“As I have said, immediately afterward the African cauldron began to seethe. Schuyler said that in his opinion the natives considered the ancient prophecy fulfilled. The mummy was the man from the sea.
“Schuyler gave as his opinion that the thing was the work of Atlanteans and that the man in the mummy-case was a native of lost Atlantis. How the case came to float up through the fathoms of water which cover the forgotten land, he does not venture to offer a theory. He is sure that somewhere in the ghost- ridden mazes of the African jungles the mummy has been enthroned as a god, and, inspired by the dead thing, the black warriors are gathering for a wholesale massacre. He believes, also, that some crafty Moslem is the direct moving power of the threatened rebellion.”
Gordon ceased and looked up at me.
“Mummies seem to weave a weird dance through the warp of the tale,” he said. “The German scientist took several pictures of the mummy with his camera, and it was after seeing these — which strangely enough were not stolen along with the thing — that Major Morley began to think himself on the brink of some monstrous discovery. His diary reflects his state of mind and becomes incoherent — his condition seems to have bordered on insanity. What did he learn to unbalance him so? Do you suppose that the mesmeric spells of Kathulos were used against him?”
“These pictures—” I began.
“They fell into Schuyler’s hands and he gave one to Morley. I found it among the manuscripts.”
He handed the thing to me, watching me narrowly. I stared, then rose unsteadily and poured myself a tumbler of wine.
‘“Not a dead idol in a voodoo hut,” I said shakily, “but a monster animated by fearsome life, roaming the world for victims. Morley had seen the Master — that is why his brain crumbled. Gordon, as I hope to live again, that face is the face of Kathulos!”
Gordon stared wordlessly at me.
“The Master hand, Gordon,” I laughed. A certain grim enjoyment penetrated the mists of my horror, at the sight of the steel-nerved Englishman struck speechless, doubtless for the first time in his life.
He moistened his lips and said in a scarcely recognizable voice, “Then, in God’s name, Costigan, nothing is stable or certain, and mankind hovers at the brink of untold abysses of nameless horror. If that dead monster found by Von Lorfmon be in truth the Scorpion, brought to life in some hideous fashion, what can mortal effort do against him?”
“The mummy at Kamonos’—” I began.
“Aye, the man whose flesh, hardened by a thousand years of non-existence — that must have been Kathulos himself! He would have just had time to strip, wrap himself in the linens and step into the case before we entered. You remember that the case, leaning upright against the wall, stood partly concealed by a large Burmese idol, which obstructed our view and doubtless gave him time to accomplish his purpose. My God, Costigan, with what horror of the prehistoric world are we dealing?”
“I have heard of Hindu fakirs who could induce a condition closely resembling death,” I began. “Is it not possible that Kathulos, a shrewd and crafty Oriental, could have placed himself in this state and his followers have placed the case in the ocean where it was sure to be found? And might not he have been in this shape tonight at Kamonos’?”
Gordon shook his head.
“No, I have seen these fakirs. None of them ever feigned death to the extent of becoming shriveled and hard — in a word, dried up. Morley, narrating in another place the description of the mummy-case as jotted down by Von Lorfmon and passed on to Schuyler, mentions the fact that large portions of seaweed adhered to it — seaweed of a kind found only at great depths, on the bottom of the ocean. The wood, too, was of a kind which Von Lorfmon failed to recognize or to classify, in spite of the fact that he was one of the greatest living authorities on flora. And his notes again and again emphasize the enormous age of the thing. He admitted that there was no way of telling how old the mummy was, but his hints intimate that he believed it to be, not thousands of years old, but millions of years!
“No. We must face the facts. Since you are positive that the picture of the mummy is the picture of Kathulos — and there is little room for fraud — one of two things is practically certain: the Scorpion was never dead but ages ago was placed in that mummy-case and his life preserved in some manner, or else — he was dead and has been brought to life! Either of these theories, viewed in the cold light of reason, is absolutely untenable. Are we all insane?”
“Had you ever walked the road to hashish land,” I said somberly, “you could believe anything to be true. Had you ever gazed into the terrible reptilian eyes of Kathulos the sorcerer, you would not doubt that he was both dead and alive.”
Gordon gazed out the window, his fine face haggard in the gray light which had begun to steal through them.
“At any rate,” said he, “there are two places which I intend exploring thoroughly before the sun rises again — Kamonos’ antique shop and Soho 48.”
* * *
18. THE GRIP OF THE SCORPION
“While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.”
— Poe
HANSEN snored on the bed as I paced the room. Another day had passed over London and again the street lamps glimmered through the fog. Their lights affected me strangely. They seemed to beat, solid waves of energy, against my brain. They twisted the fog into strange sinister shapes. Footlights of the stage that is the streets of London, how many grisly scenes had they lighted? I pressed my hands hard against my throbbing temples, striving to bring my thoughts back from the chaotic labyrinth where they wandered.
Gordon I had not seen since dawn. Following the clue of “Soho 48” he had gone forth to arrange a raid upon the place and he thought it best that I should remain under cover. He anticipated an attempt upon my life, and again he feared that if I went searching among the dives I formerly frequented it would arouse suspicion.
Hansen snored on. I seated myself and began to study the Turkish shoes which clothed my feet. Zuleika had worn Turkish slippers — how she floated through my waking dreams, gilding prosaic things with her witchery! Her face smiled at me from the fog; her eyes shone from the flickering lamps; her phantom footfalls re-echoed through the misty chambers of my skull.
They beat an endless tattoo, luring and haunting till it seemed that these echoes found echoes in the hallway outside the room where I stood, soft and stealthy. A sudden rap at the door and I started.
Hansen slept on as I crossed the room and flung the door swiftly open. A swirling wisp of fog had invaded the corridor, and through it, like a silver veil, I saw her — Zuleika stood before me with her shimmering hair and her red lips parted and her great dark eyes.
Like a speechless fool I stood and she glanced quickly down the hallway and then stepped inside and closed the door.
“Gordon!” she whispered in a thrilling undertone. “Your friend! The Scorpion has him!”
Hansen had awakened and now sat gaping stupidly at the strange scene which met his eyes.
Zuleika did not heed him.
“And oh, Steephen!” she cried, and tears shone in her eyes, “I have tried so hard to secure some more elixir but I could not.”
“Never mind that,” I finally found my speech. ‘“Tell me about Gordon.”
“He went back to Kamonos’ alone, and Hassim and Ganra Singh took him captive and brought him to the Master’s house. Tonight assemble a great host of the people of the Scorpion for the sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice!” A grisly thrill of horror coursed down my spine. Was there no limit to the ghastliness of this business?
“Quick, Zuleika, where is this house of the Master’s?”
“Soho, 48. You must summon the police and send many men to surround it, but you must not go yourself—”
Hansen sprang up quivering for action, but I turned to him. My brain was clear now, or seemed to be, and racing unnaturally.
“Wait!” I turned back to Zuleika. “
When is this sacrifice to take place?”
“At the rising of the moon.”
“That is only a few hours before dawn. Time to save him, but if we raid the house they’ll kill him before we can reach them. And God only knows how many diabolical things guard all approaches.”
“I do not know,” Zuleika whimpered. “I must go now, or the Master will kill me.”
Something gave way in my brain at that; something like a flood of wild and terrible exultation swept over me.
“The Master will kill no one!” I shouted, flinging my arms on high. “Before ever the east turns red for dawn, the Master dies! By all things holy and unholy I swear it!”
Hansen stared wildly at me and Zuleika shrank back as I turned on her. To my dope-inspired brain had come a sudden burst of light, true and unerring. I knew Kathulos was a mesmerist — that he understood fully the secret of dominating another’s mind and soul. And I knew that at last I had hit upon the reason of his power over the girl. Mesmerism! As a snake fascinates and draws to him a bird, so the Master held Zuleika to him with unseen shackles. So absolute was his rule over her that it held even when she was out of his sight, working over great distances.
There was but one thing which would break that hold: the magnetic power of some other person whose control was stronger with her than Kathulos’. I laid my hands on her slim little shoulders and made her face me.
“Zuleika,” I said commandingly, “here you are safe; you shall not return to Kathulos. There is no need of it. Now you are free.”
But I knew I had failed before I ever started. Her eyes held a look of amazed, unreasoning fear and she twisted timidly in my grasp.
“Steephen, please let me go!” she begged. “I must — I must!”
I drew her over to the bed and asked Hansen for his handcuffs. He handed them to me, wonderingly, and I fastened one cuff to the bedpost and the other to her slim wrist. The girl whimpered but made no resistance, her limpid eyes seeking mine in mute appeal.
It cut me to the quick to enforce my will upon her in this apparently brutal manner but I steeled myself.
“Zuleika,” I said tenderly, “you are now my prisoner. The Scorpion cannot blame you for not returning to him when you are unable to do so — and before dawn you shall be free of his rule entirely.”
I turned to Hansen and spoke in a tone which admitted of no argument.
“Remain here, just without the door, until I return. On no account allow any strangers to enter — that is, anyone whom you do not personally know. And I charge you, on your honor as a man, do not release this girl, no matter what she may say. If neither I nor Gordon have returned by ten o’clock tomorrow, take her to this address — that family once was friends of mine and will take care of a homeless girl. I am going to Scotland Yard.”
“Steephen,” Zuleika wailed, “you are going to the Master’s lair! You will be killed. Send the police, do not go!”
I bent, drew her into my arms, felt her lips against mine, then tore myself away.
The fog plucked at me with ghostly fingers, cold as the hands of dead men, as I raced down the street. I had no plan, but one was forming in my mind, beginning to seethe in the stimulated cauldron that was my brain. I halted at the sight of a policeman pacing his beat, and beckoning him to me, scribbled a terse note on a piece of paper torn from a notebook and handed it to him.
“Get this to Scotland Yard; it’s a matter of life and death and it has to do with the business of John Gordon.”
At that name, a gloved hand came up in swift assent, but his assurance of haste died out behind me as I renewed my flight. The note stated briefly that Gordon was a prisoner at Soho 48 and advised an immediate raid in force — advised, nay, in Gordon’s name, commanded it.
My reason for my actions was simple; I knew that the first noise of the raid sealed John Gordon’s doom. Somehow I first must reach him and protect or free him before the police arrived.
The time seemed endless, but at last the grim gaunt outlines of the house that was Soho 48 rose up before me, a giant ghost in the fog. The hour grew late; few people dared the mists and the dampness as I came to a halt in the street before this forbidding building. No lights showed from the windows, either upstairs or down. It seemed deserted. But the lair of the scorpion often seems deserted until the silent death strikes suddenly.
Here I halted and a wild thought struck me. One way or another, the drama would be over by dawn. Tonight was the climax of my career, the ultimate top of life. Tonight I was the strongest link in the strange chain of events. Tomorrow it would not matter whether I lived or died. I drew the flask of elixir from my pocket and gazed at it. Enough for two more days if properly eked out. Two more days of life! Or — I needed stimulation as I never needed it before; the task in front of me was one no mere human could hope to accomplish. If I drank the entire remainder of the elixir, I had no idea as to the duration of its effect, but it would last the night through. And my legs were shaky; my mind had curious periods of utter vacuity; weakness of brain and body assailed me. I raised the flask and with one draft drained it.
For an instant I thought it was death. Never had I taken such an amount.
Sky and world reeled and I felt as if I would fly into a million vibrating fragments, like the bursting of a globe of brittle steel. Like fire, like hell-fire the elixir raced along my veins and I was a giant! A monster! A superman!
Turning, I strode to the menacing, shadowy doorway. I had no plan; I felt the need of none. As a drunken man walks blithely into danger, I strode to the lair of the Scorpion, magnificently aware of my superiority, imperially confident of my stimulation and sure as the unchanging stars that the way would open before me.
Oh, there never was a superman like that who knocked commandingly on the door of Soho 48 that night in the rain and the fog!
I knocked four times, the old signal that we slaves had used to be admitted into the idol room at Yun Shatu’s. An aperture opened in the center of the door and slanted eyes looked warily out. They slightly widened as the owner recognized me, then narrowed wickedly.
“You fool!” I said angrily. “Don’t you see the mark?”
I held my hand to the aperture.
“Don’t you recognize me? Let me in, curse you.”
I think the very boldness of the trick made for its success. Surely by now all the Scorpion’s slaves knew of Stephen Costigan’s rebellion, knew that he was marked for death. And the very fact that I came there, inviting doom, confused the doorman.
The door opened and I entered. The man who had admitted me was a tall, lank Chinaman I had known as a servant at Kathulos. He closed the door behind me and I saw we stood in a sort of vestibule, lighted by a dim lamp whose glow could not be seen from the street for the reason that the windows were heavily curtained. The Chinaman glowered at me undecided. I looked at him, tensed. Then suspicion flared in his eyes and his hand flew to his sleeve. But at the instant I was on him and his lean neck broke like a rotten bough between my hands.
I eased his corpse to the thickly carpeted floor and listened. No sound broke the silence. Stepping as stealthily as a wolf, fingers spread like talons, I stole into the next room. This was furnished in oriental style, with couches and rugs and gold-worked drapery, but was empty of human life. I crossed it and went into the next one. Light flowed softly from the censers which were swung from the ceiling, and the Eastern rugs deadened the sound of my footfalls; I seemed to be moving through a castle of enchantment.
Every moment I expected a rush of silent assassins from the doorways or from behind the curtains or screen with their writhing dragons. Utter silence reigned. Room after room I explored and at last halted at the foot of the stairs. The inevitable censer shed an uncertain light, but most of the stairs were veiled in shadows. What horrors awaited me above?
But fear and the elixir are strangers and I mounted that stair of lurking terror as boldly as I had entered that house of terror. The upper rooms I found to be much like thos
e below and with them they had this fact in common: they were empty of human life. I sought an attic but there seemed no door letting into one. Returning to the first floor, I made a search for an entrance into the basement, but again my efforts were fruitless. The amazing truth was borne in upon me: except for myself and that dead man who lay sprawled so grotesquely in the outer vestibule, there were no men in that house, dead or living.
I could not understand it. Had the house been bare of furniture I should have reached the natural conclusion that Kathulos had fled — but no signs of flight met my eye. This was unnatural, uncanny. I stood in the great shadowy library and pondered. No, I had made no mistake in the house. Even if the broken corpse in the vestibule were not there to furnish mute testimony, everything in the room pointed toward the presence of the Master. There were the artificial palms, the lacquered screens, the tapestries, even the idol, though now no incense smoke rose before it. About the walls were ranged long shelves of books, bound in strange and costly fashion — books in every language in the world, I found from a swift examination, and on every subject — outre and bizarre, most of them.
Remembering the secret passage in the Temple of Dreams, I investigated the heavy mahogany table which stood in the center of the room. Bur nothing resulted. A sudden blaze of fury surged up in me, primitive and unreasoning. I snatched a statuette from the table and dashed it against the shelf-covered wall. The noise of its breaking would surely bring the gang from their hiding- place. But the result was much more startling than that!
The statuette struck the edge of a shelf and instantly the whole section of shelves with their load of books swung silently outward, revealing a narrow doorway! As in the other secret door, a row of steps led downward. At another time I would have shuddered at the thought of descending, with the horrors of the other tunnel fresh in my mind, but inflamed as I was by the elixir, I strode forward without an instant’s hesitancy.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 8