A brick yielded to his attack.
Then he heard Lydia’s voice, low but anxious, calling him.
He backed out of the air shaft.
“Got a rope ready?” he demanded.
“You’ve got to leave,” she replied. “The negro is passing the knock-out drops. If you’re missing they’ll suspect.”
Farrell handed her the knife.
“Talk about breaks!” he growled, “Well, take this. If anyone recognizes me, I’m finished. So you get busy and work on the bars. Let yourself down the rope, and swing until you pass the balcony railing, then drop.”
He seized her in his arms and resumed his endearments in Arabic. The negro filled the glass that Farrell had picked up. Then, as the cupbearer made his way among the guests, Farrell poured the wine into the fountain. He watched his comrades so as to time his feigned unconsciousness to accord with their real stupor.
One lone survivor was still chanting drowsily. It was a bawdy song about the forty daughter of the sultan. And then he slumped in a heap.
Abbas dragged Farrell out of the garden. One by one he laid the brethren on the floor of the waiting room. Though feigning unconsciousness, Farrell finally fell into a troubled, nightmarish sleep.
* * * *
His drugged companions were stirring. He heard a murmur of voices from beyond the door that led into Hassan’s hall of audience. Then Nuri walked down the line, helping to their feet those who had freshly returned from Paradise. They steadied themselves and then filed after him into the audience hall, where Hassan sat on his dais, under the glare of the one great red lamp that glowed like a satanic moon in that firmament of hell.
One of the brethren stood before the dais, reporting to Hassan.
“We searched his house but he was not there.”
In spite of his peril, Farrell relished the irony of the situation indicated by this obvious discussion of him.
“What proof have you?” demanded Hassan as those returned from Paradise took their seats along the wall.
“Nothing important. Except—”
The speaker fumbled in his pocket.
“Except four teeth, mounted in gold, with hooks of silver.”
“Wallahi!” exclaimed Hassan. “When we hunt him, we’ll have to remember that his front teeth are missing.”
“He may have another set,” suggested Nuri. “According to the custom of some of these wealthy infidels. These may have been left to fool us.”
“True,” admitted Hassan. “But nevertheless he may have discarded his teeth as part of a disguise. We’ll hunt him right away! Habib! Suleiman! Musa!”
Three assassins advanced from the wall as their names were called. They would seek Farrell with daggers, as they had sought Burnham and Parr.
Farrell saw his chance. The grim humor of it appealed to him. He leaped to his feet.
“Ya sidi,” he exclaimed, “let me hunt the infidel!”
Hassan smiled.
“Well said, Ayyub. Your zeal does you credit. Take Habib’s place.”
It was too perfect to be true, walking out, cracking his two companions across the head with a pistol butt, then calling Healy and raiding the place. But before Farrell could derive much satisfaction from his fortunate stroke, Nuri interposed. Catlike, cunning, sinister Nuri, the predatory Kurd from the mountains.
“Master,” he said, “Ayyub is a recruit, and this is a perilous mission. He’d better wait for further training.” He paused. His smile was ominous and his eyes gleamed with menace as he continued, “Ayyub’s toothless smile seemed to please that red-haired wench who wouldn’t look at the rest of the boys. How much more he could please her if he had those splendid teeth, gold mounted and fit for a toothless king!”
Farrell saw at a glance that though he dropped a man with each shot of his automatic, the survivors would still suffice to overwhelm him and cut him to pieces. Then he heard Hassan’s voice of doom.
“Meestair Farrell, in spite of your stupid moments, you are clever. Mashallah! That was magnificent, seeking our hospitality, where you would be least of all expected, and then volunteering to be your own executioner. What a hasheeshin you would make,” he concluded with ungrudging admiration.
Then he clapped his hands. The impact sounded like a crash of thunder in the silence that had suddenly fallen over the assembly.
“Ya Abbas! Pen and ink!” Then, to Farrell, “I am sorry that we must accept such a low ransom. I would really prefer your services. If I could only convert you!
“But be pleased to sign an order for the sum we demanded.”
CHAPTER VIII
Gleaming Blades
Out of the corner of his eye Farrell saw the assassins gathering in a half circle that gleamed with blades. One word of command would send them forward, stabbing as they leaped. But Farrell knew that they would not strike until he had signed; perhaps not until the check had been cashed.
“Oh, very well,” said Farrell. “Doubtless I will sign. And I will pay as much again if you release the red-headed girl. The second payment to be made when she is safe and free. Fair, is it not?”
“Praise God for the red-headed girl,” said Hassan piously. “And I regret that we can’t let you live.” Farrell seated himself on the edge of the dais and began writing a check. He handed it to Hassan.
“Read, and see that I have not written a trap for your men.”
“You won’t trifle. Not when she is our security,” replied Hassan as he took the paper and beckoned to Nuri.
The security that the assassin gained from their numbers, and the recollection that Farrell had drawn a knife to punish Hassan’s use of the forbidden word, Shaytan, made them discount any possibility that he had other weapons.
As the two leaders glanced at the ransom check, Farrell drew his pistol and fired, not at the enemy, but at the great red globe that illuminated the room.
Nuri, though taken by surprise, drew and returned the fire. Farrell whirled and shot at the flash. He heard the Kurd drop. Hassan yelled an order. There was a click, and a grating, sliding sound.
In the darkness Farrell could just distinguish the white turban and white kaftan of the Master as he turned toward the panel that had opened in back of the dais. Hassan was retiring to give a clear field for the ring of blades that was closing in from all sides.
Farrell knew that he could not shoot his way out. But there was one resource left. He holstered his pistol and lunged toward Hassan, clutching him in his arms and halting his departure. Then he seized the chief assassin and pitched him headlong into the midst of his own killers, whose blades flickered in the trace of illumination that leaked in from the ante-room.
Despite the old man’s shirt of mail, his hasheesh crazed butchers would slash his throat or finally hack him to pieces in the darkness unless he dispersed them.
“Back, fools!” Hassan shrieked. “Back! It is I, the Master!”
And as they retreated in bewilderment, Farrell dashed straight ahead toward the thread of light that came in from the doorkeeper’s room.
But before Farrell had half reached his goal, the door of the outer room opened, admitting a flood of light. He saw that the assassins, obedient to Hassan’s yell of dismay as he landed in their midst, were retreating toward the walls. They stared, for a moment confused. Then Hassan’s cry urged them to the attack.
Zayd the doorkeeper barred Farrell’s exit. He leveled a pistol and fired. Farrell dropped flat as the weapon flashed, and from the floor returned the fire, catching Zayd full in the chest. But as Farrell regained his feet the assassins were closing in.
He emptied his pistol into the advance. The enemy fell back, riddled by the well directed fire. During that moment’s respite, Farrell saw that the fanlight in Zayd’s guardroom was not barred. He leaped to the desk, seized a chair, and swept the window clean a stroke. And as the
assassins re-formed and charged, he cleared the window, dropping into the foundations and rubbish of a recently razed building.
Farrell picked himself up from the refuse, wondering by what fortune he was able to move. He saw a file of men with drawn pistols entering the ground floor of Aswad’s place. Healy was leading the raid.
“Hey, John!” he yelled. “Give me a gun and I’ll show you the way.”
Hobbling as best he could with his twisted ankle, he joined the attack.
By sheer weight they took the first two floors by assault. Then they charged into the audience hall. Foot by foot they fought their way down the room, clubbing and shooting. A squad of patrolmen joined the skirmish.
Farrell recognized Hassan, pistol in hand, rallying his assassins.
“Get that guy with the beard!” he shouted as he fired and missed.
Farrell’s pistol jammed before he could make good the error. But Healy’s .38 cracked as Hassan turned toward his private exit.
“Got him, by God!” grunted Healy “Now give ’em hell!”
The police drove through. The survivors were clubbed into submission. They found the garden empty of all save its dark eyed, richly adorned girls who due to the insulation of the walls, had not heard the disturbance.
“Be Jaysus!” muttered Healy as Farrell led the way into the dim coolness, “if this ain’t the flossiest dive I’ve ever seen!”
Farrell went directly to the air outlet.
“Lydia,” he called. “Come out. All clear.”
“Thank God,” they heard her say. Healy eyed the red-haired girl in her bedraggled costume, and wondered at the dagger in her hand.
“I pried enough bricks loose to clear two more bars,” she explained. “And I found enough odds and ends to make a rope.” Then, as she saw Healy lift his hat and rub his head. “Oh, did some of that mortar hit you?”
“It sure did,” said Healy with a grin. “So that was you, wig-wagging at me with a scarf after you beaned me. That wasn’t mortar, that was a brick!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Lydia. Then she laughed as she saw the twinkle in Healy’s blue eyes.
“So that’s how come you started the raid, eh, John?” asked Farrell.
“Yeah. No woman can toss bricks at me from the third floor and get away with it!”
“Well, I’ll take her into custody myself,” said Farrell as he took Lydia by the hand. “I’m the worse for wear, and my teeth are somewhere out in the battlefield.”
As Farrell and Lydia entered the audience hall, they heard a patrolman exclaim, “Jeez, what ritzy teeth!”
“Officer,” said Farrell, “let me try them on. If they’re not mine, they’re close enough a match to have nearly cost me my hide a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah, with all your monkey work,” interpolated Healy, who had returned from the garden, “it took a red-headed girl heaving bricks to start the fireworks. Now where’s this fellow Nuri?”
“Here he is,” said Farrell. “Right where I plugged him.”
Healy stooped to examine the body that lay beside the dais.
“Peacock ring on his finger! That cinches it. We’ll hang every last man alive in this dump. Accessory before the fact.”
“And that lets Gordon and Rubenstein out of it, after all,” continued Healy. “Here’s the line-up. The day you gave Parr the peacock, Nuri told Gordon and Rubenstein to meet Parr at the River Café, saying he’d persuaded Parr to give it up. The seal this bozo’s wearing shows that he must have sent Parr that threatening note. And of course, he must have tipped us off to make the pinch.
“We went through Parr’s papers and found lots of dope on that holy peacock. That, and the story Gordon and Rubenstein put out cleared up most of the loose ends,” continued Healy. “Nuri called on Parr and removed the pearls before Parr could take the peacock to the River Café. The way he worked it was simple.
“Remember, that note ordered Pars to ride in a Liberty cab? That’s a new company that just opened up, so he had to ask information for the number. And the telephone is in back of the library, which gave Nuri plenty of time to pinch the pearls, and then snap the peacock closed again. He sent the shakedown note by messenger, and timed his own arrival so everything would click.
“Looks like Parr was the goat all around. The peacock was planted and so was the old manuscript. The idea was to sting Parr with the holy relic and later blackmail him for smuggling it into the country. He never knew anything about the pearls.
“Then when Nuri framed his partners he had to kill Parr, so he couldn’t squawk when Gordon and Rubenstein spilled their story after they were pinched. Naturally enough, nobody’d believe they weren’t mixed up in the Burnham killing, and so of course they’d take the rap.
“But now that I’ve spoken my piece,” concluded Healy, “supposing you open up with some of your monumental learning and tell me what kind of a dive this is.”
“I’ll tell you later,” countered Farrell. “As I said, I’m taking this young lady into custody for heaving a brick at you. Let’s go, Lydia.”
Then, as Farrell led the way to the street: “You’d better let me take you to the Delano, and wait until I can find you some suitable clothes. They have a private entrance there, and you’ll not have to pass through the lobby. Though that costume is becoming!”
“Oh, but you think of everything,” murmured Lydia. “Now do tell me what you were saying to me in Arabic, when Nuri came in.”
Farrell regarded the smiling green eyes for a moment, then nodded.
“I’ll do that—and you’d better like the translation!”
THE KING’S PEACOCK
Originally published in Clues Magazine, December 1933.
Glenn Farrell, lean, rugged, and tanned by the searing breath of the Asiatic deserts from which he had recently returned, had not yet accustomed himself to the Latin gayety of New Orleans. The music and tinkle of glasses and the laughter in Lorraine Cartwright’s apartment in the French Quarter jarred brazenly on ears that had been attuned to the whispering silence and murmuring menace of nights in Arabia.
He shook his head and disgustedly flicked a cigarette butt into the basin of the fountain that sprayed mistily in the center of the plantain-clustered courtyard of the old building.
“The French Quarter,” he reflected as he crossed the court and strode toward the vaulted passageway which opened on Orleans Alley, “would be charming, if it weren’t for studio parties.”
“Sour and savage as ever!” mocked a laughing voice at his right. “After doing my best in the way of festive riot, here I catch you slinking into the dark corners.”
Farrell turned and recognized his hostess, who was emerging from the shadows of the arcade that flanked the patio.
“The change is a bit too sudden,” he said with a vague gesture that was half apologetic. “Let’s go to the French Market for a bit of coffee.”
“Well, why not?” agreed Lorraine, eager to humor his whim. “They’ve elected a bartender. The party’s out of my hands already, and they’ll never miss me. Just a minute till I powder my nose.”
Farrell lingered for a moment at the entrance, then strolled slowly toward the corner of the building, which faced the tree-clustered expanse of lawn behind the abside of Saint Louis Cathedral. Several paces brought him to the intersection of Pirate’s Alley. There he paused to wait for his hostess, and strike light to a cigarette; but as he fumbled for a match, Farrell started and recoiled a pace.
Death was stalking in the French Quarter.
A man lay in the half-lighted shadows. His low, agonized groan was just perceptible above the music that sifted through the casements that pierced the two-foot walls of the building. Farrell saw a dark pool spreading across the paving slabs, and a lean, muscular hand, outstretched and reaching for something beyond its grasp. The man stirred, shuddered, made an e
ffort to worm his way across the alley. Farrell sensed the iron will that still defied death. He knelt beside the wounded man, and leaned forward to hear the low guttural murmur which was his final effort to explain a gesture toward the doorway two paces beyond.
And then Farrell’s hostess arrived. Her scream of dismay kept him from catching the scarcely articulate words.
“Call a doctor, quick!” Farrell commanded brusquely. “And the police.”
In the dim light he recognized the aquiline features and swarthy skin of an Arab.
“Try it again, brother,” said Farrell, speaking in Arabic. The ornate, silver hilt of a Persian dagger projected from the side of the wounded man. Farrell wondered that he could still stir or murmur.
“Malik—” The Arab pointed again toward the doorway across the alley, then slumped back against Farrell’s supporting arm. He tried to pronounce a second word, but the effort ended in a cough, a gasp, and a rattling in the throat.
“Dead, the poor devil.” Farrell knew that malik meant ‘king.’ “But king of what? What was he trying to tell me?”
As he pondered, Farrell suddenly sensed that he was not alone with the dead. A whiff of a heavy, exotic perfume told him that some woman as foreign as the dead was near, or had but a moment ago passed by. He turned—and in time to get a glimpse of a feminine form that in another instant blended with the deeper gloom at the farther end of Orleans Alley. She must have emerged from the shadow of the buttresses of the cathedral.
“Knifed him, and now she’s making a get-away,” was Farrell’s first thought. But before he could dash down the alley to detain the woman, he heard the racing of an engine and a clash of gears. “And that’s that! Gone, clean!”
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 41
