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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “What’s that—over there?” demanded Barrett. “Good Lord! Did it get away from Sidi Abdurrahman?”

  He indicated something that stirred in the shadow of a pillar at the right of the altar; and then he saw that despite its similarity to the beast which had overcome him, it was distinctly another creature.

  “A new monster about to be ensoulled by an elemental, to be a companion to the one that killed Louise,” explained d’Artois. “And Yvonne is here to provide the blood offering—remember Sidi Abdurrahman’s remarks?”

  “Let’s go out blazing!” growled Barrett; but again d’Artois restrained him.

  “Not yet,” murmured d’Artois. “We have to get her out of here.”

  But despite the calmness of his voice, his features were pale, and perspiration cropped out on his forehead as in desperation he searched his brain for some device to accomplish the impossible. Sidi Abdurrahman, holding the first monster helpless, was out of the question as an ally; but now, if ever, they needed that great occultist’s aid.

  “He won’t fail us,” d’Artois said. “And we’ll see our moment…”

  Two acolytes were advancing toward the altar. One had a bowl of burnished copper, the other, a long-bladed knife. And as they took their posts, Don José began chanting.

  “Bal-Taratan, come forth! Bal-Karadîn, come forth! From the blackness and from Avichi, Dark Lords, come forth!”

  The braying and bellowing of strange wind instruments and the savage thunder of drums was bestial as the sluggish shape that crouched whimpering by the altar, awaiting the elemental that was to emerge from Avichi, the eighth and nethermost hell.

  “God…that’s awful,” muttered Barrett as he watched the weaving gestures of Don José and his acolytes.

  Brass clanged. The deep, hoarse, booming blasts of horns shook the vault. Mists were writhing like phantom serpents basking in the rays of a phantom sun that revived them from the chill of night.

  “Bal-Taratan! Bal-Karadîn! I open the Gateway! I mark the Path!” intoned Don José, his voice rich and clear above that lustful bellowing and the sharp clack-clack of pebbles rattled in a yellowed skull. The acolytes, gesturing now like automatons, stared glassily, unaware of the shapes that were becoming visible.

  Bal-Taratan! Bring him forth! Bal-Karadîn! Bring him forth! I have a house for him! And for him I have food! Ia Bal-Taratan! Ia Bal-Karadîn!”

  And as Don José paused at the enunciation of the names of the Lords of the Eighth Hell, the acolytes hissed a phrase that was a dying, evil echo of those dread words.

  “A feast of blood! A drink of blood!”

  The acolytes responded, “Yea, the fumes of blood! The fumes, and the savor!”

  The mist was now thicker, and its coldness had become folds of reptilian foulness. D’Artois and Barrett crouched in the angle of the pilaster, stricken by the sorcery of that evil chant. The terrific blasting of that awful rhythm had numbed and paralyzed body and mind.

  “Yea, the fume of blood, and its savor!” thundered the chorus.

  They were weaving a red symphony. Blood…blood…red mists shot with streaks of blackness that coruscated, and blackness that flamed! There was a stirring and chirping and twittering, and the flapping as of monstrous wings beating the upper air of the vault.

  D’Artois’ cheeks were gray, and Barrett’s face was distorted from the acute physical misery induced by that terrific reiteration and weaving of words. His teeth were clenched, and sweat poured from his brow.

  The words of the chant now became strange syllables whose fusion and blending gave a meaning that transcended language, striking into the very souls of the two who crouched in the shadows, binding them with a hideous fascination.

  The bowl was ready. And the knife was rising…

  CHAPTER 4

  The Lords of Fire

  A solemn command came from the chaos of sound: “Bring him forth, Bal-Taratan! Bal-Karadîn!”

  Don José’s voice was the final assault to pierce the veil, and open the Gateway for the elemental that was to possess that hideous body; but it served still another purpose. D’Artois flinched from the anguish of the impact; the shock wrenched into life his numbed muscles, his stupefied brain; and his wrath, suddenly released, sent his hand flashing to his holster—

  Smack smack smack! The acolyte with the knife pitched forward. The one who held the bowl dropped to the flags.

  “Gardez-vous!” shouted d’Artois, with his left hand jerking Barrett to his feet. “Pick them off! Steady, now!”

  The ranks of the acolytes wavered before the deadly fire, broke in panic.

  “Missed him!” growled Barrett, as Don José flattened behind a pedestal and a bullet ricocheted, whining into the shadows.

  The enemy re-formed and charged, knives advanced. They flashed forward like serpents, darting and zigzagging, hunched forward in a crouch. Some jerked suddenly upward as a slug pitched them end for end. Others, riddled, charged on to collapse within a pace of their mark. But many lived.

  “Give me a clip!”

  “Fini!” snapped d’Artois. “Take a knife—voilá!”

  His pistol for another instant chattered like a machine gun; then came a sudden silence. The enemy paused, wondering; then they understood, and closed in.

  Hoarse breathing, and the slip-slip of bare feet that wove in and out, devil-dancers darting back and forth with flickering blades.

  “Too many,” gasped Barrett, during a breathing space when the fury of their concerted assault drove the enemy back in momentary panic. “Get us—yet—get that—get José—”

  D’Artois, master swordsman, might with his uncanny skill bore through the press and close in with the high priest. No other resource remained.

  But the voice of Don José urged his beast-men to the attack, and the overwhelming wave surged resistlessly forward.

  “Back!” yelled d’Artois. “Before they surround us. Into the niche, Ça!”

  Even as he spoke, he flashed forward—then back, and on guard again, blade dripping afresh, hand ready to strike again, slash through some weak spot in the dense line.

  Another command from Don José. The attack withdrew, and he advanced to parley.

  “Ah…d’Artois,” he said, “since steel will not dislodge you, let us try—”

  Suddenly his dark eyes became fixed, and his hands made rhythmic gestures. D’Artois and Barrett, caught off guard by the unaccountable action of their empty-handed enemy, faltered for an instant, perplexed. Despite the wrath of battle, their instincts for a moment restrained their attack on an unarmed man.

  D’Artois was the first to recover.

  “Rush him!” he cried, leaping forward. But he had waited too long.

  Flames began lapping up from the paving in a crescent that imprisoned d’Artois and Barrett in its semicircle. The fires slowly converged, inch by inch, hungry blue flame relentlessly advancing.

  “Hold your breath and dive through!”

  “No!” shouted d’Artois, seizing Barrett by the shoulder. “It’ll burn us to cinders. Elemental fires!”

  Barrett did not understand; but he read the desperation in d’Artois’ eyes.

  “Resist his will. Fight his thought! If you fear, you are lost!”

  “What do you mean—”

  “Do as I say or you’re lost—she’s lost!”

  Barrett was dismayed by that uncanny, marching flame above whose wavering crest burned the fixed, malignant eyes of Don José. The madness of that awful night had reached its climax when blue flames were exhaled by solid flagging. But when he saw that d’Artois’ gaze was fixed, and his features composed, he gained courage.

  “I defy your will and your power with my will and my force!” he heard d’Artois tensely whispering. The low murmur became rhythmic as drum-beats, and inexorable as fate. And Barrett began to repeat
d’Artois’ words, halfheartedly at first, then confidently.

  “I defy your will with my will, your power with my power!” he repeated.

  Suddenly he felt a strange thrill of triumph surge up from within him; and for an instant the psychic concussion of the liberated force shook him, and his dry eyes blinded as he blinked, caught a sobbing breath, and repeated, “I defy you, my will against your will…”

  He saw that the flames no longer advanced. The intolerable heat scorched and singed, but no longer increased.

  The flames retreated—only by the breadth of a finger—but they retreated, beaten back by will that fought will.

  And then Barrett faltered, cracking under the terrific strain.

  “Can’t make… I’m done in!”

  They heard a cry of triumph from beyond the wall of flame. Don José knew that his victims were helpless, and stood waiting for the fires to close in. D’Artois and Barrett exchanged despairing glances.

  “Try it!” muttered Barrett. “It’ll roast us anyway—”

  D’Artois nodded, and his fingers closed on the haft of his red knife, but his occult knowledge assured him that the blade would fuse from the terrific heat.

  Don José’s exultation, however, was checked as a mighty voice thundered from the passageway, “My will against your will, and my power against your power!”

  It was awful in its richness and volume. Sidi Abdurrahman was chanting as he advanced, solemn, prodigious-seeming as a descending doom—a colossus of power stalking across the Border.

  “I have returned to accomplish where once I failed. You escaped me, ages ago, when the Dragons of Wisdom proclaimed the black night of doom for lost Atlantis. I failed, but in the many lives I have lived since then, I have gained power against your power, and will against your will!”

  Don José made a gesture. Then he found his voice, and uttered a command. The flames wavered as he spoke, then surged high as his followers clustered about him. They resisted the Chêla’s awful will—but in vain. The tips of the crescent of fire drew from the wall. Don José had lost command of the weapon he had devised; it lived on by the force that the Chêla concentrated. Flight was futile; space is nonexistent in occult combat. And the beast-men and their chief made their last desperate resistance as the flaming crescent reversed its curvature, enfolding them in its terrific embrace.

  There was no outcry—only a hissing and crackling that endured but an instant. Then came the dreadful stench of searing flesh as flame, hungrier than any earthly fire, lapped with deadly swiftness, roaring as winds lashing monstrous cliffs. A column of awful radiance burned for a moment with adamantine brilliance.

  When their dazzled eyes had become accustomed to the ensuing dimness, d’Artois and Barrett emerged from their niche and strode over the blistering tiles. They were careful not to look at the spot where the flames had centered.

  Sidi Abdurrahman’s august features were still transfigured, but the power was leaving him. It was only with an effort that he kept his feet as, smiling wanly, he made a gesture of benediction.

  “This is the end of an old feud that started many lives ago. I was not ready for this meeting—but to save her—and you—I spoke. The Occult Masters sought to help—did help—”

  He gasped, caught his breath, and with difficulty resumed, “They warned me—I could not endure the test—since I could not—receive all the force they were sending. But I could not decline—”

  D’Artois caught the Chêla as he collapsed. The silence for a moment was unbroken save for the bestial whimperings of the wounded who had dropped short of the vortex of flame.

  “We can do nothing for Sidi Abdurrahman,” said d’Artois. “Get Yvonne—quick! Before we all go mad!”

  * * * *

  As the sun rose, Yvonne, revived from the drugs of the Satanic ritual and quite unharmed, heard d’Artois’ narrative. Barrett, bandaged and smarting from his wounds, answered her weary smile, then turned to his friend:

  “Pierre, I’m still stumped by a few things.”

  “Only a few?” countered the old man with a flash of good-humored irony that for a moment struggled through the sombre memory of death’s double thrust at a lovely girl and a great-hearted occultist.

  “Where did he get that awful body for the elemental spirit?”

  “The crypts beneath the city,” said d’Artois, “have spawned strange broods. Monstrous hybrids, perhaps archaic survivals of lost Shâlmali, revived from suspended animation by Don José. But that is an occult rather than a scientific problem.”

  “After all,” said Barrett, “the final riddle is, why did anyone with Don José’s talents dabble in such ghastly studies? What motive—”

  “He was following the tradition of the Black Brotherhood,” replied d’Artois. “He was moved by the lust for power given by the services of elementals. He needed familiar spirits to help him further his pursuit of dark arts. Blood alone would bind them to his will; and you know to what lengths he went.”

  Yvonne shuddered at the evening’s memories, then interposed, “But why did your friend’s heroism end fatally?”

  “At the best, I can only guess,” admitted d’Artois. “Despite his great learning, he was only a Chêla, not a full initiate. Thus he could not endure the forces which he called forth, and he knew that he could not. Yet he accepted the challenge.

  “He created a psychic explosion whose repercussion literally blasted him to pieces. Not his physical body, but his vital forces, which were unable to withstand the strain of mastering that elemental fire.”

  D’Artois paused. The silence was acute; and for a moment it seemed that they felt the presence of Sidi Abdurrahman. Finally Barrett spoke.

  “He mentioned other lives—”

  “According to the traditions of his order,” resumed d’Artois, “he believes in reincarnation. And it seems that in some former existence he failed in his duty, so that in the lives that followed, he sought to redeem himself.

  “He stood there in the vault, holding the captured elemental a prisoner. He was oblivious to his surroundings; but when Don José called the fires down on us, the psychic impact aroused Sidi Abdurrahman and brought to his consciousness the presence of an age-old enemy of all mankind.

  “But whatever the reason and however science may try to explain it, we owe our survival to Sidi Abdurrahman.”

  D’Artois cleared his throat, rose, stepped to the door.

  “I am an old man,” he said, “and vengeance leaves me weary. Let me therefore leave you in good hands while I rout out Monsieur le Préfet. I will have him dynamite the entrance of that accursed vault, so that no matter how ominous the stars may be, there will be no more archaic survivals coming forth in search of victims.”

  And Barrett, regarding Yvonne Marigny, knew that when grief had received its due, untroubled moonlight on the Lachepaillet Wall would make the Gray Sphinx of the Pyrenees more alluring than before.

  SATAN’S GARDEN

  Originally published in Weird Tales, April 1934.

  CHAPTER 1

  Invisible Scourge

  It was long past the hour of tinkling glass, and song to the guitar, and crowded tables at the Café du Théâtre. The gray-walled city of Bayonne slept in the moonlight like an odalisque overcome with wine and lying bejeweled in a garden whence the musicians had departed. It is thus that Bayonne has slept each night of the full moon for more than nineteen centuries at the junction of the Nive and the Adour, guarding the road to Spain.

  There were two who sat in a room on the second floor of a house that faced the street running along the city wall. One was old and leathery, with fierce, upturned gray mustaches, and eyes that smoldered beneath shaggy brows; the other was not more than half his age, a lean, broad-shouldered man whose bronzed features were rugged as the masonry of the fortress, and seamed with a saber slash that ran from his cheek-bone
almost to the chin.

  The younger emerged from the depths of his chair like a panther leaving his cage. He paced the length of the room and paused at the window to stare out into the dazzling moon-brightness that slowly marched from the rolling, tree-clustered parkway and invaded the shadows cast by the city wall across the dry moat that skirted it. Then, as he retraced his steps, he glanced at his watch.

  “Later than usual tonight, Pierre,” he observed. His voice was weary from baffled wrath. “Do you suppose that It may skip a night?”

  Pierre d’Artois shook his gray head and sighed.

  “Why should It fail to torment her? We sit here like dummies, you and I. And to what purpose? Look!” He indicated the seals on the door at his left. “It could get through neither door nor window without breaking those seals—”

  “But It did, by heaven!” exclaimed the younger. And Glenn Farrell resumed his pacing the length of the Boukhara rug that carpeted the room. He made a gesture of futile rage, then resumed, “But how, Pierre—and why?”

  Pierre d’Artois twisted his mustache, shook his head again, and struck light to a cigarette. Farrell sank into the depths of his chair and retrieved the cigar butt he had laid on its arm.

  “We couldn’t have slept on post without one of us being aware of it,” resumed Farrell. His voice was monotonous from repetition of a statement so often made that he himself had begun to doubt it. “And if we had—”

  He regarded the waxen seals on the door.

  “Those seals couldn’t have been duplicated, with your die locked in a bank vault each night. And she couldn’t have escaped.”

  “No, she could not,” agreed d’Artois. “But some one—some thing—got in.”

  “A weasel, a cat, a snake,” enumerated Farrell, “might slip through those bars. Nothing larger. Certainly nothing large enough to—good God! Listen!”

  Grim and trembling they stood at the sealed door. They heard a moaning and a sobbing, then the screams of a woman seeking to stifle her outcry.

  “Give me that key!” demanded Farrell.

  He unlocked the door and flung it open, shattering the seals and breaking the cord that ran from panel to jamb. D’Artois followed him. They halted a few paces past the threshold.