Farrell stepped into a circular vault fully twenty yards in diameter. In its center was a pool, likewise circular, and surrounded by a coping about a foot high. A dark splash on the tiles near the pool convinced Farrell that this must be the place into which the bodies of the victims of his test before Hassan had been tossed.
Farrell wondered if as a matter of convenience he had been conducted to the vault before the master cut him down. One slip would suffice…
Directly opposite Farrell was an arched niche in which sat an old man whose head was bowed in contemplation. Suspended from the crown of the arch was a cluster of crystalline prisms that slowly rotated, giving the effect of a glowing, coruscating ball of light.
As Farrell advanced, the door behind him slid silently into place. He skirted the edge of the pool in the center, and wondered from what abyss its black, untroubled waters emerged; what creatures lurked in its darkness to devour the bodies tossed into their pit. Then, leaving the pool, Farrell continued toward the bearded sage who still ignored his approach.
“At thy command, ya shaykh!” said Farrell as he halted some five paces from the Presence.
“Step forward,” directed the ancient one, looking up and indicating a small hearth-rug that lay at the foot of the steps that ascended to the niche. “Look, ya Ibrahim: hast thou seen me before?”
As the smoldering eyes narrowed, Farrell recognized Hassan, now unveiled. He returned the old man’s unblinking stare, and strove to remain unperturbed by its intent concentration; but his effort was vain. He felt a sense of futility and weakness creeping over him.
The rotating cluster of prisms now flamed and flashed with an adamantine fire that expanded and contracted and pulsed like a living thing. It seemed now to be glowing between the eyes of Hassan. An overwhelming weariness assailed Farrell.
The old man’s voice intoned sonorously, and as from a great distance.
“I am the keeper of the gateway…even in the hollow of my hand I hold al jannat and its coolness to the eyes… Yea, behold my hand…”
Farrell regarded the outstretched hand of Hassan.
“In the hollow of my hand, even in this hand I hold al jannat…”
A mistiness was gathering about Hassan, and his features became obscured so that only his glittering eyes peered through. The outstretched hand was expanding; and strangely enough, it seemed fitting to Farrell that this should be so, and that there should be hazy figures, and clots of greenness appearing in the blankness above the hand. Trees were taking root. Their outlines were hazy, and through their immaterial substance he could just distinguish the jambs of the niche, and the swirling mists that veiled Hassan.
The voice was now murmuring softly and compellingly.
“Even in this hand I hold the Garden… I am the keeper and the warden… I accept and I reject…”
Then that which in the back of his brain had kept Farrell from utterly succumbing to the sorcery of that murmuring voice and those burning eyes asserted itself, and he knew that it was illusion. As he sought to resist and deny, he felt a terrific impact as of a physical substance. A mighty, implacable will bludgeoned him as with hammer blows. He knew that if he continued assenting he would be for ever enslaved.
“There is no Garden. It is illusion,” he asserted to himself, and forced his lips to move and silently enunciate the negation. He trembled with an all-compelling fear, the awful fear of losing his very identity. That devastating will behind the cloud-veil was crushing him. How easy to assent, and end the agony!
Great beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His face was drawn and haggard with the torment of his battered will. But to surrender would betray Antoinette into the hands of the enemy.
“There is no Garden,” he persisted. “His hand is empty. EMPTY. EMPTY!”
He forced his last vestige of strength into that final declaration. The trees dwindled to pin-heads of green, and with them vanished the gray mists. The hand was empty!
Farrell sighed from mortal weariness and relief. Then he smiled triumphantly. He had withstood the terrific psychic assault that would have made him a slave, and a vassal of that old man and the murderous heritage of Asia.
Hassan smiled as at an ancient jest.
“You have withstood my will as no man before you,” he said. “There was one who resisted to the uttermost, but he dropped dead.”
Hassan, the heir of Maymun the magician, the sorcerer, the heretic, took his defeat gracefully. Then his smile became ominous and mocking.
“Who but you would have had the wit to slay Shirkuh, the chief of my servants, then so arrange the body of another you slew, that it would seem that they had died quarrelling over Al Asfarani? Subtle serpent, you erred in putting the dagger in the right hand. That Kurd was left-handed.”
As those words hammered home, Farrell wondered if his heart would ever again start beating. He was lost, and with him, Antoinette. Doomed by his own cunning.
But thus far, no word about his imposture; therefore Farrell laughed full in Hassan’s face, as became the honor of the Durani clan.
“Wallah, you put a premium on slayers! Now what award do you give me, seeing that I was unarmed when I slew Shirkuh?”
Hassan regarded him admiringly for a moment.
“Billahi, but you do belong to us! Not as a hasheesh-besotted fool to slay and be slain, but as an Associate, and finally, an Initiate. It is such as you that we seek, and seek in vain.”
A fierce light flamed in Hassan’s eyes.
“Yet your victory over my will is your doom. In the fullness of your effort to deny the illusion, you finally spoke your negation aloud. And you spoke in English!”
For an instant Farrell was dazed by the horror that had been heaped on the soul-racking triumph he had just won. Doom was at hand—doom inescapable, else that old man would not dare confront him alone.
With a cry of rage, Farrell sprang to throttle Hassan despite what unseen allies he might have. But the floor sank beneath his feet as Hassan, smiling and unmoved, fingered a knob near the jamb of the arch. Farrell clutched at the edge of the opening through which he was dropping. His fingers sustained him for a moment, but the momentum of his body swinging free into vacancy broke his slender hold. He fell into the impenetrable blackness below.
CHAPTER 8
Monsters of the Pool
Instead of an interminable drop to the bottom of an abyss, Farrell landed in less than a second, and feet foremost, on slippery flags. He noted that the air was not as stagnant as one would expect in an oubliette.
“Plenty of circulation…just put me in temporary storage until they get around to organizing a committee to finish me with pomp and ceremony,” he muttered as he struck a match.
Farrell saw that the walls of the dungeon were curved. He strode toward the center, and by the light of a second match saw a massive column of masonry which rose from floor to ceiling. He remembered the pool he had seen on the floor above, and concluded that the pillar before him was a hollow shaft which led to some subterranean spring in the heart of the knoll on which Bayonne was built.
“All in one piece, unhurt, and no enemy in sight—yet!” he reflected as he skirted the column.
Among the inevitable rubbish with which the dungeon would be littered Farrell hoped to find some fragment of rock, scrap of wood, anything, in fact, which would give him the means of meeting the enemy with more than bare hands. But before he could strike his next match, Farrell saw a glow of light at a considerable distance to his right. It faintly outlined a low archway, and suggested possible escape from the dungeon into which he had been dropped by Hassan. That same light, however, betokened the immediate presence of the enemy, and perhaps an armed sentry. Farrell therefore crept on in darkness until he was well out of line with the source of light, then left the column and progressed toward the wall.
His knee came into contact wit
h something hard and metallic. He struck a match, and saw that he had found a chain, one end of which was attached to a massive leg-iron, and the other secured to an eye-bolt sunk into the wall. The shank of the eye-bolt was badly corroded where it entered the masonry. A few minutes of wrenching and tugging sufficed to separate the chain from its anchorage. The result was a crude flail which in a strong hand could shatter whatever skull it struck.
Farrell was armed again, and his spirits rose accordingly.
He retraced his course and crept down the passageway toward the light. As he halted in the shelter of a jamb he saw that the vault ahead of him was illuminated by a glowing brazier; and the scene gave him a foretaste of what his own fate might be.
The black, oily form of a muscular negro crouched beside the brazier. The bellows in his hands wheezed from his vigorous efforts to fan the charcoal fire to a white heat. Tongs or other long-handled implements projected from the incandescent mass.
Limned in harsh highlight and black shadows Farrell saw two white-robed Ismailians whose predatory, Semitic features were stern from the contemplation of their task. Both were armed with scimitars and pistols. The object of their scrutiny was a man who sat crouched by a pilaster. Farrell could distinguish no features beyond the aquiline curve of his nose, and the black, spade-shaped beard. The hands, clasped about the knees, were fettered at the wrists.
“God!” muttered Farrell as the red glow became a dazzling whiteness. “That lad sitting there looks for all the world like an innocent bystander. Either that party isn’t for him, or he has more guts than any ten men I’ve ever seen… I’ve not been here long enough for that to be my reception committee…”
Farrell appraised the situation, and gauged the distance between his lurking-place and the group at the brazier.
“Too far! They’d get wise before I got within striking distance…now if this piece of chain were only a solid bar so that I could slug, swat, and parry instead of having to use it like a whip…now what?”
The taller of the Ismailians glanced up, and with a gesture indicated the ceiling. Farrell could not distinguish his words, but it was evident that he had addressed the negro, who set aside his bellows, picked up a length of thin rope, and rose.
Then Farrell understood. They were going to slip the cord through a ring in the low ceiling, lash the prisoner’s ankles, and suspend him so that the white-hot irons could be applied without interference from the victim’s agonized writhing.
“Missed my chance!” growled Farrell. “They were all off guard, and I could have cold-calked them! Too late, now.”
The Ismailian on the right addressed the prisoner; but the other was looking in Farrell’s direction, though not directly at his lurking-place. The negro was shifting the implements that projected from the bed of coals.
Then Farrell tested the idea that came to him an instant after his expression of disgust. He reached into his pocket and found a large silver coin the size of an American dollar. He sent it spinning across the vault. It struck the opposite wall and tinkled to the floor.
As the Ismailian at the left of the group started, caught the gleam of silver, and stooped to pick it up, Farrell, whirling his flail, leaped from cover and charged.
The startled cry of the crouching negro was simultaneous with the impact of the swinging fetter against the skull of the stooping enemy. The massive circlet of iron crunched home as the other white-robed enemy whirled from confronting his prisoner and drew a pistol. Farrell knew that he could not lash out with a second blow of his flail. He ducked as the pistol flashed, gripped the Ismailian’s wrist as the pistol cracked again, and back-heeled him. They crashed to the flags, Farrell striving to keep the pistol out of effective action and to disable his enemy before the giant negro recovered his wits enough to overwhelm him.
With a fierce wrench, Farrell disarmed the Ismailian and sent the pistol flying against the wall. And then the negro took a hand. They pounded and crushed Farrell as they sought to drive home with knife-thrusts which he evaded in his struggles to drive in with boot or knee. He finally, thrashing about, seized the shackle end of his flail; and as the Ismailian’s knife darted in, Farrell jabbed the ponderous iron to the enemy’s jaw with a crushing blow.
Then the negro crushed Farrell to the paving. Farrell’s struggles were futile; the cumulative effect of previous combats was telling. In another moment his breath would be completely cut off by those relentless black hands…
Then an agonized yell, and the stench of burning hair and flesh. The pressure relaxed as a shower of white-hot charcoal rained from the frenzied enemy and seared Farrell’s hands and face. But the respite, though brief, sufficed. Farrell’s boot laid the enemy out flat.
Then he rose, recovered the pistol that lay against the wall, and turned to confront the fettered prisoner.
“Fortunately,” said the prisoner, “I was able to reach the tongs and flip that brazier into the party.”
The mutual benefactors regarded each other a moment.
“Monsieur,” began Farrell, recognizing the prisoner as a Frenchman, “I am more interested in getting out of here than exchanging compliments. Judging from the preparations I interrupted, you were in for a pleasant evening, morning, or whatever it may be.”
“Unfortunately,” came the reply, “these fetters are riveted, and none of the tools they brought—”
“I’ll tend to that,” assured Farrell. He turned and set the brazier right side up, then with the tongs collected the still glowing charcoal, and fanned it once more to a white heat. “Get your chains hot enough,” he explained, “and we can break them by hand.”
“Magnifique!” Then, regarding Farrell more intently, “But I don’t recognize you as any of the Brethren who might be kindly disposed—though those fellows lying on the floor prove the case.”
“I’m not quite what I seem,” admitted Farrell as he arranged the chains so that they could get the full heat of the brazier. Then, staring for an instant at the prisoner and at the device engraved on the emerald set in his massive ring, Farrell hazarded a guess that seemed warranted by the absence of the host who had issued the invitations to the soirée at the château.
“Are you by any chance the Marquis—”
“C’est moi! Des Islots, and everlastingly at your service!” The saturnine features brightened for a moment.
As Farrell pumped the bellows, he wondered at the fortuitous meeting.
“Did Hassan put you in here?”
“No. Shirkuh, his second in command, arranged this. Hassan is too busy to bother with details—”
“He had plenty of time for me,” countered Farrell.
“Hmmm…then Shirkuh must be occupied with some important mission,” began the Marquis.
“The late Shirkuh,” corrected Farrell with a grim smile.
“Sacré bleu!” ejaculated the Marquis. “Did you—”
“I have the honor—and pleasure,” admitted Farrell.
“Thank God! He was my evil genius. Years ago, in Syria, I joined the Ismailians as an Associate. I was a student of the occult, you understand. Their aim at the time was harmless enough: the overthrow of Islam, and the pursuit of mystic speculations. For centuries the order has had no secular significance, you comprehend.
“I advanced to the rank of Initiate, then returned to France and organized a thaumaturgical society which was to carry on with the researches I had made in Syria, and in High Asia. And this was all well until fellow Ismailians came to Bayonne, one by one, and ended by converting the thaumaturgical society into a chapter of Ismailians.
“Shirkuh was the chief of these, a prior. And then they reverted to the tactics of the Twelfth Century. To augment the hasheeshin that they sent over, they recruited cutthroats from the underworld of Paris. Various actresses and women of the demi-monde were led to believe that they had been admitted as Associates, and were set to work
as spies.
“There is a plot even now under way which, if successful, will upset the French colonial empire and end in a jihad that will stir up the entire Moslem world.
“Another chapter has been organized in Lyons, with a prior in charge: and Hassan is Grand Prior of France, acknowledging only the supreme chief in Damascus.
“At all events, when I saw the political aspect of the Ismailians who had gained their foothold through my thaumaturgical society, I protested to Shirkuh—and here I am. Hot irons and other pleasant devices were to make my end most colorful.”
“Where,” wondered Farrell, “does La Dorada fit into the picture?”
“Eh? La Dorada? Why, a sort of chief female spy—she is friendly with many high officers and civilian dignitaries, you comprehend. She is—”
“Was,” interrupted Farrell. “Three assassins finished her.”
“Diable!” exclaimed the Marquis. He was amazed rather than grieved.
“You take it calmly, for a lover,” remarked Farrell.
“Lover?” The Marquis laughed sourly. “I, her lover? Camouflage, to account for her presence down here, and along the Riviera. As to her being assassinated, that is easily explained: her mission must have been completed. So she was killed to insure her continued secrecy, and also to warn her dupes that they would follow suit if they relented or weakened in the course dictated by Hassan. And that move makes it all the more conclusive that France is due for an explosion.”
The confusion was being untangled. Farrell wondered at Antoinette Delatour’s connection, and the source of the dreams that had haunted her; but the chains that bound the Marquis were white-hot and ready to break, so that conversation would have to wait.
“All right, heave!” directed Farrell.
The chains parted.
They stripped the bodies of the white-robed Ismailians, and armed themselves with their scimitars and pistols, as well as taking the extra cartridges that studded one of the belts. And the keys that had admitted the executioners completed the equipment. As the hot ends of the chain cooled, the Marquis bound them to his limbs so that they would not clank.
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 28
