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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “The terribly resurrected La Dorada last night spoke of a Garden. And the dying La Dorada pronounced the name Hassan just before she expired in the plaza. Through the whole chain of horror and deviltry, we see a continuous linkage of the Ismailians and the hasheeshin of accursed memory.

  “Antoinette,” continued d’Artois, “must in some way be involved in a mesh of necromancy and murder that hinges on her resemblance to La Dorada. It is not impossible that she was kidnapped to double for La Dorada in that accursed Garden.

  “And finally,” concluded d’Artois, “this society of thaumaturges, which has made such overgrown fools of us, is obviously allied to or even an integral part of the society of Ismailians and its higher orders, adepts, occultists, necromancers, and devil-mongers of all degrees.”

  “Now that you’ve summed it up, what are we going to do?” reiterated Farrell.

  “You will take the trail at once,” replied d’Artois.

  Farrell brightened perceptibly at the hint of direct action.

  “Shoot,” he said bruskly.

  “Mais non,” countered d’Artois, “it is you who will shoot if my plan is right. You are deft at disguise, and you speak several Oriental languages like a native.”

  D’Artois paused, intently studied the lean, bronzed features of his friend, and his cold gray eyes.

  “An Arab,” he muttered. “Possible, but not so good. A Kurd…yes, that would be better.”

  “Wrong!” contradicted Farrell. “There were some Kurds at the château last night, notably that hell-hound of a Shirkuh. And the first of the assassins I shot down in the plaza was a Kurd. Too many of them in the picture. I might be tripped on their dialect.”

  “An Afghan, then,” compromised d’Artois. “They are Aryans, and our blood brothers, those Afghans. You will loiter around the waterfront. I will warn the Sûreté to arrest you at times, but to release you for lack of evidence; so be careful not to be too brazen in building up a local background of feuds and slayings to substantiate your supposed reason for having left your native hills.

  “It is a slim chance; but it is possible that you will stumble across some Ismailian who will favorably mark your possibilities. In the meanwhile, I will keep in touch with you as much as possible.

  “But remember, one false move will betray your mission. And the first warning you will receive will be a dagger jammed very deeply into your back. You are flirting with sudden death the moment you leave this house.”

  * * * *

  That afternoon Farrell lurched from a doorway that the most vivid imagination could not have associated with the house of Pierre d’Artois. The shape of his eyebrows had been changed by judicious plucking. His hair had been dyed, and the cut of his mustaches altered. Tenacious, finely powdered pigments had been rubbed into his eyelids and about his eyes so as to change their expression: all trifles, yet the total effect, aided by the drunken swagger, the gestures, the reek of ’araki and foreign tobacco, was that Glenn Farrell had disappeared, and that a hard, haggard, quarrelsome Afghan sobering up from a spree strode muttering down rue Saint Augustin, and thence toward the quai along the Adour.

  He found fishing-vessels, tramps from Algiers, and a zaroug that had sailed all the way from the Red Sea with its crew of stout Danakils. Husayn, its nakhoda, was a lean, grizzled Arab whose manner suggested pearl-poaching, smuggling, or slave-running from the Somali Coast to Arabia, with piracy thrown in for good measure… Husayn spoke of his health, which forbade further traffic on the Red Sea…

  There was a Levantin, oily and cringing, who peddled narcotics…

  There were brawls along the waterfront. No true Afghan would or could abstain. A fight was a fight.

  Very soon the waterfront boasted a new character, a quarrelsome Afghan, drunken, bawdy, stranded, swearing loudly by the honor of the Durani clan, and ready for any skullduggery. Ibrahim Khan, they called him.

  Once in a while some whining cadger of drinks would mutter as Ibrahim Khan reviled him and tossed him a franc. That was a member of the Sûreté giving, and receiving, the lack of news that is falsely said to be good news. Sometimes it was warning, but never encouragement.

  The quarter of the city that lies between the Nive and the Mousserole Wall is so disreputable that during the war it was out of bounds for soldiers. It is a district of narrow, dingy streets, dirty cafés, bawdy-houses of the lowest order; it abounds in cheap wine, cheaper women, and all the scum and riffraff of a polyglot border-and-seaport town.

  While the upper stratum of the enemy was doubtless of high degree, the foundation layer would be in the mire. The underworld of France would furnish its quota for the lower order of assassins. The master mind needed dirty tools for dirty work; and here, among the thieves, pimps, cutthroats of beyond the river, the trail might be picked up.

  Ibrahim Khan sat in one of the dingiest of those unsavory resorts, muttering in Pushtu and Arabic and broken French, alternately gross and poetic as he courted the attention of Marcelle, the barmaid whose coarse, buxom loveliness drew trade for all departments of the house.

  Tie your husband to a rope, Bimbar,

  Tie the rope to a tree;

  Throw the tree in the river, Bimbar,

  And come to your lover.

  Thus he chanted in amorous, wine-muddled accents, the whole stanza in one breath, and, in the Afghan fashion, ending in a high-pitched, gasping cry, a full octave higher.

  The girl did not understand the words; but there was one sitting in the corner who did.

  “Oh, my brother,” he murmured, and spat contemptuously, “are such as that sister of pigs fit for the pride of the Durani clan?”

  Ibrahim Khan’s hand flashed to the hilt of one of the knives that bristled in his belt. But before he could draw, the thin-faced man smiled.

  “Put that knife away, brother,” he said. “I have news for you.”

  “Well?” interrogated Ibrahim Khan a little less belligerently. “Out with it.”

  “Softly, softly,” murmured the stranger. Ibrahim Khan had never seen him along the waterfront, or in the Mousserole quarter. “I am Nureddin. I have been interested in your handiness in certain matters…and Husayn, the nakhoda, speaks well of you—”

  “He should, Allah blacken him!” admitted Ibrahim Khan, who under his layer of grime was Glenn Farrell, trembling with eagerness to follow up what he sensed was the first open move to take the bait he had so patiently and thus far vainly offered the enemy.

  “There are women,” continued Nureddin, “lovelier than the brides of paradise.”

  Farrell laughed contemptuously, and made an insulting remark that left little doubt as to his opinion of Nureddin’s profession: but that was to play his part as a truculent Afghan.

  “Nay, by Allah!” protested Nureddin with a good-humored laugh. “It is not what you think. Follow me, if you have courage.”

  Farrell scrutinized Nureddin for an instant. Whatever game Nureddin might be playing, it would certainly not be for small counters. Then Farrell, still feigning skepticism, drew from the pocket of his grimy, ill-fitting suit a small pouch, hefted it so that the gold it contained clinked softly. He tossed the money to Marcelle.

  “Ya Nureddin, I will fight as eagerly for my naked hide as for a pouch of gold. Now if you still want me to meet your friends, I will entertain them royally, inshallah!”

  Nureddin smiled and stroked his chin.

  “By Allah, O Afghan, you are suspicious. Follow me.”

  “Lead on,” agreed Farrell.

  He followed Nureddin to the street and thence to an alley so narrow that with his outstretched arms he could at the same time touch the buildings on both sides: and the narrowness was exceeded only by the stench. Nureddin halted at the end of the alley. A heavy, iron-bound door barred further progress. “From here you must go blindfolded,” said Nureddin.

  “By your be
ard!” mocked Farrell as his hand flashed into view with a pistol whose cavernous muzzle gaped ominously. “Perhaps you would like to bind my hands also? Now, forward! Or I will blow thy teeth right and left…if it so please Allah,” he concluded piously.

  “Fire!” retorted Nureddin. “The Master would give me a less pleasant death for disobeying his orders.”

  In the moonlight Farrell could see the perspiration that glittered on Nureddin’s forehead; but he did not flinch.

  “Ya billahi!” ejaculated Farrell after a moment. “Were there a blood feud between us, I would. But as it is—”

  He shrugged, holstered his pistol, and turned, to stalk down the narrow alley.

  Farrell was certain, now, that he was on the right trail. But since spies are notoriously eager to agree to anything and everything to gain admittance to forbidden doors, Farrell had to play the blustering, alternately suspicious and foolhardy Afghan. He swaggered away in his lordly fashion, presenting his back as a fair target for hurled knife, or pistol fire.

  “Ya Ibrahim!” protested Nureddin. “Be reasonable. He ordered. It is on my head—”

  “He, whoever he is,” retorted Farrell, “may then seek me himself and I will induce him to change his rules. Wallah! And your head, that is no more than a ball to play with!”

  “Oh, well, have it your own way,” agreed Nureddin resignedly as Farrell again turned. Then he clapped his hands sharply.

  Farrell sensed his danger; but before he could whirl and draw, something soft and clinging enveloped him. It was a net whose fine, stout silken cords bound his limbs and entangled him.

  “God, by the Very God, by the One True God!” he swore, struggling with the soft, relentless thing that enmeshed him like a monstrous spider-web, and seeking to draw a knife. “Pig and father of pigs!”

  Something emerged from the shadow of the pilaster that buttressed the wall. Farrell dropped flat, still striving to extricate himself and tackle his enemy. He secured a footing and leaped up, butting his shoulder with a terrific jolt into his enemy’s stomach.

  A grunt and a gasped curse. A warning cry from Nureddin. The knife in Farrell’s hand slashed a dozen meshes in the net. Then, before he could follow up and extricate himself, a form dropped from a window directly above, driving him flat against the paving. His knife dug vainly between the cobblestones. He recovered, thrust upward…

  Smack! Something hard and heavy and swiftly moving swept his senses away as he felt his blade bite home.

  CHAPTER 6

  Satan’s Garden

  The slow, steady drip-drip-drip of water dropping against stones crept into Farrell’s consciousness and finally became an impression distinct from the trip-hammer throbbing of his battered head. He stirred, and found that he was not bound. The holster under his left arm was empty. One of his knives, however, remained.

  “If they wanted my hide, they could have taken it in the alley,” he reflected as he pieced together his recollections of the encounter. “So far, it looks as if I’ve got ’em fooled.”

  Then, in Arabic, “Aie…my head! O dogs and sons of dogs, come out and fight! Ya Nureddin, thou son of a strumpet, thou uncle of camels! Thou eater of unclean food!”

  The cell echoed with his bellowing. As he paused for breath, he reeled, clutched at the wall from whose base he had arisen, and supported himself. A torch flared smokily in the distance, from its sconce in the wall of the passage that opened into his cell.

  “Father of many pigs!” he stormed as he kicked the iron grillwork that barred his advance, and rattled the chain and lock that secured the door.

  The clattering and jangling finally drew a protest from beyond Farrell’s field of vision. Then a fat, white-bearded fellow with bleary eyes and a bloated, sottish face emerged from a cross passage.

  “Silence a moment!” he croaked as he took the torch from its sconce and advanced toward the grille.

  “Bring me that dog of a Nureddin!” raged Farrell.

  “One thing at a time,” replied the warden. “Calm down and I’ll promise you action.”

  “Oh, very well, then,” agreed Farrell. “Lead on, Uncle.”

  Uncle drew a pistol and, keeping Farrell covered, unlocked the door.

  “Now, wild man, forward!” he ordered. “And no false moves.”

  The slimy, glistening sides of the passage indicated that they were far beneath the surface of the city; perhaps in that labyrinth of vaults and connecting tunnels of which local tradition has murmured darkly and vaguely. Although his head ached from contact with material weapons wielded by physical enemies, Farrell shuddered at the evil that brooded about that archaic masonry and muttered of that which had emerged to defile the dead with obscene necromancies, and torment the living with monstrous hallucinations that came in the guise of dreams. The aura of age-old menace overpowered the terror of the Ismailian assassins.

  “To your left,” commanded the warden.

  As Farrell rounded the turn, he saw ahead of him a glow of light and smelled the heavy, lingering fumes of incense. An Arab, and a bearded man whose race he could not determine, stood watch at the farther archway. Their hands rested on their belts, ready to draw knife or pistol. Their eyes stared fixedly from immobile features. They were drugged, or entranced: and Farrell shivered at the necessity of convincing himself that they were not dead.

  “Pass on,” commanded the warden as Farrell hesitated at the threshold. “The Master, our lord Hassan, will receive you.”

  The lord Hassan—the one whose name the dying La Dorada had with her last breath pronounced. She had known who had ordered her death.

  A thrill of exultation was mingled with the flash of dread that assailed Farrell as he stepped into the reception hall of Hassan, that slayer of women and master of necromancers.

  The room was long and narrow, and sweltering in a red glow of light. A Persian carpet ran down the center toward the divan in an arched alcove at the farther end. A man wearing a silken kaftan sat cross-legged among heaped cushions. His face was veiled, but his fierce eyes, smoldering in their deep sockets, were more menacing for being all that was visible.

  Farrell halted midway between the alcove and the entrance. From the corner of his eye he saw a row of men, dressed in European clothes, sitting cross-legged along the wall on either side of him. Their arms were crossed on their breasts, and their eyes stared as glassily as those of the guards at the entrance. They were drugged, or deep in a hypnotic trance.

  Farrell offered the peace.

  “No peace and no protection, ya Ibrahim,” responded Hassan, “until we have made a test of you.”

  “Tawil ul ’Umr,” demanded Farrell with a touch of respect such as even a blustering Afghan would concede an old man; “Prolonged of Life, how am I to be tested?”

  The old man reflected for a moment. His glittering eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Tell me, can you obey as well as slay?”

  “How should I know, Prolonged of Life?” proposed Farrell. “By your beard, I have never tried obedience. I am of the Durani clan.”

  “You will learn,” said Hassan. “I will set you an example.” He glanced to his left and clapped his hands. “Asad!” he called sharply.

  One of the staring figures rose from his place along the wall. He moved as one receiving will and animation from some external source.

  “Harkening and obedience, ya sidi!” he acknowledged as he halted before the dais.

  “Your canjiar,” murmured Hassan.

  The curved blade flashed from its sheath.

  “That knife is your gate to Paradise, ya Asad,” said Hassan in his gentle, purring voice. Yet beneath its suggestion Farrell sensed a relentless command.

  Asad inclined his head as he touched his fingertips to his forehead, his lips, and his breast. A pause—the blade flashed again as Asad thrust it full into his own chest. He stood
for a moment fingering the hilt; then he tottered and sank to the tiles, to relax and lie sprawled face down in the dark pool that slowly spread across the paving.

  Farrell knew that beneath his grimy skin his cheeks were bloodless. It was horrible to see even a hasheeshin spill his life carelessly as a glass of wine to humor that old man who peered over the edge of his veil.

  “There, ya Ibrahim, is obedience.”

  Farrell collected his courage and demanded boldly, “And why should any man yield such obedience?”

  “Because,” came the reply, “I am the keeper of the gateway. He is even now in Paradise, and exempt from any recall.”

  Farrell grimaced.

  “No more than any true believer gains for slaying an infidel,” he retorted.

  “You will enter the Garden, ya Ibrahim,” murmured Hassan, “and see for yourself. Then you may accept or reject.”

  To the Garden! There, unless all d’Artois’ deductions were wrong, he would find Antoinette. But Farrell restrained his eagerness, and pondered a moment, as became the role he played.

  “I am ready, Prolonged of Life,” he finally replied, as he advanced a pace.

  “Softly, softly,” said Hassan. “Are you armed?”

  “Ay, wallah!” replied Farrell, drawing his remaining knife.

  Hassan again clapped his hands.

  “Ya Suleiman! Yusuf!”

  Two rose from the ranks and approached.

  “Harkening and obedience, my lord,” they said as they bowed.

  “This one claims to be a man of valor, O Devoted Ones!” said Hassan. “Draw!”

  Their blades were drawn as one. The slayers stood like panthers poised and ready to close in on their prey. Their eyes glowed in the red glare like beasts lurking in the shadows beyond a fire. Slaves to the mesmeric power of Hassan, and to the hypnotic hasheesh, they were men in form only.

  Hassan glanced at Farrell.

  “You may decline without penalty or dishonor,” said the old man. “You are free, and owe us no obedience.”