I regarded with mild curiosity the silvery gleam that deliberately drew closer. I wondered what mummery was in progress. It might of course be a knife. Perhaps I should really shift a bit to one side, or else it would pin me to the back of my chair. It came nearer…
Then something within me snapped. I knew that I had been sleeping, with my eyes open and fully conscious. With a terrific start I moved, just in time to evade the stroke.
The intruder instinctively sought for an instant to wrench his dagger free from the unyielding hardwood which held it fast: so that I had him well by the throat before he abandoned his weapon and met me hand to hand.
He was lean as a serpent and long-armed as an ape. But I eluded his clutch, and drove a fast one to his jaw that sent him reeling back into the darkness. It shook him. It should have laid him out cold. But he came back for more.
As he recovered and closed in, a fresh poniard in hand, I drew my pistol and fired.
I saw him sag in the middle and crumple, riddled by that hail of lead at close range; saw another shape emerge from the darkness at my left. But before I could shift my fire, there was a heavy impact behind my ear: and then I saw nothing at all save abysmal blackness shot with livid streaks and dazzling flashes.
“Where’s Pierre?” was my last thought as I met the floor, still clutching the pistol.
* * * *
I don’t know how long I was out. My head was spinning crazily as I opened my eyes and saw Pierre regarding me with mingled solicitude and amusement.
“So,” he railed, “I leave you on guard and here I find you, flat on your face. No matter! Your stout skull seems none the worse.”
“But what happened to the corpse?” queried d’Artois, as I clambered to my feet and dropped into a chair.
“What corpse?”
He indicated the pistol lying on the floor where it had slipped from my fingers when my grip had relaxed, and pointed at the empty cartridge-cases glittering on the rug.
“Someone…how would you say it?…was polished off. You never miss.”
Flattering, but true.
That dark splash that stained the polished hardwood floor at the edge of the rug did indicate some one seriously riddled.
It all came back to me.
“They crept up on me. I was asleep with my eyes open. I came to in the nick of time. And number two slugged me just as I accounted for number one.”
I wrenched the poniard from the chair.
“Lucky I snapped out of it,” I continued. “Good Lord, but I can’t understand how I watched that fellow slip up on me without my moving until it was almost too late. I wonder if it could have been that perfume…”
“What perfume?” queried Pierre.
I sniffed, twice, thrice. “Be damned, Pierre, but it’s gone. That must have been it.”
But d’Artois was looking at the poniard, and had nothing to say about vanished doors. “Mais regardez donc! Here! Take the slant!”
He pointed at the inlay in delicate hair-lines of pale gold that decorated the slim, curved blade.
“Very pretty job of inlaying,” I admitted. “Never saw a peacock more beautifully drawn.”
“Imbecile!” fumed Pierre. “So it’s only a pretty bit of engraving to you, this peacock! But it’s a wonder Mademoiselle Diane hasn’t been disturbed with all the rioting and shooting. Could she have walked out before our very eyes?”
“No. Look at that string knotted to the doorknob and the ashtray. It’s not been disturbed. She’s still asleep.”
“Nevertheless, I must look.” Pierre opened the door. “Death and damnation! She’s gone!” he exclaimed. “Walked right out before your eyes!”
Gone she was. Not through the door I had watched. And not through the windows, between whose bars nothing larger than a cat could have crept.
“No, and not up the chimney,” announced Pierre. “Then where?”
“Through the floor or the wall, perhaps,” I hinted.
D’Artois took me at my word. On hands and knees he explored the floor and the tiled hearth, poking and thrusting about with the blade of his penknife, seeking for some trace of a catch or spring which would release a trapdoor or sliding panel. And then he devoted his attention to the paneled walls; but in vain. If there was any secret exit, secret indeed it was.
But Pierre was by no means discouraged. “Let this rest for the moment,” he directed, “and we will search the rest of the apartment.”
“But,” I protested, “that isn’t finding Diane.”
“Finding Diane,” he replied, “may not be the most important thing at present. She has been carrying on her nocturnal wanderings for some time, and from each trip she has returned. It is likely that she will return this time also.”
“How about trailing those assassins that nearly polished me off?”
“Eminently sensible,” admitted d’Artois. “If we could follow them the trail would doubtless lead to the source of the deviltry. Your letting moonlight through one of them must have been most disconcerting. Look! They left through the door, and none too deliberately.”
“But this will have to be investigated by daylight,” he continued. “And that would advertise our moves to the enemy. Finally, I suspect that the trail would be lost very soon after it is picked up in the street. Let us rather inspect this house of the dead marquis.”
And while Pierre did the serious inspecting, I prowled about, admiring the antique Feraghan carpet that shimmered silkily under my feet, the floor lamp of saw-pierced damascene brasswork, the oddly carved teak statuettes from Tibet, curious bits of jade and lacquer: and on the mantel was a silver peacock with outspread fan.
“Look!” exclaimed Pierre, interrupting my contemplation of the rare and strange adornments of the room. “Behold! Unusual, n’est-ce pas?”
I took the book he offered me, thumbed its pages. “What’s so unusual about that? Looks like Arabic or Persian… Good God, Pierre, it’s bound…damned if it isn’t! Human skin!”
“I saw that also. But I referred to the title.”
“But that’s the back cover.”
“Que voulez-vous? Where would you have it in such language? But look at the title itself.”
“You forget that I can’t read this scratching,” I reminded Pierre. “Try it yourself.”
“Pardon! Well then, it is entitled, Kitab ul Aswad.”
“Of course. The Black Book. Manifestly appropriate. Title matches the color of the cover. Now this one,” I continued, indicating a red-bound American best seller, “should be called Kitab ul Abbmar.”
“Idiot!” growled Pierre. “Have you ever heard of THE Black Book?”
And to forestall any further irrelevant replies, Pierre opened the book and read aloud in sonorous Arabic:
“Which is to say,” he translated, knowing that the old, literary Arabic is too much for any but a scholar, “God created of fire seven bright spirits, even as a man lights seven tapers one after the other: and the chief of these was Malik Tawus, to whom he gave the dominion of the world and all that therein is: so that God sleeps dreamlessly while his viceroy rules as seemeth good to him.”
“Odd enough,” I admitted, “but what of it? Except that the evening is superabundant with peacocks. First they try to ream me out with a blade inlaid with a peacock; and then I stand here, admiring the silver image of a peacock on the mantel, and now you read me of Malik Tawus. Say, now, was that malik or malaak?”
“Malik,” replied Pierre. “Although he has been called Malaak as well.”
“And you end,” I resumed, “by favoring me with a rich passage about the King, Lord, or Angel Peacock, according as the scribe splashed his reed or the tradition garbled the story…”
“I heard something in her room,” Pierre interrupted. And Pierre, who had preceded me, halted and whirled to face me at Diane’s
door. “She has returned. While we babbled of black books.”
“Impossible!”
“Then take a look,” challenged Pierre.
I looked, and I saw.
Diane lay curled up in her great canopied bed, sound asleep. On her feet were satin boudoir slippers, torn and scarred and soiled.
“She went, and she returned, before our eyes.”
And then Diane spoke: but not to us.
“I found the spring, Etienne. But I couldn’t move the panel. I’ll return tomorrow night…”
“Good Lord, it’s got her!”
“Don’t wake her,” commanded Pierre. “Let her sleep. We’ve been outmaneuvered. Alors, we will retire in confusion, get ourselves some sleep, and tomorrow—we shall see what we shall see.”
* * * *
After a later breakfast, Pierre and I drove across the river to the Third Guard’s Cemetery, turned back to town and then through the Mousserole Gate, across the drawbridge, and into the hills. D’Artois apparently was idling away his time; but having seen him open and smoke his way through the second pack of Bastos, which smelled no less of burning rags than the first pack, I knew that he was far from loafing. Whenever we passed the obsolete gun emplacements, casemates, or lunettes in the surrounding hills, Pierre would slow up, stare a moment, refer to a sketch, mutter to himself, and step on the gas again.
“Vauban built that…and that also was erected by Vauban…” was the sum of his comments.
We were retracing our course. The jovial, bearded and mitered statue of Cardinal Lavigerie welcomed us to Place de Theatre.
“Doubtless we should pause for a drink.”
“The anis del oso is not so bad,” I seconded.
But in vain.
Pierre drew away from the curb, and thence to the left, skirting the park that lies outside the walls and moat on the side toward the Biarritz road. Again to the left, turning our backs to Biarritz, we headed into Porte d’Espagne and the old guard house, driving across the causeway that at this point blocks the moat.
“Vauban, it seems, built the whole works,” I remarked. And then, “Hello! What’s this? Stop a moment…”
But d’Artois cleared the breach in the wall, utterly ignoring my desire to pause and look.
And then he spoke: “Jackass! Do you fancy that I didn’t see those several men roaming about the green between the edge of the moat and the Spring of St. Leon with surveyor’s instruments and the like? And need I impress upon you that they are by no means surveying, and that those instruments are by no means transits and levels? Alors, why need we pause and stare at those good men?”
All of which suggested that Pierre knew more about the goings on at the Spring of St. Leon than he cared to publish in the papers.
“Well, perhaps Vauban didn’t build the whole works,” I began, seeing that surveyors had been definitely dismissed. “I would imagine that we’d find the entrance somewhere near the ancient part of the city, not far from the cathedral. Possibly near that fountain…”
“Erected on the site of the castle of the Hastingues, taken by assault in the Eleventh Century by the Bayonnais,” quoted Pierre mockingly from the guide book.
I ignored the jibe, and continued, “And to find it, we’ll have to cover the ground stone by stone.”
But Pierre was taking no hints that afternoon. “Impossible!” he exclaimed. “It would take weeks. And then we’d be too late.”
“Very much what I say, mon vieux. In a word…”
Pierre’s gesture was painfully expressive.
“Well,” said I, “The whole thing sounds like a Chinese dream. All of it.”
Un reve chinois, do you say? Comment? Was it a Mongolian vision that came so close to pinning you to the back of your chair after you, an old campaigner, went to sleep with your eyes open an hour after taking your post? An Asiatic dream that you shot to ribbons when you awoke from your unaccountable sleep? We must work fast. And this time there shall be no jugglery of taking her away and returning her under our very eyes.”
“What do you propose?”
“We will both stand watch in her room.”
“After what happened last night,” I objected, “They may get both of us with some devil’s trick. Like that whiff of perfume.”
“I have considered that,” replied d’Artois. “And we will see. There was never a peacock hatched who can twice in the same way outwit Pierre d’Artois. Nor is it likely that the enemy would repeat that same device. They have too many tricks.”
* * * *
Raoul admitted us. “Monsieur,” he began, “a visitor is waiting for you in the study.”
“Magnifique! And is she handsome?”
“Mais, monsieur, he is a foreign dignitary. An emir.”
“Then offer him a drink, and assure him that in but one moment I will have the honor of greeting him.”
In Pierre’s study we found the guest, a lean, wiry fellow with a predatory nose and the keen eye of a bird of prey. A broad, seamed scar ran from his right eye to the point of his chin; and another stretched diagonally across his forehead. Strangely familiar mustaches fringed his lip. And then I remembered that during the past few days I had fancied seeing foreign faces in Bayonne, where scarcely any face is foreign. Yet those were lean and swarthy in a different manner, and were set off with mustaches whose droop and cut were decidedly outlandish. And just this afternoon I intercepted a glance that was too casual to be convincingly casual.
There was nothing after all remarkably strange about those fellows. Only—well, they didn’t wear coat and trousers with the manner of those born to our stupid costume.
“Your servant,” began our visitor after a pause that was just long enough to be as impressive as his bow, “doubtless announced me as Nureddin Zenghi, an emir from Kurdistan.”
He glanced sharply about him, stared at me for a moment, and found my presence acceptable: all this while d’Artois returned the emir’s bow with one of equal profundity and rigidity.
“But in all fairness,” he continued, picking his words with just the suggestion of an effort, “I must confess that I am somewhat more than an emir. The fact of it is that I am…”
He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “I am the Keeper of the Sanctuary.”
“Ah… Monseigneur le…” D’Artois paused to select a suitable title. Propriety above all else, was Pierre.
“Emir, if you must be formal, Monsieur d’Artois. Although I am incognito. Extremely so, in fact.”
“A votre service, monsieur l’emir,” acknowledged Pierre, and again bowed in his inimitable fashion, which I endeavored to duplicate as he presented me.
It is difficult to bow elegantly while seeking to keep a couple of fingers near the butt of a pistol in one’s hip pocket.
“As I said,” resumed our visitor, “I am Keeper of the Sanctuary at Djeb el Ahhmar, in Kurdistan, the center of the Faith. Viceroy, so to speak, of Malik Tawus.”
Peacocks, I thought, were becoming monotonous. I thought of that dagger I had barely escaped last night, and that book in Diane’s parlor.
“Moreover,” continued the emir, “I am a friend of France.”
The emir was impressive, but not excessively coherent, I thought. But Pierre was equal to waiting without committing himself.
“All of which I appreciate and respect. But pray continue, my Lord Keeper.”
I wondered just what ax the emir wished to grind on the friendliness to France.
“Therefore,” continued the emir, “I am here to seek your aid in doing France a signal service, and at the same time overthrow a malignant impostor.”
“A pretender, I fancy, to the custody of the Sanctuary?” suggested Pierre, fencing like the master swordsman that he was, with word and steel alike.
“Precisely. And it will be very much to your interest to
help me, Monsieur d’Artois. Indeed, the welfare of your protégée, Mademoiselle Diane Livaudais, is closely linked with my own success.”
Pierre essayed a feint. “You mean, monseigneur, that you will lead me to the hidden vault where Mademoiselle Diane spends her nights seeking to enter the presence that asks her to open his grave?”
The emir’s brows rose in saracenic arches. “That is interesting, of course, but most obscure,” evaded the emir. “In fact, I am by no means certain that I understand what you have in mind.
“But,” continued the emir, “this is what I have in mind: Abdul Malaak, who came from Kurdistan three years ago to seize the local sanctuary—yes, as you surely have learned from the events of the past few days, the servants of Malik Tawus gather in conclave here in Bayonne—Abdul Malaak has succeeded in using his occult science to gain control of the mind and will of your protégée, Mademoiselle Livaudais. And when his control is complete, he will use her as an outside agent to operate in his cause in France, as a spy, unearthing information from various prominent persons he will designate. She will to all intents and purposes be a charming, gifted woman, acceptable and accepted in the best circles; but in fact she will be no more than an automaton, her every thought and word dictated by Abdul Malaak, who sits in a solitarium behind the throne in the hall where the conclave meets.”
“Ah…indeed…most interesting, monsieur l’emir,” replied d’Artois. “And is it presumptuous to inquire as to the nature of Abdul Malaak’s plans?”
“By no means,” assured the emir. “I am a friend of France.”
There was a stone. Now for the ax he wished to grind thereon.
“Abdul Malaak has assembled a circle of adepts in occult science,” explained the emir. “Some from Hindustan. Others from Tibet and High Asia. Many from Kurdistan and Armenia, and Azerbaijan, the land of fire. And each a master in the science of fundamental vibration.
“To give you a crude example—though to a mind like yours, an example is scarcely needed—a company of troops on foot marching in cadence can wreck a bridge. The note of a violin string which is attuned to the fundamental vibration of a goblet will cause the goblet to shiver to fragments.”
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 7