A low, soft laugh interrupted d’Artois’ remarks.
“Ah…but I prefer to elect my own time, Baali,” said a voice, “when I will not be bound by any conditions of yours.”
In a dim corner of the room a spot of misty luminescence was elongating to a spindle of quivering light. Then it expanded, and solidified. The materialization was more rapid than before.
“Getting stronger,” muttered d’Artois. “She has absorbed additional energy.” Then, to the presence, “Lilith, back to the darkness of forgotten midnight! All those who evoked you from the ghosts of memories and from the shadows of ancient prayers are dust and less than the dust of those who loved you long ago!”
From his waistcoat pocket d’Artois drew the silver crux ansata, which he advanced at arm’s length as he paced deliberately toward the Presence, stepping to the cadence of the adjuration which he pronounced.
“Go therefore in peace; Ardat Lilî!
“Go in peace, Queen of the Lilin!
“Go in peace, and trouble no longer the living. For he is dead, and so also are his friends, and for you there is neither vengeance nor hope, Queen of Zemargad! Go therefore to the shadows and the early dawn of time, and to the dust of those whose fancy gave you life anew!”
Diane and Farrell, standing in their quadrants, thrilled as they heard d’Artois’ sonorous voice intoning as he advanced toward that malignant beauty whose wondrous body had become firm and substantial in the dim glow, and half shrouded in a diaphanous mist that served her as a gown.
Again that poison-sweet, evil laugh; but instead of shrinking or retreating as she had done earlier in the evening, she stepped forward to meet d’Artois. Her smile mocked him, but her phosphorescent eyes regarded Diane from beneath their long lashes with a cold, deadly stare.
D’Artois halted. He was baffled. His solemn command had failed. For an instant his shoulders slumped hopelessly. Then he reasserted his will. His teeth clicked grimly together, and he extended his arms. But the diabolically lovely enemy evaded his grasp as though she were a wisp of haze drifting in the wind. Farrell, seeing d’Artois’ futile gesture, leaped clear of his quadrant and sought to intercept the demoniac beauty who slipped forward like a panther to seize Diane. She evaded Farrell’s grasp, and closed in.
An instant later, d’Artois and Farrell vainly sought to break her deadly hold on Diane’s throat. The phantom woman’s strength was great, and her limbs, seemingly solid flesh and blood, were flexible and yielding and elusive as writhing serpents.
Diane’s desperately won gasps of breath told how those relentless, slender fingers sank home, mocking the strong hands that tried to break her fierce grip. The phantom snarled in bestial fury, and thwarted the efforts of the two men striving with her as vainly as though they were wrestling with eels.
Farrell snatched a knife.
“God!” he gasped in despair. “She’s not human—”
Even in that extremity, he instinctively paused to justify the use of force against such a radiant, feminine beauty, evil though it was.
“Tenez!” cried d’Artois, seizing his wrist. “The blade will go through her and stab Diane.”
D’Artois stepped clear. He was baffled and beaten. She—Lilith—Queen of the Lilin—had stolen the energy of five adepts whose mangled bodies lay in the vault below; she had summoned from out of space bit after bit of disembodied force; her strength had become superhuman.
Diane had ceased to struggle. The slender, deadly fingers were sinking remorselessly home. The scarlet lips were twisted in a sneer that was made all the more terrible by the beauty of Lilith.
D’Artois flung the silver crux ansata into a corner with a wrathful, despairing gesture. Then with a triumphant cry, he saw and recognized his last hope: the image of green chrysoprase. He snatched it from the mantel.
His lips moved soundlessly as he smote the image against an andiron, fracturing the lovely throat, so that the head rolled across the floor. He struck again, cracking the faultless body.
Farrell stared for an instant; then, “Bust it again, Pierre! Look!” he shouted.
He shrieked the last word in a frenzy of exultation.
The phantom woman was becoming misty…almost transparent.
Smash! Another spattering of fragments as they glanced off the column that buttressed the fireplace.
Farrell turned just in time to catch Diane, who, no longer supported by the spectral slayer, was about to collapse.
“A last-minute guess. And it worked,” muttered d’Artois. He glanced about for a moment as if to reassure himself that vengeful Lilith had indeed vanished. Then he continued, “Let me give you a hand. Get Diane out of here—quickly!”
* * * *
When Diane regained consciousness, the grayness of early dawn was making the electric lights of her apartment a sickly, yellowish glow. She sat up among the cushions of the chaise-longue, smiled wearily, and declined the glass of brandy d’Artois offered her.
“My throat’s terribly bruised, but otherwise I’m all right,” she said. “And now tell me what it was all about.”
Farrell and d’Artois exchanged glances. They remembered all too well the horrors of the night just past. Diane sensed their thought.
“I wasn’t so nearly unconscious as you supposed,” she resumed, “and I heard what you two said. So tell me the rest—I mean, the reasons.”
“All of our memories, our thoughts, our emotions,” began d’Artois, “are vibrations in the ether, similar, perhaps, to radio waves. And the occultists agree that a thought vibration, however attenuated it may become, never actually dies out. And just as by amplification a radio wave can be increased a millionfold, so also by harmonious mental concentration can a thought be infinitely strengthened.
“Graf Erich’s five adepts by their contemplation of the chrysoprase statuette summoned from the vast limbo of undying thought forms an entity that had once been associated with the green image. That entity was Lilith—Ardat Lilî—Agrat bat Mahhat—whatever name you wish. They all imply a female demon.
“She should have vanished with the death of Graf Erich and his adepts; but the accretions of countless disembodied entities, human and otherwise, that were attracted by the thought vortex created by the intense concentration, were all assimilated by the personality whose materialization became strong enough to strangle Diane.
“That chrysoprase statuette was the focal point of the concentration; it was the model for the visualization of the adepts, so that they would have an absolute unity that could not have been gained from verbal description. I noted this fact from the records I studied, but did not get its full significance until the very last and almost fatal moment.
“My plan was to force the demon to materialize in the circle, and then command her to depart for ever—but she thwarted me by materializing of her own volition, thus evading the compulsion I intended to exercise.
“And the last, and perhaps the strangest feature of this grotesque tragedy, is the apparition herself—”
“You’ve confused us,” interposed Farrell, “by using so many names in addressing her and speaking of her.”
D’Artois laughed and struck light to a cigarette.
“Different designations for the same entity. Most of the terms I used are not proper names but class designations. According to Assyrian tradition, Lilith is the head of a hierarchy of female demons or lilin. She is Queen of Zemargad, Agrat bat Mahhat, Daughter of the Dancer, who roams about at night with myriads of lilin, whom Solomon is said to have summoned to appear and dance before him.
“Graf Erich, poor devil, tried to perform a similar feat, and fell afoul of the vengeance of Lilith.”
“But how about cutting my hair?” wondered Diane. “What in the world—”
“The old tradition,” said d’Artois, “describes Lilith as ‘a seductive woman with long hair.’ To
use an awkward expression, long-hairedness is an essential of the Lilith-image or concept.
“Graf Erich, therefore, wanted you to cut your hair so as to destroy that which you had in common with her. In other words, divested of your exceptionally long hair, you would be degraded in the eyes of Lilith and thus beneath her jealousy. Again, you might have lost your identity as Diane, the rival.”
“But why didn’t you get scissors instead of drawing that circle and making the other preparations?” wondered Diane.
“Lilith had become too strong,” explained d’Artois. “First, you recollect, she had but enough power to cause a hammer to slide from a steep roof. Later, she appeared in person to stab you; and finally, she gathered enough strength to throttle you with her bare hands, and to resist our efforts to overpower her. And, anticipating such an increase, I recognized the need for more desperate measures than the sacrifice of your hair.”
“A terrible sacrifice,” interposed Farrell, as he admiringly regarded Diane. Then, seating himself at the foot of the chaise-longue, “And now that you’re through diverting us with demonology, I’m going to quote a modern author, on an old theme: ‘Diane is a seductive woman with—’”
“Pardieu!” interrupted d’Artois, “if that is what you call the lay of the land, there is nothing for an old man but to go home and get some much-needed sleep, and leave you to the mercy of this seductive, long-haired woman!”
“I think,” said Diane with a smile and a gesture toward her blue-black hair, “that I’ll ask the coiffeur to take the biggest, sharpest scissors the first thing in the morning, and—”
“Over my dead body!” protested Farrell.
D’Artois paused at the entrance of the hallway, twisted his mustache, and grinned broadly.
“By the rod, Monsieur, if you do not this afternoon return with worthwhile amendments to an ancient Assyrian tradition, you are an oaf, a mouse, and an uncouth fellow! Cordieu! Were I but your age!”
ONE ARABIAN NIGHT
Also published as “Makeda’s Cousin”
Originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, November 1934.
The breeze that swept out from the Arabian Desert wafted a whiff of even hotter fumes from the now silent engines of the great tri-motored plane and assured Glenn Farrell that it was not a dream. Petrol and hot lube and exhaust gases were never that vivid in any mirage.
Farrell was lean, broad of shoulder, craggy jawed, and at home from Surabaya to Timbuktu; yet his gray eyes were wide and the stern lines of his rugged face had dissolved in wonder. He had landed in a lost city whose very existence had for some twenty-eight dusty centuries been no more than a legend: the capital from which Balkis, Queen of Sheba, had set out to visit King Solomon.
And it was inhabited. Bronzed, bearded men were emerging from the purple shadows of colossal palaces and terraced ziggurats that rose dizzily up and into the red glow of the setting sun. Slender, shapely women with olive hued bodies peered through transparent veils that were not intended to conceal their scarlet lips and kohl darkened eyelids.
The natives halted. Their guttural murmuring subsided; but Glenn Farrell had heard enough to know that the language which they spoke was similar to Arabic in the way that the English of Chaucer’s time resembles the language of our day. Without turning to his two companions, he said, in a low voice that was unsteady with wonder, “Talk to their leader, Ismeddin.”
The old, white bearded Arab who had followed Farrell from Mekinez to Boukhara advanced and greeted the stern faced amir who had stepped from the silent but ever thickening throng of natives. They were armed with curved scimitars; but a few carried silver mounted, long barreled jezails, and flintlock pistols—weapons which they must have bought from wandering Bedouins who had ventured into the terrific Rub’ al-Khali.
Farrell knew that Ismeddin’s parley would decide the fate of the party. He turned to his friend, Colonel Pierre d’Artois, on leave from the French Air Service to pilot Farrell’s plane to Africa.
“If we have to take it on the run, do you think you can lift her out of this plaza and clear of the walls?”
The grim faced old soldier shrugged, twisted his waxed moustache to a finer point and said, “Mondieu! Trying is the only way to find out. Though if that girl near the chief doesn’t quit eyeing you that way, mon ami, there will be some of that hell popping.”
Farrell followed d’Artois’ glance. Her faintly aquiline face was delicate as a Persian miniature, and his pulse quickened as he caught the inviting gaze of dark eyes that smouldered behind the transparent veil which was held in place by disc-headed pins thrust like monstrous marigolds into her black hair. Farrell no longer tried to follow Ismeddin’s sonorous Arabic. He caught his breath, and his gray eyes narrowed as he returned the intent appraisal of the slender Sabean girl whose graciously curved body and shapely legs gleamed golden-ivory through her sun-pierced gown. And then the corners of her amorous mouth lifted in the shadow of a smile.
“Let her look, Pierre,” whispered Farrell. “You can pilot that crate the rest of the way to Djibuti and then sell the damn thing for scrap. I’m staying here to learn the language a bit better.”
“Some of those nuts, mon ami!” growled the Frenchman. “You young fool, you’ll probably end up by being flayed alive and crucified. Anybody that’s done as much exploring as you have ought to know better than to look at native women—”
“Nuts yourself, Pierre!” countered Farrell. “When anybody that’s done as much exploring as I have gets cold-calked by an eyeful like that, something’s got to be done about it. That girl’s going with us to Djibuti.”
“Imbécile!” grumbled the Frenchman. “Talk Arabic to match your clothes. That’s our only hope of getting out of here with whole hides. Particularly with your damned romantic stupidity!”
And then Ismeddin returned from the parley and announced, “The Amir welcomes you. These people worship the sun and stars, like they did in the days of Queen Balkis; so I told him that you came to pray at the shrine of the moon goddess, and that beside being able to fly like a bird, you can raise the dead, and—”
“You would!” growled Farrell. “And now there will be the devil to pay—if anyone dies here—”
“No wonder she looked at you that way,” interpolated d’Artois. “But when do we eat and where do we camp?”
“As I was about to say, ya Bimbashi,” resumed the old Arab, “we will be quartered in one of these ruined palaces. And tonight we will witness the ceremonies at the temple of the moon. This way, sidi. That tall fellow will show us to our quarters. And we will leave, inshallah, before there is any occasion to raise the dead.”
“Like hell we will,” muttered Farrell as he followed his guide. “You couldn’t have doped out a better way of crabbing the act!” Then catching a parting glimpse of the large-eyed girl with the golden hair pins and noting the amorous curves of her slender body silhouetted by horizontal rays that glared through an archway, he added, “But miracles seem to be in order in this man’s town.”
Grilled lamb, flat cakes of bread, and water from the spring that made Madinat-ash-Shams a verdant spot in the blistering southern desert was presently served to Farrell and his companions as they were breaking out their kits in the vast ruin which darkness had suddenly enveloped. The menace and lurking mystery of antiquity oppressed Farrell; and the camel dung fire over which Ismeddin was brewing coffee cast a glow that seemed to animate the gigantic, solemn faces sculptured on the masonry. He shivered, and not from the evening chill that had followed sunset. Then he pictured again the subtle invitation that had lurked on the lips of that Sabean girl and heard in his fancy the tinkle of her golden anklets.
D’Artois’ face became grave as he sensed the significance of Farrell’s sudden change of expression.
“I’ll watch here,” he said, “so I’ll be on hand to warm up the motor at the first sign of rioting.”
“Hell, Pierre,” chuckled Farrell. “I won’t look for her tonight. They don’t allow ladies at the prayer meeting.”
He gathered his flowing djellab about him and followed Ismeddin up the broad avenue to the loftiest of the ziggurats, or tower-temples erected centuries ago by the worshippers of the heavenly bodies. He heard the mutter of drums and the insinuating whine of stringed instruments, and the heart shaking clang of great brazen gongs.
“It is insane…this idea of making a date with the granddaughter of the Queen of Sheba…”
Smoking torches illuminated the broad stairs that led to the ziggurat on the first terrace of which thronged the last of the Sabeans who had once ruled all of Arabia. Farrell felt cold chills race up and down his spine as the chanting and drumming hammered into his very soul; and something told him that the Sabeans were a cruel and lustful race to make drums and cymbals whisper such things to a man’s heart.
Farrell saw curtains slowly parting to reveal the shrine, and forgot all but the sinister spectacle before him. He barely understood the words of the clean shaven, chanting priests ranged beside the altar, a great square block of carved basalt; but the knife that gleamed in the hand of one who whetted the frosty steel needed no interpretation. They were about to offer a sacrifice. The victim was a young, dark haired girl who had been stripped of all but her dazzling beauty, and a broad, sapphire encrusted girdle about her slender waist. Her eyes were closed, and her head was inclined. She sat cross-legged, and with her arms crossed on her breast. For an instant Farrell tried to assure himself that that was no living woman, but a tinted statue, the goddess of the shrine. He relaxed, exhaled a sighing breath, then froze anew as he noted that she was breathing. She was unbound; and Farrell knew that she must have been drugged so that neither struggle nor change of expression would detract from her ceremonial posture.
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 34
