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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Please don’t—not now. Let me for a change speak of something else,” she protested. A long, smouldering, speculative glance. Then, “Perhaps you could help me again? Though it is dangerous, and the reward will be nothing.”

  That last was an outright mistake, Farrell told her.

  “My father, Nureddin Ali,” resumed Mûnah, “is a prisoner in a house on Jalan Penang, in the hands of an enemy trying to force him to equip a pirate boat. I also was a prisoner, but I escaped and went to Crosby’s bungalow to exact vengeance. Crosby trapped my father.”

  Vengeance was meat and drink to a Malay. Mûnah’s knife work was reasonable. But if she thought that she was using Farrell as a sap, the laugh was on her. The specifications sounded like the Claw of Iblis! This was a break.

  “But why not notify the British police?” Farrell countered, catching the joker in the deck.

  “My father,” Mûnah explained, “already has a price on his head. He is unjustly accused. His only hope is escape and flight to Sumatra.”

  It was a bit too reasonable! Farrell, however, could not decline the risk. However dangerous, it must lead from Crosby to the sinister Claw.

  “I’ll go,” he agreed; then he listened as Mûnah gave him detailed directions.

  “My father’s enemy has followers of all races,” she concluded, “and it will be easy for you to enter. No one knows his name. He is called the Great Lord. Take this token, and use it as I described.”

  She handed him a Straits dollar with two of the date numerals obliterated, leaving only a nine and a three. Mûnah, resisting the advances of one of her captors, had knifed him and taken his identification tag.

  “I would go myself,” she added, “except that my face is too familiar, and I am only a woman. Now take this thin bladed knife. Conceal it. It may serve you.”

  “And you, in the meanwhile?” queried Farrell.

  “To Johore Bahru,” she answered. “Take my hired car. Abandon it when it has served you.”

  * * * *

  Farrell drove back to Singapore, parked at the gas works, and set out for the native quarter on foot.

  Jalan Penang was a rankly scented darkness through which turbaned figures slunk like ghosts. From a nearby courtyard came the muffled clanging of gongs, whining of moon fiddles, and the sputter of firecrackers: a Chinese funeral procession about to set out.

  Farrell shuddered as he heard the eerie wailing and thumping, and muttered, “If this don’t work, there’s going to be another funeral, and not Chinese…”

  Then he squared his shoulders. The amiable Farrell grin that had fatally fooled many an enemy crinkled his face. Fate, that blind idiot, was jerking the strings.

  He tapped at the door. A wrinkled Malay with betel juice drooling from the corners of his mouth answered him with an iron stare.

  “Ninety-three reporting,” announced Farrell, presenting the dollar.

  “The third nail,” recited the Malay.

  “Of the ninth claw,” answered Farrell, wondering if Mûnah had been right about the password. One hand was on the butt of the Webley in his coat pocket.

  The Malay led him into a murky den crowded with drunkards gurgling at flasks of arrak, and hopheads pulling at the stems of opium pipes.

  The Claw had a sweet place.

  Farrell’s guide stalked toward a blank, dirty wall. There was no perceptible opening, but many bare feet had worn a slick streak across the rough floor. He tapped in peculiar rhythm; there was an answering tap; then he said, “Ya Abbas! Ninety-three reporting!”

  A panel opened. Farrell crossed the threshold. A pistol prodded his ribs.

  “Not a move, brother of a pig!” growled a voice from his side. The speaker probed his pockets, removed his pistol. “Miss Fortesque as well as the Master would like to see you.”

  The pistol at Farrell’s back urged him into the murky glow of a single kerosene lamp suspended from the ceiling.

  Madeleine Fortesque sat on a dais beside a thin, hook-nosed Arab with a henna-reddened beard and a mouth hard as a sword blade. Ignoring Mûnah’s counsel had been a fatal mistake! He should have let her knife Madeleine!

  Her face was drawn, pallid even in that murky yellow glow. He was trapped as surely as though he had taken the drugged wine she had set out for him.

  “The third nail of the ninth claw,” mocked the leather-faced Arab, “spent too much time toying in graveyards. We trailed you from Crosby’s house, shortly after releasing Miss Fortesque. Despite her failure to trap you, we give her another chance to prove herself.

  “If she succeeds, she will take the number you have borrowed! Pa’Bak! Gendut! Come forward!”

  Two short, thick-muscled Malays appeared from a shadowed doorway. They bound Farrell’s ankles with cords of hard spun silk. Then they stepped away, and so did the man whose pistol had prohibited resistance.

  The last named approached the Claw and presented Farrell’s Webley. The master of the show handed it to Madeleine.

  “We have admitted you on probation. We cannot trust you until you have become an outlaw. Your fingerprints on the pistol that kills Farrell will guarantee your fidelity.

  “The British law will not suspect you—until you fail me. Then there will be whisperings to the police.

  “And you, Farrell, Sahib—though your feet are bound, you can hop. If you gain that door at your left before she hits you, you are free and she dies. Feminine marksmanship in this poor light will give you a chance.”

  Sweat cropped out on Farrell’s forehead, and his lips became dry as the red dust of Singapore.

  But for those spies who had followed Madeleine, his bluff would have worked. He could have gotten within arm’s reach of the Claw, nailed him with Mûnah’s dagger—

  “Fire at will, Miss Fortesque!” murmured the Claw, smiling maliciously as her face became a tense white mask.

  Madeleine, embarking on a career of adventure, was enjoying it no more than Farrell. For just an instant, the misery on her face made him sorry for her. Then he cursed women, brown and white alike. Two in one evening, through malice and bungling, had put him on the spot.

  “If I ever get out of this, I’m getting a job as a eunuch—” The grotesque thought flashed through his mind even though he knew that he could not get clear.

  Madeleine’s pistol was rising. He stared at the gaping muzzle, his glance catching her agonized eyes. He watched the silent motion of her lips. The guards were at her elbow, ready to block a false move.

  She was trying to give him a break, trying to tell him how they could both escape! But how?

  He couldn’t get it. The Claw was grinning and stroking his beard.

  Farrell knew the mocker’s promise was vain. He hopped, but not toward the door of safety. He purposely tripped, fell face forward. The Claw laughed at the sprawling intruder.

  “It’s jammed,” complained Madeleine, vainly tugging the trigger. She handed the gun to the Claw. He reached for it. His henchman, enjoying the spectacle, crowded closer.

  Then the fun ended in a hell blaze. Farrell, snatching Mûnah’s dagger, hurled himself forward, instead of toward the exit. Though his ankles were bound, he sailed toward the dais in a long arc.

  A pistol crackled. Not the heavy thunder of a Webley, but the spiteful smack of Madeleine’s tiny weapon spraying fire and lead into the Claw! She had snatched it from her bag. His move, distracting the guards, had given her a chance.

  Farrell, knife drawn, landed in the melee. The henchmen, dazed by the unexpected turn of their jest, yelled and drew blades. Farrell’s dagger ripped upward. The Claw toppled over, his grin becoming a surprised gape.

  Madeline, overwhelmed by the guards, was shooting wildly as Farrell made the most of the distraction. He slipped his red knife between his ankles, slashed the cord.

  They were both swamped by tramping feet and probin
g knives. Additional ruffians came pouring in from the front room. And then Farrell recovered the Webley. It was far from jammed. Its iron thunder blasted holes into the tangle.

  And then came the pounding of heavy footfalls, booming oaths in Hindustani. Turbaned Sikhs ploughed into the melee. The Singapore police were taking charge.

  Strange, how quickly they had arrived! But it was not until hours later that Farrell, back in his bungalow, realized just how odd it was that his mad raid had tripped up the Claw of Iblis and earned him and Madeleine the thanks of the Governor General of the Malay States.

  “Darling,” Madeleine was explaining as they regarded each other through a tangle of bandages, “What you heard me tell the police was as synthetic as your story.

  “I’m really Madeleine Millwood. The corporation that sent you here is managing my late father’s estates. I suspected them of pulling crooked work to make me sell out, so I came to Malaya. Dad and I lived here, years ago, which made it easy for me to scout around.

  “In Penang I made contact with you as well as the agents of the Claw. I was going to join the outfit. I suspected you of being part of his organization on account of your visit to Crosby, which I timed in on, from the compound. Seeing you dicker with him led to my play against you. That also led me to think that perhaps I’d not have to go through with the risk of meeting the Claw. But you forced that on me.”

  “Funny,” muttered Farrell, “the police didn’t find any records of the Claw’s doings—”

  And then the number one boy broke in to announce a visitor. Mûnah, resplendent in silken sarong and embroidered jacket.

  “Tûan,” she said, “I came to beg your pardon and Allah’s—”

  She stopped short. Her face froze as she saw Madeleine. Farrell reassured her, then gave her a long, pointed look. She smiled and continued, “I lied to you. My father was not a prisoner. I was working in behalf of my uncle. Raja Mahmud, of Batu Gaja. The Claw has blackmailed him on account of his anti-British activities during the world war. He forced my uncle to permit those crimes against planters and mine owners.

  “So I used you as a catspaw to create a disturbance. I knew that while you slew those dogs, I could slip in by the rear and set fire to the evidence with which he extorted money and service from criminals, rajas, and white men alike! I succeeded, thanks to you and the police I called.”

  Then, with a malicious little smile at Madeleine, she added, “And as I promised you, there is no reward for your service… But do you forgive me?”

  “For the sake of that knife, yes,” admitted Farrell.

  Before he could find further words, she turned toward the hallway.

  “So that,” murmured Madeleine, who had not missed Mûnah’s flash of Malay wrath at the sight of a white woman in Farrell’s arms, “is the heroine of that graveyard scenario the Claw mentioned?”

  Farrell’s face darkened a cozen shades.

  “Yes, damn it!” he growled. “Which makes me a double catspaw—once for Mûnah, once for you. To hell with Millwood Industries—they can mail me a check—I’ll write ’em a report—no use going back—”

  “Don’t be stupid, darling,” smiled Madeleine. “I might have been annoyed if you’d waited in that graveyard for…well, sunrise…but how would you like to manage the Millwood Industries in Malaya?”

  While Farrell had an aversion to conventional jobs, Madeleine’s dark eyes were a promise of more than employment.

  “I might play, if you’ll forget to put opium into the wine,” he agreed.

  PIT OF MADNESS

  Originally published in Spicy Mystery Stories, April 1936.

  Bayonne seemed incredibly ancient and lovely to Denis Crane as he headed from the wine shop to the Biarritz Highway and across the sombre parkway toward the Gate of Spain. The cathedral spires were silver lance-heads reaching into the moonglow, and the city was a pearl gray enchantment afloat on a sea of writhing river mists: yet that blood soaked soil whispered to Denis Crane as he walked.

  This was unholy ground, honeycombed with crypts in which Roman legionnaires had worshiped Mithra, and watched frenzied devotees slash and mutilate and emasculate themselves in honor of bloodthirsty Cybele. This corner of France was the home of witch and wizard and warlock.

  A shiver rippled down Crane’s lean, broad-shouldered body as he glanced to his left and saw the ominous cluster of ancient trees that overshadowed the low gray cupola of the spring where Satan and Saint Leon once had met—

  Another medieval legend. Well, and here is the causeway, and just ahead, rue d’Espagne, with the yellow glow from the windows of Basque wine shops breaking its narrow gloom.

  But the scream that came from his left told him how far from warm humanity he was, however near the lights might be. It was the sobbing, desperate outcry of some woman whose last gasp could not quite voice her terror.

  Crane’s suntan became a sickly yellow in that spectral, mist-filtered moonlight. He wheeled, stared into the swirling grayness of the dry moat that girdled the thirty-foot city wall. His face lengthened, tightened into grim angles, and his eyes narrowed as he listened. Silence—sinister…poisonous…

  Then that dreadful wail again. It was closer now, and though it was inarticulate he knew that the woman was crying for help and despaired of getting it.

  An everlasting instant, and she burst from the mist and into the foreground at the foot of the causeway that blocked the moat. Her abrupt appearance shocked Crane, though he knew that it was but the illusion of fog and moonlight.

  Her hair was a streaming blackness, and her body a pearl-white glow. Her feet and legs were as bare as her torso. All she wore was a flimsy shawl caught at the shoulder, draping slantwise to veil one breast, and flaring out, to shroud the opposite hip. Crane distinguished no feature but her mouth. It was distorted in a cry she could not utter.

  He plunged down the steep slope of the causeway and into the moat. Her legs gave way, pitching her headlong to the sand. She lay there, arms sprawled out. As he reached her side, she shuddered and slumped flat, no longer making instinctive efforts to protect herself.

  Crane rolled her over into the crook of his arm. He saw then what mist and motion had masked: her throat was savagely torn, her breast and stomach clawed and lacerated. Her face was a gory crisscross of bruises and slashes. The filmy fragility of the shoulder-to-hip shawl had not hampered her assailant enough for him to tear it from her body.

  Neither pulse nor breath was perceptible. Though her sweetly curved body was blood-splashed, her wounds could not have killed her; but terror and despair could have.

  Her face must have been as lovely as her body; but horror blinded him to the sleekness of her hips and the shapeliness of her legs and firm young breasts. His eyes narrowed as he recovered sufficiently from the shock to interpret certain significant signs.

  Her hands had the incredible softness of one utterly a stranger to the lightest work; but what she still clenched in her fingers was a startling revelation.

  It was similar in shape to a military campaign badge; purple, with a rosette of the same color. A decoration awarded to an elect few.

  But most revealing of all was the silken shawl. It placed her beyond any question. There was only one house in Bayonne where the girls paraded in such costume; and that place was on the street that ran along the city wall.

  Then he noted that she was breathing; and a slash on her inside arm was bleeding. It might not be dangerous, but it was near an artery. He drew a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket, and devised a tourniquet.

  The town was asleep, and he’d have to carry her to the house on the wall; but first give that tourniquet a twist. He fumbled for a pencil—

  But Crane’s first aid was not completed.

  The sand of the moat bottom gave no betraying crunch; the mist thinned moonlight cast no warning shadow; and Crane’s intuition was an insta
nt too late. He dropped the battered girl, but before he caught more than a fleeting glimpse of the dark figure which loomed monstrously above him in the grayness, a flying tackle carried him crashing to the ground.

  The impact knocked him breathless. Iron hands clutched his throat; but Crane’s fist hammered home. Splintered teeth lacerated his knuckles, and blood gushed, drenching his face. His opponent, snarling scarcely articulate curses, jerked back. Crane’s boot lashed out.

  But the moonlight was blocked by another figure with monstrous, outspread wings. Bat wings, it seemed. It dropped, boring headlong, toppling Crane backward. A spicy, pungent odor, an odd blend of incense and cosmetics stung his nostrils. Then, still grappling with the thing which had swooped out of the upper mist, he crashed against the gray masonry of the bastioned wall. Crane’s hard head had not a chance against a fortress built to defy a battering ram, but his shoulders absorbed enough of the terrific impact to save his skull Some lingering vestige of wits told him that once out of action, he no longer interested the enemy.

  Minutes elapsed before he could fight off the numbness and inertia that clogged his will. But he finally rolled over and clambered to his knees.

  He was alone in that gray, ghoulish moonglow. The girl was gone. He saw the prints of his own feet and those of the mysterious assailants that had swooped down on him. Blood flecked the sand, and one untrampled spot still held the imprint of that savagely slashed girl’s breasts. It had not been illusion; but for a moment Crane’s blood became ice.

  The laundry marks and monogram on the handkerchief he had bound to the girl’s arm would damn him beyond redemption when her body was found. And aside from that, he could not hope to obliterate the traces of the struggle in the moat.

  The French police, inhumanly efficient, would inevitably connect him with the outrage. When he returned to his quarters, the concierge would note the time of his arrival. The proprietor of the wine shop on the Biarritz Road would remember when he had left, and the direction he had taken. And every foreigner is conspicuous in sleepy Bayonne.