She had guts. Crane’s smile lost his bleakness. For a long moment their glances blended. She sighed, and her breasts crept through their screen of dark curls. Her smile was a revelation, and suddenly Crane’s blood quickened from the soft caress of her arm and the warmth of her body.
“Tenez!” protested Crane. “Stop it, you damn’ little fool. I’ve got some business to attend to—”
“You wouldn’t buy me,” she whispered. “Somehow, that’s rather wonderful…but you like me just a little, don’t you? Wouldn’t that make it different?”
Somehow, it did; and Crane’s sensible effort to break away failed. She was lonely and worried. He couldn’t repulse her friendliness.
“Cut it out!” he growled, though his protest was weakening. He laughed harshly, thinking of the one about the mail-carrier who hiked on Sundays; but Madeline seemed no longer one of those who lined up in that mirrored hell glare. She had become a bright flame in the foulness that crept through the mists of that fiend-haunted gray city.
Those were not bought lips that clung thirstily to Crane’s mouth, and the shudder that rippled down her throbbing body was instinctive…and as her arms closed about him, Crane defied the peril that was gathering outside. He could not repulse the first glow of friendliness in that drab lupanar…
Madeline’s eyes were tear-sparkling when she slipped from Crane’s arms and said, “I know now that she is dead.”
“The devil you do!”he snapped, feeling decidedly stupid about the interlude that might in the end cost him all but his head—literally, as they use the guillotine in France.
“Yes. Or you’d not have lingered, with that wrath in your eyes. So I know you can’t find her alive.”
No use explaining his true motives. He took a key from his pocket.
“Go to the Panier-Fleuri. Stay under cover. What you told me about an Arab has entirely upset my assumption. I thought you could tell me about someone wearing the Order of Saint Léon. But no matter—I’ve got a fresh hunch. Now run along.”
They waited for the cessation of laughter and footsteps in the hall. A latch click. Silence, except metallic voices from the reception room on the ground floor.
Crane watched Madeline slip toward the further stairway. A moment later, looking from the window that overlooked the narrow black alley that skirted the rear of the house, he saw the white blur of her face, and caught the gesture of her hand.
She was on her way. He slammed the door and strode down the main stairway. He forced a laugh at the doorkeeper’s vulgar farewell; but as he crossed the threshold, he began to see that his investigation, despite the delay, had gained him an ally if the police should catch up with him.
But that silver peacock was an ominous hint. Devil worship…some damnable Asiatic cult. He’d heard it existed in the mountains of Kurdistan.
Yet for all that thickening menace, the riddle in some respects was less baffling in the light of reflection.
Diane had been headed off by the monsters that had swooped down on Crane from the lip of the moat. They must have held to a straight line across the parkway. That gave him a start toward tracing the point from which she had made her futile break.
The mist was thinning, yet enough remained to envelop Crane in a spectral veil that protected and at the same time hampered him. He was unarmed; but he paused long enough to remove his socks, stuff one inside the other, and then slip in a rock the size of his fist. Very pleasant, if he got the edge on the two who had laid him out.
For half an hour he circled, trying to pick a course that the two monsters would have used to head off the mangled fugitive.
“Her instinct would drive her to the closest route to safety,” he reasoned. “To her sister. Then if the Gate of Spain was the closest, her direction must have been more to my left. Otherwise she’d have gone through the Lachepaillet Gate.”
Half an hour search vindicated the hunch. A shred of scarlet chiffon. A splash of blood.
He looped left. He found footprints heading toward the Gate of Spain—her pursuers, eager to cut off a flight that would betray their rendezvous.
Ahead of him a masonry lunette loomed low in the mist. One of the outer defenses erected by Vauban—or perhaps something much more ancient, and conceived by no honest engineer.
Crane now crept through the mists until a whiff of stale tobacco warned him of a watcher’s presence.
He rose and boldly stalked toward the lunette. A jet of light flared in his face, blinding him. He was challenged in French.
“I’ve got to see the émir at once!” Crane bluffed, using a plausible Arabic title that would flatter anyone of lower rank.
The sentry protested. The émir was not to be disturbed. The ceremony had started. Crane shrugged and offered him the silver peacock.
“Hurry, idiot!” growled Crane. “Tell him I’m here!”
The flash shifted toward the silver token. The drawn pistol was holstered and an empty hand reached for the symbol. And then Crane’s bludgeon cracked down. The guardian collapsed. Crane caught him and the flashlight.
The fellow was wearing a gown, and a hood from which hung a mask to conceal his face. Crane donned the disguise. This was no time for qualms.
The memory of that mangled girl nerved his arm. He raised the pistol, smashed down with the barrel. Then he picked his way down a narrow casemate inclining sharply into the earth.
Furtive flashes of his light guided Crane. He descended a stairway of archaic masonry, crumbled treads whose rubbish litter had been swept against the walls. A splash of fresh blood guided him.
Finally there was an indirect glow ahead. Drums were thumping, and voices muttered in eerie rhythm. Some satanic ritual was in progress.
Reasonably, Crane should now notify the police; but that brained sentry left him with no retreat. More than ever, his story had to be good.
He halted at the jamb of an arch opening into a vaulted chamber illuminated by flickering wax tapers. Its circular walls were pierced with other arches that led to further and darker crypts.
Upward of a score of scarlet-robed and hooded figures were informally gathered in groups. They sat on low wooden tripods the size of coffee tables. Their muttered conversation was low-voiced and unintelligible, but Crane sensed the tension that gripped them, felt their awe and soul-stabbing anticipation.
There was one, tall and commanding, who strode from group to group. Red-masked faces jerked abruptly upward at his approach.
But most revealing of all was the blank arch opposite Crane. Stretched out on a massive block of stone lay a woman, bound hand and foot: Diane, recaptured for the ritual from which she had escaped. Her body was to serve as an altar, perhaps to feel the thrust of a sacrificial knife. Black candles burned about her, diffusing acrid fumes which half obscured her; but Crane saw that she breathed. The tourniquet with his initials, however, had been removed.
Since Diane was alive; he need not find that damning handkerchief, provided that he could extricate her. But though he was armed with the sentry’s pistol, the odds were far too great for open attack.
Then he saw that the figure on the two foot, brazen crucifix behind that altar of bare, lacerated flesh was inverted. That final detail sent frost racing through his blood. Those hooded figures had gathered for the Black Mass, the evil ritual of modern satanism, utterly different from the oriental devil-worship. Crane wondered how that silver peacock fitted into the tangle.
From one of the passages at the left came bestial snarls and half human mutterings: some monster held in reserve for the ultimate horror of that mad gathering.
The lordly figure in black clapped his hands. The devotees shifted into crescent formation. Crane joined them as they moved toward the altar.
The Black Monster was donning a priest’s stole and cope. Six red-robed acolytes filed f
rom a passageway. Three carried thuribles from which poured blue-black, pungent fumes; the others had trays of hammered copper, all heaped with diamond shaped lozenges. They passed among the gathering, swinging their thuribles and offering wafers to the devotees.
Crane tasted one of the confections; but instead of swallowing, he palmed it. It reeked with hasheesh and datura, blended with other oriental drugs he could not identify; but the two he recognized warned him. Both were brain-searing aphrodisiacs. Those wafers of illusion would make the partaker a crazed beast gnawed by outrageous fancies and delusions. That would give Crane his chance to act.
And all the while that bestial mumbling and groaning and the vibration of pounded iron echoed from the further crypt.
Crane watched the high priest of Satan make a foul mockery of the genuflections of the Mass, saw him spit upon the reversed crucifix, heard him chanting in a high, malignant voice.
Crane could scarcely understand the ritual, but some phrases of ultimate blasphemy were all too clearly burned into his reeling brain.
“Satan, Lord of the World, defend us against an unjust god who created only to damn…defend us against hypocrisy that mocks with the lure of redemption…hear the voice of the damned, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning! Satan, to you we make our prayer, Just and Logical God…”
Finally, the priest faced about and mocked the caricatured crucifix.
“And You, O Thief of Homage and Deceiver of Mankind, I compel you to become incarnate in this bread…by the mockery you have ordained, I who am ordained command you and you will obey…yea, while we draw blood anew from your wounds…and press fresh thorns of vengeance on your brow…this I can and this I will do…Accursed Nazarene…Traitor Son of a Traitor God…”
A low rumbling mutter drowned his amen; then with an inverse gesture of his left hand, the priest blessed the gathering and in mocking accents completed the blasphemy: “Hoc est enim corpus meum!”
He spat upon the consecrated bread, stolen from some consecrated altar; he scattered the fragments among the frothing, slavering devotees. They closed in, maddened with blasphemy and Asiatic drugs. They groveled, clawing and growling as they fought for the fragments.
Crane joined them. It was too early for a break. He had to outwit the un-drugged acolytes.
First voices, then the tearing of the scarlet robes told him that women were among those who writhed and panted and grappled on the floor. Hoods and masks yielded to clawing fingers. Soon they forgot blasphemy. The Asiatic drugs were biting deep.
In a moment the vault had become an animation of the bestial carvings of a Tantric temple, Women in jewels and costly gowns, and men in formal evening dress were clawing each other with a fury that stripped clothing to shreds.
A golden-haired fiend with crazed eyes and hungry red mouth emerged unpaired from the tangle and twined eager arms about Crane. A few scraps that glittered with green sequins trailed from her hips and what remained of a brassiere clung to breasts that throbbed from her fierce, drugged passion. Her legs were white serpents and her quivering body was a multitude of consuming flames, and her loose hair blinded and choked Crane as he swallowed his horror of that uncontrollable madness.
Yet he had to play his part. That black-robed demon’s eyes glittered fiercely from behind his mask as he circled the arena, watching their ever fouler fancies cropping out…
That golden-haired woman’s madness was cleaner than what was on every side. And despite his qualms, Crane’s blood surged in irrepressible response to her savage frenzy…
Yet even as he yielded to that vortex of passion, a remote corner of his brain remained untainted. He plied her with answering kisses, felt the shudder of her hot flesh, but that one sane morsel was wondering. And at times he saw what was about him.
He recognized a black-bearded man whose face had appeared in every major newspaper of the world…another, who had led a victorious army…and one who from the sidelines told premiers what to say…
The Master gestured, and an acolyte dashed to the passageway at the left.
Crane’s fist smashed home, driving away a black-haired woman who sought to displace his companion. Her body was raked and bitten and slashed, but she was seeking more savage company…Crane saw how Diane had been mangled. Her terror hinted that she had not been drugged…
Then Crane saw what had been released when those unseen iron bars clanged open. A tall, gray-haired man whose deeply lined face had once been handsome and commanding. He wore what remained of full evening dress. The ribbon that had crossed his shirtfront trailed like a streamer as he approached; and on it Crane saw the ribbons of civil and military decorations.
He recognized the man. He knew now from whose formal garb that purple rosette had been torn. His mouth frothed, and his eyes burned insanely. He snarled bestially and plunged into the surging orgy.
This was a man whose whispers shook Europe. Now he rolled vilely in that tangle of writhing flesh.
But why—Great God, why?
The Master laughed and gestured. The sullen ruddy glow of the tapers was drowned in a blue white, dazzling radiance, pitilessly revealing what shadows had shrouded.
Then Crane saw and understood.
A motion picture camera was covering the hideous show. That damnable film would place those drugged dignitaries forever in the power of that master of blasphemy. He had tricked them from Biarritz with hints of sensational ritual, drugged them, and the record of their unspeakable wallowings would doom them. Satanism had a logical purpose: political blackmail.
Time to move. The Master was distracted by his own show. Crane kicked clear of his companion, reached for his pistol.
It was gone! Lost in that writhing vortex.
He bounded to the altar, snatched that mockery of a crucifix, and whirled toward the Master. A pistol crackled. Crane felt the stab of hot lead, hurled himself aside as bullets spattered the masonry. The acolytes closed in. The brazen crucifix crunched home. But the survivors overwhelmed him, hammering and kicking and grinding him into the flagstones.
The Master joined them. Crane, battered and stunned, heaved up out of the gory tangle, clawed the mask aside. He slashed at that swarthy, aquiline face. He missed, ducked a knife thrust, and closed in. This was the émir, the Asiatic enemy whose grip on the drugged dignitaries would buy state and army secrets, upset an African colonial empire.
Crane bored in, but the enemy was fresh and he was dizzy and battered. They crashed to the floor, Crane underneath, vainly trying to drive home one good blow. He jerked clear of a second knife thrust; but the next raked his ribs. The vault became a roaring redness until he perceived nothing but those implacable eyes and that savage, brazen leer.
But that last stroke did not fall. The surging tangle of madmen, sated of all but blood lust, swept Crane and his enemies against the wall. As the acolytes strove to club them into reason, Crane made the most of his respite.
He snatched an abandoned thurible by the chains, swung it like a flail, flattening the Master’s skull. He swung again, but the chains whipped athwart a devotee who intervened, and the weapon was jerked from Crane’s grasp. He turned toward the altar, ploughing through the writhing tangle. He tripped and was dragged back into the whirlpool of madness, a yard short of his goal.
A pistol roared as he struggled to his feet.
Madeline had followed him.
Crane jerked the weapon from her fingers and blasted the acolytes back as she struggled with her sister’s bonds.
Another shot. The cameraman toppled from his perch behind the altar. The pistol was empty. Crane seized the machine and smashed it across the head of a surviving enemy. The film reservoir spewed out its reel of yellow celluloid, fogged beyond redemption in an instant.
The knots yielded. Crane seized the half conscious girl and with Madeline at his heels, skirted the groveli
ng tangle of drugged devil-worshipers. There were no acolytes left to pursue. And presently they reached the mist and moonlight…
“As you learned,” explained Diane, hours later, in Crane’s rooms, “I was just frightened helpless by your dashing down to meet me. The émir didn’t intend for me to be clawed to ribbons. But Monsieur le Général Mar—”
“Forget his name!” interrupted Crane, “Later, I’ll tell you why.”
“Eh bien,” resumed Diane, “through error he prematurely took some of those drugs sooner than the émir intended. Before the ritual started. And you saw—”
“Plenty.” Crane shuddered. Then he glanced at Madeline. “You little fool, you had to follow me!”
“But yes. I suspected that through no fault of your own you had been involved and were following some insane American impulse to do what you thought the right thing. So I followed, to help if I could. I feared she was dead, so I hesitated to call the police.”
“Damn lucky you didn’t!”
And then Diane interposed, “Monsieur Denis, how can I ever express my gratitude—”
“Madeline,” interrupted Crane, “has already taken care of that. And having had my fill of sunny France, I think I’ll leave for Spain in the morning.”
THE WALKING DEAD
When Walt Connell heard the diffident tapping at the back door, he assumed an expression of judicial sternness. Plato Jones, who spaded Connell’s garden, must be returning with a fantastic story to account for a week’s absence and the six dollars which Connell had given him to buy some orange wine. But it was Plato’s wife who tapped at the door, a plump, comely negress with a small parcel under her arm.
“Evenin’, Mistah Walt,” she began. “Mah man Plato ain’t come back yet.”
The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™ Page 5