham a stern passion for truth, a contempt for euphemisms and circumlocutions. What he wanted was the plain fact unadorned, and no evasions. As he put it, “no tampering with the formula.” He was in fact an in-vino-veritas drinker of Fundamentalist fervor. Also he was amusing, and the actress was vastly entertained by our cross-conversation.

  Some day or other soon, I resolved, I would usefully irrigate Walter into such condition that he could not bear to leave even a shred of covering on the clear-eyed goddess of the verities. I was astonished to find that he was a chemist and spent much time in his laboratory in the chateau. That explained his remark about the formula. He was very explicit in telling me what an amazing chemist he was. I was to learn later that he had not exaggerated. That is why I have lingered over his picture.

  It was a wonderful dinner, with a high note of sophistication and delicately reckless gayety that had a constantly ringing undertone as of fine steel. The only hints as to our peculiar position were when the distinguished attorney, glancing at me, proposed a toast to “the happy near damned,” and when Satan sent for a casket and displayed some of the most magnificent jewels I had ever seen.

  He told their histories. This emerald set in turquoise was the seal which Cleopatra had pressed upon the letters she wrote to Anthony; this necklace of diamonds was the one with which the Cardinal de Rohan had thought to buy the favors of Marie Antoinette, and so had set in motion that trial which had been one of the midwives of the Revolution, and finally cost the unhappy queen her head; this coronet had shone among the curls of Nell Gwynne, set there by Charles, her royal lover; this ring with its regal rubies had been given by Montespan to the poisoner La Voiture for a love philter to warm the cooling heart of the Roi du Soleil.

  At last he gave the flashing little Frenchwoman who sat at his right a bracelet of sapphires that had been, he said, Lucrezia Borgia’s. I wondered what she had done to deserve it, and if there were ironic significance in his naming of its old owner. If so, it made no difference in her delight.

  And it gave me an enormously increased respect for Satan’s power that in this gathering there was no melodramatic secrecy, no masking, no stale concealment of names by numbers. His people met face to face. Evidently any thought of mutual betrayal was incredible, their faith in Satan’s protection absolute. That all of them, or many of them, had witnessed my ordeal of the steps I had no doubt—nor that they had watched the tragedy of Cartright. There was nothing to show it in their behavior.

  They bade good night to Satan. I arose and would have gone with them, but his eyes caught mine and he shook his head.

  “Remain with me, James Kirkham,” he commanded.

  And soon we were alone, the table cleared, the servants gone.

  “And so,” his lashless eyes glittered at me over the edge of his great goblet, “and so—you have lost!”

  “Yet not as much as I might have, Satan,” I smiled, “since had I gone but a bit higher my fall might have been like that ancient one of yours—straight into Hell.”

  “A journey,” he said blandly, “never devoid of interest. But a year soon passes, and then you shall have your chance again.”

  “To fall, you mean?” I laughed.

  “You gamble against Satan,” he reminded me, then shook his head. “No, you are wrong. My plans for you require your presence on earth. I commend, however, your prudence in climbing. And I admit you—surprised me.”

  “I have then,” I arose and bowed, “begun my bondage with a most notable achievement.”

  “May we both find your year a profitable one,” he said. “An
d now, James Kirkham—I claim my first service from you!”

  I seated myself, waiting, with a little heightening of the pulse, for him to go on.

  “The Yunnan jades,” he said. “It is true that I arranged matters so that you might retain them, if you were clever enough. It is also true that it would have amused me to have possessed the plaques. I was forced to choose between two interests. Obviously whichever way the cards fell I was bound to experience a half-disappointment.”

  “In other words, you observed, sir,” I remarked, solemnly, “that even you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Another blunder of a bunglingly devised world. The museum has the jades; well, they shall keep them. But they must pay me for my half-disappointment. I have decided to accept something else that the museum owns which has long interested me. You shall—persuade—them to let me have it, James Kirkham.”

  He raised his glass to me, ceremoniously, and drank; I followed suit, with no illusion as to the word he had used.

  “What is it,” I asked, “and what is to be my method of—persuasion?”

  “The task,” he said, “will not be a difficult one. It is, in truth, in the nature of the initial deed all knights of old were compelled to perform before they could receive the accolade. I follow the custom.”

  “I bow to the rules, sir,” I told him.

  “Many centuries ago,” he continued, “a Pharaoh summoned his greatest goldsmith, the Benvenuto Cellini of that day, and commanded him to make a necklace for his daughter. Whether it was for her birthday or her bridal, none knows. The goldsmith wrought it of finest gold and carnelian and lapis lazuli and that green feldspar called aquamarine. At one side of the golden cartouche that bore in hieroglyphs the Pharaoh’s name, he set a falcon crowned with the sun’s disk—Horus the son of Osiris, God, in a fashion, of Love, and guardian of happiness. On the other the winged serpent, the uraeus, bearing the looped cross, the crux ansata, the symbol of life. Below it he made a squatting god grasping sheaves of years and set upon his elbow the tadpole symbol of eternity. Thus did the Pharaoh by amulets and symbols invoke an eternity of love and life for his daughter.