E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates

by E. Hoffmann Price

  And something was crowding her out of her own body! The thought was outrageous. But I remembered other and equally incredible things that had taken place in Bayonne, and could not doubt Pierre’s ominous words. And certainly I could not question his sincerity.

  D’Artois nudged me, and gestured toward a chair.

  “Seat yourself,” he whispered. “Wait and you will see.”

  We sat there in the shadows. I wondered what specter from the dark background of that old city would appear to make good Pierre’s ominous words. I heard the silvery chime of the cathedral clock striking eleven. I relaxed. It…whatever it would be…would not appear until midnight.

  But I was wrong. I became aware of a subtle, poison sweetness that permeated the room. And in the darkness to the left of the moonbeams that marched slowly across the floor, I saw a shimmering phosphorescence that elongated, and spread, and took form. It was at first so tenuous that I could distinguish the mantelpiece looming out of the shadows behind it. The odor in the room was becoming more intense. It was like the aroma of embalming spices from some desecrated sarcophagus, but infinitely more pungent. The luminous haze was something from a tomb, or worse. Even as I watched, drugged by that spectral sweetness, the silvery mist became substantial. It assumed a definite form.

  It was a woman of surpassingly gracious figure. She wore on her head a tall, curiously wrought diadem. As she turned to face us, I saw that her features were lovely with an evil beauty. Her smile was a curved sinister mockery. Her lips moved, but I could distinguish no sound.

  Neither d’Artois nor I stirred. I doubt even that we breathed. We sat there, watching that shadowy, diabolical beauty return our stare. Then she noiselessly approached Madeleine’s bed, moving with an undulant, serpentine grace. She bent over the sleeping girl, and made weaving passes with her slender hands.

  Madeleine stirred, and murmured in her sleep, and made a gesture as if to repel the presence. She half rose and supported herself on her elbow. Then as she sank back among her pillows, her gesture became one of despair and weariness, and resignation. Her deep sigh was the only sound in the terrible, haunted silence of that room.

  I saw a misty vapor rising from her half-parted lips. It floated, and spread like cigarette smoke in a room whose air is utterly still.

  “Pardieu!” muttered d’Artois. “She defies us to our teeth!”

  He rose from his chair, and advanced a pace.

  “Balkis, Queen of the Morning, get you back to the shadows whence you came!” he commanded in a low, tense voice. “Back to the shadows, Balkis, and confuse him who disturbed your rest.”

  The presence ceased her gestures. She stood erect, and regarded Pierre with eyes burning with fury. She advanced a pace toward him. But instead of retreating, d’Artois took another stride toward that spectral presence. The air became tense from the silent conflict of Pierre’s will and the resentment of that ghostly beauty. For an instant it seemed that she was becoming more substantial, and was poised, ready to claw him in her imperious, unspoken wrath.

  D’Artois advanced another pace, almost within arm’s reach, and confronted her, eye to eye. He feared neither man nor devil, that fierce old soldier.

  Then he spoke solemnly in a sonorous language that reminded me of Arabic. His voice was low, but the syllables rolled like the surge of a distant surf. As he intoned, he extended his hand in a gesture of command. The presence became more and more tenuous, and retreated. It became a vague fleck of luminescence that paled in the slowly shifting moonlight; and in another moment it vanished.

  I heard Pierre’s sharply exhaled breath, and saw his shoulders droop wearily. The tension in the room eased abruptly. And then I noted that Madeleine no longer exhaled the misty vapor that had been passing between her lips.

  He turned. Trembling violently, I followed him from the room. Under the light in the hall, I could see that his features were drawn and haggard, and that his eyes burned with a fierce light. He too was trembling; not from fright, but from the effort of will which he had exerted in defying the lovely, spectral presence.

  “For God’s sake, what was it?” I finally ventured to ask, speaking in a whisper. “Will it stay away?”

  “That is what is seeking to take possession of her,” replied d’Artois. “And it will not stay away, if he who sent it chooses to make it return.”

  “What is it?” I repeated. “A ghost?”

  “In a way, yes,” he said, “but no honest ghost walking of its own accord. It is a presence conjured up by some necromancer, and sent to possess her. And though I have driven her away tonight, she will return tomorrow night, and the one thereafter, until she has accomplished her end. I ordered her to leave. I used no formula other than that of solemn command. It was my will against that damnable shade from across the Border.”

  “But who is she?” I asked, still dazed by the apparition, and by the glare of deadly hatred she had turned on us.

  “Balkis, Queen of the Morning,” said d’Artois, “and having been aroused from her sleep, she is struggling eagerly to take the body that her damnable ally has sought for her to inhabit. And we can not stop her. True, I drove the presence away. But I must have a better weapon than my unaided will, or in the end, when I am exhausted, she will return, and finally take full possession.”

  “Good God, Pierre, that’s terrible!” I exclaimed, horrified at the thought of a woman’s soul being crowded out of her own body.

  “But how do you know that this apparition is Balkis? And why did you call her Queen of the Morning?”

  “I judged by her costume. And at times Madeleine in her speech gropes for words, as though she had forgotten the languages she speaks, or forgot what she intended to say. And then she drops a few foreign words, starts, corrects herself. And those foreign words were in that long-forgotten dialect spoken by the Sabeans. Judge for yourself. Balkis lurks in the body of Madeleine, and even during the day asserts herself.

  “But that in itself proves nothing, you understand,” d’Artois continued. “This, however, does: when I called her Balkis, Queen of the Morning, and addressed her in her own language, she obeyed me. That title is a play on the Arabic word that designated her ancient kingdom.”

  I pondered on this for a moment, then resumed my questions.

  “But can’t some one drive her away, and keep her away?” I demanded. “Haven’t the clergy some ritual of exorcism, or has that been discarded in this day and age? I notice you didn’t follow the old traditional sign-of-the-cross formula.”

  “There is nothing essentially evil about Balkis,” explained Pierre. “She is only a woman whom some evil person has called from her grave. And a Christian exorcism would be as meaningless to her as it would be to a Hottentot. She never heard of such a thing. It would be utter vanity.

  “An occult knowledge more profound than that possessed by any one in France is required,” he continued. “I know of only one person who has it, and I have sent for him. He is a darwish, one of those eccentric mendicants who preserve the occult traditions of the Orient. He is an adept.

  “With his assistance, we may succeed, if in the meanwhile Madeleine does not become entirely possessed. Sitting and watching her will be futile. To expel Balkis by the unaided will is a terrific task, and no sooner is it accomplished than she presently returns, and in no wise discouraged.”

  The mere announcement of the presence of our spectral guest would have been sufficiently disconcerting; but actually to have seen her was too much for my comfort. Yet I finally slept, thanks to a half-pint of Pierre’s vieux armagnac. It burned like the everlasting fires, but it drugged my wrenched nerves. Dead royalty in the house, visible or invisible, is not an effective sedative.

  * * * *

  Madeleine spent most of the following day in her room. And charming as she was, I was glad that she remained out of sight. Her presence would have been disconcerting. I wo
uld have wondered whether Madeleine or her ghostly companion looked at me from those lustrous, almond-shaped eyes. The apparition of the previous night accounted for the indefinable foreign expression of her features. It was the spiritual intrusion of Balkis, leaving its imprint, bit by bit. And those successive visitations would be branded on her brain so that in the end, Madeleine Delorme would be thinking the thoughts and pondering on the age-old memories of dead Balkis.

  We sat again in Pierre’s study. The evening ritual of cigars and coffee and liqueur was somber and unrelieved by the scintillant d’Artois conversation and esprit that in the past had made him the perfect host. He was staring at the pattern of the Boukhara rug, and absently lifting a demi-tasse to his lips.

  I heard the sharp crack of a pistol, the shattering of the cup, a tinkle of glass, and the solid chunk of something striking the woodwork behind him.

  “The devil!” exclaimed d’Artois, diving to the floor. “We are under fire!”

  I snatched the cord that drew the heavy damask drapes away from the windows, letting them close and mask the opening.

  “Some one,” said Pierre, “resents my expelling Balkis last night. Ah…there’s where it landed.”

  With his penknife, d’Artois dug into the door-jamb and extracted a bullet.

  “Probably a Luger,” he muttered as he studied the jacketed missile. “And, thank God, a bungler fired the shot. My friend, they are hunting us. They see that we are keeping her, and that though they accomplish their devilish aims, it will avail them nothing. Resurrected queens may disturb one’s mind, but they do not fire pistols and shoot a demitasse from one’s lips.”

  Pierre seated himself, and pondered. His brow was cleft by a triple-furrowed frown, and he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Then, finally, he spoke.

  “Some one has prepared Madeleine for this outrage, and has overcome her will, so that when she is asleep she can not any longer deny the ghostly intruder that would inhabit her body. And that one, pardieu, is the person we must find. Somewhere in this town is a necromancer whose terrible studies have led him to this outrage. Some one has called Balkis from the shadows of twenty-eight dusty centuries. She has not appeared of her own volition. This wasted bullet bears witness to her living sponsor.”

  He paused for a moment, regarded me intently, and continued in a low, tense voice, “Some necrophile is enamored of the Queen of the Morning, and wishes to give her a new body.”

  “Necrophile?” I shuddered at the hideous implication. “But that would signify—”

  “That is hair-splitting,” d’Artois interrupted. “Whether this one be in love with the very body of dead Balkis, or whether, as in the present case, it is her spirit for which he seeks a living body, he is still a necrophile. And this, while less horrible to contemplate than that which you had in mind, is really a greater outrage, since it is directed against a person who would much rather be herself than any number of departed queens. Mordieu! And rightly so!

  “We know now that we have men as well as a phantom to combat. This wild shot has betrayed the nature of the enemy, and we shall track down this lover of dead Balkis. And then, when that old darwish appears—I cabled the consuls and Residents of every port in whose hinterland he might be—he will expel Balkis and she will swallow her rage and go back to her disturbed sleep, to dream once more of Suleiman.

  “Do you, therefore, watch by her room. Do not fear the presence if it appears. For it is constantly here, whether visible or not. If anything substantial enough to handle a pistol or knife appears, draw and fire. With the full moon, you may enjoy excellent shooting!”

  Pierre’s gray eyes had a steely glitter, and he spoke now with his old vivacity. That bullet which had picked the demi-tasse from his very lips had immeasurably encouraged him.

  “We will hunt him down, pardieu!” he exclaimed. “And in the meanwhile, we will divide the watches of the night. Take your post, and your choice of pistols. I will relieve you at midnight. And until then, I will be busy with some deductions of my own. While we are awaiting the arrival of our excellent darwish, we may find that accursed lover of dead queens, and he will regret his poor marksmanship. Salaud! I will not miss!”

  I selected a pistol from Pierre’s arsenal, and took my post in the hallway, just outside Madeleine’s door. I knew that her windows were barred, and that nothing larger than a cat could slip through. And being on the second floor, it would require exceptionally clever work for an intruder to steal in and make away with her. The sawing or forcing of the bars, moreover, would betray him, then and there.

  This, however, did not lull me into a sense of false security. The knowledge that in the room beyond the door, Balkis might be bending over Madeleine, and with ceremonious gestures and passes be commanding her spirit to leave its body, was sufficient to keep me from becoming sleepy, or negligent in my watch. I paced up and down the carpeted hallway. Yet it was an eerie vigil, and I forced myself to cease visioning that sinister, shadowy presence that Pierre had confronted the night before. At times, I fancied that I could again smell the subtle sweetness that had heralded the materialization of dead Balkis.

  There was a window at the end of the hallway. I glanced out, occasionally, and saw nothing but the light of a full moon. But the black shadows seemed alive with emanations filtering from the ancient, undisturbed soil of the citadel. A conclave of evil was abetting Balkis. This house had become a focal point of entities that the power of some necromancer had released in summoning Balkis from the dust. I entered the vacant room that adjoined Madeleine’s. It was the one that her maid had occupied before leaving in terror one night after having seen the apparition. Like Madeleine’s, it faced the tree-clustered parkway that extended from the gray walls and moat toward the highway that leads to ruined Château Maracq.

  I looked down into the deserted street that ran along the city wall. Once I thought I could see a figure lurking in an angle of the parapet. And then it seemed after all to be only a wisp of river mist, or perhaps a whirling of wind-blown dust. But I started, stared for an instant, and shivered, for even the dust of this ancient town is alive and vibrant with that which it has received and assimilated since mediaeval sorcerers and alchemists crouched shuddering over their terribly charged alembics that bubbled and dripped strange distillates, and fumed in the red glare of charcoal furnaces.

  But that dust cloud or fog wisp could not reach to the second story. So I returned again to the hall, to walk my post.

  I heard Pierre stirring about in the study on the first floor. He commanded the entrance of the house. Then later, I heard him exclaim and mutter. Some late visitor, I thought, as the door opened. And then…

  I heard a gasp, and a groan, and the thud of a falling body and the splintering of wood.

  “Sacré nom d’un nom!” I heard Pierre exclaim.

  That was enough. They were taking us by assault. As I bounded down the winding stairway, three steps at a time, I drew my pistol.

  Another crash, and a splintering of glass, and the smack of a pistol.

  “Hold ’em, Pierre!” I shouted. And an instant later, I landed with a leap in the vestibule. A man lay stretched out on the floor. Pierre was struggling with another, seeking to wrench from his hand a long, curved knife. A third, groaning and cursing, was reaching for a pistol that lay beyond his grasp. Just as d’Artois back-heeled his adversary and sent him crashing into a corner, I opened up with my pistol. The gentleman on the floor lost all interest in the weapon he sought.

  “Back to your post, imbécile!” d’Artois yelled, as he turned to face me. “See if they are attacking the second floor.”

  “But the windows—”

  “Back to your post! Immediately!”

  As I turned to obey, I heard another crash, and saw d’Artois following me. The yard-long blade of a Moro kampilan flashed as he leaped after me, carrying the weapon at the port.

  We burst
into Madeleine’s room.

  Pierre’s intuition had been right. In the moonlight we saw three intruders. Two of them were about to take Madeleine from her bed. The third with a gesture was indicating the window. I saw that the bars had been wrenched aside, and caught a glimpse of a rope ladder, apparently let down from the roof.

  As we leaped into the room, the leader shouted a warning, and Madeleine’s captors dropped her to the bed from which they were lifting her. A pistol cracked. I saw Pierre flinch from the impact, but the shot did not stop him. His blade flashed forward and up, ripping his enemy from waist to chin.

  As I turned to let drive at the one who was leaping across Madeleine’s bed, knife in hand, a fourth, emerging from a corner, struck my arm. My shot went wild; and then my pistol jammed as I whirled about to fire at the assailant from the side. A blade raked my ribs, and in another instant I was grappling hand to hand with the newcomer, striving to brain him with my clubbed pistol, and to avoid his curved knife.

  We crashed to the floor. Luckily, it was his head and not mine that was dashed against the massive leg of Madeleine’s bed. I rapped the useless pistol against his skull for good measure, and staggered to my feet.

  D’Artois, blade in hand, was facing the two survivors. One was poised to leap and thrust with his knife. The other, pistol rising from his hip, was ready to drop d’Artois.

  One of them would be sliced in half by that yard-long kampilan. One of them was a dead man. But the other would account for d’Artois as I hurdled the bed to close in, hand to hand. Neither thrust nor shot could miss at that range.

  There was but one thing to do. I hurled my jammed pistol at the one about to fire. I missed. It crashed into a mirror. I had failed d’Artois.

  Then, during that despairing instant in which I leaped, empty-handed and too late, it happened.

  I saw an incredibly swift, fluent flash of steel, and a spurt of fire; heard a grunt, a shot, a yell of mortal terror, and once more the sound of steel biting home.

  Pierre, poised and tense in his moment of extreme peril, had lunged as the shivering of the glass distracted the enemy’s attention, and slashed asunder the one who fired, an instant too late. Then, cat-like, he whirled about to cut down the survivor.