I don’t know! I know nothing!” Promero’s voice became hysterical. “I had nothing to do with it “
“Make him talk, Dionus,” snapped Demetrio. Dionus grunted and nodded to one of his men who, grinning savagely, moved toward the two captives.
“Do you know who I am?” he growled, thrusting his head forward and staring at his shrinking prey.
“You’re Posthumo,” answered the clerk sullenly. “You gouged out a girl’s eye in the Court of Justice because she would not incriminate her lover.”
“I always get what I go after!” bellowed the guardsman. The veins in his thick neck swelled and his face grew purple as he seized the wretched clerk by the collar of his tunic, twisting it so that the man was half strangled.
“Speak up, rat!” he growled. “Answer the inquisitor!”
“Oh, Mitra, mercy!” screamed the wretch. “I swear–”
Posthumo slapped him terrifically, first on one side of the face and then on the other, then flung him to the floor and kicked him with vicious accuracy.
“Mercy!” moaned the victim. “I’ll tell, I’ll tell anything
“Then get up, you cur!” roared Posthumo. “Don’t lie there whining!”
Dionus shot a quick glance at Conan to see if he were properly impressed. “You see what happens to those who cross the police,” he said.
Conan spat with a sneer of contempt. “He’s a weakling and a fool,” he growled. “Let one of you touch me, and I’ll spill his guts on the floor.”
“Are you ready to talk?” asked Demetrio wearily.
“All I know,” sobbed the clerk as he dragged himself to his feet, whimpering like a beaten dog, “is that Kallian came to my house shortly after I arrived I left the temple when he did and sent his chariot away. He threatened me with dismissal if I ever spoke of it. I am a poor man, my lords, without friends or favor. Without my position with him, I shall starve.”
“What’s that to me?” said Demetrio. “How long did he remain at your house?”
“Until perhaps half an hour before midnight. Then he left, saying that he was going to the Temple and would return after he had done what he wished to do there.”
“What did he mean to do there?”
Promero hesitated, but a shuddering glance at the grinning Posthumo, doubling his huge first, soon opened his lips. “There was something in the Temple he wished to examine.”
“But why should he come here alone, and in such secrecy?”
“Because the thing was not his property. It arrived at dawn, in a caravan from the south. The men of the caravan knew nothing of it, except that it had been placed with them by the men of a caravan from Stygia and was meant for Caranthes of Hanumar, priest of Ibis. The master of the caravan had been paid by these other men to deliver it directly to Caranthes, but the rascal wished to proceed straight to Aquilonia by the road on which Hanumar does not lie. So he asked if he might leave it in the Temple until Caranthes could send for it.
“Kallian agreed and told him that he himself would send a servant to inform Caranthes. But, after the men had gone and I spoke of the runner, Kallian forbade me to send him. He sat brooding over what the men had left.”
“And what was that?”
“A sort of sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs. But this one was round, like a covered metal bowl. Its composition was like copper, but harder, and it was carved with hieroglyphics like those on ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid was made fast to the body by carven copperlike bands.”
“What was in it?”
“The men of the caravan did not know. They only said that those who gave it to them said that it was a priceless relic found among the tombs far beneath the pyramids and sent to Caranthes ‘because of the love which the sender bore the priest of Ibis.’ Kallian Publico believed that it contained the diadem of the giant-kings, of the people who dwelt in that dark land before the ancestors of the Stygians came there. He showed me a design carved on the lid, which he swore was the shape of the diadem that legend tells us the monster-kings wore.
He determined to open the bowl to see what it contained. He became like a madman when he thought of the fabled diadem, set with strange jewels known only to the ancient race, a single one of which would be worth more than all the jewels of the modern world.
“I warned him against it but, a short time before midnight, he went alone to the Temple, hiding in the shadows until the watchman had passed to the other side of the building, then letting himself in with his belt key. I watched him from the shadows of the silk shop until he entered, then returned to my own house. If the diadem, or anything else of great value, were in the bowl, he intended hiding it elsewhere in the Temple and slipping out again. Then on the morrow he would raise a great hue and cry, saying that thieves had broken into his house and stolen Caranthes’ property. None would know of his prowlings but the charioteer and I, and neither of us would betray him.”
“But the watchman?” objected Demetrio.
“Kallian did not intend to be seen by him; he planned to have him crucified as an accomplice of the thieves,” answered Promero. Arus gulped and turned pale as the duplicity of his employer came home to him.
“Where is this sarcophagus?” asked Demetrio. Promero pointed, the inquisitor grunted. “So! The very room in which Kallian must have been attacked.”
Promero twisted his thin hands. “Why should a man in Stygia send Caranthes a gift? Ancient gods and queer mummies have come up the caravan roads before, but who loves the priest of Ibis so well in Stygia, where they still worship the arch-demon Set, who coils among the tombs in the darkness? The god Ibis has fought Set since the first dawn of the earth, and Caranthes has fought Set’s priests all his life. There is something dark and hidden here.”
“Show us this sarcophagus,” commanded Demetrio, and Promero hesitantly led the way. All followed, including Conan, who was apparently heedless of the wary eye the guardsmen kept upon him and seemed merely curious. They passed through the torn hangings and entered the room, which was more dimly lit than the corridor. Doors on either side gave into other chambers, and the walls were lined with fantastic images, gods of strange lands and far peoples. Promero cried out sharply.
“Look! The bowl! It’s open and empty!”
In the center stood a strange black cylinder, nearly four feet in height and perhaps three feet in diameter at its widest circumference, which was halfway between the top and the bottom. The heavy, carven lid lay on the floor, and beside it a hammer and a chisel. Demetrio looked inside, puzzled an instant over the dim hieroglyphs, and turned to Conan.
“Is this what you came to steal?”
The barbarian shook his head. “How could one man bear it away?”
“The bands were cut with this chisel,” mused Demetrio, “and in haste. There are marks where misstrokes of the hammer dinted the metal. We may assume that Kallian opened the bowl. Someone was hiding nearby possibly in the hangings of the doorway. When Kallian had the bowl open, the murderer sprang upon him or he might have killed Kallian and opened the bowl himself.”
“This is a grisly thing,” shuddered the clerk. “It is too ancient to be holy. Whoever saw metal like that? It seems harder than Aquilonian steel, yet see how it is corroded and eaten away in spots. And look here on the lid!” Promero pointed a shaky finger. “What would you say that was?”
Demetrio bent closer to the carven design. “I should say it represented a crown of some sort,” he grunted.
“No!” exclaimed Promero. “I warned Kallian, but he would not believe me! It is a scaled serpent coiled with its tail in its mouth. It is the sign of Set, the Old Serpent, the god of the Stygians! This bowl is too old for a human world it is a relic of the time when Set walked the earth in the form of a man. Perhaps the race that sprang from his loins laid the bones of their kings away in such cases as this!”
“And you’ll say that those moldering bones rose up, strangled Kallian Publico, and then walked away?”
�
�It was no man who was laid to rest in that bowl,” whispered the clerk, his eyes wide and staring. “What man could lie in it?”
Demetrio swore. “If Conan is not the murderer, the slayer is still somewhere in this building. Dionus and Arus, remain here with me, and you three prisoners stay here, too. The rest of you, search the house! The murderer if he got away before Arus found the body could only have escaped by the way Conan used in entering, and in that case the barbarian would have seen him if he is telling the truth.”
“I saw no one but this dog,” growled Conan, indicating Arus.
“Of course not, because you’re the murderer,” said Dionus. “We’re wasting time, but we’ll search as a formality. And if we find no one, I promise that you shall burn! Remember the law, my black-haired savage: For slaying an artisan you go to the mines; a tradesman, you hang; a gentleman, you burn!”
Conan bared his teeth for answer. The men began their search. The listeners in the chamber heard them stamping upstairs and down, moving objects, opening doors, and bellowing to one another through the rooms.
“Conan,” said Demetrio, “you know what it means if they find no one.”
“I did not kill him,” snarled the Cimmerian. “If he had sought to hinder me I’d have split his skull; but I did not see him until I sighted his corpse.”
“Someone sent you here to steal, at least,” said Demetrio, “and by your silence you incriminate yourself in this murder as well. The mere fact of your being here is enough to send you to the mines, whether you admit your guilt or not. But, if you tell the whole tale, you may save yourself from the stake.”
“Well,” answered the barbarian grudgingly, “I came here to steal the Zamorian diamond goblet. A man gave me a diagram of the Temple and told me where to look for it. It is kept in that room,” Conan pointed, “in a niche in the floor under a copper Shemitish god.”
“He speaks truth there,” said Promero. “I thought not half a dozen men in the world knew the secret of that hiding place.”
“And if you had secured it,” Dionus sneered, “Would you really have taken it to the man who hired you?”
Again the smoldering eyes flashed resentment. “I am no dog,” the barbarian muttered. “I keep my word.”
“Who sent you here?” Demetrio demanded, but Conan kept a sullen silence. The guardsmen straggled back from their search.
“There’s no man hiding in this house,” they said. “We’ve ransacked the place. We found the trap door in the roof through which the barbarian entered, and the bolt he cut in half. A man escaping that way would have been seen by our guards, unless he fled before we came. Besides, he would have had to stack furniture to reach the trap door from below, and that has not been done. Why could he not have gone out the front door just before Arus came around the building?”
“Because,” said Demetrio, “the door was bolted on the inside, and the only keys that will work that bolt are the one belonging to Arus and the one that still hangs on the girdle of Kallian Publico.”
Another said: “I think I saw the rope used by the murderer.”
“Where is it, fool?” exclaimed Dionus.
“In the chamber adjoining this one,” answered the guard. “It is a thick black cable wrapped about a marble pillar. I couldn’t reach it.”
He led the way into a room filled with marble statuary and pointed to a tall column. Then he halted and stared.
“It’s gone!” he cried.
“It was never there,” snorted Dionus.
“By Mitra, it was! Coiled about the pillar just above those carven leaves. It is so shadowy up there that I could not tell much but it was there.”
“You’re drunk,” said Demetrio, turning away. “That’s too high for a man to reach, and nobody could climb that smooth pillar.”
“A Cimmerian could,” muttered one of the men.
“Possibly. Say that Conan strangled Kallian, tied the cable around the pillar, crossed the corridor, and hid in the room where the stair is. How, then could he have removed it after you saw it? He has been among us ever since Arus found the body. No, I tell you that Conan did not commit the murder. I believe the real slayer killed Kallian to secure whatever was in the bowl and is hiding now in some secret nook of the Temple. If we cannot find him, we shall have to blame the barbarian, to satisfy justice, but where is Promero?”
They had straggled back to the silent body in the corridor. Dionus bellowed for Promero, who came from the room in which stood the empty bowl. He was shaking and his face was white.
“What now, man?” exclaimed Demetrio irritably.
“I found a symbol on the bottom of the bowl!” chattered Promero. “Not an ancient hieroglyphic, but a symbol freshly carved! The mark of Thoth-Amon, the Stygian sorcerer, Caranthes’ deadly foe! He must have found the bowl in some grisly cavern below the haunted pyramids! The gods of old times did not die as men die they fell into long slumbers, and their worshipers locked them in sarcophagi, so that no alien hand might break their sleep! Thoth-Amon sent death to Caranthes. Kallian’s greed caused him to loose this horror and it is lurking somewhere near us even now it may be creeping upon us “
“You gibbering fool!” roared Dionus, striking Promero heavily across the mouth. “Well, Demetrio,” he said, turning to the inquisitor, “I see nought for it but to arrest this barbarian “
The Cimmerian cried out, glaring toward the door of a chamber that adjoined the room of statues. “Look!” he exclaimed. “I saw something move in that room I saw it through the hangings. Something that crossed the floor like a dark shadow.”
“Bah!” snorted Posthumo. “We searched that room “
“He saw something!” Promero’s voice shrilled and cracked with hysterical excitement “This place is accursed! Something came out of the sarcophagus and killed Kallian Publico! It hid where no man could hide, and now it lurks in that chamber! Mitra defend us from the powers of darkness!” He caught Dionus’ sleeve with clawlike fingers. “Search that room again, my lord!”
As the prefect shook off the clerk’s frenzied grip, Posthumo said: “You shall search it yourself, clerk!” Grasping Promero by neck and girdle, he propelled the screaming wretch before him to the door, where he paused and hurled him into the room so violently that the clerk fell and lay half stunned.
“Enough,” growled Dionus, eyeing the silent Cimmerian. The prefect lifted his hand, and tension crackled in the air, when an interruption came. A guardsman entered, dragging a slender, richly-dressed figure.
“I saw him slinking about the back of the Temple,” quoth the guard, looking for commendation. Instead, he received curses that lifted his hair.
“Release that gentleman, you bungling fool!” shouted the prefect. “Know you not Aztrias Petanius, the nephew of the governor?”
The abashed guard fell away, while the foppish young nobleman fastidiously brushed his embroidered sleeve.
“Save your apologies, good Dionus,” he lisped. “All in line of duty, I know. I was returning from a late revel and walking to rid my brain of the fumes of the wine. What have we here? By Mitra, is it murder?”
“Murder it is, my lord,” answered the prefect. “But we have a suspect who, though Demetrio seems to have doubts on the matter, will doubtless go to the stake for it.”
“A vicious-looking brute,” murmured the young aristocrat. “How can any doubt his guilt? Never before have I seen such a villainous countenance.”
“Oh, yes you have, you scented dog,” snarled the Cimmerian, “when you hired me to steal the Zamorian goblet for you. Revels, eh? Bah! You were waiting in the shadows for me to hand you the loot. I would not have revealed your name if you had given me fair words. Now tell these dogs that you saw me climb the wall after the watchman made his last round, so they shall know I had no time to kill this fat swine before Arus entered and found the body.”
Demetrio looked quickly at Aztrias, who did not change color. “If what he says is true, my lord,” said the inquisitor, “it clears
him of the murder, and we can easily hush up the matter of attempted theft. The Cimmerian merits ten years at hard labor for housebreaking; but, if you say the word, we’ll arrange for him to escape, and none but us shall ever know about it. I understand you wouldn’t be the first young nobleman who had to resort to such means to pay gambling debts and the like but you can rely on our discretion.”
Conan looked expectantly at the young noble, but Aztrias shrugged his slender shoulders and covered a yawn with a delicate white hand.
“I know him not,” he answered. “He is mad to say I hired him. Let him take his just deserts. He has a strong back, and the toil in the mines will be good for him.”
Conan, eyes blazing, started as if stung. The guards tensed, gripping their bills; then relaxed as he dropped his head, as if in sullen resignation. Arus could not tell whether or not he was watching them from under his heavy black brows.
The Cimmerian struck with no more warning than a striking cobra; his sword flashed in the candlelight. Aztrias began a shriek that ended as his head flew from his shoulders in a shower of blood, the features frozen into a white mask of horror.
Demetrio drew a dagger and stepped forward for a stab. Catlike, Conan wheeled and thrust murderously for the inquisitor’s groin. Demetrio’s instinctive recoil barely deflected the point, which sank into his thigh, glanced from the bone, and plowed out through the outer side of his leg. Demetrio sank to one knee with a groan of agony.
Conan did not pause. The bill that Dionus flung up saved the prefect’s skull from the whistling blade, which turned slightly as it cut through the shaft, glanced from the side of his head, and sheared off his right ear. The blinding speed of the barbarian paralyzed the police. Half of them would have been down before they had a chance to fight back except that the burly Posthumo, more by luck than by skill, threw his arms around the Cimmerian, pinioning his sword arm. Conan’s left hand leaped to the guard’s head, and Posthumo fell away shrieking, clutching a gaping red socket where an eye had been.
Conan bounded back from the waving bills. His leap carried him outside the ring of his foes to where Arus had bent over to recock his crossbow. A savage kick in the belly dropped him, green-faced and gagging, and Conan’s sandaled heel crunched square in the watchman’s mouth. The wretch screamed through a ruin of splintered teeth, blowing bloody froth from his mangled lips.
The Other Tales of Conan Page 6