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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Helas, monsieur, what can I tell…”

  “When I quoted Hafiz you seemed to hear familiar words.”

  “Certainly. I did chant them. I also am an adept. And I chanted the verse of Hafiz for the sake of the rhythm; not to give her a command to come and release me, which she couldn’t possibly do, but to ask her to communicate with Nureddin Zenghi, in Kurdistan.”

  “Why the verse, did you say? What has it to do with Nureddin? That is dense to me.”

  “Pardon. You are not an adept. But to put it simply, it acted merely as a carrier wave, as your radio experts would put it. It gave me a rhythm on which to impress my thought. I can’t explain it briefly. But go into Tibet, and High Asia; to Hindustan, among the fakirs. Study at the feet of one who might still be found sitting at the foot of a column in the vast ruins of incredible Ankor Wat. Speak with the priests of the Eightfold Path. Piece all your gleanings together; and you will finally be able to project your thoughts to one with whom you are en rapport—if you have the strength of will. The knowledge is jealously guarded. But I found it.

  “Had I gone further with the art, I could have projected myself from my body, and spoken to her. But I couldn’t. Can’t yet. And shan’t live long enough to learn how.

  “When I was reported dead, I was actually in this cell. My enemy tricked me in a contest of occult arts, and here I am. Abdul Malaak… Servant of the Angel, as he calls himself. I see it all now. He forged that letter and clipping to get her into my house from which he could summon her to make the trip unobserved. And his concentrated thought aided by the circle of adepts in the great hall, overpowered my message.”

  “But Nureddin did come to town.”

  “Magnifique! Maybe she did send for him. And he will take the place by assault. He will not fail…”

  “Nureddin has failed.”

  And I told what had happened in Pierre’s study.

  “Then we are doomed,” said the marquis.

  “Doomed, hell!” I said. “You suggested that we be allies. Now let me take command. Is it near your feeding-time?”

  “Yes, So says my stomach,” replied the marquis. And then, as he saw me glance once more at the trap-door in the crown of the vault: “Even if I leaped to your shoulders, I couldn’t reach it.”

  “Who said you had to reach it?” I queried.

  “How then?” demanded the marquis. “They don’t get close enough for you to take the guard by surprise as he gives me my food. If they only passed it through that door there!”

  “I have an idea. Stand close to the wall, out of sight. Better yet, back out through that hole in the wall…”

  “But…”

  “Be damned! Ask no questions, monsieur, or my inspiration will leave me. I have a hunch. Are you with me?”

  “To the death and to the uttermost.”

  I accepted the hand he extended. “And there is another,” I added: “Pierre D’Artois.”

  None better,” admitted the marquis. “There is no love lost between us, but he will not begrudge me any help given you and Diane. But even that d’Artois risks his head if he dares enter.”

  “Never fear about d’Artois,” I reassured the marquis, “but while we have time, tell me this: who has the hold over Diane’s mind? Is it you, or that dried-up thing on the pedestal?”

  “Both, it seems. Though he is aided by his circle of adepts. With them broken up, his power would be comparatively little.”

  “But would that release her, breaking them up, and him also?

  “Yes. And I will die happy if I personally attend his breaking up. Into small bits, Monsieur Landon. If we get out of here alive, I will dismember him with my bare hands! And since she has obeyed the command, she can be awakened from the influence of the Power…”

  “There they are now!”

  The marquis beckoned me to be silent.

  In my turn, I motioned him to crawl out of sight of trap, and followed him.

  “Qu‘ est-cequec’ est?” muttered the marquis, obedient, but puzzled.

  “Wait and see.”

  * * * *

  We heard the trap open. A basket was descending at the end of a slim cord.

  “Pull that basket up and let down a rope. That isn’t heavy enough,” I directed in Arabic.

  “Why not, ya marqees?” queried the voice, somewhat taken aback.

  “This isn’t el marqees, ya bu!”

  I shouted. “Let down that rope and pull him up. He’s still breathing, but he won’t be when you come back with a rope.”

  From above I heard a mutter of voices.

  “And who are you?” demanded the spokesman.

  I heard the clank of arms. My unusual request had been passed along to the guard, doubtless. But as Pierre said, toujours audace!

  “Come down and see, O heap of offal! One of the master’s guests, O eater of pork! Would you argue with me?”

  And then, aside to the marquis, “I’ve got ’em going.”

  The marquis grinned, and the fire returned to his eyes.

  “Give me your rags,” I continued, “and we’ll fool ’em proper.”

  “Just a moment, ya sidi,” resumed the voice, “while we get a strong rope.”

  “Make haste then, eater of un-clean food! I have much else to do than to butcher Feringhi swine, down here in the cellar.”

  “Patience, master,” said the voice.

  I dug up from my memory a few epithets collected in Mindanao, and growled them in return. They couldn’t understand it, and were duly impressed with my importance. By the subdued and respectful murmurings, they must by that time have identified me as one of the master’s pet assassins.

  But the occasional tinkle of accoutrements and soft note of steel didn’t reassure me. The death of the marquis and the lifting up of his body doubtless was of sufficient importance to detain a part of the guard.

  A heavy rope, several centimeters in diameter, was let down.

  “Give me more slack! Pigs and fathers of many little pigs, how can I tie this fellow’s carcass with that little? And anchor it firmly up there. When you get him up, I’m coming after.”

  Then to the marquis: “I’ll go first, and you follow.”

  “No, let them haul me up. I can’t climb a rope,” he whispered.

  “You’re a damned liar, but since you want the first crack at them, go ahead. But remember you’re dead. Don’t start the show until I get there.”

  I tied a running noose and drew it up beneath his arms.

  “All right up there! Heave away! And wait for me. I’ll tell you what to do with him.”

  They heaved away.

  “Well,” I reflected. “I’ll be in a pretty jam if something goes haywire and that rope doesn’t come down again. That hothead…”

  By the time the marquis reached the trap, I was in a sweat and a fidget.

  “Hurry up there!” I roared. “And let that rope down. Drop him anywhere. He won’t hurt you.”

  “Shall we hoist you, ya sahib?”

  “Let that rope down, and silence, ya humar!”

  So far, so good. I had them buffaloed.

  I leaped at the rope, and hand over hand, pulled myself up. As I approached the opening, I gripped its edge with one hand, heaved myself through, and sprawled face down on the floor.

  “He still breathes, master,” said one.

  “I forgot my scimitar. Give me yours and I’ll tend to that.”

  And as I was solicitously assisted to my knees, the hilt of a blade was thrust into my hand.

  I leaped and slashed.

  “Give ’em hell, Etienne!” I shouted.

  And I laid about me, right and left.

  The marquis closed in on the one nearest him, lifted him over his head, and dashed him head-first to the tiles. Then he snatched a
blade from the floor, and came on guard.

  The four survivors faced us, dazed by the swift turn. And then they charged. I hacked and slashed clumsily and desperately. Parried, and missed my riposte. Lashed out again, and had my blade dashed from my hand by a sweeping cut. Etienne, crouched on guard behind his whirlwind, of steel, faced half to his right saw my peril, and with a dazzling snick of his blade, sliced my adversary’s sword arm half off: and back again to his party.

  As I booted my disabled enemy into insensibility, I marveled at the incredible skill with which he held those three fierce Kurds at bay.

  I gave my opponent’s head one farewell bounce against the paving, picked up his blade, and joined Etienne.

  “Gardez-vous!” he snapped. “I have him!”

  He slipped forward in a lunge, blade slicing upward to disembowel his adversary; and back on guard again, with but two to face him.

  They were too dazzled by that terrific attack to be aware of my presence. Thus my neck-cut to the one on the right was most creditable.

  “Tenez!” commanded Etienne, as he confronted the survivor. “I need him.”

  Standing as though his feet were spiked to the floor, he waved me aside, engaged his enemy, parrying cut after desperate cut as coolly and effortlessly as though fencing with a blunt foil instead of with blades that sheared from shoulder to hip with one stroke.

  The Kurd fought with the savagery of one whose doom stares him in the face. But in vain. He could not crowd or break through the hedge of steel that Etienne built with his leaping, flashing scimitar.

  Then the Kurd stood there, blinking and bewildered, staring at his empty hand. His blade clanged against the tiles a dozen feet away.

  “Now, son of a disease, throw this refuse into the pit. And you, Landon, strip this fellow you kicked senseless. I need his clothes.”

  The survivor complied without a murmur, and one by one thrust the dead and dismembered down the trap-door.

  “Tie that pig!” snapped the marquis.

  I obeyed, using a coil of the rope with which we had been hoisted up.

  “And now,” said the marquis, “Tell us several things, or I will dismember you slice by slice.”

  The fellow growled.

  “What! Tongue-tied? Well, then…but no, I will not slice you to pieces…

  “Landon, pass me that torch.”

  I plucked the flaming torch from its socket in the wall. Etienne applied it to the Kurd’s feet.

  “Where is the girl, and what is the master doing?”

  The Kurd writhed, and groaned.

  “Speak up, dung heap, or I’ll roast you alive!”

  The smell of flesh roasted before it is dead is not pleasant.

  “I will speak, sahib!”

  “Very well. What is happening in the Throne Room, and what of the girl?”

  “The master sits on the high throne. The girl is as one dead, awaiting the command to pass through the veils of fire to become the Bride of the Peacock. It is the night of power.”

  “The night of power…and here we are, two against a company. Landon, will you join me in dying like a man?”

  “I don’t relish this dying stuff any too damned much, Etienne,” I confessed. “But I’ll go any reasonable length with you. So lead on.”

  “Magnifique! Let us go…”

  And then he turned. “This roasted pig here will spread no alarm,” he growled as his blade descended.

  We thrust this last body down the trap-door.

  The marquis wiped his scimitar, and led the way. Torches illuminated the passage until the first turn, and thereafter it was lighted by an indirect glow, emanating from a molding along the arched ceiling.

  “Your Arabic is acceptable. A lot of these fellows speak only Kurdish or dialects of Turki, but stick to your own, and all will be well. And very few will recognize me in that purple light. None, in fact. They’ve not seen me for better than two years, and my very existence has been forgotten except by a few jailers.”

  “There was one who evidently had not forgotten you.”

  I felt for the little peacock amulet, and found it still about my throat.

  “Nureddin was speechless. Handed it to me, and coughed his life out. Since he was your friend, take it.”

  “Another vengeance to exact. But remember: on your life speak not the Arabic word Satan. Whoever inadvertently pronounces it must then and there be torn to pieces. Nor say any word resembling it. That would be fatal to you, and would draw attention to me.”

  “What is your plan?”

  “I have none. Even as I had none but an urge to explore when I wandered into the darkness and found you. This labyrinth is not entirely known to me, Keeper of the Sanctuary before Abdul Malaak. But this part of it I know well enough, and our wits will do the rest.”

  The marquis led the way, down winding passages, up stairways, down others, curving and twisting, never once hesitating at a branch or cross passage. Sentries posted at intersections saluted us perfunctorily; and the marquis negligently returned their salutes.

  As we advanced, I picked up the deep booming of the drums. Mingled with it was the wail of reed pipes, and the whines of single-stringed kemenjahs.

  “Fight it,” said the marquis. “Don’t let it get a hold on you. Abdul Malaak sits nodding there on that tall throne, impressing his will on the circle of adepts. They receive and amplify it a thousandfold, and on that a thousandfold more, increasing in geometrical progression. They have but to attune their minds to the vibration frequency.

  “Once I saw them project their thought to take material form.”

  “Juggler!” I scoffed.

  “Jugglery if you will. But I saw what I saw: a material entity formed in the vortex of that resonating, countlessly amplified thought.

  “But,” continued the marquis, “if you resist it from the beginning, you may hold your own. We may break it up. Tonight’s conclave deals with Diane, and thus our escape may not be noted.”

  As we turned a corner, crossed scimitars barred our progress.

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

  The sentries raised their blades in salute and advanced us. As we entered the arched doorway of the Throne Room, their blades clicked behind us.

  A smoldering somber mist, red as the embers of a plundered city, hung in the air of that great domed hall. A heavy sweetness surged about us, wave on wave. Bearded adepts sat cross legged beneath three-decked, gilded parasols, and caressed with knuckles and finger tips and the heels of their hands the drums of varying sizes which they balanced on their knees. As they played, they swayed in cadence. Their eyes stared fixedly to the front. They were dead men driven by a terrific will.

  Against the wall of the circular hall towered a pyramid terraced in steps of glistening black. Tongues of flame quivered up from orifices along the stairway that led to the dais at the apex. The dais was canopied with gold threaded damask, and crowned with the monstrous effigy of a peacock, tail fanned out, and enameled in natural colors.

  On the dais sat the cadaverous Abdul Malaak, that animated mummy that was to smite all France with the devastating thought waves of his adepts. He sat there like a high god. He nodded to the colossal thunder of the drums, and the whining strings, and the wind instruments that moaned of the blacknesses across the Border.

  We took our places near the foot of the pyramid, so that we could see the entrance which faced Abdul Malaak. Through it filed a steady stream of devotees, all robed in white, with scarlet girdles from which hung scimitars. As they took their places on the cinnabar-powdered floor, they caught the cadence of the music and swayed to its rhythm. From their ranks row after row in a crescent facing the throne, came a hoarse whispering which grew to a solemn chant.

  Acolytes marched up and down through the ranks of the communicants, swinging fum
ing censers. Others, robed in crimson, followed them, bearing copper trays laden with small, curiously shaped lozenges and wafers which they offered the followers of the Peacock.

  The stones beneath us quivered. I could feel the world rocking on its foundations. That maddening music finally spoke in a wordless language of riot and pillage and chaos. And high above the adepts arms crossed on his breast, sat Abdul Malaak, directing the doom.

  I thought of the violin note that would shiver a wine-glass; of the ram’s-horn trumpets that leveled the walls of Jericho. It wasn’t the sound. It was the thought that was in resonance, the mind of each individual hammering relentlessly in cadence, doubling and redoubling the sum whenever another of the circle put himself completely in tune. Resonance; perfect timing; until the hatred of one shriveled adept from High Asia would be magnified a millionfold and on that yet again as much more.

  The air was tenanted with presences called from over the Border by that demon on his tall black terraced throne. Distinctly above that deep, world-shaking roll and thunder I began to hear twitterings and chirpings and murmurings. They were gathering, drawn by the master’s resistless vortex of power. We were being hemmed in by a congress of evil infinitely greater than all humanity working with one thought could of itself devise.

  The puny blasphemies and petty filthinesses of medieval devil-worship were childish against this monumental array of Satanism from Kurdistan.

  “Fight it, Landon, fight it!” whispered the marquis. “Don’t let it get you or you’ll join them. Malik Tawus devised no such evil; not in Kurdistan and Armenia, where I learned the true faith to bring it to France.”

  An acolyte approached with a tray of wafers. The marquis and I both accepted.

  “On your life, don’t swallow it,” he cautioned. “Palm it. With that music you couldn’t stand the drug it contains.

  “And to think that I brought all this into France,” he continued. “Not this, tonight, but paved the way for that devil up there to get his hold. His death is more important than your life, or mine, or hers, even.

  “If Nureddin were alive…”

  And then, “Look!” exclaimed Etienne. “Over there!”