E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “She’s on the way.”

  “But where?”

  “Idiot! She will leave the same way our three visitors entered. Look!”

  We followed Diane with the beam of the flashlight.

  She went straight toward the window, grasped the bars, and pulled herself to the sill.

  “Follow her!” commanded Pierre. “Strip this one—his robe isn’t bloody.”

  I stripped the one cleanly decapitated.

  Those fellows didn’t drop from the ceiling, but came down a shaft through the wall, whose opening was concealed by the window-casing.

  “How about a turban?”

  “This one will do. Wind it with the stained end in. Quick, now! Follow her. Put that damned turban on as you go. Allez!”

  Diane had pulled herself up. A glimpse of her heels, and she was out of sight.

  “Now my pistol.”

  “Take it. But hurry. I’ll be busy here…”

  “What?”

  “Va-t-en!” commanded Pierre. “Have I ever failed? Go!”

  I leaped to the window-sill, felt, and found a void over my head, grasped the edge, and pulled myself up. In spite of our knowledge of the thick walls of these old houses, the existence of such a shaft would never have been suspected. The flashlight revealed a narrow passage not over ten feet long. At its end was a shaft leading down. I ventured a flash down its depth, and saw a ladder leading to a level that was well below the first floor of the house. At the bottom I turned, and faced a low archway which opened into a passage lead-straight ahead.

  Some twenty paces ahead of me was Diane. I slopped along as fast as I could in the loose red slippers of the enemy, and as I advanced, I wound my turban as well as I could on the march.

  Diane was walking, with a slow, almost mechanical stride, or she would have been quite out of sight. As it was, I quickly overtook her, and then snapped out the flashlight. Diane, deep in her trance, was utterly unaware of my seizing her robe so that she could guide me through the darkness.

  She was stepping to the cadence of those drums.

  I could distinguish now that the sound was of many drums: the roll and purr and sputter of tiny tom-toms against a background of solemn booming that made the masonry quiver beneath my feet. Yet the source of the sound was still far away.

  Although the incline was not steep, it was perceptibly downgrade. We were turning ever so slowly to the left. The air was becoming damp and musty and cool. Our descent must now be taking us far beneath the uttermost foundations of Bayonne. Somewhere, below and to the left, was the brazen door that guarded the one who chanted in Persian and invited Diane to a conclave of the dead that were lonely in their deep vaults.

  Ahead of us was a faint glow. I halted to let Diane gain a few paces, and then, hugging the left wall so as to gain the maximum protection from the door-jamb in case there should be a reception committee waiting, I crept forward as silently as possible.

  Then it occurred to me that unseeing automatons like those that Pierre had stopped only by hacking them to pieces would hardly be susceptible to surprise. And if more swordsmen, bound in a deep trance and directed by some master mind to overwhelm me, were waiting, I’d have my hands full. I wondered if a pistol would stop them…the Moro jurmentados down in Sulu, riddled with dum-dum bullets, continue their charge until they hack to fragments the enemy who hoped to stop them with rifle fire.

  Well, at least those three swordsmen had been alive, and their blood was like any other blood when spilled.

  I ventured a peep around the doorjamb. The passage opened into a small alcove which was illuminated by the red flames of a pair of tall black candles set one at each side of a brazen door. Diane was alone before the door.

  She hesitated, half swaying on her feet for a moment, then knelt on the second of the three steps that led to the door. Where her fingers traced the arabesques and scrolls embossed on the bronze, the verdigris had been worn away.

  How many hours had she spent in wearing the seasoned bronze to its original color? Or were there then others who sought the same doorway? And if there were, when might they appear?

  Evidently she was seeking the hidden catch which would open the door; the gateway of the tomb.

  Surely Diane needed no light to further her quest. Then why these lurid candles? Had they a ritualistic significance, or were they for sentries, or acolytes that served the Presence behind the panel? I knew not what cross-passages I had unknowingly passed in the dark, and what swordsmen might be marching from any of them. Swordsmen, or worse…

  Then Diane spoke; not to me, but to the dead behind the door. “I’m trying, Etienne, but I can’t find the spring.”

  She rose from her task and retreated, turning away. Her eyes stared sightlessly at me. Then she wavered, tottered, and retraced her steps. Some compelling power was forcing her to resume her task.

  I followed her, and looking over her shoulder, studied the embossing her fingers traced. Each curve, each figure, each floral and foliate form that could conceal the hidden catch she tapped, fingered, dug with her nails: but there was one she did not touch. And that one of all others seemed the only one that could control the lock: the center of a lotus blossom, close to the left edge. Even in that dim red light I could clearly distinguish a line of demarcation that separated the substance of the lotus center from the surrounding metal. Then why didn’t Diane press it? Why had she avoided it, night after night?

  But had she avoided it?

  It was smooth and polished. Someone had fingered and touched it.

  Diane herself. It all came to me: door would not open until the Presence was ready for her arrival.

  I watched her fingers working their way back and forth over the traceries of bronze, toward the center of the lotus blossom. She was touching it…

  I took a hitch in my belt, slid the scimitar and its scabbard back toward my hip, shifted the Luger.

  Click!

  The door yielded, swinging inward on silent hinges. The drums boomed and roared and thundered. Their vibrations smote me in the face like the blast of a typhoon. An overwhelming perfume surged forth, stifling me with its heavy sweetness.

  I leaped in ahead of Diane, advanced a pace toward the blank wall before me then wheeled to my right, and saw him who made a madness of Diane’s nights.

  He sat cross-legged on a pedestal of carven stone. His arms were crossed on his breast. He was nude, save for a yellow loin-cloth that flamed like golden fire in the purple light of the vault. His face was emaciated and his ribs were hideously prominent. If he breathed, it was not deeply enough to be perceptible.

  The drumming thunder ceased abruptly: and the silence was more terrific than the savage roaring pulse that had halted.

  Dead?

  Dead, save for those fixed, glittering eyes that stared through and past me. But they lived, fiercely, with a smoldering, piercing intentness.

  Then someone stepped in between me and the Presence.

  Diane had followed me, and standing in front of me, faced him.

  Like him, she crossed her arms on her breast. Then she advanced with slow steps, not halting until within a few paces of the Presence. She knelt on the tiles, and bowed. Then she spoke in the expressionless voice of one who recites by rote a speech in a foreign language he does not understand.

  “Etienne, I am here. I heard you from across the Border, and I have obeyed. I have opened your grave.”

  I stood there like a wooden image, neither drawing my scimitar to cleave that living mummy asunder, nor my pistol to riddle him to ribbons. This couldn’t be the Marquis de la Tour de Maracq; not this blasphemy from somewhere in High Asia, that might have followed the Golden Horde, ages ago. Yet she had called him Etienne. Then he spoke:

  “Landon, it is not good that you have meddled and entered the solitarium behind the throne. Even the elect dare n
ot enter here. But since you are here…”

  He smiled a slow, sinister smile. His long lean arm extended like the undulant advance of a serpent. “Look!”

  I followed his compelling gesture with my eyes, and saw the brazen door swing slowly shut. It closed with a click of ominous finality.

  I stared for a moment too long, held by the voice and the gesture. Just a moment too long. There was someone behind me. But before I could move, strong hands, gripped my arms.

  The Presence murmured a command. My scimitar and pistol and flashlight were taken from me. The hands released me: and all with such incredible swiftness that I turned just in time to see my four momentary captors filing into an exit that pierced the wall, carrying with them my blade and pistol. As the last one cleared the threshold, a panel slid silently into place.

  I had been a splendid guardian of the lovely girl who knelt at the feet of that creature on the throne!

  “That door,” resumed the Presence, speaking so deliberately that the moment of my disarming was scarcely an interruption, “is easily opened from the outside, by those we wish to admit.”

  Again he smiled that slow, curved smile of menace.

  He looked down at Diane, and spoke to her in purring syllables. She rose from the tiles, and stood there, vacantly regarding us, Diane’s body devoid of Diane’s spirit.

  “This girl and I,” said the Presence, “have a few things to discuss. You will therefore be pleased to excuse us…”

  He inclined his head, and smiled his reptilian smile.

  I saw his fingers caress the carvings near the top of the pedestal on which he sat. I leaped, but too late. The floor opened beneath me. As I dropped into the abysmal blacknesses below, I caught a glimpse of the purple light above being cut off by the trap-door lifting back into place.

  I landed on my feet with force enough to give me fallen arches, and pitched forward on my face. The stones were cold and damp and slippery. I rose to my hands and knees, and crept cautiously along, feeling for openings in the floor, and hoping to locate a wall which I could follow to anywhere at all. A corner, or an angle, anywhere to get out of the heavy blackness and near something that would give me a sense of direction. Here there was only up and down, and neither north, south, east, nor west.

  Caged in the sub-cellar of this subterranean vault; locked in the basement of hell’s private office. And Diane in the hands of that animated mummy!

  Finally I butted head-first into a wall. The stars unfortunately weren’t of sufficient duration to let me see where I was. So I crept along, following the cold, moist stones.

  My fingers touched a vertical bar: one member of a grillwork which blocked my advance. I reached forward with my other hand and grasped another bar, felt my way along, right and left. It was a gate, hinged to the masonry at one side, and chained shut at the other.

  Something tangible at last. Something to grip and struggle with. The gate yielded protestingly for a few inches until the chain drew taut. I could feel the heavy scale of rust and corrosion on the links. I tugged and pulled and pushed, but in vain.

  Then I removed my borrowed robe, folded it into a compact pad which I applied to my shoulder. I backed off, carefully measuring my retreat, gathered myself, and with a running leap, charged the gate. The chain snapped. The gate opened. I pitched headlong ahead of me, amid a clatter of links and the clang of the gate’s crashing against the wall.

  Before I could regain my feet, someone landed on me.

  Clean, manly fighting may have its place in the prize ring, and possibly even the wrestling arena: but in hell’s basement it is a needless grace. I shifted just in time to avoid the unknown’s knee fouling me. Not to be outdone in courtesy, I closed in, and located his eyes, but before I could apply my thumbs to the best advantage, he broke my attack. Finally I back-heeled him, and we both crashed to the paving. Luckily, he absorbed the shock, but it didn’t stop him. He lacked the simian strength and terrible arms of the assassin of the night before, but he made up for it in agility and devastating rage. We both were approaching exhaustion from the fury of attack, defense, and counter-attack.

  I yielded suddenly, to throw him off his balance; but I tripped on the loose piece of chain, lost my own balance, and failed to nail him as he pitched forward.

  And I couldn’t locate him. My own heavy breathing kept me from hearing him. I was trembling violently, and my mouth was dry as cotton. And if my heart pounded any more heavily, I’d burst wide open. Well, he must be in the same shape. So I sank to the floor, hoping to catch him with a low tackle, or to thwart him in a similar maneuver on his part.

  But I couldn’t find him.

  “Come here, damn your hide!” I frothed, finally getting enough breath to relieve my wrath.

  “Thank God, a Christian!” panted a voice not far from me. “And by your speech, an American. Let us be allies, what is left of us.”

  “And who might you be?” I demanded.

  “A prisoner like yourself. Let’s declare a truce, and if we must fight, follow me to where there is enough light.”

  The fellow sounded convincing enough. His English was the meticulously correct speech of an educated foreigner.

  “Done. Lead on.”

  “Then put your hand on my shoulder, and I will lead the way,” he continued. “To show my good faith, I will let you follow. Keep your head down. The masonry here is low, and very hard.”

  My enemy chuckled.

  “Mordieu! but I have been deceived about American sportsmanship. You would have gouged my eyes out. You bit a nice morsel from my throat—apropos, I’ll show you the right way to do that some day, if we get out of here alive… Steady, now! On your hands and knees…here we are.”

  I followed him through a low, narrow opening that had been made by prying a few blocks of masonry out of place, and into a tiny cell illuminated with a slim taper. The ceiling was vaulted, and over a dozen feet above the floor.

  “This has been my grave for some time.” He indicated the brazen panel in the wall.

  “There has been entirely too much talk of graves in the past few days,” I replied. “Graves with living occupants.”

  He started at me curiously, almost replied. Then, seeing me eyeing the brazen panel: “Mais non! Even with your bulk and hard head, you couldn’t budge that bronze. It doesn’t corrode and waste away like the iron in this devil’s nest.”

  “Well then,” said I, “how do they feed you?”

  “They let food down through a trap in the ceiling. Look!”

  I looked up, and saw the outline of a trap-door.

  “You look strangely familiar,” I began. “I’ve never seen you, but somehow it is as though I had seen a portrait, or photograph, or heard you compared for likeness to some one I did once see, somewhere.”

  “No one has seen me for two years or more. But how did you run afoul of Abdul Malaak? Are you also an aspirant to the custody of the Sanctuary?”

  He made a curious, fleeting gesture with his left hand.

  “Hell’s fire, monsieur,” I replied, “how many custodians, aspirant and actual, does this devil-haunted town hold?”

  Then, without pausing for an answer, I threw it at him:

  “When l am dead, open my grave and see

  The smoke that curls about thy feet.”

  “Comment?” he exclaimed.

  A home run! I continued:

  In my dead heart the fire still burns for thee,

  Yea, the smoke rises from my winding-sheet.”

  He stared. I met his stare.

  “Que diable!” he finally exclaimed. “Who or what you are, I don’t know. But you know who I am: de la Tour de Maracq.”

  “And I am Davis Landon. This meeting with the gentleman who has chanted Mademoiselle Diane to the edge of madness is certainly a pleasure.”

  The marquis smil
ed wearily. “Chanted, and to what end? From your quotation of Hafiz, I know that she must have heard me, but she couldn’t get my thought. Certainly not thus far, at least. So I am buried here, and awaiting the bowstring, or the fire, or the saw and plank: whatever Abdul Malaak in his kindness orders when he has sufficiently poisoned my friends against me. I thought a while ago that they had discovered my loophole and were trying to stop my private explorations. So I gave you a good fight…”

  For just an instant a fierce light flamed in his eye; and then that thin, weary smile again.

  “This is puzzling,” I protested. “I happen to know that she did get your message which you ‘willed’ or projected, or whatever means you used. Every night she wanders in her sleep to obey a summons, and claws at a brazen panel…”

  “What’s that you say?” demanded the marquis. “Wanders in obedience to my summons? Wanders?”

  “Yes. From your house which you willed to her on your deathbed in Marrakesh.”

  “But, monsieur, I never died in Marrakesh.”

  “That I can readily believe,” I admitted. “But she showed me that letter from you, and a newspaper clipping announcing your death, and a note in Arabic from the companion of your last hours. And thus she accepted your legacy, the house on Remparts de Lachepaillet, where she was very conveniently situated to leave by a secret passageway to hell’s front door.”

  Throughout my speech, the marquis stared at me, bewildered.

  “I, dying in Marrakesh, willed her that house?…”

  “Yes, damn it, and hoodooed her with strange dreams of graves to be opened, and voice chanting in Persian. And tonight I followed her through the gateway…”

  “How’s that? Followed her? Is she there?”

  “Yes. And that devil touched a spring and dropped me into that dungeon before I could say aye, yes, or no. So you might tell me what started her wanderings.”