Soft fingers touched his lips, and Nefretari answered, “Of course not. No matter how long you stay, she will each night send you here.”
He felt the softness of her cheek against his, and the caress of her curls. There was much more to learn—and not about Lili.
His fingers tingled at the thrill of her supple, slender curves. For a moment she seemed too unreal to caress, but as she leaned closer, the warm firmness of breasts dispelled the illusion of insubstantiality. He could not see, but he could feel their suave perfection as they swelled, rounded like the twin domes of a mosque, and blended with gentler, but none the less intriguing undulations…
The incurve of her waist accentuated the gown, and reached the warm fascinations that they masked. Her mouth answered his with an eagerness that was seconded by a body that had become an infinity of questioning, quivering fibers… She murmured inarticulately…
Only a filmy gossamer now separated them, and the ardent glow of her slender body seemed to melt that to nothingness…
And then her arms encircled him like possessive serpents, and as she drew him to her hungry mouth, the fire of her lips enveloped Maynard in a consuming ecstasy… Strange kisses blossom in Kamit, that Black Land…
Finally she stirred, and whispered, “I thought I ought to warn you. But now I don’t want you to leave. You’ll stay, won’t you?”
Without waiting for his assurance, she said, “I’ll get some wine. It’s a long time until morning.”
A switch clicked as she entered a room across the hall. Maynard reached for the wall switch to light her return. But before he found it, he stayed his hand. In moving he had caught a glimpse of a mirror which reflected scarcely more than a double hand’s breadth of the apartment into which Nefretari had stepped.
For an instant the partial revelation of olive-tinted flesh smiling through fabric unsubstantial as moonbeams dazzled him. Then he saw that she was putting more than wine into one of the glasses.
Maynard was thinking fast. To refuse the drink would warn her.
And then she reentered the room, carrying a copper tray with a decanter and two filled goblets. She set the tray on a tabouret, and offered him a glass. He tasted it, and then glanced sharply at the door.
“Don’t you think you’d better lock it? Someone might—”
She stepped toward the door. Maynard was ready. A swift flexion of his wrist, and three-fourths of the wine was spilled to the thick napped Khiva rug beside the bed. His hand masked the goblet when, as she returned, he raised it to his lips.
He swallowed less than a half of what remained, wiped his lips, and reached for the decanter to refill the goblet. He had taken but a scant fraction of whatever drugs she had added.
And then Nefretari was again at his side, her almond-shaped, long-lashed eyes aglow, and her crimson lips a wine-scented invitation.
“The door’s locked, now,” she whispered.
But somehow, Nefretari was not as amazed or dismayed as she should have been when her ardent lover became languid and drowsy, when his impulsive, eager hand slipped lifelessly from her breasts, and he slumped soddenly back among the cushions. She bent over him, listened for a moment to his breathing, then began a stealthy search of the room. In a few moments she found the key to Lili’s bedroom.
As the soft swish-swish of her slippers was becoming inaudible down the hall, Maynard emerged from his feigned stupor, and crept to the threshold. He saw her vanish in a cross passage. As he approached the angle, he heard Nefretari’s voice from an adjoining room.
“She will be on her way. The infidel dog is out of action for many hours.”
The receiver clicked. And as Nefretari emerged, Maynard seized her. Caught off guard, the slender Coptic girl had not a chance. His hand cut off her startled outcry, and the other held her helpless as he carried her back to his room.
“Take it easy, darling,” he grimly mattered as he deftly entangled her in a sheet. Once her arms and legs were bound, he gagged her with a towel.
“You may not be something from the wall of a tomb, but you look like a first-class mummy.”
He wondered for a moment at the terror in her dark eyes. From behind her gag came an inarticulate gurgle. Glancing about his room, he noted on the arm of a chair something that had not been there when he had entered, early in the evening: A silver-hafted dagger.
Nefretari apparently had intended to stab him, but had compromised by drugging him. He pocketed the curved blade.
Recovering the key to Lili’s room, he re-entered. And not an instant too soon. She was on her feet, clearing the edge of her bed. And as her disarrayed chiffon gown clung lovingly about her hips, then settled to her ankles, she donned her black silk habara. Her eyes stared sightlessly. She was utterly unaware of his presence as she stepped like an automaton toward an alcove at the further end of the room.
The back of the recess swung inward at Lili’s touch. She wormed her way through the narrow opening. Maynard followed.
For all Nefretari’s tangible doings, something more than her efforts, something uncanny and sinister was leading the copper-haired girl out into the blacknesses of Kamit.
Lili descended a narrow stairway that opened into a subterranean tunnel. The old house dated back to the days when any wealthy Arab needed a secret exit.
They must now be far beyond the walls of the villa. As nearly as Maynard could tell, she was heading eastward. He shuddered. Beyond the eastern walls of Cairo were hundreds of ancient tombs. The voice that chanted in Lili’s bedroom must be trickery; yet something real and evil was leading her on.
The silver haft of Nefretari’s curved dagger, however, was certain consolation.
Lili finally ascended a flight of a narrow, rubbish littered stairs that opened into a small, vaulted chamber. They were in a Moslem tomb. The outer door was locked.
She knelt in front of a brazen plate in the floor. It was nearly three feet wide, and twice as long. She struck light to a pair of half consumed black tapers supported by wall sconces. A poison sweetness began to pervade the vault. Lili was bowing and genuflecting as she addressed the occupant of the tomb.
“I’m trying, Istavan, but I can’t find the spring. Can’t you tell me…?”
Maynard’s blood froze. Her suddenly tense attitude indicated she was listening to some voice inaudible to him. She leaned forward, and with questing fingers probed the arabesque traceries of the age-tarnished bronze. She was following lines that through constant fingering had lost their century-old corrosion. No wonder her nails had been worn to the quick!
But this time she succeeded. A scarcely perceptible click, and the brazen panel surrendered to her clawing fingers. It swung upward like a cellar door, uncovering a burial vault.
It was empty, Maynard saw as he gritted his teeth and forced himself to look over Lili’s shoulder; but it had been altered to form the approach to something worse even than he had expected. But he followed her into the pit, and down a narrow passageway.
He checked his stride where the tunnel opened into an illuminated chamber.
The man who sat cross-legged on a divan at the further end was neither Graf Istavan, nor a corpse; he was an oily, turbaned Hindu, whose dark eyes were too busy caressing the curves that blossomed through Lili’s coral-hued gown to glance beyond her.
Then Maynard understood why the white robed stranger had not perceived him. As Lili wavered, he gestured and murmured in a guttural language and Maynard felt the vibrant flash of his will power as though it were something tangible. Lili was the victim of a hypnotist who was impersonating her dead lover.
“Istavan,” she murmured, drawing nearer, “I’ve been hunting you, night after night.”
The Hindu stroked his curled, black beard, and reached out to draw her to the divan.
Maynard crossed the room in three long bounds. The Hindu started, thrust Lili aside; but a
s he drew a dagger, Maynard’s fist connected. The sledge hammer impact landed the tomb dweller in a tangle of cushions. Maynard, snatching his wrist, followed through. Smack! Bedtime in Hindustan!
Then a door slammed open. Two burly negroes were charging to their master’s assistance. They were unarmed, but they caught Maynard off balance, sending him crashing to the floor. Too late to draw Nefretari’s knife. They were pounding and tramping him into the tiles, grinding the breath out of him as their ponderous fists gouged and pummeled him to the verge of insensibility. Then the Hindu recovered and joined the party. Maynard, breathless and half paralyzed, although still semiconscious, finally heard the Hindu say, “Take him to a cell. I’ll tend to him later.”
As they lifted him bodily from the floor, Maynard heard the Hindu address Lili.
“Tomorrow night, when Sir Clinton Forsythe calls at your house, Hassan Basha will also call. But before he arrives you will stab Sir Clinton. When the police arrive, you will say that Hassan Basha surprised you and Sir Clinton.”
And Lili, her senses subjected to the hypnotist’s will, would obey. Sir Clinton was the Englishman who was the power behind the throne in Egypt. That murderous plot would cause the downfall of Hassan Basha, the prime minister; and in the meanwhile, Lili’s bemused senses would be convincing her that she had found her dead lover…
The negroes, finally reaching their destination, flung Maynard into a crypt whose only illumination was the feeble glow of a taper in the passageway. One of them fumbled with a ring of keys, looking for the one that fitted the lock of the cell.
But they had underestimated their victim. His recovery had been more rapid than the soggy limpness of his body had led them to believe. As the key grated home, he lunged at the door, flinging it open before the latch could engage. The impact knocked the astonished negro end for end; and before his companion could get into action, Maynard’s curved dagger slashed upward. The fellow collapsed, trying to keep his stomach from dropping to his ankles. The one bowled over by the outflung grating clambered to his knees, but Maynard was ready. He felt his blade bite flesh, but his hasty thrust was not as successful as the first one.
They crashed against the wall. Maynard, battered and exhausted, saw red spots dancing before his eyes as the negro wrenched the blade from his grasp. A bestial, wrathful growl, but before the descending blade reached its mark, he doubled up one leg, and drove home.
The knife raked him from shoulder to hip, but his kick flung his assailant clear. And as the negro clambered to his feet, Maynard regained his balance in time to face the charge. All he had gained was another moment of life—But the attack fell short. Maynard’s assailant slipped in a pool of blood and lurched to his knees. Maynard landed on his shoulders, driving him to the tiles.
A groan and a gurgle—the negro had impaled himself on the blade that was to rip Maynard asunder.
Rolling the negro over, he drew the knife clear. He picked up the keys; but he had gained little. The Hindu would presently miss his servants; and it would take Maynard hours to learn by trial and guess which door led to the surface.
He set out at random; before he had progressed fifty paces into the labyrinth, he saw a glow of light from a doorway. Dagger in hand, Maynard stealthily crept forward. But before he reached his objective, he sensed a stirring in the shadows. Too late he realized that the sound of his battle with the two Africans must have warned the occupant of the illuminated cell, and he had lurked just short of its door, waiting.
He whirled, just as a dark form lunged from the gloom and drove him smashing against the masonry. Not a chance to use his knife; but a flailing kick did the work. Though Maynard’s head seemed to explode in a blaze of red, he sensed that his assailant was out.
He painfully struggled to his feet, the first to recover. Fumbling in the shadows, he found Nefretari’s dagger. He had never in cold blood stabbed a man; but in this subterranean madhouse, he had to whittle the odds down as he went along.
The struggle had flung his unconscious enemy into the taper glow. Maynard bent over him, knife ready—And then his fingers went limp. He gasped.
It was Graf Istavan, Lili’s dead lover!
As the Hungarian regained his wits, his half coherent remarks confirmed the identification.
“For a dead man,” Maynard sourly chuckled, “you did pretty well. What the hell is this tomfoolery about? And who’s that Hindu rat out in the front room. Sound off, before I give you the works!”
Graf Istavan explained, “I have always been interested in the occult. The Hindu is Baghavan Das, an adept at psychic sciences. A Mahatma, a very exalted and learned man.”
“Nuts!” growled Maynard. “Wait till you learn something about him.”
“So I came to Cairo, to study with him. I decided to abandon my affair with Lili, spread the news of my death, and carry on the pursuit of higher learning.”
“Screwier’n hell!” Maynard jerked Istavan to his feet. “How do you get out of here?”
As Graf Istavan led the way, he resumed, “And as I developed psychic powers, the Mahatma told me that as a qualifying test I would have to summon Lili to my grave by psychic means. If I succeeded he would initiate me into the inner circle of occultism. And my period of apprenticeship being over, I would no longer have to…ah, abstain from the pleasure of life, so to speak.”
“Someone made a boob of you!” growled Maynard. “From what I saw before the niggers cold-caulked me, about all the indulging you’d do would be by proxy!”
That worked. The Hungarian exploded. Using the captured keys, he led on through the labyrinth; and as Maynard followed, he saw the point of the riddle: a blend of occult art and trickery, hypnotism and oriental drugs. Graf Istavan, deluded but sincere, had used his psychic powers to summon Lili by telepathy.
The last lock yielded. Graf Istavan brushed aside an embroidered hanging. A shrill scream shook the vault.
Lili was giving the Mahatma a run for his money. The divan was a whirl of cushions and coral chiffon and flailing arms and legs. Her red hair was streaming, and her nails were raking the Mahatma’s face as she shrieked, “You’re not Istavan—how did I ever get here—”
Something had restored her senses. Graf Istavan’s wrathful exclamation warned the Mahatma, who bounded to his feet as Maynard crossed the threshold. The Hindu snatched and hurled a vase, not at the Hungarian, but toward a brazen gong in a corner.
Then he drew a knife and closed in with Graf Istavan. Maynard leaped forward but before he could knife the Mahatma, two negroes burst into the room. The vault was a roaring madhouse.
Lili, picking up a tray, drove it crashing across the head of one of Maynard’s assailants as he jerked his wrist clear of a detaining hand, and thrust home with his dagger. The Hindu and the Hungarian were grappling. He saw the Hungarian stagger backward, clutching his side. He was drenched with blood, and the Mahatma’s knife was dripping.
As Maynard closed in with the African who was recovering from Lili’s blow, the Mahatma hurled her into a corner. Then he charged, blade in hand. Maynard flung himself aside, but felt the dagger rake his back. Graf Istavan, despite his wounds, snatched a tabouret and hurled it; but the Hindu ducked the missile.
It caught Maynard on the shoulder, numbing him all the way to his ankles. And then the Hungarian collapsed, weakened by loss of blood. Lili, stirring and moaning, lay huddled against the wall.
Maynard’s savage kick knocked the Mahatma from the battle; and then he grappled with the African. A savage, waterfront brawl, with nothing barred.
The African back-heeled him; but Maynard, as he dropped, jerked his opponent with him to the tiles. The double impact knocked him breathless. And the Mahatma was on his knees.
Then Maynard recovered his knife and drove it home. Before he could struggle clear of the hulk that pinned him to the floor, the Hindu was on him. His eyes were as murderous as the dripping blade
he gripped. Pay day—!
But not for Maynard. A wrathful, feminine scream—a groan—the Mahatma pitched headlong, a knife between his shoulders. Nefretari had taken a hand; and as the Hindu coughed out his life, the Coptic girl laughed venomously and said, “So that’s the way you used that red-headed wench to assassinate Sir Clinton? What I saw on that divan didn’t look like politics to me—”
The Mahatma gurgled his last breath into the pool of blood that was slowly spreading across the tiles. Nefretari, the wrath fading from her almond-shaped eyes, regarded Maynard, and smiled.
“My orders were to kill you,” she explained, “but somehow, I just couldn’t…and I’m awfully glad I didn’t…anyway, I got loose and followed, hoping to keep you out of trouble. And when I saw my friend the Mahatma going for that red-head—well, it annoyed me terribly, though I didn’t care for him, any more.
“I didn’t have a key, but luckily I was slim enough to edge between the grating.”
They turned to Graf Istavan. Lili was at his side. The Hungarian was not fatally wounded, but Lili’s grief rang sourly in Maynard’s ears—for just as long as it took him to remember Nefretari.
“Whatever got Lili straightened out so suddenly?” he wondered.
“When you told me what the Mahatma was doing,” explained the Hungarian, “I broke the hypnotic influence. Without going into details, what he did was to get in tune with her and impress his own will on the thought I was projecting. Something like a sound frequency wave in radio is impressed on a carrier wave. If you can follow my—”
“I won’t even try,” chuckled Maynard, catching Nefretari’s hand. “I’m going to send you a doctor, and—”
“Gil, I’m ever so grateful,” interposed Lili. Then she remembered things and was decidedly embarrassed.
“Think nothing of it,” grinned Maynard, “I’m really the one who’s grateful. This matter of Egyptian tomb paintings needs a bit more looking into.”
Maynard couldn’t quite understand what Nefretari murmured in Coptic, but he knew that it would be fun learning.
The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction Page 18