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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  I was trembling violently, shivering from the immeasurable cold of interplanetary space; but my brain was a glowing ball of incandescence that threatened to burst forth and mingle with the terrific splendor before me.

  “Steady, my son,” came the voice of Father Martin from the other end of a succession of infinities, “this too is illusion and mockery. We are in the presence of more than seemed possible to this master of unmentionable blasphemies. But High God is witnessing this infamy. And He will speak.”

  Strange, hearing mention of God in that diabolical mockery of every rational fact and foundation of the universe. I remembered Pierre’s solemnly irreverent-seeming words, and believed that we were indeed before the servant of Him who is beyond the scope of our God and His three-dimensional divinity.

  The harmonies became even more outrageously baffling. They were now interfering, and the interference beats were weaving even stranger patterns of vibration. This colossal engine of frequency-blending was pouring together not only light and sound, but the higher rays from the bulbous glass tubes, all into one heterodyne whose beats were now upsetting the very geometry of creation.

  The circle of the vault was no longer a circle, but a curve that my mind could not name, or even conceive. It is madness to speak of a hemisphere with angles, but angles it had, and they were neither right, nor obtuse, nor acute. There were parallel lines crossing before my very eyes. The insane geometry of that vault was now a defiance of every principle of engineering and architecture. I knew that the dome would have to collapse, and bury us beneath its mass. No substance aggregated into that shape could cohere. I shrank instinctively, to avoid the crash of that impossible structure.

  “Hold to your sanity!” shouted Father Martin. “If it must fall, it will fall!”

  Sanity! When even he was resigned to the madness of it, and the absence of his God from this maelstrom of perverted space!

  Bands of light rang with infinite sweetness in my ears. I could see hyperbolas and parabolas from their origin to their extremities that extended to infinity, and mighty spirals that reached beyond. And there were sounds whose curves swept with inexpressible grace. There was neither forward, backward, sidewise, neither up nor down in that vortex of vibration. I began finally to understand the words of that obscene chanting!

  Then came the supreme terror, the uttermost blasphemy; I became aware of a column of greenish haze in the space between the rugs. In that space was the final outrage: the three dimensions of our cosmos, and a fourth axis of direction at right angles to each of the three we know. In that zone of fourth dimension, I could perceive a pathway along which I could walk to escape from the heart of a steel globe without penetrating its walls. And whoever could march along that Fourth Axis could master this and all other worlds with the forces that would follow him from across the Border of our tridimensional universe of height and breadth and length.

  There was the Gateway, and there were its keepers, reading the equations that defined the pathway, pronouncing tremendous syllables of the master vibration.

  “They are doing it!” groaned Father Martin. “The door is open. And look—great God, look!”

  I looked. And even in that horror of visible sound and audible color I could still recognize the destruction of the last hope, and the severance of the last link to sanity.

  Our world was but the intersection of a plane that cut a fourth-dimensional cosmos. In the incredible geometry of that section of super-space, the small triangular base between the rugs contained enough room to deploy armies and engulf worlds. In our world that triangle covered but a few square feet, but in that diabolical perversion of all sense, it was an abyss that cleft the uttermost depths and frontiers of the universe. The Golden Horde of Genghis Khan, the uncounted hosts of High Asia could march and countermarch, lost in that vastness; Antares and Aldebaran could roam about, lost, hopeless sparks in that terrific gulf. In that green, shimmering haze was a Presence, the Lord of the Fourth Axis marching at right angles to our three dimensions; and in his trace were monstrous entities that transcended all experience and conception. I closed my eyes to the terror, but in vain; for our eyes looked along the Fourth Axis, and through our eyelids!

  The edges of the green zone were rolling toward us, engulfing the master hierophants, and reaching toward those on the outer fringe. The Master on his throne saw, and terror swept his god-like features, and the adepts crouched back toward the wall, shrinking from the march of the Lord of the Fourth Axis and his followers. They, the evokers, were stunned by the apparition of that which they had evoked.

  At that instant of immeasurable terror, a figure leaped from the niche at our left. Pierre d’Artois! He charged across that anteroom of hell to confront the Presence from across the Border. In his left hand he held, extended, a roughly fashioned crux ansata of copper. As he advanced, he chanted, full and clear against the terrible weaving of harmonies of rays and sounds and colors.

  Green, crackling flames leaped about the thrones and parasols. We heard the tremendous wrathful murmur of outraged space; and above it, new, strange whisperings and rustlings and chirpings. Pierre’s great voice and prodigious utterance was rending and slashing the web of sorcery, and shattering its exquisitely attuned harmonies. The uncannily distorted angles and monstrous spirals and terrifying, nameless involute curves were assuming rationality as the perverted geometry of the vault began to correct itself. And the zone of greenish haze in the center grew vague and unstable; and the clear vistas of spatial vastness grew dim and obscure.

  “Look!” I yelled, clutching Father Martin’s arm. “He’s breaking it up!”

  With a howl of rage, the dazed adepts emerged from their stupor, and poured from their thrones and their posts. Father Martin and I charged through the dim twilight that remained of the wrenched symphony of blended vibrations, joining Pierre, and seizing the staves of parasols from the vacant thrones. The enemy, still dulled by the rending of their mesh of vibrant power, of which they themselves had for the time been an actual part, could not collect their wits soon enough to prevent d’Artois and the priest and me from forming, back to back, for our hopeless stand.

  We were lost, and the world with us. For having seen, we now knew, rather than surmised. They would overwhelm us, and re-establish that awful vortex of power at their leisure, the next time stopping short of the full evocation which had terrified even those bronzed lords of doom. Pierre had for the moment saved the world, but he had surely saved its destroyers also.

  We used the parasol staves as quarterstaff or pike. We salvaged blades from those disarmed by Pierre’s uncanny adaptation of any arm, however hopeless, to the cunning play of a skilled swordsman trained in the salles d’armes of those old French masters among whom he was eminent. It all happened in a moment; and then, steel in hand, we sought to resist the wave that rolled toward us as the adepts got their wits back to the third dimension.

  “Here’s to a finish!” I shouted to Father Martin above the howling rage of the enemy.

  “A good finish!” he roared in return, swinging his salvaged ceremonial blade with unskilled but vigorous strokes.

  “Tenez! Hang on! Sock them!” bellowed Pierre, as with deadly skill he wove harmonies of steel as amazing as those vibration harmonies he had just shattered. His blade bit and slashed, lengthwise and athwart, compensating for our cruder, heavier efforts. He was slaying with a dazzling swiftness that was so precise and finely timed as to seem deliberate. “We can hold them!”

  Luckily the enemy had only their broad, curved ritual swords. One pistol in the crowd would have wiped us out. The priest had turned into a fighting-man, sturdy but awkward, leaving himself open with every stroke he made. And Pierre, dancing in and out with his flickering steel, found time once and again in that mill of slaughter to deflect with his own blade the cut that would have shorn Father Martin in half. As for me, I held my own; but my arm was becoming numb, and my parries
were slower, and my returns less effective.

  “We can hold them!” Pierre had shouted, confident in his mastery of steel. But the priest and I were wearing out. It was Pierre’s indomitable spirit that spoke, rather than his reason.

  The cuts and batterings of the raid were telling. And soon Pierre was favoring me with the protection of his blade. The enemy, wary from our first whirlwind of slashing, was now more subtle. With a great cry, one of them hurdled the wall of slain behind which, we resisted their advance, and impaled himself on Father Martin’s sword-point; and at the same instant, his companion slashed clear through the priest’s lowered guard.

  Two of us now. Stout Pierre, and I, on my last legs. Another rush of Mongol swordsmen, and then—

  A terrific detonation shook the floor beneath our feet. Then a second and sharper explosion, and a rush of smoke from the passageway leading into the vault.

  “Tenez!” roared Pierre. “Hang on! They are here!”

  Even as he spoke, I heard the crackle of pistols and the roar of a riot gun. I saw men charging in through the acrid clouds of smoke.

  My distracted attention cost me a grazing sweep that parted my hair. But I emerged from my crouch with an upward stroke, felt my blade rip home, and free again. Then through eyes half blinded by blood, I saw the sheriff’s posse driving in and closing, hand to hand.

  “Those excellent deputies!” exulted d’Artois. “Imbécile! En garde! We are not through!”

  I followed behind the shelter of his blade as he hacked his way toward the posse.

  * * * *

  It was soon over. In another instant the surviving adepts had been swept back and slugged into submission. We found Father Martin where he had fallen athwart the three satanic rugs. He clutched the fringe of one, as though to guard it as long as life remained.

  Pierre knelt at his side.

  “Carry on where I left off,” he contrived to say between gasps, and coughing of blood. “On your life, destroy those rugs…”

  Pierre’s fingers closed about the grip of a sword. But as he rose, the priest’s hand detained him.

  “Those who live by the sword—”

  Father Martin could not complete his speech.

  “Very well, Father,” replied d’Artois as he laid down his blade. And then, with more reverence than I had ever before heard in his voice, “Grâce à Dieu, he lived long enough to know that he did not take up the sword in vain. And if I recollect rightly, it was a well-established precedent that he followed.”

  The posse was returning from the corner where the enemy lay in a heap about the throne of the Master.

  “Ho, there, Monsieur le Shérif!” he hailed, “Be so good as to have several of your deputies lend us a hand.” He indicated with a gesture the body of Father Martin. The sheriff started in amazement at seeing a priest lying in the tangle of fallen adepts. He lifted his hat, and inclined his head for a moment.

  “You do well, monsieur,” said d’Artois as he saw that gesture of respect to the cloth. “And you know not how well. That is more than a priest. He is—”

  Words failed d’Artois for an instant. Then, to me, and speaking with a hoarse, strained voice, “And do you give me a hand with these accursed rugs before Satan himself snatches them from our grasp. They have cost us too much already!”

  * * * *

  We followed the posse to the cars in which they had come to our rescue.

  Our adversaries, like most Asiatics, had used the cutting edge instead of the point; and though they had just fallen short of slashing us to bits, they had not vitally damaged us. One good thrust is worth a dozen of all but perfectly directed cuts. And then, they had been occultists and not masters of the sword, else they had hewn us to pieces before the rescuers arrived. Nevertheless, it might be said that when we returned from the emergency hospital, we were so bandaged that we had to be stacked into chairs in the courtyard of that house on Saint Peter Street, which I had not expected to see again.

  “Now that we’re back in the third dimension,” I began, “suppose that you tell me how it happened.”

  “Skipping details,” replied Pierre, “I learned, shortly after I left you and Father Martin in the hallway, that they had a radio sending-set for communication with their other units about the country. They were so sure of themselves that they did not watch me as closely as they might have. They were certain that they would make an ally of me, doubtless. At all events, I bent a wrench over the head of the radio operator and took advantage of the opportunity to put in a few words which most fortunately were picked up by the New Orleans police sets. You see, I remembered the proper wave length from having seen the dial of your set when we heard the general alarm and orders to pick up those agents of the Master who were impersonating Federal men.

  “Those explosions?” Pierre grinned. “Mordieu! I was too busy to inquire! But judging from the smell of the fumes, I should say they used a good quantity of 80 percent blasting gelatin. Whatever it was, it tore the steel door from its housing. And incidentally, the shock for a moment halted the charge that would have overwhelmed us.”

  “Whether it was blasting gelatin or TNT,” I said, “the sheriff didn’t get in a second too soon! But what I wanted to know was what happened just as you popped into the scene. When the Last Conqueror looked flabbergasted, right when space and geometry and time and light and sound were so hopelessly scrambled, and that damnable Thing came marching down—it seems like a pipe-dream, but for a moment I could see It approaching at right angles to height, length, and width, all at the same time. Four mutually perpendicular axes!”

  D’Artois smiled and shook his head.

  “Cochon! He overstepped himself, that one! First, of course, in assuming that I would be tempted by power unheard of, and join him. But as your American aviators put it, he over-controlled, and the Gateway became too wide. It admitted too much. That is a crude expression, but it must suffice. There are no exact words, you comprehend. We were closer to the fourth dimension than I ever wish to be, myself!

  “He was momentarily disconcerted at having done more than he had intended, perhaps more than he dreamed possible. I don’t know what would have happened if I had not interposed.”

  “Neither, for that matter, does he!” Pierre smiled grimly, then continued, “And he’ll never find out, that would-be successor to Genghis Khan, who was a schoolboy compared to what today’s enemy would have been had he achieved his purpose.”

  Then he resumed his explanation.

  “At that instant, I ran to the center of the vortex of force and upset the complex harmony, destroying that devil’s resonance of light, rays, and sound vibrations which he had created. It was so terrific, yet at the same time so delicately synchronized and balanced that it could be shattered more readily than you would think.

  “I pronounced the equations of super-dimensional space that I had with Father Martin’s aid deduced from studying the rug; although to be frank about it, I’m not sure that it made any difference what I said. For right in the heart of the vortex, even a discordant thought might conceivably cause that diabolical heterodyne to skip a beat or ring a false note in its higher harmonies of interfering waves.

  “That piece of copper cable I had twisted into the shape of a crude crux ansata was to—how do you say it?—buck up my own courage, for I carried with me the moral backing of what it symbolized.

  “And you, my friend, were not out of your mind when you thought that you heard colors, and saw sounds, and observed angular circles. That vortex of vibrations all attuned to the conditions demanded by the equations woven into those rug patterns literally upset a portion of what we call space of three dimensions, and did outrageous things to it.

  “And that reminds me.” D’Artois paused a moment, then resumed in a low, solemn voice, “I made Father Martin a promise. And had it not been for his profound learning—“Jake, build for us
a fire! Immédiatement! At once! Here, in the courtyard.”

  Then, as Jake heaped kindling and touched a match to it, d’Artois resumed, “And God forbid that we delay another moment in carrying out the last wish of that brave priest. Those damnable rugs are unique in containing the secret of opening the Gateway to the Fourth Plane, of Super-space of which our world may be but a cross-section.

  “Jake, throw them into the fire!”

  “No, suh, Mistah Peer, no suh! Ah ain’t gonna tech none of them!” he declared, rolling his eyes and edging away.

  “Mordieu, and I do not blame the boy,” said d’Artois as he painfully emerged from his chair. He flung the rich folds into the hungry flames. Instead of the stench of burning fabric there came a sweetish, pungent odor, and clouds of violet smoke.

  “No honest rug would bum that way,” I remarked.

  “That flame,” replied Pierre, “does seem to confirm some statements made by the Master. The late Master, I could more accurately put it,” he amended. “He claimed that the dyes and yarn came from beyond our three-dimensional cosmos. Whether that was in good faith, or to impress me so that I would join them, I can not say. But you were in that vault, and you saw.”

  “Which makes it all the more unreal,” I answered, “to be sitting here in my own courtyard, looking at the coals that contain all of that vast scheme.”

  THE DEVIL’S CRYPT

  Also published as “Gray Sphinx”

  Originally published in Strange Detective Stories, January 1934.

  CHAPTER 1