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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Voilà! That further indicates an interchange of bodies during the night!” declared d’Artois. “As a Syrian dancing-girl you are beaten, and the welts appear on the body of Antoinette Delatour. And the heavy anklets of the Syrian girl mark your daytime body just as they leave prints on her.

  “Now what else do you remember, ma petite? Your impressions become more distinct each time, n’est-ce pas? Your recollections—”

  “Exactly,” she assented. “And last night—oh, I know I’m becoming utterly mad!—the veiled Master was accompanied by a man who walked through the garden with him.”

  “And how,” wondered d’Artois, “is that more peculiar than the rest of the dream?”

  “The Master’s companion,” replied Antoinette, “is the Marquis des Islots. Mon Dieu, is the whole city of Bayonne bound for this devil’s garden?”

  “What?” D’Artois started and glanced sharply at Antoinette, then at Farrell. “Monsieur le Marquis has been added to her dream. Do you see any connection?”

  “I don’t,” confessed Farrell. “After all this madhouse she’s been through might it not be a fancied recognition? Pure imagination?”

  “Cordieu! exclaimed d’Artois. “Would she not sooner imagine that she saw ibn Saoud, or Saladin? That would be more in keeping. Diable! Her seeing Monsieur le Marquis is so wide of any fancy that I am now convinced that she is not dreaming.”

  “Eh, what’s that?” demanded Farrell, aghast at the wildness of d’Artois’ implication. “That it wasn’t a dream? Good Lord, man—”

  The recurrent nightmare had driven Antoinette Delatour to the verge of distraction, so that d’Artois’ contention did not amaze her as much as it did Farrell.

  “Mon Dieu,” she sighed wearily, and took Farrell’s hand. “It’s all become such a terrific confusion… I don’t know who I am. Oh, how my poor back aches from that beating!”

  “Courage, my dear!” reassured d’Artois. “The enemy has slipped.” Then, to Farrell, “Allons! Let us get to work at once. I have several of those hunches.”

  “The quicker the better, Pierre,” agreed Farrell. And as Antoinette’s slender arms released him, he followed d’Artois down the stairs to the street.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Hand of Hassan

  “Your task, my friend,” began d’Artois as, back again at his house, they sat down to plan their campaign against the phantom garden, “will be to watch at the plaza. You will loaf, and drink an occasional apéritif, and smoke your way into the day. You may see nothing; but with time and patience your watch will have results. All of Bayonne passes the plaza, sooner or later.”

  “But what,” wondered Farrell, “am I to look for?”

  “People who show signs of hasheesh intoxication, particularly Arabs or other Orientals,” answered d’Artois. “You know the symptoms. You have seen enough hasheeshin in Egypt and Syria. I need not describe their manner, or peculiar stare. We are in search of addicts who in addition are fanatic Moslems. A slender clue at best, but while you pursue that, something else may happen.

  “And I, in the meanwhile, will be doing some private snooping of my own. This Monsieur the Marquis des Islots is due for an investigation. That one has an open reputation for dabbling in obscure arts, and not such a savory reputation either.”

  “But,” protested Farrell, “how do hasheesh addicts come into this?”

  “Listen, I will enlighten you,” began d’Artois. “We mentioned the Assassins, the followers of Hassan al Sabbah, the terrible Chief of the Mountains, n’est-ce pas? Those Assassins were of the fanatic Ismailian sect of Moslems. Those guests of the garden mentioned in this book”—d’Artois indicated Siret al Haken, lying open on the desk—“actually believed that their master had the power of admitting them to paradise for brief visits, at the end of which they were drugged, and dragged forth to awaken once more on earth, and ready for any infamy that might be demanded as the price of returning to the garden.”

  “I have all that,” admitted Farrell. “All right, then?”

  “The sect of the Ismailians,” continued d’Artois, “was more than religious. It was political. Its members did not content themselves with theory. And if, as Antoinette’s strange dreams indicate, we have a nest of Ismailians—that is, hasheeshin—to contend with, sooner or later one or more of them will be noted about town.

  “As for Antoinette, it is quite possible that she is, without being aware of it, clairvoyante. And thus Monsieur le Marquis will bear investigation. Do you therefore stand watch as I directed, while I pursue some private snooping. A bientôt!”

  Whereat d’Artois turned to his desk, leaving Farrell to go to the plaza and seek a table under the striped awning of the café.

  * * * *

  Farrell was none too optimistic, but upon his arrival at Café du Théâtre he assumed an indolence that in any place but southern France would have seemed a pose. But in Bayonne the enjoyment of placid idleness is an ancient art: and thus it was eminently suitable for him to sit and watch the smoke spiraling from the cigarette that smoldered between his fingers.

  All of the Bayonnais, and all visitors, eventually pass the plaza: Portuguese and Spanish and Italian sailors, Arabs from Algiers and Morocco, Basques from the hills; English tourists on their way to the arcades of rue Port Neuf, where they found the only épiceries in Bayonne where they could buy Scotch whisky; peasants, loafers, soldiers on leave; quietly dressed and unpainted girls who had left behind them, in their rooms beyond the Nive, all the gauds and garniture of their profession. Costly imported cars flashed by, to cross Pont Mayou and Pont de Saint Esprit; ox-carts lumbered past, the drivers, arrayed in dingy smocks, trudging along and reviling their placid beasts. Bayonne marched by in review; and Farrell watched the parade.

  But despite his apparent idleness, Farrell’s gray eyes were occupied with more than wisps of smoke, and the tall glass of anis del oso that sat on the marble-topped table before him. Without in the least shifting his slightly bowed head, he was peering between his drooping eye-lashes at the passers-by, and at the boulevardiers who like himself sat sipping the meridional apéritif.

  He was particularly interested in the trio that sat two tables to his right, where they could command a view of rue Port Neuf as well as the street that led to the Mayou bridge. They were swarthy and aquiline-featured. Two were Syrian Arabs; but the third, despite his dark skin and foreign air, was no Semite, but an Aryan: a Kurd from Kurdistan, one of those fierce mountaineers who in their native land are the terror of Turk and Persian alike. Yet the trio had kinship in at least one feature: the dilated pupils and the staring glassiness of their eyes.

  As Farrell raised his glass and sniffed the odor of the cloudy drink, he smelled trouble as well as anis del oso. D’Artois’ sombre hints were having substantial realization. Farrell’s first reaction was to loosen the pistol in his shoulder holster. The peculiar stare of their eyes convinced Farrell that he had picked up the trail of that which d’Artois felt would lead to the source of the bedevilment of Antoinette’s nights.

  Farrell continued his apparent enjoyment of idleness. His broad shoulders slumped. He languidly passed his fingers through his sandy hair; but for all his efforts to maintain his poise, his long, lean frame was tense, and chills raced up and down his spine, despite the warmth of the day.

  He summoned the waiter and called for brandy.

  Then he noted that an exotic, imported car was coming to a smooth halt at the curbing. A footman in livery opened the door and stood at attention as a woman emerged from the rich upholstery and silver and cut glass of the town car that bore the crest of the Marquis des Islots.

  Farrell recognized the woman as La Dorada. He wondered, as he saw her step to the curbing, why a carpet had not been unrolled to keep her feet from the contamination of the paving. The scarcely perceptible breeze wafted a breath of perfume whose cost rumor had for once fallen
short of exaggerating.

  La Dorada was passing the table of the trio from Asia. The one facing the Mayou bridge made a gesture. His lips moved. At that distance, Farrell could not hear what he said. La Dorada apparently paid no attention to the murmur. She was accustomed to whispered admiration.

  Farrell ignored the warning of his intuition: it was too unbelievable and outrageous.

  Then it happened. The Kurd, who faced Farrell, leaped cat-like to his feet. A knife flashed in his hand. La Dorada started at Farrell’s warning cry, and added her own note of dismay as she saw his hand with an incredibly swift gesture seek his armpit.

  Smack-smack-smack! roared the heavy automatic.

  The Kurd pitched backward to the paving, groaning and clutching his stomach.

  But even as Farrell drew and fired, the Syrian whose back had been turned to Farrell leaped from his place. And the knife he held found its mark, full in the breast of La Dorada.

  The pistol spoke, but too late. Even as the impact of the heavy slug bowled the Syrian over in a heap, his blade sank home.

  La Dorada screamed, reeled, and collapsed, clutching the dagger whose hilt projected beyond the blood-splashed fur collar of her coat.

  As he leaped forward, pistol in hand, Farrell knew that she would be beyond assistance. A shot at the survivor of the trio was impossible, and pursuit was futile. Waiters, patrons of the café, and passers-by clustered about the dying beauty. In the confusion Farrell heard the clash of gears and caught a glimpse of a car tearing madly down toward the road leading to Maracq.

  La Dorada moaned, and shuddered.

  “Hassan—” she articulated with an effort. Then she coughed, and gasped.

  A red foam flecked her red lips.

  The arrival of a pair of gendarmes, and, a few minutes later, a passing doctor, scattered the dense cluster of frantically gesticulating citizens.

  “Monsieur,” said one of the gendarmes, who had seen Farrell holster his automatic, “be pleased to accompany us. Purely as a matter of form, you understand. It is plainly evident that that one—”

  He indicated the second of the assassins that Farrell’s pistol fire had bowled over.

  Farrell shrugged. It would be awkward for a stranger in town to be dragged into the formalities of a police investigation; and doubly annoying in view of his having a serious problem of his own to handle.

  “Very well, monsieur,” agreed Farrell with a wry grimace.

  Then he saw d’Artois emerge from the fringe of the crowd that still persisted, at a distance of several paces. He whispered in the ear of the gendarme—only a few words, but they sufficed.

  The gendarme turned from d’Artois to Farrell.

  “Your pardon, monsieur. You may call on us at your leisure. It was routine, you comprehend.”

  Farrell in his turn bowed, and followed d’Artois to his car, eager to be clear of the plaza. And as they drove past the parkway that lies between the road to Maracq and the wall of Lachepaillet, Farrell gave his companion an account of the assassination.

  “Sacré nom d’un nom!” swore d’Artois at the conclusion of the narrative. “That is the technique of the Fifth Order of the Ismailians. They worked in threes, so that if the first and second were cut down, the third would nevertheless slay the victim.

  “They hunted Saladin seven hundred years ago. They slew Nizam ul Mulk. The Sultan of Cairo, Baibars the Panther, barely escaped them. They terrorized the Near East until Tamerlane in his wrath took by assault their almost impregnable castle of Alamut, tore it down stone by stone, and put to the sword 12,000 Ismailians. But the order persisted, though its power has been broken for these past five centuries, thanks to the savage efficiency of Tamerlane.

  “And I am thoroughly convinced,” continued d’Artois, “that you witnessed a recrudescence of that plague which ate at the heart of the Moslem world for several centuries. They seem to be branching out again. Even as during the Crusades they assassinated Conrad of Montferrat, so are they again carrying secret war against the infidel.”

  “But why,” demanded Farrell, “did they strike La Dorada in the public square? They could have killed her stealthily. Even though they could not foresee that I would shoot two of them down in their tracks, the other spectators or the police might have killed or captured them.”

  “You miss the point,” declared d’Artois, “which is pardonable, since even your extensive travels in the Orient would not of necessity bring you into contact with the Ismailians. They killed her in public as an example to instill terror in others. It is a matter of history that Ismailian assassins were often ordered to slay a dignitary and to make no attempt at escape. In one case the slayer struck, then sat down and began eating his travel rations of bread and dates, calmly awaiting the guard that would drag him to the executioner and impalement on a sharpened stake. The besotted hasheeshin faced a horrible doom for the sake of re-entrance to the paradise with which their master duped them. The utter fearlessness and indifference to death and torture aroused more terror than the assassinations they perpetrated.

  “So much for the fedawi, or Devoted Ones, Ismailians of the Fifth Order. The first four orders were the Grand Master, the Grand Priors, and simple priors, or initiates; and then a grade known as rafigs, or associates. These upper grades were intelligent persons who after sufficient study in the free-thinking, heretical doctrines of the Ismailians would be eligible for the highest offices in the Order.

  “The Ismailians became a state within a state; they undermined Persia and Syria, and for several centuries exacted tribute from sultans and emirs, with summary vengeance as the penalty of non-payment, very much,” concluded d’Artois, with a malicious grin, “like those racketeers they have in your United States. That should make it clear!”

  “But how,” wondered Farrell, “does Antoinette fit into all this?”

  “The companions and initiates of the Ismailians,” replied d’Artois, “were adepts in alchemy, magic, conjuring, and occult arts. They used Islam as a mask for all manner of forbidden heresies and as bait to attract the pious oafs and religious fanatics who did the actual slaying and—how does one say it, à l’Américain?—and took the rap!

  “Maymun the Persian founded the order. A free-thinker, heretic, and magician, he fled from the wrath of the Khalif Mansur, with his son Abdallah, to whom he imparted all his vast knowledge of medicine, conjuring, and occultism. And Abdallah built up on this start by promising the return of the vanished Seventh Imam, who had never died, but who was waiting for the day to return and rule all Islam. They still wait for the return of Ismail, the Seventh Imam. And in the meanwhile, behold the deviltry with which they amuse themselves, bewitching Antoinette, slaying La Dorada—le bon Dieu can only say what will come next.”

  They drew up at d’Artois’ house as he concluded his refreshing of Farrell’s memory on the origin of the menace that had taken root in Bayonne.

  “How about my watching the plaza?” wondered Farrell as Raoul admitted them.

  “You have watched enough,” declared d’Artois. “In fact, you have made yourself so painfully conspicuous that from now on I will have to watch you more closely than Mademoiselle Antoinette, or you will be found full of daggers yourself.”

  “Nuts, Pierre!” protested Farrell. “I’ve been away from home before, and I’m used to being hunted.”

  “Nevertheless, be on your guard,” cautioned the old man.

  CHAPTER 4

  Shirkuh Makes Magic

  That evening, after dinner, d’Artois’ man, Raoul, entered the study with a large envelope that had just been delivered by a messenger.

  D’Artois glanced at the large waxen seal that secured the flap.

  “The crest of Monsieur le Marquis,” he observed. Then, with a wink and a grin at Farrell, he continued, “Like Satan in the first lines of the Book of Job, I wandered up and down the world, and in i
t, particularly at Biarritz, and somewhat about the estate of our good Marquis. But need I assure you that if my presence was noted, it was also amply accounted for? Mais oui, of a verity!”

  He slit the envelope and withdrew an engraved invitation.

  “Hmmm… Monsieur le Marquis requests the honor of my presence at a soirée at his château. The Thaumaturgical Order of Thoth is meeting in open conclave.”

  “Wait a minute,” interrupted Farrell. “There’s something fishy about this. La Dorada, his sweetheart, is murdered around noon. And now he sends you an invitation to—what was it?—some kind of juggler’s convention. Anyway, it’s utterly out of keeping. Not only inhumanly callous, but damned poor form; no matter what his private morals may be, a man of his station would have better manners!”

  “Granted,” acquiesced d’Artois. “But consider: this thaumaturgical society may be depending upon the meeting-place designated, and can not postpone it for the sake of one man’s grief. That there is such an order has been for some time an open secret. Then, he himself may be absent from the conclave, even though it assembled in his name. Or again,” continued d’Artois, “it is even possible that Monsieur the Marquis does not know of La Dorada’s death.”

  “Absurd!” objected Farrell. “In a town this small—”

  “Wait!” interrupted d’Artois. “Remember Antoinette’s dream: the Marquis walked through the garden with the veiled Master. He may still be in that garden, not to emerge until the hour of the soirée.”

  “By the rod, that’s possible,” agreed Farrell. “Since La Dorada was presumably killed by the Ismailians, the Marquis may be in their hands, dead, or a prisoner.”

  “Now, as to this invitation,” continued d’Artois, “it may be a device to exact vengeance for your excellent pistol practice. Their espionage would inform them that you, my friend and guest, would surely accompany me to the soirée.

  “But mark you this: they can scarcely know that your Antoinette could tell you of seeing the Marquis in the garden. That, you comprehend, is the information that ties the scattered ends together, and makes their otherwise subtle trap seem obvious to us.