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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  At the corners of the pentacle, the darwish had placed glowing charcoal from the censers that had not been overturned. And on each heap he poured a handful of the same incense that they had been burning in the room. As the fumes rose in dense, stifling sweet clouds that almost obscured the darwish as he knelt in the center of the figure, we heard him chant.

  “Ya Balkis! Ya Balkis, malikat us-Sabahh! Beloved of Suleiman! The thief and the spoiler has robbed the grave and called you from being queen among the quiet dead. The mocker and the defiler has disturbed your rest.

  “Ya Balkis, come forth from the body which you have invaded!

  “Ya Balkis, come forth of your own will, or I will pronounce your Hidden Name. I will pronounce your True Name. Hear me, Balkis, Queen of the Morning, for this I can and this I will do!”

  Then he began solemnly intoning in that almost forgotten language. His voice rolled and thundered like drums beaten before a palace; and from time to time, during that sonorous invocation, we heard her name, and knew that he had not yet pronounced the True Name.

  D’Artois shivered, and down my own spine there were chills leaping and dancing to the cadence of that great voice. A terrific tension was in the air, and a rustling and chirping, and a murmuring: and within the pentacle, beside the smoke-veiled kneeling form of the darwish, we saw another standing, who was slender and wore a tall, curiously wrought diadem.

  The chanting ceased, and the muttering, rustling sounds that we had heard. And then the darwish pronounced a single phrase, and made a gesture.

  There was a deep sigh, and a stifled wail of unutterable despair. The darwish was alone in the pentacle. His eyes stared and his face was drawn as he bowed to the five points of the pentacle, and stepped from its limits.

  He addressed d’Artois.

  “My lord, Balkis has returned to the shadows. Now let us see what tenant the stolen body has.”

  Madeleine lay motionless on the altar, in the wan light of the flickering tapers, and the green phosphorescence that pervaded the room.

  “Look,” whispered Pierre, “her expression is changed. She is indeed gone.”

  I saw then that while the features had not altered in any essential, there was an indefinable though certain difference. I wondered if Madeleine would look at us from those long-lashed eyes when she opened them.

  “Awaken her at once!” commanded d’Artois, beckoning to Graf Istavan. He too had seen that presence in the pentacle with the darwish, and with her disappearance, his last hope had vanished. His haughty features were calm in despair: for Balkis, the beloved from the shadows, had died before his eyes.

  Nureddin muttered a word to the Dankalis. As they advanced, their circle of steel urged Graf Istavan toward the altar. Then they halted, letting him approach the body of his victim. Their thirsty blades were poised, ready to cut him down at Nureddin’s signal.

  The necromancer turned toward d’Artois.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “this has gone too far. I can not awaken her.”

  “Try it!” demanded d’Artois. “It is worth trying. If you fail, these black fellows will tear you to pieces and eat your raw flesh. Awaken her!”

  Graf Istavan knew that d’Artois had used no figure of Speech when he made his threat. He saw the darwish thoughtfully fingering the edge of his sword. Then he faced the altar, and made stroking passes and gestures. He addressed the sleeping girl in sharp syllables of command. Perspiration cropped out on his forehead. His hands began to tremble as he exerted his will to its utmost, trying one device after another to awaken Madeleine. He was fighting for his life, and he knew it. But in vain.

  His arms dropped to his side. He turned to Pierre with a despairing gesture.

  “It is useless, monsieur,” he said. “She has escaped. She is beyond my reach. She—”

  “Is she dead?” I demanded. “Pierre—”

  “No,” said d’Artois. “Her body is alive. It has suffered no violence. But her spiritual essence, her intelligence, her soul, call it what you will, had been forced so far into the shadows that it wanders, lost and confused, and can not find its way back. Try again, Graf Istavan, or by the living God, these fellows will tear you limb from limb, and I am not jesting!”

  The necromancer shrugged his shoulders resignedly, and shook his head.

  “What I can not do, I can not. Do your worst. I am beaten, and I do not complain. That white-bearded juggler of yours, that wild darwish from the desert, has driven Balkis beyond my reach. I heard him command her by her True Name, and she obeyed. She is gone—”

  Again that gesture, and that haunted look of despair.

  “So it makes little difference what happens to me. Let them strike. Perhaps I can find her somewhere across the Border, where she is with the untroubled dead. Strike, monsieur. I am unarmed.”

  And the eager steel that touched him, waiting to drive home, did not make him flinch. I saw that he welcomed it. I sensed that we were but saving him from seeking his own life. It was I, rather than Graf Istavan, who felt the supreme despair of that tense moment when the steel would blossom red again and complete the evening’s vain butchery. For vain it was, with Madeleine lying there, a thing of exquisite beauty: living, yet dead. Madeleine’s self was wandering blindly in a limbo whose dim mazes confused her groping search for her body. I saw the fierce light in Pierre’s eyes and the passionless, serene gaze of the darwish, and the grimness of the Dankalis poised to strike: and saw but futile vengeance whose bitter fruit would be a lovely, soulless body.

  Nureddin’s gesture beckoned the savages away from Graf Istavan, whose life they wanted as blood indemnity for their fallen comrades.

  “Nureddin,” said d’Artois, “is there no way? Are we too late?”

  His voice was unsteady, and his features were tense. For a moment I wondered if he would with his own hands kill an unarmed man.

  “Sidi, there is a way,” replied the darwish. He spoke very slowly and solemnly. “Do you remember that night? We were in Kuh-i-Atesh?”

  D’Artois’ tanned cheeks paled at the mention of the Mountain of Fire, in Kurdistan. “Good God! you don’t mean that you’ll try that ritual?”

  “If it please Allah, I will,” affirmed the darwish.

  D’Artois bowed his head for a moment. He glanced at the sleeping loveliness on the altar. His eyes were somber and despairing.

  “I can’t let him do that,” he muttered. “And she’s the daughter of my old friend. I can’t refuse…”

  Pierre’s features quivered with emotion. He paced back and forth, head bowed, and eyes staring at the tiles. Pierre was playing the heart-breaking role of destiny. His choice would decide the day. Madeleine would remain a lovely, lifeless thing—or old Nureddin would face some awful peril. I had sensed that from the moment I had heard the name of that mountain in Kurdistan. Now I knew it.

  “My friend,” said the darwish, “I will make the venture, inshallah! Do not seek to dissuade me. You have no choice. I will not fail!”

  The darwish turned to the Dankalis and spoke a few words in a low voice. They stared, and made gestures of protest. Nureddin hushed their murmurings with a sharp command. Then they escorted Graf Istavan away from the altar. I had not understood a word of that Somali Coast jargon, but I saw from their faces that the words of Nureddin had instilled fear, and consternation, and grief.

  “Mordieu!” exclaimed Pierre as he faced me. “He has taken the initiative so as to absolve me of all blame. He knew that I could neither consent nor deny.”

  In a low, hoarse voice he continued, “To stand here and watch, helplessly—it is terrible!”

  The darwish in the meanwhile had been scratching a circle on the tiles with the point of his blade. Then he wiped it clean and forced it between the tiles so that it stood upright before him. The steel glistened frostily in that weird green light.

  Nureddin knelt and cr
ossed his arms on his breast. He bowed thrice, touching his forehead to the tiles just in front of the sword. We heard him muttering words that he pronounced so rapidly that we made no attempt to understand or even recognize the language. Then his voice became a faint murmur as he stared fixedly at the glittering steel. Finally it subsided to an indistinct whisper, then to silence. His body swayed ever so slightly, like a reed in a gentle breeze.

  Nureddin’s features were transfigured with an awful solemnity. His eyes had become fixed in an intent stare. I held my breath, and quivered from a growing tension. Neither fuming censers nor chanting acolytes: only an old man kneeling before an upright blade, and staring fixedly; yet it was more awesome and compelling than any of the thaumaturgy and sonorous rituals I had witnessed that night, and more terribly thrilling than Graf Istavan’s mighty recital.

  I knew that this darwish who knelt in the circle was indeed a pious and holy man; that such peccadilloes as the robbing of caravans were trifles not to be charged to his account.

  The room was a brooding silence such as precedes the relentless stroke of doom. I glanced at Pierre, and was glad that I did not know what to expect.

  We stood poised on the very border of—

  A great cry wrenched our tense nerves. Then we heard a gasp, and the scream of a startled woman.

  Madeleine sat upright on the altar. She was bewildered, and her eyes were wide with terror. Then she recognized d’Artois.

  “Oh, Uncle Pierre!” she exclaimed, as she slid from the altar that had come so perilously close to being her bier. “What in the world—where—an old white-bearded man was leading me through an awful fog where I’d been lost so hopelessly—”

  She laughed hysterically, and clung to her Uncle Pierre.

  “He took me…by the hand…and led me… Oh, it was terrible, but his face was so kind…”

  “My dear,” said d’Artois, making an effort to control his conflicting emotions, “let us go home. We have—here, take her!” he commanded in a voice whose gruffness nearly cracked for an instant. “The car is not far from the château, in front.”

  As Madeleine clung to my arm, I caught a glimpse of Nureddin lying face down on the tiles. His arms stretched out before him. Only a glance: but I knew now why d’Artois had paled at the mention of Kuh-i-Atesh.

  The exit from the room was through the window. As I helped Madeleine through the shattered sash, I heard Pierre’s voice, very stern, and too well controlled. He spoke to the Dankalis in Arabic.

  “One of you help me with your master’s body. He is dead.”

  “Monsieur d’Artois,” said Graf Istavan, “death is nothing to me. But would you leave me to be mutilated by these savages?”

  “Their master,” replied d’Artois sternly, “went across the Border to lead your victim back to her body before it died. But he himself could not return. Before he left, I fancy that he instructed his men. Who am I to ask them to disobey?”

  I leaped to the ground. As Madeleine dropped to my arms, one of the Dankalis followed her. After him came d’Artois, who let down the body of the darwish.

  Pierre, however, carried Nureddin single-handed to the car, for the Dankali was in great haste to rejoin his comrades…

  * * * *

  We drove back to Pierre’s house as fast as the powerful car would carry us. Madeleine, still unstrung from her sudden awakening, was startled at the sight of Nureddin.

  “Oh, that’s the same old man that I saw in my dream!” she exclaimed. “He led me back through the fog and the darkness. It’s been the most miserable nightmare! Most of the time I thought I was some one else.”

  Later, as we three sat in his study, I said, “Pierre, what really did happen, now that it’s all over?”

  “That old darwish,” said d’Artois, “knew that there was but one way of bringing Madeleine back to her body. He knew that that would be a feat that even an adept can perform but once. Yet, knowing that it would be fatal, he persisted.

  “My dear,” he continued, turning to Madeleine, “although your body was still alive, you were dead. And had Nureddin not acted so quickly, you would have joined Balkis in the shadows, for there would have been no living body to await your return.”

  For a few moments we were without words. Death had taken the darwish, but the living girl was testimony that Death himself had been robbed by that strange old man.

  “But why didn’t he use the True Name—whatever that may be?” I finally asked d’Artois.

  “Nureddin’s occult studies could scarcely have included Madeleine’s True Name,” replied d’Artois. “He did not know it, and thus could not call her back to her body. But an adept from the Orient would know the True Name of Balkis.

  “That principle,” d’Artois continued, “is one of the oldest in the study of magic and the occult. The ancient Hebraic cabala made much of the holy and awful mystery of the True Name of Javeh. Egyptian sorcerers claimed that they would work miracles by threatening Osiris with the public revelation of his True Name if he did not lend them his power.

  “Everything, in fact, is supposed to have a secret name by which it can be commanded,” concluded Pierre. “But few have that knowledge.”

  “And to think,” said Madeleine, “that that old man deliberately gave his life for a strange woman.” Her eyes sparkled with tears as she continued, “That took greater courage than facing—oh, but I shouldn’t say that, after what you and Uncle Pierre did. What I mean—if I could only express—”

  “Don’t try to, my dear,” said Pierre. “We know how you feel about that heroic old fellow.” And then, solemnly, “You can best express your appreciation by never regretting that you are not a queen.”

  D’Artois, deeply moved as he was by the sacrifice of the darwish, smiled, and twisted his mustache. “You might,” he suggested, “remember him, and some day name your first son Nureddin!

  “And now I must busy myself with certain arrangements with Monsieur the Prefect of Police, on account of the messy condition of the château of the late Graf Istavan. His title, by the way, is as fictitious as your claim to the throne of Balkis. Those good Dankalis would do well to leave Bayonne quietly and quickly. And while I arrange—”

  D’Artois winked at me, and grinned, making an unconvincing attempt to conceal his emotions.

  “See if you can console this young lady for her sudden loss of a crown,” he said.

  “That,” murmured Madeleine, as the door closed behind Pierre, “should be easy enough, unless you take after Graf Istavan and insist upon royalty.”

  But she was wrong: for my thoughts as well as hers, that evening, were of an old man who had gone empty-handed on a raid to rob Death, instead of a caravan of Persian heretics.

  LORD OF THE FOURTH AXIS

  Originally published in Weird Tales, November 1933.

  “My friend,” began Pierre d’Artois, “what would you say if I told you that one man could have halted the terrific march of Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde, or stopped the relentless sweep of Tamerlane’s power?”

  “I would say,” I replied, certain that d’Artois was proposing one of those paradoxes with which he loves to garnish his speech, “that Jake had mixed too many Sazerac cocktails.”

  “And you would be wrong!” retorted d’Artois. He struck light to a Bastos, several hundred of which villainous cigarettes he had left of the supply that he had brought with him from France. “But I grant that it could not have been accomplished unless that one man had acted in time.”

  “Certainly,” I conceded. “If either of those conquerors had been assassinated at an early age.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Pierre, “if that excellent servitor of yours would mix you another one of those cocktails, your stunted imagination might be equal to what I am about to explain. Listen then!

  “There is another conqueror stirring in Central Asia. And he will
make what you call the monkey of Genghis Khan, and lame Timur who limped his way over half the earth, destroying and building as pleased his fancy. And I, Pierre d’Artois, am here to stop him!”

  D’Artois, who had arrived in New Orleans not more than an hour before, is the most sane and practical man I have ever known. I had been delighted when I received his unexpected telegram, announcing his proposed arrival on the Crescent Limited, Wednesday; and surprised when he arrived a full day ahead of time, having travelled via air from New York. He had smiled cryptically at my demands for explanation of his haste, and had changed the subject; but now, apparently, he was in his dramatic way startling me into full attention.

  I could see from his grim expression as he pronounced the last words of his speech, that he was in earnest, and that the Sazerac cocktails which Jake, my negro handyman, had mixed, were in no wise responsible for Pierre’s staggering remarks. Nevertheless, I regarded him with a stare that finally made him smile at my bewilderment.

  “But no! It is not that I propose to stop an army, single-handed,” he continued. “It is rather that I am here to thwart a psychic menace which is to pave the way for a conqueror who will be more devastating than Genghis Khan, whom they rightly called the Mighty Manslayer. I said psychic; yet perhaps I should have said cosmic, or possibly ultra-cosmic. But decide the word for yourself.”

  He exhaled a cloud of acrid smoke from his vile cigarette. Pierre would have none of our widely advertised American brands. And then he resumed what already promised to be as strange a discourse as that which had preceded his fight against the Lord Peacock in Bayonne, that devil-haunted, charming city in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

  “History has commented on the super-human genius of Genghis Khan. History offers no comparable figure. Alexander the Great—Iskander Dhoulkarnayn, they call him even to this day in the Asiatic lands he invaded—was what in your idiom is termed a boy wonder, a flash in the pan, which soon burned out, and left an empire that disintegrated before the dead of his last battle. And our Napoleon, that Corsican made his fame by wasting the manhood of France, and to what end? Consider, he abandoned an army in Egypt, lost a larger army in Russia, rode to the fiasco of Waterloo, and died in exile, leaving his infant son heir to a fictitious crown. That sweeps the field clear, except for Genghis Khan, and his successor, Tamerlane. They came from the nowhere of High Asia, and they ravaged the world from end to end. The successors of the Great Khan amused themselves building empires of the fragments of that vast heritage left by an obscure nomad chieftain from the Gobi Desert. History has been baffled at the colossal force of him they called, and rightly, the Master of Thrones and Crowns, the Perfect Warrior, the Mighty Manslayer, the Scourge of God, that Genghis Khan whose line and whose conquest persisted for generations, cropping out in that brooding, terrible Tamerlane, and Baber, that empire-builder.