The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  “And, by God, Barker, but I’m glad to see you!” I said.

  “Got your message,” he grinned, his little eyes snapping. “Ain’t no need to ’ide in ’ere, though. Nobody’s goin’ to come bargin’ in on you now, they ain’t. Ace ’igh, you are with Satan. A reg’ler one of ’em. Tysty bit o’ work, Cap’n, you done. Tyke it from me what knows what good work is.”

  He took a cigar, lighted it and sat down, eyeing me admiringly.

  “A tysty bit o’ work,” he repeated. “An’ you with no trainin’! I couldn’t ’ave done better myself.”

  I bowed, and pushed the decanter over to him.

  “Not me,” he waved back. “It’s all right if you’re goin’ to sleep an’ got a ’oliday. But old John Barleycorn ain’t no use in our line o’ work, sir.”

  “I’m just a beginner, Harry,” I said apologetically, and set the decanter down untouched. He watched me approvingly.

  “When Miss Demerest told me,” he resumed, “you could fair ’ave wyved me over with a feather. Bring ’im to me, syes she, the minute you can. If I’m sleepin’ or wykin’ it mykes no difference, I want ’im she syes. Any hour it’s syfe, she syes, but don’t you let ’im run no risks. ’Ell on seein’ you she is, sir.”

  “She just let me know she’d be back in her room by twelve,” I said.

  “All right, we’ll be there,” he nodded. “Got any plans? To squash ’im, I mean.”

  I hesitated. The thought in my mind was too nebulous as yet even to be called an idea. Certainly too flimsy to be brought out for inspection.

  “No, Harry, I haven’t,” I answered him. “I don’t know enough about the game. I’ve got to have a chance to look around. I know this though—I’m going to get Miss Demerest free of Satan or go out doing my damnedest.”

  He cocked an ear at me, like a startled terrier.

  “And if that’s the only way, I’ll pick the time and place to make sure that I take Satan with me,” I added.

  He hitched his chair close up to mine.

  “Cap’n Kirkham,” he said earnestly, “that’s the last plye to make. The very last plye, sir. I’d be ’ot for it if we could get anybody else to do it. An’ if nobody knew we was behind it. But there ain’t nobody ’ere who’d do for ’im, sir. Nobody. It’s like pryin’ for a mountain to fall on ’im, or the h’earth to swaller ’im, sir.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “It’s just this, Cap’n. If you do for ’im, or I do for ’im, we got to do for ’im knowin’ there ain’t no out for us. Not h’even a bloody ’arf-chance of us gettin’ awye. The kehjt slyves’d see to that if nobody else did. What! Us tykin’ their ’Eaven from ’em? Suicide it’ll be, Cap’n, no less. An’ if they suspect Miss Demerest knows anything about it—Gord, I ’ates to think of it! No, we got to find some other wye, Cap’n.”

  “I meant—only if there was no other way,” I said. “And if it comes to that I don’t expect you to figure in it. I’ll go it alone.”

  “Now, Cap’n, now, Cap’n!” he said, short upper lip quivering over buck teeth and face contorted as though on the edge of tears. “You ain’t got no call to talk like that, sir. I’m with you whatever you do. ’Ell, ain’t we partners?”

  “Sure we are, Harry,” I answered quickly, honestly touched. “But when it comes to killing, well—I do my own. There’s no reason why you should run any suicidal risks for us.”

  “Ow!” he snarled. “There ain’t, ain’t there? Ow, the ’ell there ain’t! Maybe you think I’m ’avin’ a ’appy ’oliday runnin’ around these walls like a bloody rat? A decent, Gord-fearin’ jail I wouldn’t ’ave a word to sye against. But this—what is it? Just plain ’ell! An’ you an’ Miss Demerest like my own family! No reason, ain’t there! Christ, don’t talk like that, Cap’n!”

  “There, there, Harry, I didn’t mean it quite that way,” I said, and patted his shoulder. “What I mean is to leave Satan to me, and, if the worst does come about, try to get Miss Demerest away.”

  “We stand together, Cap’n,” he answered stubbornly. “If it comes to killin’ I’ll be in it”—he hesitated, then muttered, “but I wish to Gord I could be sure any honest bullet would do for ’im.”

  That touched me on the raw. It came too close to some damnably disconcerting doubts of my own.

  “Snap out of it, Harry,” I said sharply. “Why, the first thing you told me was that Satan’s only a man like you and me. And that a bullet or a knife would do for him. Why the change of heart?”

  “I was braggin’,” he muttered. “I was talkin’ loud to keep my pecker up. ’E ain’t exactly what you’d call human, sir, now is he? I said ’e wasn’t the devil. I never said ’e wasn’t a devil. An’—an’—Oh, Gord, ’e’s so bloody ’uge!” he ended helplessly.

  My uneasiness increased. I had thought I had an anchor in Barker’s lack of superstition about Satan. And now it apparently had him by the throat. I tried ridicule.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” I sneered. “I thought you were hard-boiled, Harry. Satan tells you he comes from Hell. Sure, where else could he come from, you tell yourself. I suppose if somebody told you the story of Little Red Riding Hood you’d think every old woman with a shawl was a wolf. Go hide under the bed, little man.”

  He looked at me somberly.

  “’Ell’s behind ’im,” he said. “An’ ’e’s got all the passwords.”

  I began to get angry. One reason was that in arguing against him I had also to argue against myself. After all, he was only voicing my thoughts that I was reluctant to admit were my own.

  “Well,” I told him, “if he’s made you think that, he’s got you licked. You’re no use to me, Harry. Go back to your walls and creep. Creep around them and stay alive. Devil or no devil, I fight him.”

  I had thought to prick him. To my surprise, he showed no resentment.

  “An’ devil or no devil, so do I,” he said quietly. “Tryin’ to pull my leg, ain’t you, Cap’n? You don’t ’ave to. I told you I was with you, and I am. I’m through bein’ a rat in the walls. That’s all, Cap’n Kirkham.”

  There was a curious dignity about Barker. I felt my face grow hot. I was ashamed of myself. After all, he was showing the highest kind of courage. And surely it was better for him to spread out his fears in front of me than to let them ride him in secret. I thrust my hand out to him.

  “I’m damned sorry, Harry—” I began.

  “No need to be, sir,” he checked me. “Only there’s lots about this plyce an’—’im—that you don’t know about yet. I do, though. Maybe there wouldn’t be no ’arm in showin’ you a bit. Maybe you’d be seein’ a wolf or two yourself. What time is it?”

  There was a hint of grimness in his voice. I grinned to myself, well pleased. There was good hard metal in the little man. It was a challenge he was throwing down to me, of course. I looked at my watch.

  “Twenty after eleven,” I said. “So that you keep a certain appointment at midnight—lead on, Macduff.”

  “Your shirt,” he said, “would look like a light’ouse in the dark. Put on another suit.”

  I changed rapidly into the most unobtrusive of the wardrobe’s contents.

  “Got a gun?” he asked.

  I nodded, pointing to my left armpit. I had replenished my personal arsenal, of which Consardine had deprived me, while at the Club.

  “Throw it in a drawer,” he bade me, surprisingly.

  “What’s the idea?” I asked.

  “No good,” he said, “you might be tempted to use it, Cap’n.”

  “Well, for God’s sake,” I said, “if I was, there would be good reason.”

  “Might just as well carry along an alarm clock,” said Barker. “Do you just as much good, Or ’arm. Mostly ’arm. We don’t exactly want no h’advertisin’ on this trip, Cap’n.”

  My respect for Harry took an abrupt upward swing. I dropped my gun into the casual mouth of a nearby vase. I unslung my armpit holster, and poked it under a pillow.

  �
�Get thee behind me, Temptation,” I said. “And now what?”

  He dipped into a pocket.

  “Sneakers,” said Barker, and handed me a pair of thick rubber soles. I slipped them over my shoes. He fumbled in another pocket.

  “Knucks,” he dropped a beautiful pair of brass knuckles in my hand. I thrust my fingers through them.

  “Good,” said Barker. “They ain’t got the range of a gun, but if we ’ave to get violent we’ll ’ave to see it’s quiet like. Get up close an’ ’it ’ard an’ quick.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  He snapped off the lights in the outer room. He returned, moving with absolute silence, and took my hand. He led me to the bedroom wall.

  “Put your ’and on my shoulder, an’ step right be’ind me,” he ordered. I had heard no sound of a panel, and could distinguish no opening in the blackness. But a panel had opened, for I walked through what a moment before had been solid wall. He halted, no doubt closing the aperture. He swung off at a right-angle, I following. I had counted fifty paces before he stopped again. The corridor was a long one. He flashed a light, brief as the blink of a firefly. Before me was one of the little lifts. He pressed my arm, and guided me in. The lift began to drop. He drew a faint sigh, as of relief.

  “There was dynger along there,” he whispered. “Now it’ll be fair clear goin’!”

  The descent of the elevator seemed very slow. When it stopped, I was sure that we must be well below the floor of the great hall, somewhere down among the foundations.

  “What we’re goin’ into is one of ’is private wyes,” again he whispered. “I don’t think even Consardine knows it. An’ we won’t meet Satan on it. ’Cause why? I’m goin’ to show you.”

  We slipped out of the lift, and crossed what was apparently a ten-foot-wide corridor, black as a windowless dungeon. We passed, I conjectured, through its opposite wall, and along another passage of eighteen short paces. Here Barker paused, listening.

  Then in front of me a hair line of faint light appeared. Slowly, ever so slowly, it widened. Barker’s head became silhouetted against it. Cautiously he advanced, peering out. Then he nodded, reassuringly. He moved forward.

  We were in a dimly lighted, narrow corridor. It was hardly wide enough for two men to walk side by side. It was lined and paved with some polished black stone into which the light, from some hidden source, seemed to sink and drown. We were at one end of it. The floor fell in a gradual ramp for a hundred yards or more, and there the way either ceased or curved, the light was so faint and the effect of the polished stone so confusing I could not tell which.

  “Looks like a h’alley into ’Ell, don’t it?” muttered Harry. “Well, in a minute or two try to sye it ain’t.”

  He set grimly forth down it, I at his heels. We came to the part that had perplexed me, and I saw that it was a curve, a sharp one. The curve was unlighted, its darkness relieved only by faint reflections from behind. I could not see its end. We moved on into the thickening gloom. The floor had become level.

  Suddenly Barker halted, his mouth close to my ear.

  “Lay down. Not a sound now when you look in. On your life! Don’t ’ardly breathe!”

  I looked through the crack. I felt a cold prickling along my spine and in the roots of my hair.

  A little below me and not more than fifty feet away sat Satan. And he was opening the gates of his Black Paradise to the dying souls of his kehjt slaves!

  The meaning of the scene struck clear with my first glimpse of it. Satan was leaning forward from a massive throne of heavy black stone cushioned in scarlet and standing on a low broad dais. His robes were scarlet. At his side squatted the ape-faced monstrosity of an executioner, Sanchal. At his left hand stood two figures with veiled faces. One of them held a deep ewer, and the other a golden goblet.

  At Satan’s feet was a woman, rising from her knees. She was not old, fair haired, and must once have been very beautiful. Her body, seen through the one white robe that was her only covering, was still so. Her wide eyes were fixed with a dreadful avidness upon another golden goblet in Satan’s hand. Her mouth was half open, her lips drawn tight against her teeth. Her body quivered and strained as though she were about to leap upon him.

  The executioner whirred the loop of his cord, and grinned. She shrank back. Satan lifted the goblet high. His voice rolled out, sonorous and toneless.

  “You, woman who was Greta von Bohnheim, who am I?”

  She answered as tonelessly.

  “You are Satan.”

  “And what am I, Satan?”

  She replied:

  “You are my God!”

  I felt Barker shudder. Well, I was doing a little shivering myself. The infernal litany went on.

  “You shall have no God but me!”

  “I have no God but you, Satan!”

  “What is it, woman, that is your desire?”

  Her hands were clenched, and she drew them up to her heart. Her voice was tremulous, and so low that barely could I hear it.

  “A man and a child who are dead!”

  “Through me they shall live again for you! Drink!”

  There was faint mockery in his voice, and derision in his eyes, as he handed the goblet to the woman. She clutched it in both hands, and drained it. She bowed low, and walked away. She passed out of the narrow range of my vision, stepping ever more firmly, face rapt, lips moving as though she talked with one unseen who walked beside her.

  Again I felt the cold creep down my back. In what I had beheld there had been something diabolic, something that truly savored of the Prince of the Damned. It betrayed itself in Satan’s cold arrogance and pride during the blasphemous litany. It was in his face, his glittering eyes, and in the poise of his huge body. Something truly of Hell that possessed him, emanated from him, hovered around him. As though, as once before I have tried to describe it, as though he were a mechanism of flesh and blood in which a demon had housed itself.

  My gaze followed the woman until I could see her no more. The chamber was immense. What I could see of it through the crack must have been less than a third of it. The walls were of rose marble, without hangings or ornamentation of any kind. There were pierced openings like the mouths of deep niches over which silvery curtains fell. There was a great fountain that sent up tinkling jets of water out of a blood-red bowl. Couches of the rosy stone were scattered about. They were richly covered and on them lay, as though sleeping, men and women. There must have been dozens of these, for there were a score of them within my limited vision alone. I could not see the roof.

  I thought that these curtained apertures might be cubicles or cells in which the slaves dwelt.

  A gong sounded. The curtains were plucked aside. In each of the openings stood a slave, their eyes fastened upon Satan with a horrid eagerness. I shivered. It was like an eruption of the damned.

  Satan beckoned. A man stepped forward toward the dais. I took him for an American, a Westerner. He was tall and lanky, and in his gait something of the rocking habit of the range rider. His face was the hawk-like type that the mountain country breeds, and, curiously, it made the peculiar pallor and dilated eyes mask-like and grotesque. His mouth was thin and bitter.

  Like the woman, he prostrated himself before Satan. The veiled figure with the goblet held it out to the ewer bearer who poured into it a green liquid. The cup bearer handed the goblet to Satan.

  “Rise,” he commanded. The suppliant sprang to his feet, burning gaze upon the cup. The unholy ritual began again!

  “You, man who was Robert Taylor, who am I?”

  “You are Satan!”

  “And what am I, Satan?” Again the blasphemous avowal: “You are my God!”

  “You shall have no God but me!”

  “I have no God but you, Satan!”

  “What is it, man, that is your desire?” The slave straightened, his voice lost its lifelessness. His face grew cruel as that of the executioner’s own.

  “To kill the man I hate…to fi
nd him…to ruin him…to kill him slowly in many ways!”

  “As you killed him once—too swiftly,” said Satan maliciously, and then, again tonelessly:

  “Through me you shall find him whom you hate, and slay him as you desire! Drink!”

  He drank and passed. Twice more I heard the clang of the summoning gong, and twice I watched the white faces of these doomed ones with their avid eyes appear through the silver curtains and disappear behind them. I heard one man ask for dominance over a kingdom of beasts. Another for a Paradise of women.

  And Satan promised, and gave them the green draught. The kehjt!

  The subtle, devilish drug that gave to its drinkers the illusion of fulfilled desire. That turned the mind upon itself, to eat itself. And that by some hellish alchemy dissolved the very soul.

  I stared on, fascinated, Eve forgotten. But if I had forgotten, Barker had not. The crack through which I was looking closed. He touched me, and we arose. Soundlessly we slipped up the ramp through the dim, black passage. I felt a bit sick.

  It had been no nice picture, that of Satan wallowing in the worship of those slaves of his, dealing them out love and hate, dark power and lust, sardonically and impartially giving each what he or she most desired.

  Illusions, yes. But more real than life to the drinkers when the drug had them. But, God, their awakening!

  And after that awakening the burning craving to escape reality! To return to that place of illusion to which the kehjt was the only key!

  No wonder that the three of the museum affair had gone to their deaths with such blind obedience!

  And, if Satan was not what he pretended, very surely he was not disgracing that power whose name he had taken.

  I had paid little attention to where we were going, blindly following Barker’s lead.

  “Well,” he whispered, suddenly, “was I right? Wasn’t it a h’alley into ’Ell? What price Satan now, Cap’n?”