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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  She smiled a slow, carmine sorcery. The dark, long-lashed eyes were without fear. Her slender arms gestured like twin serpents of nacre as she patted the midnight of her elaborately dressed, long hair.

  “You prefer me to all earthly women, Baali… And even though you did not…you could not kill those five acolytes…could not buy her safety at the cost of such infamy… Baali, am I not lovely?…”

  CHAPTER 4

  Two Long-Haired Women

  Farrell and d’Artois in the meanwhile had been pondering on the events of the evening, and seeking to devise a wedge to split the solid front of contradictions that opposed them.

  “The fact that in three cases the falling object which almost struck Diane,” said d’Artois, “came from the house of Graf Erich is certainly significant. But on the other hand, I can scarcely imagine his wishing to harm Diane.”

  “Yet it must track back to him,” persisted Farrell. “Consider, the strongest manifestation: that of flexing a wire until it snapped and released its deadly burden.”

  “Pardieu, you have right,” admitted d’Artois. “Graf Erich’s château must be the focal point where maximum intensity is developed.”

  Farrell stared somberly into the glowing coals of the grate. D’Artois paced slowly back and forth, each trip marking the length of the wine-colored Boukhara rug that filled the center of the study. Suddenly he halted, and flung open the casement.

  “Look!” he commanded, making a sweeping gesture of his arm.

  Farrell gazed across the moon-drenched wilderness of roofs. It seemed for a moment that he stood in the tower of some mediaeval necromancer, looking into a vista of freshly opened hyper-space and across the roofs of a dead city of enchantment.

  Wraith-like mists were slowly marching from the Nive, and along the dry moat that girdled the walls, and up into the citadel, to clamor at the heavily armored door at the ground level. Farrell felt a sudden chill flash down his spine, despite the warmth of the study.

  “Like a Chinese dream,” he muttered. “Old, and evil, and beautiful…like some pearl-gray sphinx smiling through her veils of mystery… Lord, but it’s old—I never realized, till just now—”

  “Old? Old indeed, mon ami,” said d’Artois solemnly; “old when the Moslem conquerors took the city by assault; old when the Roman legions drove the stakes of their first encampment on the banks of the Nive. And beneath this citadel there are passages and crypts…”

  Farrell sharply regarded his friend and noted the stern, hard lines about his mouth and the glitter of his eyes.

  “Do you mean to say,” demanded Farrell in a low, hoarse whisper, “that you think that some elemental has emerged from the everlasting midnight of the vaults beneath this city to destroy Diane?”

  D’Artois shrugged, slowly shook his head, and smiled somberly. Then his eyes shifted for a moment toward the open casement. He ceased smiling.

  “Pierre,” Farrell abruptly resumed. “I’ve got a whim, and I’m going to humor it whether you think I’m goofy or not. I’m going for a walk, along rue Lachepaillet—to see the moonlight advance across the parkway, down below.”

  D’Artois’ eyes narrowed as he scrutinized his friend.

  “Me, I will go with you,” he announced, “Unless—”

  “Glad to have you,” assured Farrell. Then, as he picked up his hat and jammed it well down on his head, “I’ve had the creeps for the past hour. And it’s been getting worse ever since we left Diane. Now, if you must laugh—”

  “But no, I refuse to find anything humorous about the thought,” protested d’Artois. “Your interest in the young lady, while a trifle sudden, is certainly warranted.”

  “You’ve got me all wrong. She doesn’t interest me. It’s just that I’ve got a hunch. That ever increasing force! Just as we were saying—”

  “Precisely,” agreed d’Artois. “In fact, no one was contradicting you.” Then, with a malicious grin, “Which contentions on your part prove indubitably that you are not one damned bit interested in Mademoiselle Diane.”

  D’Artois selected a Malacca stick from his collection, then led the way to the door; but he had scarcely crossed the threshold when the telephone rang.

  “C’est moi, d’Artois,” he assured the speaker. Then, “But yes—we will see you at once. With pleasure. À bientôt!”

  “Diane?” wondered Farrell.

  “Certainly none other,” said d’Artois. “No, there is nothing wrong, yet. She sought to explain, but I gave her no chance, lest she end by explaining herself into a state of mind. You two, it seems, have had a hunch, yes? Dignifying it by the name of telepathy or intuition is hardly necessary.”

  D’Artois paused at his desk and took from a compartment a small device in the shape of a Greek letter tau with a circular handle where the cross-bar joined the stem. He shook his head in response to Farrell’s query, and thrust the silver symbol into his pocket.

  “A crux ansata,” he said. “Later, perhaps, I will explain.”

  They walked briskly up rue Tour de Sault toward the head of rue d’Espagne, where the latter reaches out toward the breach in the fortification. From there they turned to their right and followed the Lachepaillet wall for two short blocks to Diane’s door.

  “I’ve been so terribly uneasy,” Diane explained as she admitted Farrell and d’Artois. “Ever since Graf Erich phoned—”

  “Eh, what’s that?” demanded Farrell. Mention of the Count abruptly jarred him from his preliminary survey of the exquisite effect of apricot-hued negligee and coral lamé mules worn by a girl of Diane’s coloring. “When was that?”

  “A little over half an hour ago,” said Diane as she ushered them into the living-room. “He seemed terribly agitated, and hinted that I might expect a repetition of the accident at the château. But I couldn’t get him to be explicit about it; and that’s what alarmed me. I fancied it must have been because he was worried about those accidents, and particularly the one of tonight. So—”

  She made a quick, nervous gesture of her hand.

  “So, as you see, I’ve taken down the pictures and bric-a-brac and everything that could possibly fall. But that’s not why I called you. It was something Graf Erich said tonight: before he hung up, he insisted that I should cut my hair.”

  “Comment?” demanded d’Artois. “Cut your hair?”

  “Yes,” replied Diane. “He hinted to that effect shortly after that bust fell down and nearly struck me as I lay on the chaise-longue, over there in the corner. At the time I fancied that he was teasing me about my whim of wearing long hair. But his mentioning it again tonight, and insisting on it, despite his agitation about the possibility of something falling—”

  She stopped short, shook her head, and made a gesture of perplexity.

  “It seems to me that our friend Graf Erich is plumb loco!” declared Farrell. “Good egg and all that, but just off his chump! Worried about a succession of uncanny accidents, and then kicking about the way Diane wears her hair.” D’Artois shook his head.

  “Au contraire,” he said, “I fear that Graf Erich is only too well balanced. Tell me, did you say that you would cut your hair?”

  “But yes,” replied Diane. “Anything to please him, he sounded so upset. And as soon as I agreed, he hung up.”

  “My dear,” said d’Artois, “suppose that you get a pair of scissors.”

  Diane and Farrell regarded him with amazement.

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Farrell, “Now you’ve got it!”

  D’Artois stifled the retort that was on his lips. He considered for a moment the sleek, blue-black coiffure, then smiled mirthlessly.

  “Perhaps it would be hasty to sacrifice such exceptionally lovely long hair in this day and age—still—but suppose that I call Graf Erich and see if I can get some sense out of his incoherence. That one is far from irrational. There is something
in what he says; and right now I will find out!”

  He glanced about him, seeking the telephone. Farrell stroked his chin and regarded d’Artois with wonder and a tinge of alarm. Diane indicated the adjoining room. But as d’Artois rose, a bell rang.

  “Perhaps,” he said, stopping short, “it is Graf Erich calling back.”

  Diane shook her head.

  “That’s the door-bell, not the telephone. Excuse me—just a moment, please.” As Diane left the living-room, d’Artois caught Farrell’s eye.

  “Mon vieux, I am not demented,” he protested.

  “But why cut her hair?” persisted Farrell, scrutinizing d’Artois as though he expected to find symptoms of delirium.

  D’Artois shrugged. “To be frank, I don’t know—yet. But I do know Graf—”

  A scream at the front door cut d’Artois’ remarks short. Then another: an agonized shriek that betokened an outraged mind rather than a wounded body.

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Farrell, as he sprang toward the door, and started down the hallway. “Diane!”

  “Mordieu! It’s after her!” And d’Artois followed.

  The front door was wide open. They saw Diane on the sidewalk, struggling hand to hand with a slender, sinuous woman who sought to drive home a long, frostily glittering dagger. Diane, straining and gasping, strove to wrench back and break the grip of the woman who relentlessly menaced her with that deadly slip of steel.

  Farrell halted for an instant in utter amazement. Like Diane, the other woman was dark and long-haired and exceedingly lovely; and like her, arrayed in a shimmering, silky fabric which, conspiring with river mists and moonlight, lent an unreal, almost terrible beauty to the swaying, lithe forms that struggled for the icy splinter of a blade.

  The enemy’s features were branded with a venomous smile that made her crimson lips seem like a fresh wound.

  All in a glance; all in one fleeting instant which can be longer than a lifetime.

  Farrell leaped forward and seized the enemy’s wrist.

  He gasped in dismayed horror as his fingers closed about the exquisite, nacreously gleaming arm. She was serpent-cold; yet an electric thrill numbed his arm all the way to the shoulder.

  “Oh, Glenn!” panted Diane as she caught her breath and renewed her efforts.

  “Tenez!” snapped the voice of d’Artois as Farrell extended his arm again. He clapped his hands sharply, then continued in a brusque, dominant tone, “Lilîtu! Agrat bat Mahhat!”

  The smile vanished from the crimson lips as d’Artois pronounced those strange words. The dagger wavered in her grasp. She suddenly wrenched her wrist free from Diane’s grip, but instead of striking, she turned to confront d’Artois. The lovely features were menacing, but they were also clouded with apprehension.

  Farrell, his arm still tingling from the uncanny contact, supported Diane, who shrank away from the diabolically lovely enemy.

  D’Artois again addressed the stranger. He stood firm and erect, and looked her full in the eye. His right hand flashed from his coat pocket. He grasped the silver crux ansata.

  Once more he pronounced, “Lilîtu!”

  Then he began intoning in a language that Farrell dimly recognized as an archaic Semitic tongue. His voice rolled and thundered like a distant surf; it crackled and snapped sulfurously, and his fierce old eyes were frosty cold as he intently regarded that evil beauty whose luminous loveliness seemed to be a concentration of solidified moonbeams rather than any aggregation of flesh and blood.

  “Who is that woman?” muttered Farrell as Diane clung to him. “A human snake? Look!”

  Then, before Diane could turn her head from his shoulder, “No, don’t look!”

  The nacreous gleaming arms and shoulders and the imperious features were becoming diffused and misty. Farrell heard a low, wrathful cry, and the tinkle of steel against masonry.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, seeking to collect his outraged senses. “Where—” As d’Artois turned, Farrell saw that the lean, leathery features were drawn and haggard, and that the old man’s brow glistened with sweat. The outstretched arms dropped wearily back to his sides. One hand still clutched the silver crux ansata.

  “Back in whatever unknown hell hatched her,” said d’Artois.

  Farrell started at Diane’s half-articulate cry.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Only…mon Dieu!…where did she—”

  Farrell shook his head. “I thought—”

  But Farrell’s thought had been too wild for expression. So he abruptly cut his speech; and then, seeing a glitter on the paving, stooped to pick up a dagger whose jeweled hilt glowed and flamed in the moonlight.

  “It seems so ghastly and unreal, now that I look back at it…as though it happened years instead of just seconds ago,” said Diane as she led the way back to the living-room. “I greeted her, and then she said something in a language I couldn’t understand. Instead of asking her in, I leaned forward and asked her to repeat. And before I knew it, she had seized me by the shoulder, pulled me off my balance—she was terribly strong, in spite of her slight figure—”

  D’Artois and Farrell had exchanged glances during Diane’s remarks; and from long association, they understood each other’s moods without the aid of spoken words. Farrell yielded the floor to d’Artois.

  “The strength of madness,” said d’Artois as his eyes shifted from Farrell to Diane. “If you’d seen how she slipped clear of me! Too bad that anyone so beautiful would be so utterly insane.”

  D’Artois paused to note the effect of his bit of fiction, and saw that Diane was accepting his story at its face value; which, in view of her fright, and distracted attention, was reasonable enough.

  “Now run along to bed, chère petite,” continued d’Artois. “I’m certain she won’t be back tonight.”

  Diane rose from her chair, and would have protested.

  D’Artois shook his head.

  “We must go. I will explain later. Wake Félice and have her sit up with you. She’ll grumble, but pay no attention to that.”

  “I will—” began Farrell.

  “Of verity, I know that you would,” replied d’Artois. “But you and I have to find that poor demented girl. And in the meanwhile,” he continued, again addressing Diane, “do not admit anyone. When we return, we will ring two long and two short; but before you open the door, first peep out the window and identify us.”

  Diane made no further effort to detain them.

  D’Artois turned to Farrell as they reached the paving.

  “Monstrous blockhead!” he exclaimed. “I was wondering just when you would declare that that accursed creature vanished in a wisp of fog—and then you insisted on remaining to guard the roost!”

  “But,” protested Farrell, “it seems that leaving Diane there with old Félice, the cook—”

  “Would I have left her alone if there were reason to fear danger? This creature lured Diane to the door because she could not bring a material thing like a dagger into the house in the same manner in which she herself could have appeared therein. Had she materialized in the house, she could not have injured Diane with her bare hands. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” assured Farrell with elaborate irony. “Among other things, who was she, and what happened to her? I’d have sworn that she vanished in a puff of mist. Can you—”

  “She did indeed so vanish,” said d’Artois. “And let me see that dagger which you picked up.”

  They were close to the old guardhouse now, and about to turn down rue Tour de Sault.

  “Ah…just as I expected,” muttered d’Artois as he examined the dagger and its sapphire-sparkling hilt. “I suspected it from Graf Erich’s warning Diane.”

  “How does he fit into it?” demanded Farrell impatiently.

  “This,” declared d’Artois, “is a dagger from hi
s collection. I know it well indeed. A rare and distinctive piece.”

  “Good Lord!” gasped Farrell. “And we thought he wasn’t mixed up—at least, not—”

  “We’ll soon know!” interrupted d’Artois.

  “But I’d still like to know what happened to that girl,” persisted Farrell. “That was an illusion, or else—”

  “You were so certain that it was an illusion that you suddenly checked your speech so as to avoid alarming Diane, yes?” D’Artois chuckled mirthlessly.

  “Graf Erich’s devil-mongering?” hazarded Farrell.

  D’Artois nodded.

  “Well, what was she—it—that creature?” demanded Farrell. “And did you or didn’t you begin talking to her in what sounded something like the Arabic you hear in Nejd?”

  “I did,” replied d’Artois. “I solemnly commanded her to leave. I presented the crux ansata, a very ancient symbol of power. And she left. My will against hers. None of what you call hocus-pocus. I called her by her proper designation; at least, by one of her names. That is an essential in any ritual of exorcism. I guessed, but not blindly, when I called her Agrat bat Mahhat, the Daughter of the Dancer.”

  Farrell perplexedly shook his head.

  “How did you know—where did you ever meet—”

  “She had exceptionally long, heavy hair, if one were to judge by her curious coiffure. So had Diane. Then she is Agrat bat Mahhat, said I. Very simple.”

  “Pierre, this is getting to be a madhouse!” despaired Farrell. “Even a bit of common sense would help—”

  “Wait till we see Graf Erich,” countered d’Artois grimly. “Then you’ll understand.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The Vengeance of Lilith

  They found Graf Erich sitting at a table in the circle of illumination cast by the single chandelier that burned in the salon. As he rose to greet them, they saw that his dark features were wan, and his eyes haggard and feverish. Farrell and d’Artois sensed that Graf Erich was on the verge of making a monstrous confession, and was nerving himself for the plunge.