“Precisely,” agreed d’Artois.
“And going from the physical to the mental, let one man in a theater rise and shout Fire! there will be a panic.
“Thus these adepts will concentrate in unison on whatever thought they wish to project: so that through the principle of resonance they will uncork the vast reservoir of hidden discontent with society, religion, and politics that exists in France as in every country, and in the end effect the overthrow of established rule.”
“As in Russia,” I interposed.
“Exactly,” assented the emir. “You also are a person of rare comprehension. And, to bring us up to date, I was not amazed at what happened in Spain not long ago to the Bourbons. And being a friend of France, I am here to seek your aid in thwarting this powerful engine of destruction. Single-handed, I would be hopelessly outnumbered, for while I have friends in the circle, they have been corrupted by Abdul Malaak and turned against me.”
“Very well, monsieur l’emir, I am with you, heart and soul. But tell me, is it true that the Marquis de la Tour de Maracq is dead?”
“Who says that he is dead?” countered the emir.
“It has been written,” replied Pierre.
“What is written may be history, or prophecy. Who can say?”
Score one for the emir. He didn’t know whether Pierre was for or against the marquis. He was sure of Pierre’s interest in Diane, and in friends of France.
“May I ask—and I trust again that I do not presume,” said Pierre, “—why it is that you are so anxious to thwart Abdul Mallak’s plans? I mean, you comprehend, aside from your friendship for France.”
“That is simple. Our cult is divided by a schism. There are those who seek temporal power, and those who care only for peaceful spreading of the cult of Malik Tawus, the Lord of the World. We believe that He has no need of or desire for political machinations in His behalf, and that in due course, the Lord of the Painted Fan will Himself assume the throne of the world, and exalt those who believe in Him—just as your early Christians said of the Nazarene.
“Now be pleased to give me a pencil and paper. I will make you a sketch.”
The emir hitched his chair up to Pierre’s desk.
This was a bit too good to be true. I remembered that saying about Greeks bearing gifts. The events of the past two days had likewise made me wary of altruistic Kurds. I loosened my pistol.
D’Artois caught the move from the side of his eye, and shrugged negligently.
“Start at Porte d’Espagne,” began the emir, as he traced a line. “Then…”
But he spoke no further. Something flickered through the open window the emir faced. He pitched forward, clawing at his chest. I drew and fired, then leaped to the window, and fired again, not with any hope of hitting the figure that was disappearing around the first turn of the alley just as I pressed the trigger, but at least to give him my blessing.
“Give me a hand,” said d’Artois.
The hilt of a dagger projected from the emir’s chest. He shuddered, coughed blood which joined the stain on his shirtfront.
“Porte d’Espagne…to the left…great peril…take…many…armed…men…”
He clutched the hilt of the dagger, tore open the front of his shirt, and with a final effort, snatched from about his throat a thin golden chain from which depended a tiny amulet: a silver peacock with tail fanned out and jeweled with emeralds.
Neither d’Artois nor I could understand the utterance that was cut off by another gush of blood.
“Tout fini!” exclaimed Pierre. “He offered us this when he knew he couldn’t give us even another scrap of information. This glittering fowl must be a token of admittance.”
“Draw the shades!” commanded d’Artois. “And get away from that window. Likewise, stand guard until I return. On your life, admit no one. Not any one.”
“The police?” I suggested. “I fired two shots.”
“I will handle the police. No one must know that the Keeper of the Sanctuary is dead. As long as they are in doubt, we have a weapon against them: for they thought him important enough to kill him before he could tell his story.”
As d’Artois dashed out, I barred the door after him.
I could hardly share Pierre’s optimism about the police. Here we had a stranger in the house, neatly harpooned with a knife. And what a story we’d have to tell! Someone tossed a dagger through the open window just as the Keeper of the Sanctuary was to explain where Diane wandered every night to claw at the door of a vault whose occupant commanded her to open his grave. Even an American jury would choke at a tale like that!
I picked up one of the drab little things which in France pass as magazines, and came across an article on the prevalence of murder in the United States.
“This is good,” I reflected. “Now here in law-abiding Bayonne, I sit peacefully at the door of a lady’s bedroom, and some one tries to dissect me with a nicely decorated dagger. The next day, a visitor has his conversation punctuated by a knife thrown through the window by parties unknown…”
I shifted a bit more out of range of the window, and checked up on the cartridges in the Luger.
“To crown it, I’ll get buck fever and let daylight through Raoul or Pierre when they enter. Or maybe they’ll find me here, deftly disemboweled and marked, ‘opened by mistake.’”
“Open my grave and see the smoke that curls about thy feet!…”
I was developing a marked dislike for Hafiz. That old Persian was distinctly macabre. Then this one:
“If the scent of her hair were to blow over the place where I had lain dead an hundred years, my bones would come dancing forth from their grave…”
Then I wondered how Diane’s phantom lover tied into the psychic-vibration scheme of turning France upside down. Now that I’d mulled over the felonious assaults and successful assassination, I couldn’t help but have several thoughts concerning this exceptionally lovely Diane.
The click-clack of the knocker startled me. “Aui vive?” I demanded.
“It is I. Pierre,” came the reply.
“Enter with your hands in the air.”
But I recognized the voice, and returned my pistol.
“Eh bien, she is fixed. Monsieur le Prefet was reasonable.”
Do you mean that he swallowed that wild tale?”
“Mais, certainement. Though there was of course some talk of what in your charming country one calls a lunacy commission; but in the end I prevailed.”
* * * *
That evening Pierre and I called on the lovely Livaudais.
“Mademoiselle,” began Pierre after acknowledging Diane’s greeting, “you eluded us last night. But this time we will be more vigilant.”
D’Artois deposited a large and very heavy suitcase on the floor.
“Oh, but you must be planning an extended visit, with all that luggage!” laughed Diane.
“And why not? Monsieur Landon and I keeping you under surveillance all the way around the clock, n’est-ce pas? But tell me, did we disturb you last night? Am I forgiven…”
“And so it was you that broke my cut-glass decanter and spilled wine all over the rug. But no, I didn’t hear a sound.”
“’Tis well!” exclaimed Pierre. “I would have been desolate had we awakened you. And I shall send you a new decanter, all filled with my own Oporto.”
“Monsieur d’Artois, you’re a darling. But how in the world am I to sleep tonight, with the both of you standing guard, staring at me as though I were a dodo come to life?”
“Simple enough. Take a bit of this sedative. It won’t drug you so that you won’t hear the voice.”
“Well, why not give her a heavy shot of it,” I suggested, “so that she won’t hear the voice at all, and leave that devil behind his sepulcher door chanting in vain.”
“Not at a
ll!” objected Pierre. “She must find the way to open the door, and pass through and fulfill that which has been impressed upon her subconscious mind. Then, after she has done that, we shall land like a ton of those bricks. I, Pierre d’Artois, will land in person; and henceforth, Mademoiselle will see no tombs by night.”
Then, to Diane: “It is now passably late. Suppose that when you have arrayed yourself in…should I most appropriately say, walking-costume?…take a bit of this sedative. And then we will stand guard, we two.”
As the door of Diane’s bedroom closed, I turned to d’Artois. “Why that suitcase? It’s heavy as a locomotive.”
“That you will understand before the evening is over. I have there various things which I may need on a moment’s notice: though I can not say at what moment.
“We are fighting an organization that has infiltrated its members into every stratum of society. And by this time you have no doubt that you and I are marked and sentenced on account of our association with Diane.
“We are not only contending with enemies skilled in armed encounter, but equally gifted in psychic conflicts. Witness, for example, how this so lovely Mademoiselle Diane…”
“Taking my name in vain again?”
Diane opened the door and revealed herself in a negligee of blue silk curiously shot with gold. I wondered that Etienne hadn’t bequeathed her his chateau as well as his house in Bayonne.
“But I assure you it was complimentary,” replied Pierre. “And here is your potion.”
She accepted the glass, sampled its contents, drained it, stood there, the smile slowly fading from her features. Then she shuddered. “These engagements with the dead… I’m so glad I won’t be alone tonight… Goodnight, Messieurs!”
Vainly enough, we wished her a goodnight also, this incredible girl who could still, at times, smile.
Then d’Artois took from his suitcase a coil of flexible insulated wire, very much like the extension cord they use to increase the range of a vacuum cleaner. In addition to the lamp and reflector at one end, there was a small portable snap-switch, and a tiny globe scarcely larger than those used as Christmas tree decorations. This layout Pierre plugged in at a baseboard outlet, a convenience which is most unusual in Bayonne.
As Pierre uncoiled the wire and pulled it along the wall, I glanced again at the chair I had occupied the night before. Diane had accepted Pierre’s myth about the shattered decanter, and hadn’t noticed the scar in the back of the chair. But that one look was enough to bring out a sweat on me.
Then I thought of the hurled knife which had cut short the remarks of Nureddin.
“Mademoiselle from Bar le Duc, parlez vous…” I hummed as I fidgeted about.
“Tais-toi, imbecile!” snapped d’Artois. “Bawdy to the last.”
Which of course was unjust in the extreme, as I’d spent hours trying to teach Pierre the rendition of that classic.
“Surely, she is asleep by now,” he continued. “And like you, I likewise would whistle to keep up my courage. But give me your pistol,” said d’Artois.
“How come?” I demanded as quietly as I could at that outrageous order.
“You are no less on edge than I am. And you shoot damnable straight. If by mistake you pointed that siege gun at me or Diane, you would have long regrets. And anyway, we want no disturbance or shooting. The enemy can’t see us, though they must know we are here; and they must not hear us.”
I surrendered the pistol. Pierre was right, of course, but with the start I made last night, I had begun to take an interest in that excellent gun.
“Eh bien, let us take our posts,” directed Pierre.
I followed him into Diane’s room, where he set up the reflector and lamp in a corner so that if the circuit were completed, the entire room would be illuminated.
“Take that chair and draw it up. Thus. Now mark well the position of mine.”
Pierre stood at the wall switch.
“Should you catch a glimpse of a very faint bluish light, don’t dive for it. It’s just the pilot light of this lamp I’ve set up in the corner. As long as it glows, I’ll know that the…what do you call her?…the juice is on, and that I can depend on light when I need it.
“Ready? Good!”
The wall switch clicked us into darkness. The sinister watch was on.
* * * *
Sitting in a lady’s bedroom in Bayonne does not sound so terrifying. But when the lady is awaiting summons from the dead, and when the dead sends living envoys with keen knives, it is yet again something else.
I wondered whether I‘d fall asleep with my eyes open, and whether d’Artois could resist that damnable influence, whatever it had been.
Have you ever been in Morocco and heard the drums thump-thumping in the hills, calling the tribesmen to revolt? My heart was giving a perfect imitation.
Diane’s breathing was soft and quiet and normal.
Silence from Pierre’s post. Once in a while I caught a passing glance of the bluish-green pilot light, as he noiselessly shifted in his chair. Lucky he told me about that light! And once I heard him draw a deep breath. Just a deep breath. But infinitely expressive!
It was getting d’Artois too. Not a comforting thought.
The clock in the cathedral chimed twelve. And then the quarter, ages later. Then the tension eased. It is born in us to place all diablerie at midnight: and that having passed uneventfully, I felt that nothing would happen until tomorrow night, when I’d be in a much better frame of mind. Thoughts would be so much more collected…
My relief was premature.
I felt rather than heard a vibration pulsing through the room. It was as though I watched some one beating a kettle-drum at great distance, getting the rhythm by seeing the drummer’s body sway to the cadence instead of actually hearing it.
Then, finally, the pitch increased into the lower limits of audible vibration. I could hear it. Tum-tumpa-tumtum-tumpa-tum…low and massive thundering from across the wastes of space. The drumming of Abaddon of the Black Hands.
It filled the room. It was an earthquake set to a cadence.
I heard a soft, sulfurous cursing from Pierre’s side of the room.
Then a hand on my shoulder.
“It is I. The pilot light is out. They have cut the house wires. We are watched. And there will be someone sent for us.”
The drumming was reaching a more resonant pitch, so that the walls of the room amplified it.
Diane stirred in her bed. The voice was calling her to the hidden tomb.
“When I am dead, open my grave and see…”
I could almost hear that sweet, rich Persian verse as an overtone of that sonorous drumming.
“They are here!” whispered d’Artois. “I can feel them.”
“And we’re in the dark.”
“Here, take this flashlight.” Pierre thrust it into my hand. “Quick, toward the window!”
The circle of light revealed a white-robed intruder armed with a drawn scimitar.
“Shoot him!” I whispered to Pierre.
“No. Hold the light! And stand clear!”
The intruder stared full and unblinking into the brilliant flashlight. His eyes were sightless and staring. He advanced with the fluent, slinking motion of a panther, straight toward us.
Then it all happened in an instant.
D’Artois with his chair parried the sweeping cut of his adversary’s scimitar, and as he parried, he sank, squatting on his left heel and simultaneously kicking upward with his right foot.
Perfect, and deadly.
The enemy dropped in his tracks. His blade fell ringing to the floor, and in a flash d’Artois had the scimitar.
“Keep the light on the window!” cried Pierre.
The companion of the first invader dropped fully into the circle of light. After him came a second
. Both were robed like the first, and armed with scimitars. And both stared sightlessly; yet as certainly as though they saw, they poised themselves like great cats, gathered for the final leap to overwhelm us.
Great God! Noise or no noise, why didn’t d’Artois fire?
“Use your gun!” I croaked, trying to yell and whisper at the same time.
Facing those blades, empty-handed…
Christ! Was Pierre asleep with his eyes open, as I had been the night before?
Then a glittering streak from the darkness at my side, and the first one dropped, shorn half asunder by Pierre’s scimitar stroke.
“Two!” grunted d’Artois, and drew back on his guard for an instant, just out of the beam of the light.
But before he could advance, the third leaped forward, covered in his charge by a circle of flaming, hissing steel…
Clack-clack-clack!
Pierre was parrying that blind assault, cut for cut. Parrying a desperate, reckless whirlwind of steel, stroke after stroke.
Then he slipped through the mill, and sank forward in a lunge.
I saw Pierre’s blade projecting a foot beyond his opponent’s back. The enemy was too close to use his scimitar. I picked up a blade and struck his weapon from his grasp, lest he maul Pierre to a pulp with it, since he couldn’t slice him to pieces.
But that didn’t stop him. He gripped Pierre’s shoulder and drew himself forward, pulling Pierre’s blade still further through his own body in order to close in.
I hacked again and again, in a frenzy lest that madman tear d’Artois to pieces with his bare hands.
“Tenez!” gasped d’Artois. “C’est fini.”
He disentangled himself from the slashed, hacked body. As a surgeon or butcher, I’d never qualify, the way I mangle things when I hurry.
“Quick! That first one…”
D’Artois snatched the red blade from my hand, and with a single stroke decapitated the one who was rising to his knees and groping for his blade.
“Look!” exclaimed Pierre.
Diane, sitting on the edge of her bed, was slipping her feet into a pair of satin mules. It had seemed several lifetimes to me, from the time that d’Artois had advanced, armed with a chair, against the first intruder, until he had finished the third; but so swiftly had he worked that Diane had scarcely time to get out of bed, and find and don her robe and slippers.
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 8