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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Barrett stepped to the center of the room, where he could see the double windows that overlooked the Lachepaillet Wall. He saw a monstrous shape peering at him as, perched on the sill, it clutched the window-bars and slowly wrenched them apart.

  The walls had become obscured with dense, vibrant mist banks, so that only in the center of the room was any light left. The incandescent lamps were now a dull, sombre red that vainly sought to filter through the surging haze.

  The creature’s feet identified it as the monster of the moat.

  Barrett saw now what had torn Louise’s throat and drunk her blood, then taken three long strides and—

  It had spread its membranous bat-wings and soared into the moonlight, and thence to whatever unknown hell had sent it forth. The face was anthropoid, but malignant, beyond the bestial wrath of any honest ape. The body was hybrid, neither reptilian nor simian: a blasphemy and an outrage whose hideously confused anatomy was all the more abhorrent in its mingling of hair and scales.

  The feet were almost human at the heel, but branched into three claw-like toes, joined by webs. Beast it was, yet bird, and reptile. The hands were similarly formed, with arms long enough to accommodate the broad sweep of the membranous wings.

  Barrett knew that the creature had no thought for him. He knew that he could then and there stride safe and harmless through the ever-thickening mist banks, past the sombre, vengeful forms that leered out of the haze, and pass on, unmolested. The beast ignored him. It advanced with a slow, fluent, serpentine motion that was entirely out of accord with its grotesque, awkward bulk. It paused, ready to spring forward and rend Yvonne’s throat, mutilate her as it had her sister.

  The Basque maid, alarmed by Yvonne’s single shriek of mortal terror, came running in, stared in incredulous horror. Then she screamed and collapsed on the threshold.

  As the monster lunged toward Yvonne, who was paralyzed by the apparition, Barrett seized a heavy chair and lashed out, shattering it across the simian skull. The beast recoiled, sank back to its haunches, shook its head as though bewildered.

  Barrett stood for an instant regarding the fragments that remained in his grasp. Then in a flare of rage born of terror and outraged reason, he charged, driving the splintered stumps full into the monster’s face.

  The assault was vain. He had disconcerted the beast more than he had shaken it. It lashed out with arms that reached almost to its ankles, and enfolded Barrett with its shroud of membranous wings. It screeched and hissed in inarticulate fury. Its long carnivorous teeth sought his throat, even as Barrett, beyond terror or reason, evaded the fangs and sought to throttle the beast, and tear it to pieces with his bare hands.

  It was a mad dream of combat in a steaming, prehistoric jungle. The reptilian exhalation of the monster, its squeaking, gibbering wrath and the stifling embrace of its wings, drove Barrett to an insane rage. The thing was strong, but not beyond the strength of human wrath spurred to frenzy; and the very horror of its presence stirred up reserves of destructive fury whose force was dimly echoed in Barrett’s ears as he heard the splintering of furniture that crashed and fell into fragments as he and the monster rolled and leaped, broke, and closed in again, seeking each other’s throat.

  And yet for all his rage-inspired strength and agility, Barrett vainly sought to rend that tough, scaly body which yielded instead of tearing or breaking as he applied in succession, one after another savage trick of wrestling, and murderous holds practiced by Japanese experts. Though it could not quite overcome Barrett, it resisted the full flame of his fury. Its endurance was unflagging, and its counter attacks fresh and vigorous as from the start. It seemed to gain strength from Barrett’s blood, which streamed from a score of cuts and scratches and long, ragged furrows gouged by its teeth.

  Barrett’s strength at last was consumed by the futility of his rage. As in a confused dream, his mind began double-tracking: one half still a vortex of flaming wrath, the other impersonally pondering on d’Artois’ astrological observations. He knew that this division of consciousness heralded the end of his resistance; and exerting an ultimate, despairing effort, sought to sink his teeth into the monster’s throat. But the mists blackened, and the enemy evaded him. His arms clutched a void of abysmal coldness shot with burning flashes of scarlet and orange and dazzling, metallic blue. Then it seemed that he was falling swiftly through unbounded space…and as from a great distance he heard a long drawn wail of uttermost terror.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Savor of Blood

  When Barrett finally regained consciousness he saw that the lights were bright again. D’Artois, kneeling at his side, was sponging his wounds.

  “…all in the approach,” a calm, deep voice was saying. “Your friend—though God alone knows how—withstood the beast by pure force of will to slay. But that was misguided effort.”

  Barrett with a sudden effort propped himself up on his elbow to confront the person who so lightly disposed of that nightmare battle with that monster from an unknown hell; but his strength was unequal to his curiosity, and he sank back to the floor.

  D’Artois helped him to his feet. Barrett, still dazed, for a moment had assumed that d’Artois’ presence left victory to be taken for granted; but a second glance at his friend’s grim features and despair haunted eyes told him the truth.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, stubbornly resisting his fears. “Good Lord, did it—”

  And then Barrett saw d’Artois’ companion, Sidi Abdurrahman. Despite the freshness of the occultist’s bronzed skin, he seemed incredibly ancient. Barrett’s first impression was that some solemn Assyrian colossus had come to life. The neatly trimmed, square cut beard added to the resemblance; only the tall mitre was lacking. For an instant Barrett’s despair subsided; and then he remembered that d’Artois had failed.

  “Where is she?” he repeated. “We can’t stand here, idle.”

  “We do not know—yet,” replied the Chêla, unperturbed by Barrett’s impatient outburst. “But there are ways of finding out. First, be so good as to clear the floor.”

  Barrett shot a dubious glance at d’Artois. His friend’s answering nod was reassuring. And while they cleared away the wreckage of the furniture, Sidi Abdurrahman laid off a circle which he subdivided into seven sectors, and about which he drew a concentric circle.

  “As I was saying a few moments ago,” resumed the occultist, “fighting that monster was misdirected effort. We must find its master; for even though we destroyed the beast, body and soul, he would create—”

  “Soul?” exclaimed Barrett. “That—”

  “Yes. We are confronted by the recrudescence of an ancient evil that began among the Black Magicians of Atlantis. It is written in the occult records: The Atlanteans had become magicians who created monsters with the strength of the brute and the cunning of the savage; and these they ensoulled with the most malignant of elementals, who became guards and messengers, the terrible symbols of the power of the Kings of Darkness.

  “To bind these dread beings more closely to their service, they offered them sacrifices of slain animals and slain men. Fifty thousand years passed: and then the Dragons of Wisdom sent a doom forth from Holy Shamballah.”

  “Is that creature fifty thousand years old?” wondered Barrett.

  The Chêla smiled and shook his head.

  “That is only the time during which the Black Masters were at the height of their power. They were destroyed something like 850,000 years ago when the word went forth from Shamballah. And as it was done then, so must we do now: make the slave betray the master,” continued Sidi Abdurrahman as he drew a seven-pointed star in the innermost circle.

  “We will bribe and drug that monster with blood. It shall find its doom in the very evil by which it has lived all these ages; it can not resist the bait; and instead of warning its master, it will lead us to him.”

  “For a Mohammedan,”
whispered Barrett as the Chêla reached for a small copper bowl which he had brought with him, “he certainly is unorthodox.”

  “Mordieu! Who said he was a Moslem?” countered d’Artois. “His name signifies nothing. He gets his knowledge from study of occult records which are the fountain-head of learning, and transcend race and religion.”

  Sidi Abdurrahman set the bowl at the center of the circles; then he cast into it the contents of a small packet: a fine, bluish powder.

  That done, he drew a dagger, saying, “This will be its last drink of blood! And it cannot refuse the bait; for such is the law of its kind.”

  But before the keen blade touched the vein of the Chêla’s forearm, Barrett interposed.

  “Let me in on this,” he said, thrusting forward his own arm.

  “No. I have an old debt to pay. One contracted in a former life, by a former failure. Just is the Wheel and unswerving, and this is my debt.”

  With the evening’s earlier madness, Barrett found the occultist’s reference to a previous incarnation entirely rational. He stepped back as the blade bit, and the old man’s blood spurted redly into the copper bowl.

  When the bowl was filled to the brim, d’Artois stepped forward and with a handkerchief and lead pencil devised a tourniquet to check the flow.

  They watched the occultist bow ceremonially to the cardinal points of the compass, and make ritual gestures. They heard him intone, “The hour has struck, and the black night is ready…let their destiny be accomplished…”

  And then Barrett could no longer understand the Chêla’s utterance. The sonorous, majestic intonation was in a tongue so foreign and archaic that it seemed not even remotely related to any speech of mankind.

  They stood, poised and expectant, watching the copper bowl and the blood that glowed like a monstrous carbuncle. They became aware of another presence in the room. A grayish vapor finally coalesced above the red surface; and then as Sidi Abdurrahman’s great voice thundered the ultimate, triumphant syllables of that age-old occult chant, the materialization became complete.

  Barrett started in sudden alarm as he recognized at the center of the circle the same beast which had so nearly overcome him; but it was now translucent and unsubstantial, a phantom replica of the living horror. It knelt submissively, wings folded over its back as though it were a bird of prey subdued and garbed in the mockery of human form; and as with bestial eagerness it lapped up the bowl of blood, its body seemed to become more dense. A musty, reptilian stench pervaded the room.

  When the bowl was empty, Sidi Abdurrahman’s arm flashed out in a commanding gesture. The monster shrank as from the touch of red hot iron, then stepped from the circle.

  D’Artois slipped an automatic pistol into Barrett’s hand. The cold metal reminded him that at least a shred of reality remained.

  “There will be men, later,” d’Artois explained. Then, anticipating Barrett’s question: “When this is over, I will tell you the answer—if we survive.”

  The grotesque procession filed down the hall and to the deserted rue Lachepaillet. The monster shambled down the street and at the end of some fifty yards, crossed toward the parapet, then stepped into a narrow doorway. They followed it down a steep, rubbish littered stairway that led to a vaulted chamber which, by the beam of d’Artois’ flashlight, Barrett recognized as a long untenanted dungeon; and then, on its hands and knees, the apparition crept through a low archway. It emerged on the bottom of the moat.

  “Ah…this is not entirely a surprise,” muttered d’Artois as he noted the direction taken by their spectral guide. “And we’ll soon see whether Don José is its master.”

  After passing Porte d’Espagne, they ascended the steep bank of the moat, and thence toward the sombre grove at the Spring of St. Leon, where their spectral guide turned toward a casemate which was barely visible in the shadow of a solitary, gigantic tree.

  Sidi Abdurrahman halted at the entrance of the casemate. His majestic features were tense; and the fixity of his gaze betokened the concentration whereby he maintained his control of the monster. The occultist gestured toward the passageway which led straight into the heart of the knoll that rose from the level of the clearing.

  “Part of Vauban’s fortifications?” wondered Barrett, as by the beam of d’Artois’ flashlight they stepped into the darkness.

  “For a distance, yes,” agreed d’Artois. “But before we are through, we will enter a place which neither Vauban nor any other honest engineer ever built.”

  Although the apparition was faintly luminous in the darkness, Barrett was certain that the Chêla followed it by some sense other than the five which normal humanity has.

  “How did he call that thing out of thin air?” whispered Barrett, to whom the entire uncanny proceeding seemed like the fantasy of a nightmare.

  “He provided it with a body, very much as a spiritualistic medium furnishes the substance for a materialization,” explained d’Artois. “Its visible form is made up of part of the etheric double which every living creature has. And in order to maintain the form that the creature is using, Sidi Abdurrahman is exerting a tremendous effort, and drawing on an incredible reserve of psychic and physical energy. Few can endure the strain of lending too much vital force: which accounts for the eventual collapse of most spiritualist mediums.

  “The force that animates this materialization of the monster is the elemental spirit that ensoulled the body of the beast that killed Louise. This which we now see is not its physical body; and thus, being bound in an artificially created etheric form, the elemental cannot warn its master of our approach—ah…we’re getting somewhere!”

  The passageway had opened into what seemed to be a squad room for that portion of the outer defenses of the citadel. Sidi Abdurrahman and his guide had passed through an opening which pierced the further wall of the chamber.

  “This is where Vauban’s work ends,” muttered d’Artois. “Beyond—God alone knows!”

  The opening had been roughly cut through the masonry. Beyond it was a low tunnel whose spade-marked walls showed that it had been recently dug. At the end of a dozen paces it terminated at the upper landing of a staircase which was not the work of any military engineer. It had been relieved of the earth which had buried it for uncounted ages—brought to light again by the black master who had sent death stalking in the moonlight.

  An aura of incalculable antiquity oppressed them as they stepped to the threshold of the blackness below.

  Flight succeeded flight, until they arrived in a vaulted passage whose walls were buttressed with pilasters of masonry whose prodigious bulk dwarfed the mighty columns of Karnak.

  “Good Lord!” whispered Barrett, awed by the monumental architecture. “It looks as though we’ve gone beyond time and reason and—”

  “Mon ami,” countered d’Artois grimly, “the evening is young. Listen—”

  Far ahead of them, out of the age-old darkness, came the muttering of drums and the wailing of pipes. Sidi Abdurrahman halted, gestured.

  “He will stay here to hold the messenger,” explained d’Artois. “Allons!”

  As they advanced along the passage they heard chanting, and the antiphonal responses of a ritual. And finally, as they rounded a turn, the corridor opened into a vault which was pervaded by a vibrant bluish glow.

  The dome, supported by colossal pillars, swelled high above those who flitted to and fro in the satanic twilight of great glowing orbs whose quivering radiance was beclouded by fumes that rose stiflingly sweet from tall censer-tripods. They were warped and gnarled, those subterranean dwellers, long-armed, hairy survivors of a race that had vanished aeons before man in his present form appeared.

  One among them, however, was tall and towering, and resplendent in a robe that flamed and coruscated as though woven of gems; and on his head he wore a conical mitre of beaten silver. At his gesture the drumming and piping su
bsided and the acolytes ranged themselves on each side of an arch that pierced the further extremity of the vault. The arch was veiled by a heavy damask drape of crimson shot with gold.

  “The master of the show,” whispered d’Artois. And then, as the tall, resplendent leader turned: “And I was right—Don José!”

  The dabbler in forbidden arts had finally descended to become high priest of those subterranean beastmen. Barrett shuddered as he thought of what their food might be, since they did not appear by daylight to eat of what grew beneath the sun. He wondered whether they had always lived in those archaic vaults, or whether they had but recently been revived from suspended animation—

  And then the crimson drapes parted like flames torn by the breath of some nether hell. Barrett knew then that Sidi Abdurrahman had guided them well.

  In the niche exposed by the parting of the gold-shot curtains was a lotus blossom carved of rock that glistened with the glassy lustre of lacquer-ware. In the heart of the black lotus sat Yvonne, eyes veiled by her long lashes, arms crossed on her breast, head slightly inclined. Her fine features had the tranquility of the drugged, or of the quiet dead.

  Barrett’s hand flashed to his pistol butt as he gathered himself to spring from the concealing shadows; but d’Artois restrained him.

  “They will cut us to pieces with their knives,” whiskered the old man. “This calls for strategy.”

  The odds were twenty to one. Though they emptied their pistols and extra clips, the survivors could still overwhelm them; and the enemy had to be exterminated if Yvonne were to be taken from that satanic vault.

  “Then let’s go back and get reinforcements,” suggested Barrett.

  D’Artois shook his head.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Better see what this show signifies. We might not be able to return in time to—”