Diane, arrayed in wisps of scarlet and silver, and crowned with a strange, tall head-dress that flamed and smoldered with rubies and frosty diamonds, and glowed with great pearls lurid in that sultry light, was escorted by acolytes toward the steps of the pyramid.
Tongues of flame now spurted waist high along the dais and encircled it; and the jets of flame rose taller along the steps.
Pace by pace Diane approached the steep ascent of the pyramid.
“She is to pass through the veil of fire and become the Bride of the Peacock,” whispered Etienne. “The flames will not hurt her body, but she will be enslaved beyond all redemption.”
“Maybe we can make a fast break and charge up the steps and finish Abdul Malaak before these fellows come out of their trance,” I suggested. “Do you know of any way of getting away after we’ve done that?”
“Yes. A door behind the throne opens into the solitarium where he sits, most of time, in meditation on his pedestal.”
“Well, then…”
“The flames won’t hurt her body,” resumed the marquis. “But if one of us starts up there, all he has to do is to press a small catch, and the nature of the flame will change entirely. There are those who have passed through the veil unbidden, but they didn’t live long.”
Diane had begun the ascent.
Then Abdul Malaak spoke in a great voice, incongruously deep for that emaciated frame.
“Servants of Malik Tawus, I have summoned you to witness the Night of Power. Thus far we have failed because your lips served me while your hearts betrayed me. Some of you still think of El Marques who would not honor me and the message I carried from across the border.
“Others think of Nureddin, who would have kept you in Kurdistan, oppressed by the Moslem, and worshipping the Bright Angel as fugitives hidden in caverns.
“But Nureddin was slain in the act of betraying us to the Ferringhi so that he could liberate El Marqees. But I have devised a doom for El Marqees; I Abdul Malaak, have thwarted his power, and behold she is seeking me instead of him. Behold; and believe, and give him freely to his doom, even as his comrade in treason was doomed.”
“We see and we believe, and we give freely!” came the deep response!
Etienne clutched my arm.
“There is but one chance. I will go first, and settle with Abdul Malaak, and extinguish the flames. You follow, and when the flames subside, take Diane through the door behind the throne.”
Etienne leaped to his feet, and three steps up the terrace.
I followed him, drawing my blade.
A murmur rose from the devotees.
Abdul Malaak stared, for once disconcerted. Then he shouted a command. The swordsmen stirred in their trance. Abdul Malaak smote a brazen gong at the side of the dais. Its deep clang touched them to life. They rose. Blades flashed.
Two against that host of madmen. Pierre had failed me. And I was glad that he had failed. Why should he also die in this butchery?
Abdul Malaak leaned forward in his throne. His fingers found and touched a knob: and the flames rose high about the dais, fierce, consuming fire.
“Hold them until I get Abdul Malaak. Then take her away while I cover your retreat!” shouted Etienne as he passed Diane on the stairs.
He leaped through that deadly, blinding flame and at Abdul Malaak on his throne.
Then came a voice loud and clear above the roar of the swordsmen: “Nureddin has returned! Nureddin with the assassin’s knife in his chest!”
I turned, just two leaps from the flame-girt dais, where I had overtaken Diane and caught her in my free arm.
And Nureddin it was, drooping mustaches, scar-seamed cheek and forehead: a Kurd from Kurdistan. He flung aside his robe. A jeweled hilt gleamed from his chest: the very dagger I had seen impale him in Pierre’s study!
“Who will exact blood indemnity for the death of Nureddin?”
He strode through the milling throng that parted wide for him.
“What? O dogs and sons of dogs, have you forgotten the bread and salt of Nureddin?”
And the wave of steel that was to overtake and overwhelm us subsided. There was an instant of silence. Then at the feet of the terrace the apparition halted, faced about, clutched at his chest, and wrenched the dagger free.
There came a low murmur from the crowd.
Nureddin hurled the dagger among the dazed swordsmen. “Take it and avenge Nureddin!”
“Ya Nureddin!” shouted one.
“He is our father and grandfather!”
“Nureddin has come from the dead!”
“Fraud and trickery!” shouted another.
“That’s no dead man!”
“Kill the impostor!”
“It’s Nureddin himself!”
The adherents of Nureddin were forming in a cluster. A scimitar rose and flashed swiftly down. Another, and another. The friends of Nureddin, shoulder to shoulder, were cutting their way into the company. Their number was growing every instant; but still they were outnumbered ten to one.
Nureddin was ascending the terrace, three steps at a time. He halted where I stood, scimitar in my sword hand, and my free arm supporting Diane.
The battle at the foot of the terrace was waxing hotter every moment. The friends of Nureddin were being forced back toward the wall. A dozen or twenty of the enemy were charging up the terrace to cut down the impostor, and me also.
Nureddin thrust at me a pair of Boukhara saddle-bags.
I dropped my blade, and took them.
Each of his hands emerged with an object a little larger than a goose egg. Then he tossed them one with each hand: grenades! They burst full among the enemy, halting the charge with their deadly, flaming phosphorous. Another grenade. And yet another. The assault broke and fled, howling and aflame.
And then Nureddin rained his grenades into the mob below.
Even in this damned place of madness, I knew now that this was no dead man.
“We’re out of fire!” he growled in guttural Arabic. “Some high explosive!”
And that fierce Kurd, withdrawing the safety pins and holding the grenades to the last split second, hurled them so that they burst as they landed, rending and blasting the enemy.
The friends of Nureddin were now advancing, slaying-mad and frenzied by the fire and explosive that dead Nureddin had hurled at the enemy.
“Ya Nureddin!” they shouted. “Nureddin has returned with the fires of Jehannum! Ya Nureddin!”
I glanced at the throne. The terrific, searing heat had subsided; and flames were scarcely ankle-high. Etienne was clambering to his feet. He reeled, and tottered. Blood streamed from his mouth. His smile was terrible.
Then he stooped, picked an armful from the throne, and advanced down the terrace toward us.
“I told you I’d do it. Sorry you couldn’t watch and take your lesson.” He laughed as he wiped his lips. “Look!”
I saw from the torn throat of his burden that he had made good his boast.
Then Etienne with a supreme effort pitched the remains of Abdul Malaak headlong into the bedlam below.
The Kurd was hurling his last grenade.
One last detonation, muffled by the bodies it blasted and seared.
“Etienne,” I demanded, “before we get into that butchery, release her so that her mind will be free.”
“Tres bien!”
He turned to Diane, stroked her cheeks, whispered in her ear, shook her sharply, whispered again, tapped her here and there with his knuckles.
Her scream was piercingly natural and feminine. Diane the automaton had become a woman again.
“Oh, Etienne, I did find you! You weren’t dead after all!”
“Found me, but not for long. Follow Landon out of here. Quick! I’m a dead man. Breathed too much of that flame. I’m following Nureddin.”
He kissed her and broke away from her arms.
“Well, if you’re following Nureddin, you’re going in the wrong direction,” said a calm voice at our side, not in guttural Arabic, but in French. “And here’s your pistol, Landon.”
Nureddin, nothing! Pierre d’Artois!
“Stand fast, fool!” he shouted, seizing Etienne’s shoulder. “Nureddin’s friends are winning. And dead Nureddin is avenged.”
“Then,” retorted Etienne, as he recognized Pierre, “take Diane out of here. This time I won’t return to haunt her.”
Etienne saluted us with his blade. “Swear not to follow me! The last will of the dead. I don’t want to waste what little life is left…”
Pierre stared at him for a moment, and saw that Etienne spoke the truth. “You have my word.”
Pierre’s blade rose in salute; and then he turned the throne.
“Oh, Etienne!” cried Diane, at that moment realizing his intentions.
But Etienne did not hear her.
As I followed Pierre, I glanced over her shoulder and saw Etienne, blade flaming in a great arc, charge headlong into the melee. His scimitar rose and fell, shearing slashing. His voice rang exultant with slaughter. Then we heard his voice no more.
I half carried, half dragged Diane through the panel behind the throne into the solitarium of Abdul Malaak, and thence, finally, through the winding passages to Diane’s apartment.
* * * *
“Tell me,” I demanded of d’Artois the next day, “why you ordered me to follow Diane into the den of madness?”
“That was an error which I didn’t recognize until after it was all over,” admitted Pierre. “But since you acquitted yourself as you did, I claim a free pardon for having unwittingly sent you to face the Keeper of the Sanctuary instead of going myself.
“I had what you call the hunch,” he continued. “It came to me in a flash that my idea of impersonating Nureddin would succeed. You understand, I had toyed with the notion from the day of his death. I knew that Nureddin would have enough of a following to divide the conclave if he suddenly appeared, risen from the grave.
“The disguise was easy. My nose is about right by nature. Those scars on the cheek and forehead, and the mustaches, and the eyebrows were simple. Just a few touches, and the essentials were there. And that dagger—well, that was one of those flexible-bladed weapons used on the stage, in sword-swallowing acts. But convincing, bien?”
“Finding my way into that den was not so difficult. Nureddin before his death mentioned Porte d’Espagne. I checked against Vauban’s plans, and then made soundings with instruments such as prospectors use in your country to locate those oil domes. My men—you saw them, and remarked, that afternoon as we drove by—found considerable subterranean cavities where the plans showed none.
“And since I knew enough of the ritual of Malik Tawus, my detection as an impostor was very improbable.”
“But what set you on the trail, originally?” I asked.
“Etienne’s letter,” replied Pierre. “I knew it for a forgery the moment I noticed that it had been written by someone who, being used to Arabic, which is written from right to left, forgot in his careful forging that Etienne would cross his t’s from left to right.
“Alors, that sufficed. Then I telephoned Paris headquarters, where they have a file of every newspaper in the world. There was no such article in any paper printed in Morocco as the one Diane gave me.
“Thus I knew that someone was using Etienne’s alleged death as a means of getting Diane into Etienne’s house, where memories of him would make her an easy victim to the psychic influences that were directed toward her.
“And according to his remarks before you two escaped from his cell, the marquis had also been seeking to project a thought to her. And between the two forces…”
“Just a moment, “I interrupted. “Why did Abdul Malaak go to all the trouble of projecting his thought to Diane when a couple of his men could have seized and dragged her down there?
“Why bother to prepare the stage setting of Etienne’s death? Just oriental indirectness?”
“Not at all! Don’t you see,” explained Pierre, “that they wanted not merely Diane in person; they wanted her as a slave of the will of Abdul Malaak. And when she had succumbed to his will sufficiently to begin her nocturnal wanderings and pick her way to the door, he would know that she was truly in his power, and ready for the next step, becoming an automaton whose activities as a spy could be controlled no matter where she went.
“But, grace a Dieu—with certain credit to Pierre d’Artois—Mademoiselle Diane’s mind is freed, not only by the death of Etienne and Abdul Malaak, but also by having obeyed the command which had been impressed so firmly on her subconscious mind.
“And therefore, mon vieux,” he continued, “since she is done for ever with opening graves in her sleep, you must during the remainder of your stay in Bayonne divert her mind from those gruesome memories. So out of my sight for the evening. I have work to attend to. Allez!” And thus on that, and on other evenings, I sought Diane with more confidence than I had any right to have.
* * * *
“Somehow,” said Diane one night as we sat on the tall gray wall of Lachepaillet, watching the moon-silvered mists rise from the most and roll into the park, far below, “that moment’s meeting with Etienne was so unreal. It was as if he’d appeared from the dead to put my mind at rest rather than that he was actually alive. In a way, he died two years ago, instead of on that made, terrible night…not a fresh grief, but the calming of an old sorrow…if you know what I mean…”
And then and there, as Pierre would put it, I had the hunch.
“You mean,” said I, “that the Bride of the Peacock could be pleased with a much less colorful bird?”
Which was precisely what Diane had in mind.
THE RETURN OF BALKIS
Originally published in Weird Tales, April 1933.
“My friend,” began Pierre d’Artois abruptly, one evening a few days after my arrival in Bayonne, “you have heard that two women can not occupy one house without discord, have you not?”
As he spoke, he thrust aside the untasted glass of vieux armagnac at which he had been staring.
“Eh, what’s that?” I demanded. He had caught me off guard, and at loss for the proper response to what seemed the opening remarks of a discussion of wife versus mother-in-law: an odd topic, since, happily, it could at the best be only academic as far as either Pierre or I was concerned. “Well, now that you mention it, doubtless the situation has its trying features. But—”
“Alors,” continued d’Artois, “what if two women are seeking to occupy the same body?”
“Good Lord, Pierre!” I began. “This is too thick. Two women in the same body?”
But I could not hurdle it, even with a running start.
“Yes. Exactly that,” affirmed Pierre. “Madeleine’s personality is splitting. An intruder from across the Border is taking possession of her.”
D’Artois was referring to the daughter of his old friend, André Delorme. Her presence in Pierre’s house had been a surprise to me, particularly since d’Artois in his letter of a week ago, inviting me from Bordeaux, had said nothing about his expecting a decidedly charming guest from the States to enliven my visit.
“An intruder from across the Border?” I said, groping for my wits.
The idea was hard to assimilate. But I had noticed something strange about Madeleine Delorme. She was colorfully charming, despite the swiftly changing moods that had baffled and disconcerted me; yet there was a suggestion of the uncanny.
“Now that you mention it,” I continued, “it did seem as though some second personality was regarding me from her eyes. At times their expression was very old, and absolutely alien. Could that be what you mean?”
“For a fact, that is exa
ctly what I mean,” assured d’Artois. “‘Someone is trying to crowd me out of myself,’ she said to me a few days before your arrival. ‘I dare not relax. Not for a moment. It is waiting and ready, lurking beside me. It is gaining in strength. At times I feel that I am some one else. I’m afraid to leave the house. It might take possession of me, and lead me—oh, good God, but where might it not lead me?’
“Alors, I had her leave the pension where she was staying, and move into my house, where I could observe her. I thought at first that it was a hysterical fancy. But one night I saw. Then I knew.”
D’Artois paused. I wondered what it could have been that he had seen. There are vaults and passages far beneath the ancient city that for centuries have been lost to the memory of those who daily throng the arcades of rue Pont Neuf, and the narrow tortuous length of rue d’Espagne. Something archaic and malignant was whispering from the blacknesses of those unhallowed mazes. It had spoken to Madeleine, and she had heard.
Bayonne is ancient, somnolent, fantastic as a hasheesh dream, and as strangely beautiful when of a morning the gray walls and battlements of the citadel are afloat on the low-hanging river mists, and the cathedral spires reach into the early light like long slim lance-heads. But at night the blacknesses of the crypts far below the level of the moat that girdles the city begin their murmuring: and Madeleine had listened too long.
“But see for yourself,” continued d’Artois. “We will watch in her room. It will return. It is growing strong in its success—”
“Who will return?” I demanded, as I followed him up the winding staircase. “What manner of thing, or presence, is haunting her?”
“See, and you will know,” evaded Pierre, as he led the way down the hall.
D’Artois tapped gently at Madeleine’s door.
“She is asleep,” he said in a low voice, “But let us go in.”
Madeleine lay under the canopy of a great four-poster bed. The moonlight filtering in through the bars of the window and between the heavy drapes caressed her faultless shoulders and graciously curved throat, and lost itself in the twining midnight of her hair. She was lovely, this Madeleine Delorme.
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 11