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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “They are your men, ya sidi,” replied Farrell with a shrug. “If you can spare them.”

  The old man chuckled, and his eyes for a moment smiled.

  “Strike!” he commanded.

  They paused for an instant before closing in. One of them, Farrell was certain, would go down before his first thrust, but the other would slay him. Farrell’s success depended upon finesse. He shifted his feet as if to test the footing. He glanced over his shoulder as if to assure himself that he had room to retreat. All in a flash: and then they sprang, blades thirsty and a-glitter.

  Farrell’s leap took him to the left instead of to the rear. He dropped his knife and snatched the wrist of the nearest enemy, who, missing his quarry, plunged forward abreast of his comrade.

  His own momentum was his ruin. There was the snap of a breaking bone, and Yusuf pitched in a heap before the dais. And Farrell, picking his knife from the tiles, confronted Suleiman, who despite his fanatic frenzy was profiting by Yusuf’s mishap.

  They circled, feinting and thrusting, seeking to shake each other’s guard. Suleiman avoided Farrell’s efforts to close in to make it a test of strength. Nor would rushing in to exchange thrusts suffice: for if they slew each other, the Master would still not have the test he ordered. They wove in and out, shifting and side-stepping, each seeking an opening in the other’s defense.

  Then Farrell made a desperate feint at his enemy’s throat. As Suleiman’s blade rose to parry, Farrell evaded, and stretched out in a full lunge, point forward and arm extended as with a rapier. The unexpected play caught Suleiman off guard. His downward thrust came an instant too late: Farrell’s knife sank to the hilt in the enemy’s stomach, ripping upward.

  Farrell, bleeding from the cut on his shoulder, emerged from the engagement empty-handed as Suleiman collapsed.

  “Well done, ya Ibrahim!” approved Hassan. Then he smote a gong beside the dais.

  “Ya Musa! Abbas! Khalil!” he shouted.

  A panel opened at right of the dais, and three tall negroes entered. They made no expressions of obedience; only the inarticulate gurglings of those whose tongues have been removed.

  Hassan indicated the two dead, and the one whose arm was snapped.

  “To the black pool with them. All three!” Then, as two stepped forward to execute the command, Hassan spoke to the third: “Take our new aspirant, Ibrahim, to the Garden.”

  Musa bowed, and at the Master’s gesture of dismissal, led Farrell into a dimly lighted room which was arranged after the fashion of a majlis, or reception hall of an Arabian house.

  A narrow divan extended the full length of the wall. At the end farthest from the entrance were the customary coffee hearth and polished brass pots. And save for those, and the cushions and rugs with which the divan was covered, there were no furnishings.

  Farrell noted that he was not alone. Those who lay sprawled on the divan were, apparently, likewise to visit the Garden.

  “Dead-drunk…drugged…or spies to watch me,” reflected Farrell.

  Musa, who after indicating that Farrell was to seat himself, had left, presently returned with a tray on which was a goblet and flagon. These he set on a small tabouret, bowed, and left Farrell to refresh himself.

  The proof of hand-to-hand fighting had been severe enough; but the flagon of wine, fragrant but reeking of hasheesh, represented a more subtle and dangerous test. If under the influence of the drug Farrell made one remark or gesture that would betray his imposture, the awakening would be death, either swift, or else by torture administered to find out how much the outside world knew of the Ismailians. Nevertheless, Farrell dared not abstain from the drugged wine. He knew not what eyes might be regarding him through loopholes in the wall.

  “Bismillahi!” he ejaculated, and seized the flagon, draining it at a draft. He hoped that despite the insidious drug, his years of wandering in the forbidden places of Asia had impressed upon him enough of his assumed character to insure him against a fatal slip.

  Farrell wondered at the suicide ordered by Hassan. The value of Ibrahim Khan as a fedawi could scarcely balance the self-slain and the two killed in action. He reconciled this point, however, when he considered the probability of the slain being offenders against the discipline of the order…

  The intoxication of hasheesh was gripping him. Then an artifice occurred to Farrell. He might still save the day and avoid complete intoxication.

  “Ya Musa! Shewayya’ khamr!” he bawled drunkenly. “More wine!”

  The slave came hurrying with a full flagon. Farrell’s chance was to drink so much of the drugged liquor that his stomach would rebel, and expel it; and such sottishness would be quite in character. He seized the flagon with unfeigned eagerness.

  But the saving thought had come too late.

  His heart-beat became terrifyingly slow. His arm seemed so long that the weight of the flagon, already the size of a cask, and momentarily becoming larger, would exert a leverage that would upset him. The room was expanding to allow for the abnormal length of the arm that sought to raise the wine to his lips.

  Farrell became aware of a duality of identity. Half of him was struggling fiercely to assert itself and overcome the confusion of his senses; the other half was yielding to a languorous drowsiness, and a soporific humming which pervaded the room.

  There came finally a rustling of wings, and a piping, haunting music that sighed amorously. All sense of time had ceased. Farrell did not know whether he was being carried through an archway into a vast domed vault, or whether he had floated in on clouds of overwhelming sweetness.

  A fountain was bubbling, and splashing him with its spray. He stared up at the ceiling. Its luminous blue was dusted with stars that were arranged in unfamiliar constellations.

  Drums muttered somewhere in the shifting, warm fragrance. He heard the silvery clink-clinking of anklets. He rolled over on his side, and as he glanced along the rose-hued tiles, he saw dainty feet with hennaed nails stepping in cadence to the whining notes of a kemenjah, and the moan of pipes.

  As he made an effort to sit erect, a warm, soft arm supported his head, and slender, golden-brown hands offered him a bowl of cold, aromatic liquid. He drank it, and found that his reeling senses became more stable. The girl who smiled at him had great dark eyes with kohl-blackened lids.

  Another heaped cushions behind him.

  Paradise indeed; al jannat, temporarily offered as the reward of whatever infamy the lord Hassan demanded, and promised for all eternity to the fanatic fedawi who died executing his commands.

  There were other guests scattered about the jasmine and rose clustered garden, and the brides of al jannat were reviving them with flagons, cold drinks, and warm caresses.

  Farrell made an effort to fight the illusion of distorted time and distance, and the sensuous allure of the music and hasheesh. He rose, and ignoring his amorous companions, set about exploring the garden. Strange birds flitted about among the orange and pomegranate trees and mocked him with their almost articulate cries. A parrot mimicked in a loud voice the endearments that a Malay girl murmured in the ear of one of the Devoted Ones.

  “Where is the Golden One?” he heard a swarthy Kurd demand as he thrust aside his slant-eyed Eurasian companion.

  The last of Farrell’s intoxication left him. The Golden One—Antoinette!

  The girl laughed.

  “She’ll scratch your eyes out! Let her alone!”

  “But the Master, our Lord Hassan, promised she’d greet us in Paradise,” protested the Kurd.

  Farrell knew now beyond any doubt that Antoinette had been kidnapped to double in this satanic garden for the murdered La Dorada, to prove to the hasheeshin that the Lord Hassan indeed held the keys to the garden of resurrection.

  “Al Asfarani, the Golden One—”

  Farrell seconded the Kurd’s inquiry.

  “Snarling
and spitting in her alcove, O Strong Man!” smiled the girl.

  Farrell left her to entertain the Kurd, and wandered past the rows of potted trees that paralleled the walls of the garden. The walls were pierced with deep niches that formed small rooms whose arched entrances were scarcely shoulder-high. As he glanced into each in succession, he noted the trinkets and cosmetics and perfumes, and articles of feminine apparel. Each bride of al jannat seemed to have her own lupanar; but they apparently preferred to lounge among the fountains and arbors.

  Finally, however, Farrell found an occupied alcove. A woman lay face down among a heap of cushions. Her hair was copper-golden, and her bare shoulders were latticed with long, bluish stripes.

  Farrell knelt at her side.

  “Antoinette!” he whispered.

  At the touch of his fingers on her shoulder, she started and with a quick motion drew away. Her hand emerged from the cushions clutching a long sharp steel skewer used in Syria for grilling meat.

  It was Antoinette, wide-eyed with terror. She cried out, and stabbed at Farrell with the skewer. The point raked his cheek as he seized her wrist.

  “’Toinette! Don’t you recognize me?” he whispered hoarsely.

  She regarded him for a moment, puzzled and incredulous. The skewer dropped from her fingers. But before she could cry out in amazement, Farrell continued, “Not a word! If any one passes by, start raising the devil! Don’t seem to recognize me…understand?”

  She nodded, but he saw that she did not grasp the point that might make the difference between life and death. She was still bewildered.

  “Oh, Glenn…” She stroked his cheek and regarded him, still incredulously. “Are you—isn’t this—my dear, this is that awful garden I dreamed of. Only, now I have my own body, and I don’t wake up—”

  “Pipe down!” he commanded in a low, tense voice. “I’m supposed to be one of these devils! You’re not dreaming. Pull yourself together—”

  He heard footsteps approaching. They were steady, not the jerky lurchings of wine and hasheesh intoxication. Whoever it was, was for Farrell a death sentence if Antoinette in her hysteria spoke one false word.

  “Scream! Claw me! As you treated the others!”

  Then he seized her in his arms and murmured drunken endearments in her ear.

  But Antoinette was too dazed by the meeting to play her part. She clung to Farrell as the one fragment of reality in all that unending nightmare of hasheesh-drugged assassins who courted her favor, and pawed her, and abandoned their advances only at the suggestion of more amiable brides of al jannat. Instead of clawing and defying Farrell, she clung to him, sobbing hysterically.

  That deliberate tread of doom, soft slipper shod, drew nearer, paused.

  Farrell trembled like a trapped animal. He sought with his own feigned drunken, amorous approaches to drown her betraying sobs and murmurs.

  The swish-slap of slippers…another halt. Farrell felt the intentness of the gaze at his back.

  He broke from Antoinette’s embrace and turned. Standing just within the entrance of the tiny room was Shirkuh the necromancer. He had seen Farrell at the château, face to face. And he had heard. He knew.

  “Ah… La Dorada has lured you to the Garden?” he murmured with deadly emphasis on the dead woman’s name.

  The smile was slow and mocking; the relentless eyes burned with a fanatical hatred. For a moment Farrell was paralyzed with terror, and horror at the doom from which Antoinette had no further chance of escape.

  Shirkuh relished the encounter, and gloated—but just an instant too long.

  Farrell sprang from his crouched position in one swift, fluent motion. Shirkuh, taken cold-footed, could not draw his knife. They crashed to the floor. But once Shirkuh recovered from the surprise of the assault, he was more than a match for Farrell, who was battered, weary from combat, and shaken by the drugged wine. The iron fingers of the Kurd sank into his throat and throttled him. Shirkuh whipped his lithe body aside, avoiding Farrell’s frenzied efforts to drive home with his knee. As Farrell’s struggles subsided to a futile gasping for breath, the Kurd’s hand flashed to his belt and drew a knife—

  But before the stroke descended, there was a crash and a splintering of glass. Shirkuh toppled over, felled by a decanter that Antoinette had broken across his head. Farrell gasped, and caught his breath, then slowly dragged himself clear of his enemy.

  Antoinette, still clutching the neck of the broken decanter, regarded him with terror-widened eyes. Then she gestured toward Shirkuh, who muttered and stirred.

  Farrell’s fingers closed about the hilt of the knife the Kurd had dropped.

  “Me or him,” muttered Farrell. “If you don’t want to see it, look the other way.”

  The blade flashed thrice.

  Farrell wiped the red steel and slipped it into his empty scabbard. Then he sighed wearily and despairingly.

  “Finish anyway…they’ll miss him…and no place we can hide him.” Antoinette stared at the dark pool that spread across the silken rug.

  “Can’t cut my way out,” muttered Farrell. “But you have a chance. Pierre and the Sûreté are on the job—is there any place we could hide that fellow?” Antoinette shook her head.

  “Nowhere. The pool of the fountain isn’t deep enough—”

  “Never mind the fountain!” interrupted Farrell, as he leaped to his feet. “I have a hunch. We’re not quite ready to hang old man Farrell’s youngest son!”

  At the entrance Farrell turned, reassured Antoinette with a gesture, then stalked out into the Garden, chanting a bawdy song in Turki.

  Beside the fountain he found the object of his search: a bemuddled Kurd, and the Eurasian girl who had finally convinced him that the Golden One was best left to the blustering Afghan.

  “Get us more wine, O Moon of Loveliness,” said Farrell with his most engaging smile. He nudged the Kurd.

  The girl laughed softly.

  “You look as though she gave you your fill of clawing!”

  “Ay, wallah!” agreed Farrell with a broad grin. Then, as the girl picked up an empty flagon, he said in a low voice to the Kurd, “Brother, you fellows didn’t approach Al Asfarani the right way.”

  He winked and beckoned.

  The Kurd clambered to his feet and followed Farrell. They paused at the arched entrance of Antoinette’s alcove.

  “She’s in there now,” whispered Farrell. “She’ll not claw you.”

  Thus encouraged, the Kurd stepped in, Farrell following.

  “Ya sitti,” he began, addressing Antoinette. Then he started, seeing the body of Shirkuh.

  Farrell slipped past, and toward Antoinette’s divan.

  “Out of my way, O shamelessly Besotted!” growled the Kurd, pausing to nudge the body with his toe.

  During that instant Farrell found what he sought; and as the Kurd decided to ignore the supposed sot, the steel skewer drove home, its point projecting beyond his shoulders.

  “Sorry, old man,” muttered Farrell as he regarded the Kurd twitching and coughing his life out in a bloody foam. Then he rapidly searched the body.

  He found no weapons.

  “Disarm ’em when they come in here…leaves me handicapped…”

  He thrust Shirkuh’s knife into the hand of the dying Kurd and closed the fingers about it. Then he guided the hand of Shirkuh and clenched it about the blunt end of the skewer.

  “This may save the day,” he explained to Antoinette. “Remember, they fought and killed each other. That may give me a long enough lease on life to come back and get you out of this hell’s hole, or get word to Pierre. Now I’ve got to go out into the Garden and do some quick thinking. Something else may turn up…no, I can’t stay here with you…and I’ve got to leave the bodies where they are.”

  Then, as he kissed her, “Hang on. There’s still a chance for you. Maybe f
or us.”

  He strode out into the Garden, and washed his blood-stained hands at the fountain. The Eurasian girl had not yet returned with the replenished flagon. And as Farrell glanced about, looking for her, and preparing to divert her from any thought of her former companion, Musa the mute negro approached with a jar on his shoulder and a cup in his hand.

  This, Farrell surmised, would be the end of the visit to Paradise. The negro would administer a sleeping-potion; the devoted ones would drink, and upon awakening would find themselves lying in the majlis, mysteriously translated from the empyrean realm of the Lord Hassan, and ready for whatever butcheries he could assign them.

  As Musa offered him the cup, Farrell extended his own flagon, saying, “Fill this one, Father of Blackness. That cup of yours is too small.”

  The negro grinned, emptied the cup into the larger vessel, and went his way to minister to the other guests.

  The Eurasian beauty, who returned at that moment, was easily diverted, so that Farrell contrived to spill most of the drugged wine over his shirt-front and into the fountain. Then, as he saw the fedawi succumb to the effects of the drug, he himself lurched forward, feigning unconsciousness.

  “No chance to look around…no chance of cutting my way out,” he reflected as he thought of Antoinette and her ghastly companions. “And maybe the Shirkuh versus drunken Kurd formation will hold water long enough to give me time to qualify as an assassin and be sent out to do a bit of slaying!”

  The negro was making the rounds, taking the fedawi one by one from the Garden. He picked Farrell from the paving as though he were a bag of meal, shouldered him, and deposited him on the divan in the anteroom, beside his drugged companions.

  And from sheer weariness and the futility of further thought, Farrell fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 7

  A Left-Handed Kurd

  When a cold sponge on his forehead and the rim of a copper bowl pressed to his lips awoke Farrell, he had no idea as to the length of his sleep.

  Musa helped him to his feet and led the way down a narrow passage whose floor sloped perceptibly upward. The negro halted before a panel and tapped thrice. As the panel slid aside, he gestured and flattened himself against the wall so that Farrell could pass him and enter the chamber ahead.