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Title: Satan's garden

Author: E. Hoffman Price

Illustrator: Margaret Brundage
        H. R. Hammond

Release date: March 15, 2025 [eBook #75619]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1934

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATAN'S GARDEN ***






                            Satan's Garden

                         By E. HOFFMANN PRICE

          _The story of a terrific adventure in Bayonne, two
          ravishingly beautiful girls, occult evil and sudden
              death in the lair of the hasheesh-eaters._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Weird Tales April and May 1934.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

    Since the publication of "The Rajah's Gift" in WEIRD TALES nine
    years ago, followed by "The Stranger from Kurdistan," E. Hoffmann
    Price has been acclaimed one of the masters of quality fiction;
    yet his superb artistry has not interfered in any way with the
    vividness and thrilling power of his fascinating stories. West
    Point graduate, expert swordsman, orientalist and former soldier
    of fortune, his life itself is a thrilling tale of adventure.
    Endowed with a natural gift for narrative, he possesses also a
    warm imagination and unsurpassed literary craftsmanship. All these
    qualities are woven into the strange weird tale presented herewith:
    "Satan's Garden."




                        _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 bejewelled 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.

"Look, damn it, look!"

As Farrell switched on the lights, he pointed at the woman who lay
face down on the broad, canopied bed. She was writhing and moaning.
At regular intervals she flinched as from a blow, then shuddered, and
relaxed.

"Lord! I can almost hear the whip," muttered Farrell. He leaped forward
and thrust out his arm as if to ward off blows that flailed the girl's
bare shoulders. Then he retreated, shaking his head.

"If we can't see it, how can we stop it?" he muttered despairingly.

They stood, fascinated and horrified, watching a lovely girl being
flayed by an invisible scourge. They saw the red welts rising, crossing
and recrossing her shoulders, and cropping up under the filmy silken
folds of her nightgown.

"Look at it! Her gown didn't move a hair's breadth, but the whip raised
another welt! Pierre, it's impossible! That gown ought to be cut to
pieces by that flogging. Or else nothing's really hitting her. Or
else"--Farrell shook his head in bewildered despair--"or else we're
both crazy as hoot-owls!"

"_Tenez donc_," said the old Frenchman, taking his friend by the arm.
Though he himself shrank in sympathy with the girl who writhed under
the invisible lash, his voice was calmer than Farrell's. "Let us study
this thing. And man or devil, in the end we will have his hide!"

"You take the devils, Pierre, and give me a handful of whatever men you
think are messed up in it! I'll--eh, what's that?"

He knelt beside the bed, gestured to d'Artois.

"Listen to that, Pierre!" he said in a tense whisper.

"_Junayn' ash-Shaytan_ ..." they heard her say.

"Holy smoke!" gasped Farrell. "_Junayn' ash-Shaytan_ ... and did you
get what she said after that?" Then, before d'Artois could reply, "It's
over now."

       *       *       *       *       *

The sleeping girl had ceased writhing and tossing. Her cries had
subsided to a drowsy murmuring. The two watchers stared at each other
for a moment.

"But yes," said d'Artois finally. "I heard it, though it has been
several years since I heard any one use such villainous language. It
would do credit to one of the dancing-girls in Abu Aswad's dive in
Cairo. But this _junayn' ash-Shaytan_, that puzzles me."

"Simple!" said Farrell. "Satan's garden."

"_Mais oui!_" agreed d'Artois with a touch of impatience. "Only, what
is the point?"

He frowned fiercely and twisted his mustache.

"_Mon vieux_," he said after a moment's reflection, "in this first
articulate speech in her sleep we may find a clue to the invisible
scourge that leaves her back crossed with welts."

Farrell shook his head.

"Crazier and crazier," he muttered. "We're all nutty. I am, you are,
she is--all of us! Now she's talking Arabic! I'm beginning to wonder
whether her back is really beaten or whether we're both suffering the
same delusion she is."

D'Artois led the way to the door. Farrell followed.

"I have been expecting that," he said as he reached for a brief-case
lying on the table. He opened it and withdrew a photograph. "Look."

Farrell scrutinized the glossy print.

"That proves your point," he admitted. "The camera isn't subject to
hallucinations or delusions of persecution. Antoinette has been
beaten. Severely. The old black-and-blue marks photographed darker
than the new, red welts. No argument. I'm not, she isn't, you're not
bug-house. That is, _not yet_. But if this doesn't stop soon----"

He bit the tip off a fresh cigar, chewed it for a moment, struck light.

"Let us be impersonal about it for a moment," suggested d'Artois, "and
consider what we have.

"First, she tells us that her dreams have become so real that she
is confused and wonders during the day which is dream, and which is
reality. She dreams that she is in an outlandishly beautiful garden,
dim as by moonlight, yet warm as the glow of morning sun. The plants
are strange, and the flowers have an unnatural, poison sweetness.

"And strangest of all, she herself has a different body, brown-skinned,
with blue-black hair, and very large, dark eyes. The other girls, her
companions, are also dark," summarized d'Artois. "Now do you see how
her first speech in this troubled sleep begins to lend a touch of
rationality?"

Farrell pondered for a moment, then replied.

"Yes. Those few words she spoke in Arabic tonight suggest a dual
personality, give us a bit more background. But on the other hand,
didn't she tell us that she couldn't understand the language of the
other girls, and of the guests: lean, swarthy fellows with staring,
dilated eyes? If she couldn't understand them, how the devil is she
talking the fluent, unsavory Arabic of a dancing-girl in a Port Said
dive?"

"That sudden gift of tongues can be resolved," said d'Artois. "There
is something else, which is perhaps more relevant: the veiled Master,
whom the guests of the garden regard with great reverence. Does that
suggest anything?"

"It does, and it doesn't," replied Farrell, "'Way back in my mind it's
there, but I can't express it. And you, I fancy, are in about the same
fix?"

"I am," admitted d'Artois. "But before many days pass, we will pick up
the trail. We will have this invisible wielder of an unseen scourge.
Him, or his hide. But now get yourself some sleep, _mon ami_."

Farrell glanced at the door at his left.

"She'll be all right," assured d'Artois. "The ordeal is over. And what
purpose did we serve, after all?"

"Guess you're right, Pierre," assented Farrell. "Let's go."




                            2. _La Dorada_


Glenn Farrell was up at dawn. His carefully tiptoeing down the winding
stairway of Pierre d'Artois' house, however, was wasted consideration.
He found that gray-haired _ferrailleur_ hunched over the littered desk
of his study, fuming and muttering in a thick, foul cloud of smoke
that momentarily became more dense as the cigarette between d'Artois'
fingers added its stench of burning rags. The shining brass pot of
Syrian workmanship, and half a dozen tiny cups, each with a thick
residue of pulverized coffee grounds and cigarette stumps, indicated
that the old man had been at work ever since they had left Antoinette
Delatour some six hours ago.

In the clear space in front of d'Artois was an open book whose pages
were in illuminated Arabic script. Beside it were a pad of note-paper
and a half-dozen loose sheets closely scribbled.

"Pierre, why didn't you tell me you were going to carry on?" reproached
Farrell as he drew up a chair. "This is really more my funeral than
yours, getting Antoinette out of this terrible mess."

"_Mordieu!_" exclaimed d'Artois. "This is work for a scholar, not a
towering blockhead like yourself."

"Oh, all right, all right," said Farrell with a smile that for a moment
cleared his features of the dismay and wrath of the preceding night.
"Only, I can read that stuff myself, almost as well as you can." He
scrutinized the book for a moment; then, indicating the title, he said,
"_Siret al Haken_--how's that for a blockhead?"

"Very good," approved d'Artois. Then, with a wink and a grin, "And
after all, perhaps I should not call you a blockhead, even though I do
exceed you in intelligence and in skill with the sword."

He paused a moment after that time-honored raillery in which each
reviled the other's talents, then continued, "But seriously, I have
been pursuing some exceedingly roundabout speculations, and before I
inflicted them on you, I wanted to study them out myself."

"Oh, all right, then," agreed Farrell as he found a clean _demi-tasse_
and poured some of the lukewarm, sirupy Turkish coffee with which
d'Artois drugged himself during his midnight studies. "But I see no
connection with the _Memoirs of Haken_ and Antoinette's terrible
predicament."

"Listen then, I will enlighten you!" began d'Artois. "Mademoiselle
Antoinette has been dreaming of a garden rich with roses, and lilies,
and jasmine. It is alive with strangely colored birds. In fact, she
described the very garden"--d'Artois indicated the page of Arabic
script before him--"that Haken has so glowingly described: lovely girls
playing the _sitar_ and the _oudh_, and entertaining the guests of
paradise with song and wine. And a veiled master who ruled the garden."

"But what," demanded Farrell, "has that to do with those unmerciful
beatings? How about it?"

"Did I not say that I was working indirectly?" countered d'Artois. "The
scourgings, you understand, did not come until later, after the dreams
had recurred for some time. Therefore they must be but an indication of
the gradual increase----"

"Of the undoubted insanity of all three of us!" interpolated Farrell.

"Mademoiselle Antoinette," declared d'Artois, ignoring his friend's
outburst, "is not dreaming. She actually spends her nights in that
devil's paradise. She awakes and tells us that she had another body;
but her _self_ retained its identity. I conclude then that her
personality, her spiritual essence, whatever you will, is wandering,
driven by some damnable compulsion to inhabit that garden, and a
strange body."

Farrell sighed wearily and shook his head.

"This scrambling of selves and personalities is enough to drive one
nutty. It doesn't make any sense."

"Ah, say you so?" murmured d'Artois as he reached for another
cigarette. "My logic is scrambled, in that I have not attempted to show
_how_ this can be; but by assuming that it is, I get to the next point.

"Listen somewhat further, yes? We have but to find that place which
Antoinette's physical body, speaking like a Syrian dancing-girl, so
graphically damned and called _junayn' ash-Shaytan_, Satan's garden.

"There is such a garden at this moment in physical existence; or
else there is one which, reaching out of the dimness of nine hundred
departed years, is _en rapport_ with Antoinette."

"Hell's fire!" muttered Farrell. "The ghost of a garden haunting a
woman in Bayonne, in 1933!"

D'Artois tapped the cover of _Siret al Haken_.

"The author," he said, "tells of Hassan al Sabbah. _Shaykh al Djibal_,
the Chief of the Mountains. The lord of the _Hashisheen_----"

"I get it!" exclaimed Farrell. "The garden paradise into which
hasheesh-drugged devotees were tossed while unconscious, so that when
they awoke they would believe themselves to be in the Moslem heaven of
cool water, beautiful women, and forbidden wine?"

"Precisely, my excellent blockhead! I drink to your wit!" said d'Artois
with a smile that flashed over the edge of his cup of cold coffee.
"And your Antoinette is bedeviled in some way by a garden like that
of Hassan al Sabbah, the master of those assassins who terrorized all
Syria and Persia, centuries ago."

Farrell grimaced.

"Worse and worse yet! Hasn't this old city of Bayonne got enough ghosts
and devils in its own right, lurking under the blood-soaked foundations
of the citadel, without importing them from Asia?" His eyes shifted to
the clustered simitars and yataghans, kreeses and kampilans, darts and
assegais that adorned the walls of the study. "Now if they were men, we
might do something about it!"

"Have no fear on that score," assured d'Artois. "We find that every
phantom as malignantly directed as this ghostly garden has a man
pulling the strings--a flesh-and-blood man you can neatly riddle with
bullets, or slice asunder with some of those toys up there on the wall."

Farrell smiled grimly and took heart.

"Reasonable, at that. And now, suppose that we drop in and see what
Antoinette has to say about her newly acquired gift of Arabic speech.
It took me several years to learn that fluently."

"Barbarian!" scoffed d'Artois. "It is too early. You with your military
hours----"

"And you're another," countered Farrell. "Working the clock around. But
see if you can persuade Félice to scramble some eggs, at least a pound
of bacon, and perhaps a stack of waffles."

"_Magnifique!_" agreed d'Artois. "Some of those barbarous American
customs of yours are not utterly vile. And since you so kindly sent me
an electric waffle-iron, _à l'Américain_--but as a lover, you are most
unconvincing! At six of the morning, you howl for food--utterly out of
keeping! Romance is dead, slain by such as you."

"Ghosts," submitted Farrell, "can not be fought on an empty stomach."

       *       *       *       *       *

Breakfast stemmed Farrell's impatience for a while; but as they
lingered over the brandy-laden coffee, he proposed again that they set
out at once to call on Antoinette Delatour.

"Or at least, let's stretch our legs and get the air. I'll be turning
flip-flops if I don't get going."

"The air, then," agreed d'Artois. "Look! It is but little past eight."

So saying, d'Artois selected one of his collection of canes and led
the way down the stairs of the restored ruin which served as his town
house. The circular donjon dated back to the Thirteenth Century; the
remainder, though not so ancient, was old when Columbus set sail; and
the narrow street on which it faced was in accord with those far-off
days, crooked, dingy, and paved with cobblestones. Yet, being in the
heart of that colorful city which he loved so well, d'Artois was
content, and with the modernization of the interior, he contrived to be
comfortable.

They strolled along the _quai_ that follows the Nive to its junction
with the Adour, then turned to the left toward Place du Théâtre. Before
crossing the street that skirted the plaza, d'Artois paused a moment
at the curbing to give the right of way to the glittering, costly
Italian car which was approaching, presumably from the Biarritz road.
The chauffeur and footman were in livery; and the crest on the door
was one that d'Artois recognized as that of the Marquis des Islots.
Farrell, however, being ignorant of heraldry, had eyes only for the
passenger in the back seat: a dazzlingly beautiful girl whose costly
furs and sparkling jewels betokened a background as golden as her hair.
Her lovely features were drawn and weary, and her eyes haggard and
blue-ringed.

"Good Lord, Pierre!" he exclaimed as he clutched his friend by the arm.
"Did you see--for a moment I thought----"

He blinked, passed his hand over his eyes, then sought to catch another
glimpse of the beauty in the back seat.

"And what did you for a moment think?" wondered d'Artois, as the car
rolled majestically toward the Mayou bridge. His voice was grave, but
his blue eyes twinkled.

"I thought it was Antoinette," said Farrell, still perplexed. "Or else
I'm seeing things!"

"My friend," said d'Artois reprovingly, as they crossed the street,
"let Antoinette ever hear that you mistook La Dorada for her!" He shook
his head in solemn warning. "Blasphemy, you understand. _Lèse majesté._"

"But doesn't she----" began Farrell, his gray eyes still narrowed with
perplexity.

"Truly! She does just that," admitted d'Artois. "Antoinette has often
been accosted at Biarritz and Santander by admirers of La Dorada.
But on second glance, their error becomes apparent, unless they are
strangers. A similarity of coloring, perhaps a likeness of posture or
mannerism that would deceive one only for a moment, if one knew either
woman well. Had you been able to look again--anyway, La Dorada is the
current playmate of _Monsieur_ the Marquis des Islots. She was in his
car, and on her way to his château where she is spending the season.
Doubtless she is returning from a night of baccarat or roulette at
Biarritz."

"Returning? At this hour?" wondered Farrell.

D'Artois smiled and nodded.

"You do not know La Dorada. She got the name in Madrid, where she was
discovered by a café proprietor and sponsored by a grandee of Spain. La
Dorada, the gilded, the golden."

As they passed along the broad plaza, then to the left and up the slope
of rue Port Neuf, d'Artois held forth at length concerning the colorful
career of La Dorada who at first glance so strikingly resembled
Antoinette Delatour.

At the head of rue Port Neuf they turned to the left, past the old
cathedral whose tall spires tower like silver lance-heads into the
morning light, and ascended the incline to the broad drive that follows
the parapet of the Lachepaillet wall.

       *       *       *       *       *

Despite the barbarity of the hour, they found that Antoinette had
disposed of her morning chocolate and rolls. She wore a negligée of
jade chiffon whose curled ostrich trimming fluffed up about her ears
and caressed the copper-golden hair that enhanced her resemblance to La
Dorada. Her lips smiled, but her dark blue eyes were somber and haunted
as she greeted Farrell and d'Artois.

"_Hélas!_ It was worse than ever, last night," she replied, with a
despairing gesture, to Farrell's solicitous inquiry. "But be seated,
and I will tell you."

She shifted her feet to make room for Farrell at the foot of the
chaise-longue on which she reclined; then, as d'Artois drew up a chair,
Antoinette continued, "It was terribly clear! Just fancy: my hair was
jet-black, and so were my eyes. And my skin was as dark as an Arab's!
They beat me most unmercifully ... as usual."

She shuddered at the memory of the dream. D'Artois stared at the dainty
feet and their turquoise and silver mules. As Antoinette was about to
resume her remarks, he said abruptly, "In your dream, what have you
been wearing? On your ankles, I mean."

Antoinette closed her eyes for a moment to visualize her dream.

"Heavy golden anklets set with massive uncut stones," she replied.
"Emeralds, I think. But why?"

"Were they _very_ heavy?" persisted d'Artois.

Farrell regarded him curiously, wondering how adornments could be
relevant to the case.

"Terribly so!" assured Antoinette. Then, with a wan smile, "Only, I've
become used to them."

"Look!" commanded d'Artois, indicating the girl's ankles.

"Well I'll be damned!" exclaimed Farrell, and frowned perplexedly. Then
he glanced at his left hand and shifted the heavy signet on his finger.
"Her ankles are marked just as my finger is by this heavy slug of a
ring!"

"_Voilà!_ That further indicates an interchange of bodies during the
night!" declared d'Artois. "As a Syrian dancing-girl you are beaten,
and the welts appear on the body of Antoinette Delatour. And the heavy
anklets of the Syrian girl mark your daytime body just as they leave
prints on her.

"Now what else do you remember, _ma petite_? Your impressions become
more distinct each time, _n'est-ce pas_? Your recollections----"

"Exactly," she assented. "And last night--oh, I know I'm becoming
utterly mad!--the veiled Master was accompanied by a man who walked
through the garden with him."

"And how," wondered d'Artois, "is that more peculiar than the rest of
the dream?"

"The Master's companion," replied Antoinette, "is the Marquis des
Islots! _Mon Dieu_, is the whole city of Bayonne bound for this devil's
garden?"

"What?" D'Artois started and glanced sharply at Antoinette, then at
Farrell. "_Monsieur le Marquis_ has been added to her dream. Do you see
any connection?"

"I don't," confessed Farrell. "After all this madhouse she's been
through, might it not be a fancied recognition? Pure imagination?"

"_Cordieu!_" exclaimed d'Artois. "Would she not sooner imagine that she
saw ibn Saoud, or Saladin? That would be more in keeping. _Diable!_
Her seeing _Monsieur le Marquis_ is so wide of any fancy that I am now
convinced that she is not dreaming."

"Eh, what's that?" demanded Farrell, aghast at the wildness of
d'Artois' implication. "That it wasn't a dream? Good Lord, man----"

The recurrent nightmare had driven Antoinette Delatour to the verge of
distraction, so that d'Artois' contention did not amaze her as much as
it did Farrell.

"_Mon Dieu_," she sighed wearily, and took Farrell's hand. "It's all
become such a terrific confusion ... I don't know who I am. Oh, how my
poor back aches from that beating!"

"Courage, my dear!" reassured d'Artois. "The enemy has slipped." Then,
to Farrell, "_Allons!_ Let us get to work at once. I have several of
those hunches."

"The quicker the better, Pierre," agreed Farrell. And as Antoinette's
slender arms released him, he followed d'Artois down the stairs to the
street.




                        _3. The Hand of Hassan_


"Your task, my friend," began d'Artois as, back again at his house,
they sat down to plan their campaign against the phantom garden, "will
be to watch at the plaza. You will loaf, and drink an occasional
_apéritif_, and smoke your way into the day. You may see nothing; but
with time and patience your watch will have results. All of Bayonne
passes the plaza, sooner or later."

"But what," wondered Farrell, "am I to look for?"

"People who show signs of hasheesh intoxication, particularly Arabs or
other Orientals," answered d'Artois. "You know the symptoms. You have
seen enough _hasheeshin_ in Egypt and Syria. I need not describe their
manner, or peculiar stare. We are in search of addicts who in addition
are fanatic Moslems. A slender clue at best, but while you pursue that,
something else may happen.

"And I, in the meanwhile, will be doing some private snooping
of my own. This _Monsieur_ the Marquis des Islots is due for an
investigation. That one has an open reputation for dabbling in obscure
arts, and not such a savory reputation either."

"But," protested Farrell, "how do hasheesh addicts come into this?"

"Listen, I will enlighten you," began d'Artois. "We mentioned the
Assassins, the followers of Hassan al Sabbah, the terrible Chief of
the Mountains, _n'est-ce pas_? Those Assassins were of the fanatic
Ismailian sect of Moslems. Those guests of the garden mentioned in
this book"--d'Artois indicated _Siret al Haken_, lying open on the
desk--"actually believed that their master had the power of admitting
them to paradise for brief visits, at the end of which they were
drugged, and dragged forth to awaken once more on earth, and ready for
any infamy that might be demanded as the price of returning to the
garden."

"I have all that," admitted Farrell. "All right, then?"

"The sect of the Ismailians," continued d'Artois, "was more than
religious. It was political. Its members did not content themselves
with theory. And if, as Antoinette's strange dreams indicate, we have a
nest of Ismailians--that is, _hasheeshin_--to contend with, sooner or
later one or more of them will be noted about town.

"As for Antoinette, it is quite possible that she is, without being
aware of it, _clairvoyante_. And thus _Monsieur le Marquis_ will bear
investigation. Do you therefore stand watch as I directed, while I
pursue some private snooping. _À bientôt!_"

Whereat d'Artois turned to his desk, leaving Farrell to go to the plaza
and seek a table under the striped awning of the café.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farrell was none too optimistic, but upon his arrival at Café du
Théâtre he assumed an indolence that in any place but southern France
would have seemed a pose. But in Bayonne the enjoyment of placid
idleness is an ancient art: and thus it was eminently suitable for him
to sit and watch the smoke spiralling from the cigarette that smoldered
between his fingers.

All of the Bayonnais, and all visitors, eventually pass the plaza:
Portuguese and Spanish and Italian sailors, Arabs from Algiers and
Morocco, Basques from the hills; English tourists on their way to the
arcades of rue Port Neuf, where they found the only _épiceries_ in
Bayonne where they could buy Scotch whisky; peasants, loafers, soldiers
on leave; quietly dressed and unpainted girls who had left behind them,
in their rooms beyond the Nive, all the gauds and garniture of their
profession. Costly imported cars flashed by, to cross Pont Mayou and
Pont de Saint Esprit; ox-carts lumbered past, the drivers, arrayed in
dingy smocks, trudging along and reviling their placid beasts. Bayonne
marched by in review; and Farrell watched the parade.

But despite his apparent idleness, Farrell's gray eyes were occupied
with more than wisps of smoke, and the tall glass of _anis del oso_
that sat on the marble-topped table before him. Without in the least
shifting his slightly bowed head, he was peering between his drooping
eye-lashes at the passers-by, and at the boulevardiers who like himself
sat sipping the meridional _apéritif_.

He was particularly interested in the trio that sat two tables to
his right, where they could command a view of rue Port Neuf as well
as the street that led to the Mayou bridge. They were swarthy and
aquiline-featured. Two were Syrian Arabs; but the third, despite his
dark skin and foreign air, was no Semite, but an Aryan: a Kurd from
Kurdistan, one of those fierce mountaineers who in their native land
are the terror of Turk and Persian alike. Yet the trio had kinship in
at least one feature: the dilated pupils and the staring glassiness of
their eyes.

As Farrell raised his glass and sniffed the odor of the cloudy drink,
he smelled trouble as well as _anis del oso_. D'Artois' somber hints
were having substantial realization. Farrell's first reaction was
to loosen the pistol in his shoulder holster. The peculiar stare of
their eyes convinced Farrell that he had picked up the trail of that
which d'Artois felt would lead to the source of the bedevilment of
Antoinette's nights.

Farrell continued his apparent enjoyment of idleness. His broad
shoulders slumped. He languidly passed his fingers through his sandy
hair; but for all his efforts to maintain his poise, his long, lean
frame was tense, and chills raced up and down his spine, despite the
warmth of the day.

He summoned the waiter and called for brandy.

Then he noted that an exotic, imported car was coming to a smooth
halt at the curbing. A footman in livery opened the door and stood at
attention as a woman emerged from the rich upholstery and silver and
cut glass of the town car that bore the crest of the Marquis des Islots.

Farrell recognized the woman as La Dorada. He wondered, as he saw her
step to the curbing, why a carpet had not been unrolled to keep her
feet from the contamination of the paving. The scarcely perceptible
breeze wafted a breath of perfume whose cost rumor had for once fallen
short of exaggerating.

La Dorada was passing the table of the trio from Asia. The one facing
the Mayou bridge made a gesture. His lips moved. At that distance,
Farrell could not hear what he said. La Dorada apparently paid no
attention to the murmur. She was accustomed to whispered admiration.

Farrell ignored the warning of his intuition: it was too unbelievable
and outrageous.

Then it happened. The Kurd, who faced Farrell, leaped cat-like to his
feet. A knife flashed in his hand. La Dorada started at Farrell's
warning cry, and added her own note of dismay as she saw his hand with
an incredibly swift gesture seek his armpit.

"Smack-smack-smack!" roared the heavy automatic.

The Kurd pitched backward to the paving, groaning and clutching his
stomach.

But even as Farrell drew and fired, the Syrian whose back had been
turned to Farrell leaped from his place. And the knife he held found
its mark, full in the breast of La Dorada.

The pistol spoke, but too late. Even as the impact of the heavy slug
bowled the Syrian over in a heap, his blade sank home.

La Dorada screamed, reeled, and collapsed, clutching the dagger whose
hilt projected beyond the blood-splashed fur collar of her coat.

As he leaped forward, pistol in hand, Farrell knew that she would be
beyond assistance. A shot at the survivor of the trio was impossible,
and pursuit was futile. Waiters, patrons of the café, and passers-by
clustered about the dying beauty. In the confusion Farrell heard the
clash of gears and caught a glimpse of a car tearing madly down toward
the road leading to Maracq.

La Dorada moaned, and shuddered.

"Hassan----" she articulated with an effort. Then she coughed, and
gasped. A red foam flecked her red lips.

       *       *       *       *       *

The arrival of a pair of gendarmes, and, a few minutes later, a passing
doctor, scattered the dense cluster of frantically gesticulating
citizens.

"_Monsieur_," said one of the gendarmes, who had seen Farrell holster
his automatic, "be pleased to accompany us. Purely as a matter of form,
you understand. It is plainly evident that that one----"

He indicated the second of the assassins that Farrell's pistol fire
had bowled over.

Farrell shrugged. It would be awkward for a stranger in town to be
dragged into the formalities of a police investigation; and doubly
annoying in view of his having a serious problem of his own to handle.

"Very well, _monsieur_," agreed Farrell with a wry grimace.

Then he saw d'Artois emerge from the fringe of the crowd that still
persisted, at a distance of several paces. He whispered in the ear of
the gendarme--only a few words, but they sufficed.

The gendarme turned from d'Artois to Farrell.

"Your pardon, _monsieur_. You may call on us at your leisure. It was
routine, you comprehend."

Farrell in his turn bowed, and followed d'Artois to his car, eager to
be clear of the plaza. And as they drove past the parkway that lies
between the road to Maracq and the wall of Lachepaillet, Farrell gave
his companion an account of the assassination.

"_Sacré nom d'un nom!_" swore d'Artois at the conclusion of the
narrative. "That is the technique of the Fifth Order of the Ismailians.
They worked in threes, so that if the first and second were cut down,
the third would nevertheless slay the victim.

"They hunted Saladin seven hundred years ago. They slew Nizam ul Mulk.
The Sultan of Cairo, Baibars the Panther, barely escaped them. They
terrorized the Near East until Tamerlane in his wrath took by assault
their almost impregnable castle of Alamut, tore it down stone by stone,
and put to the sword 12,000 Ismailians. But the order persisted, though
its power has been broken for these past five centuries, thanks to the
savage efficiency of Tamerlane.

"And I am thoroughly convinced," continued d'Artois, "that you
witnessed a recrudescence of that plague which ate at the heart of
the Moslem world for several centuries. They seem to be branching
out again. Even as during the Crusades they assassinated Conrad of
Montferrat, so are they again carrying secret war against the infidel."

"But why," demanded Farrell, "did they strike La Dorada in the public
square? They could have killed her stealthily. Even though they could
not foresee that I would shoot two of them down in their tracks, the
other spectators or the police might have killed or captured them."

"You miss the point," declared d'Artois, "which is pardonable, since
even your extensive travels in the Orient would not of necessity bring
you into contact with the Ismailians. They killed her in public as an
example to instill terror in others. It is a matter of history that
Ismailian assassins were often ordered to slay a dignitary and to make
no attempt at escape. In one case the slayer struck, then sat down and
began eating his travel rations of bread and dates, calmly awaiting
the guard that would drag him to the executioner and impalement on a
sharpened stake. The besotted _hasheeshin_ faced a horrible doom for
the sake of re-entrance to the paradise with which their master duped
them. The utter fearlessness and indifference to death and torture
aroused more terror than the assassinations they perpetrated.

"So much for the _fedawi_, or Devoted Ones, Ismailians of the Fifth
Order. The first four orders were the Grand Master, the Grand Priors,
and simple priors, or initiates; and then a grade known as _rafiqs_,
or associates. These upper grades were intelligent persons who after
sufficient study in the free-thinking, heretical doctrines of the
Ismailians would be eligible for the highest offices in the Order.

"The Ismailians became a state within a state; they undermined Persia
and Syria, and for several centuries exacted tribute from sultans
and emirs, with summary vengeance as the penalty of non-payment,
very much," concluded d'Artois, with a malicious grin, "like those
racketeers they have in your United States. That should make it clear!"

"But how," wondered Farrell, "does Antoinette fit into all this?"

"The companions and initiates of the Ismailians," replied d'Artois,
"were adepts in alchemy, magic, conjuring, and occult arts. They used
Islam as a mask for all manner of forbidden heresies and as bait to
attract the pious oafs and religious fanatics who did the actual
slaying and--how does one say it, _à l'Américain_?--and took the rap!

"Maymun the Persian founded the order. A free-thinker, heretic, and
magician, he fled from the wrath of the Khalif Mansur, with his son
Abdallah, to whom he imparted all his vast knowledge of medicine,
conjuring, and occultism. And Abdallah built up on this start by
promising the return of the vanished Seventh Imam, who had never
died, but who was waiting for the day to return and rule all Islam.
They still wait for the return of Ismail, the Seventh Imam. And in
the meanwhile, behold the deviltry with which they amuse themselves,
bewitching Antoinette, slaying La Dorada--_le bon Dieu_ can only say
what will come next."

They drew up at d'Artois' house as he concluded his refreshing of
Farrell's memory on the origin of the menace that had taken root in
Bayonne.

"How about my watching the plaza?" wondered Farrell as Raoul admitted
them.

"You have watched enough," declared d'Artois. "In fact, you have made
yourself so painfully conspicuous that from now on I will have to
watch you more closely than Mademoiselle Antoinette, or you will be
found full of daggers yourself."

"Nuts, Pierre!" protested Farrell. "I've been away from home before,
and I'm used to being hunted."

"Nevertheless, be on your guard," cautioned the old man.




                       _4. Shirkuh Makes Magic_


That evening, after dinner, d'Artois' man, Raoul, entered the study
with a large envelope that had just been delivered by a messenger.

D'Artois glanced at the large waxen seal that secured the flap.

"The crest of _Monsieur le Marquis_," he observed. Then, with a wink
and a grin at Farrell, he continued, "Like Satan in the first lines
of the Book of Job, I wandered up and down the world, and in it,
particularly at Biarritz, and somewhat about the estate of our good
Marquis. But need I assure you that if my presence was noted, it was
also amply accounted for? _Mais oui_, of a verity!"

He slit the envelope and withdrew an engraved invitation.

"Hmmm ... _Monsieur le Marquis_ requests the honor of my presence at a
_soirée_ at his château. The Thaumaturgical Order of Thoth is meeting
in open conclave."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Farrell. "There's something fishy about
this. La Dorada, his sweetheart, is murdered around noon. And now
he sends you an invitation to--what was it?--some kind of juggler's
convention. Anyway, it's utterly out of keeping. Not only inhumanly
callous, but damned poor form; no matter what his private morals may
be, a man of his station would have better manners!"

"Granted," acquiesced d'Artois. "But consider: this thaumaturgical
society may be depending upon the meeting-place designated, and can
not postpone it for the sake of one man's grief. That there is such
an order has been for some time an open secret. Then, he himself may
be absent from the conclave, even though it assembled in his name. Or
again," continued d'Artois, "it is even possible that Monsieur the
Marquis does not know of La Dorada's death."

"Absurd!" objected Farrell. "In a town this small----"

"Wait!" interrupted d'Artois. "Remember Antoinette's dream: the Marquis
walked through the garden with the veiled Master. He may still be in
that garden, not to emerge until the hour of the _soirée_."

"By the rod, that's possible," agreed Farrell. "Since La Dorada was
presumably killed by the Ismailians, the Marquis may be in their hands,
dead, or a prisoner."

"Now, as to this invitation," continued d'Artois, "it may be a device
to exact vengeance for your excellent pistol practise. Their espionage
would inform them that you, my friend and guest, would surely accompany
me to the _soirée_.

"But mark you this: they can scarcely know that your Antoinette could
tell you of seeing the Marquis in the garden. That, you comprehend, is
the information that ties the scattered ends together, and makes their
otherwise subtle trap seem obvious to us.

"My friend, do we go and defy them, or shall we stay at home?"

Farrell laughed.

"Pierre, you're comical at times! We'll go, and be damned to them and
their trap. We can shoot our way out of any handful of knife-artists
they throw at us, what?"

"Ha! Is it that you are informing me?" scoffed d'Artois with a fierce
gleam in his steel-blue eyes. "_Voilà_--have your choice of my
arsenal," he said, gesturing at his collection of pistols, ranging
from flintlocks and cap-and-ball antiques to heavy Colt revolvers and
automatics. "And perhaps, since we shall be outnumbered, we might slip
into those shirts of Persian chain-mail. They are not much heavier than
a sweater, and so exquisitely forged as to be proof against knives and
any but the heaviest pistols. _Parbleu_, we will attend that conclave!"

After arraying themselves as d'Artois had suggested, they dressed for a
formal evening affair.

"Thaumaturgy ... thaumaturgy ..." muttered Farrell as they stepped into
the Renault and d'Artois took the wheel. "Wonder, or miracle workers,
what?"

"Precisely," agreed d'Artois. "Jugglery, sleight of hand, trickery, but
withal, an underlying substratum of fact that can not be dismissed.
I myself have seen unbelievable things done by the adepts of Tibet.
A corpse, _par exemple_, animated and made to dance by some devilish
magic. The fact of my having been admitted to their inner circles in
Tibet has in time leaked out; and it is to this that they would expect
us to attribute my receiving tonight's invitation."

       *       *       *       *       *

The château of the Marquis was out in the hills beyond the Mousserole
Gate. It was perched on a knoll that commanded the surrounding country.
Several cars were parked in a level space near the entrance.

"It seems," observed Farrell, "that there are other guests, although
that may or may not mean anything."

D'Artois presented his invitation to the butler.

"_Monsieur le Chevalier_ Pierre d'Artois," he intoned in impressive
but oddly accented French. Then he glanced at Farrell.

D'Artois interposed and instructed the butler, who then announced
Farrell.

They advanced through the vestibule and thence into the salon, a
vast, high-ceiled chamber illuminated by a pulsing bluish glow. The
walls were hung with black arras embroidered in silver to depict with
unsavory realism the grotesque imagery of Asian mysteries. At the
far end of the salon was a dais flanked by tall tripod-censers whose
pungent, resinous fumes made the air thick.

The assembled guests were in formal evening dress. There were Spaniards
with black mustaches, and Frenchmen with spade-shaped beards; and here
and there Farrell saw lean, hawk-faced Arabs, and several distinctly
Mongolian faces.

"More guests than the number of cars would indicate," muttered Farrell,
nudging d'Artois. "This is all very flossy, but I smell trouble."

"And no Marquis," added d'Artois with a quick glance about the salon.
Then he advanced to meet the man who seemed to be acting as host. After
the exchange of a few words, d'Artois presented Farrell.

In the course of the conventional courtesies, Farrell appraised the
master of the show. He was lean as a beast of prey, and as sleek.
His moves and gestures had a cat-like grace, and his speech had the
indefinable blur of accent that marks one who speaks many languages
with equal ease.

"And thus I have the honor," concluded the host, "of offering in the
name of _Monsieur le Marquis_ his regrets and the hospitality of his
house."

He paused for a moment, regarding them with his intent, deep-set eyes;
then with a gesture toward a row of chairs arranged before the dais,
"Be pleased to seat yourselves, _messieurs_."

Farrell watched the broad shoulders and tall figure pass among the
guests like a cat stalking through a jungle.

"Shirkuh of the clan of Shadi," muttered Farrell. "Ought to be an
honest fighting-man, but----"

"'But' is correct," interrupted d'Artois. "There is nothing honest
about that playmate of Satan. Mark my words, we shall see more of that
gentleman, if we live long enough."

As they seated themselves there was a clang of bronze, and the faint,
muffled wailing of pipes and the whine of single-stringed _kemenjahs_
from an alcove behind the arras. As the guests took seats, an attendant
passed up and down the rows of chairs, offering small glasses of wine,
and triangular pastries iced in curious designs.

"On your life, don't eat it!" muttered d'Artois as he palmed a
confection he had selected from the tray. "Drugged, there is no telling
what may happen to your good sense. This is all damnably familiar."

Another peal of bronze; then, as Shirkuh sprang effortlessly to the
dais, the music dimmed to a sighing whisper, a sinister murmuring from
outer darkness.

Six lean, brown men, nude save for loin-cloths that glowed like golden
flames in the spectral bluish light, emerged from an entrance concealed
by the silver-embroidered arras, and filed across the hall toward the
dais. Following them came four others, likewise arrayed, but blacker
than any negroes Farrell had ever seen. They bore a litter on which lay
a form whose gracious feminine curves were not entirely concealed by
the silken, metallically glistening shroud.

"Good Lord!" muttered Farrell. "A woman!"

The brown-skinned sextet ascended the dais. The blacks followed with
their burden. As they halted, two others emerged from the back-drapes
of the dais, bringing with them wrought bronze trestles on which the
litter was placed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Shirkuh took his post behind the litter as the sextet of adepts from
High Asia seated themselves cross-legged in front of it.

"Fellow thaumaturges," he began, "I, the least of your servants, beg
leave to present a feat that has never been accomplished save in
far-off Lhasa."

He paused, smiled, and stroked his mustache. Then he gestured toward
the shrouded form on the litter. An attendant gathered the silken folds
and drew them aside.

Farrell barely suppressed a gasp of horrified amazement.

The woman on the bier was La Dorada. Her copper-golden hair flamed
like living fire in the bluish-purple, pulsing light of the room. The
hands, folded across her breast, sparkled with jewels. She had no other
adornment or dress. La Dorada, the Golden, dead not over ten hours,
and stripped of all but her exquisite beauty, lay exposed to the gaze
of that assemblage of devil-mongers. For one terrible instant Farrell
had thought that Antoinette lay on that bier; then he remembered her
resemblance to the dead actress, and assured himself that Antoinette
was and must be in her apartment on rue Lachepaillet, awaiting another
night of fantastic dreams of an assassin's paradise, and the lashing of
an invisible scourge.

"_Monsieur le Marquis_," continued Shirkuh with a smile that flashed
satanic mockery, "is unable to be with us. But I trust that that which
I offer will be worthy of your presence."

"Lord!" muttered Farrell. "I don't know the Marquis, but exhibiting her
dead body here in his house--I've half a notion to start the show right
here!"

D'Artois' fingers closed about Farrell's right wrist.

"_Imbécile!_ This infamy is none of your business. Tend to your own
sheep."

Shirkuh nodded and made a gesture. The faint, whimpering music became
louder. Among the plucked strings of _sitar_ and _oudh_ Farrell could
distinguish the notes of a wind instrument that was a mockery of a
woman's voice. The drums muttered and purred in complex rhythm.

The adepts were swaying from their hips, and making statuesque passes
and gestures that resembled an animation of the figures of Egyptian
sculpture. Their glassily staring eyes shifted in regular cadence to
follow their darting finger tips. They were as revivified corpses that
had not yet gained full control of their bodies.

Then they lifted their voices in a chant like the wailing of ghouls
imprisoned in a looted tomb; dead brazen faces chanting to the dead.
And Shirkuh, arms extended, made antiphonal responses in a voice that
surged and thundered like a distant surf.

The notes of that diabolical wind instrument behind the arras became
more and more like the voice of a woman: a mellow sweetness against a
background of sepulchral wailing and the solemn intonation of Shirkuh.

"Good Lord, Pierre, that's awful!" muttered Farrell.

"Wait until it fairly starts," countered d'Artois in a whisper. "This
is primitive magic. Very primitive, but deadly. They are imitating that
which they design to accomplish.

"_Pardieu_, hear that damnable pipe--_her_ very voice, now. They
imitate in music and symbolize in their chant the triumph of the dead
as they return from Beyond."

That satanically sweet voice was now almost articulate. Farrell
strained his ears as he leaned forward, clutching the arms of his
chair. He sought to distinguish the words that it spoke. And then
another instrument came into play: a hoarse, reverberant roaring like
the lustful bellowing of pre-Adamite monsters. The hall trembled with
that terrific bestial blast.

The fumes of the censers were swirling and twining like fantasmal
serpents in the ghastly blueness, weaving arabesques, spiralling
in vortices, gathering about that hellish sextet and its leader
like shapes from beyond the border clamoring at the periphery of a
necromancer's pentacle.

A luminous haze was gathering and drawing to itself the censer fumes.
The nebulous iridescence pulsed and quivered like a sentient thing.
It throbbed with the slow, persistent beat of a turtle's heart after
it has been removed from the body. It elongated; then as it slowly
settled, that amorphous luminescence took shape: the graceful form of
La Dorada.

The pipe that mimicked a woman's voice was articulating now in unison,
joining the necromancer's antiphonal answer to the chanting adepts and
the minotaurean bellowing of that monstrous horn.

The master had called her, and she was there.

The phantom presence slowly merged with the nacreous body of La
Dorada. The dead woman shivered for a moment, extended her shapely
arms, sat erect on the bier. Her cry was a mingling of exultation and
bewilderment; then she accepted the hand that Shirkuh offered her, and
splendid in her unclad beauty, sprang gracefully to the dais.

[Illustration: "_The dead woman shivered for a moment, then sat erect
on the bier._"]

The music and the chanting and the bestial roaring of that terrific
horn had ceased. The assembled thaumaturges sat fixed and staring as
though their life and their spiritual essence had been torn from them
and given to the dead who saluted them with a gesture and a bow.

Shirkuh smiled triumphantly.

"You have seen, Brethren. I called her and she came. And I am but
Shirkuh, the least of the slaves. See, she is alive, with the warmth
and beauty that at noon of this very day was a coldness, and a sister
of the dust."

The red-gold head inclined in affirmation, and her smile was a slow,
curved sorcery.

"Good God, that's the awfulest blasphemy!" muttered Farrell. "Or is it
an illusion?"

"It is all too real," whispered d'Artois.

       *       *       *       *       *

And then she spoke: "I have come back from the shadows and from the
blackness of death. I have come to greet you and to say that there is
a Garden to which I must soon return. And those who meet me there need
not ever think of farewell.

"I came from across the narrow bridge, and back across it I must go.
Yet not this time to any blackness, but to the Garden, to be the Bride
and the reward and the welcome of those who believe. Oh, _Fedawi_ ...
Devoted Ones...."

La Dorada, lovely in death, and more alluring than ever in life: yet a
cold horror clutched Farrell as he heard that dead woman's caressing
voice entrance the thaumaturges with promises that no human woman
could fulfill or even imagine. Her voice was a poison sweetness, a
full-throated richness that pronounced the beguilements of Lilith
chanting to the Morning Star.

"Death so loved me that he has allowed me to leave," she said in that
wondrous voice that had made her the darling of Paris. And then her
exultant tones became a poignant sorrow as she continued, "But the
beloved of death must return...."

"_Cordieu!_ That is a foulness beyond mention!" growled d'Artois. Then:

"Let's go! Before we go utterly mad----"

He leaped to his feet and thrust back his chair. And as Farrell
followed, he expected at any instant a fanatical outburst, the flash
of blades, the crackle of pistols. But the thaumaturges sat like the
ancient dead awaiting the newly died.

La Dorada was ascending the bier. Her motions were graceful, but very
slow, as though the animation was being drained from her body. She was
dying a second time.

This as they paused at the threshold for a backward glance; then,
advancing, Farrell and d'Artois sighed deeply, and strode to the
Renault. The hideous life-like unreality had dazed them.

"_Dieu de Dieu!_" muttered d'Artois as he glanced at Farrell's lean,
drawn features, and shoulders drooping as though from the weight of the
Persian mail they had so needlessly worn. "What did that blasphemous
monster want with us? Did he hope to drive us to madness?"

"No," said Farrell wearily. "He was mocking us. Certainly he didn't
withhold his cutthroats because he was afraid to try."

       *       *       *       *       *

The long beam of the headlights swept the château, then picked up the
winding road as the car headed back toward the city. D'Artois sat
hunched behind the wheel. Farrell shivered at the memory of that
ghastly loveliness that had greeted them from the grave.

"I know she was dead," reiterated Farrell. "She couldn't have been
alive. Not with that dagger I saw jammed into her breast this
afternoon. But why did he invite you? What everlastingly damned
mummery--there's something behind all this--she's going to greet them
in the Garden and there will be no farewell--was that all illusion,
or----"

Farrell slumped back against the cushions and made a gesture of
bewilderment and futility.

They left the river road, passed through the Mousserole Gate, and
threaded their way through the unsavory quarters between there and the
Nive. As they crossed the first of the seven bridges that span the
river, d'Artois suddenly jerked back from his crouch behind the wheel.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" he exclaimed.

Farrell, aroused by the note of alarm, glanced at his companion and saw
that the horror on his face was in keeping with the consternation in
his voice.

The car leaped forward as d'Artois stepped on the accelerator.

"Death and damnation!" he shouted above the full-throated roar of the
motor. "We sat there like dummies. _That_ is what he wanted!"

"What?" demanded Farrell, tense, and alarmed by d'Artois' contagious
excitement. A sudden fear seized him.

"A trap. Not for your worthless head nor mine, but for her!
Thaumaturgy! If there is but one greater damn fool than Glenn Farrell,
it is Pierre d'Artois!"

They passed the plaza, and with a screech of brakes slowed down enough
to make the turn at rue Port Neuf. Then up rue d'Espagne, around the
hairpin turn, and thence down the street along the city wall. Again the
brake linings smoked their wrath and squealed their protest. Fuming
and cursing in a high rage, d'Artois leaped to the curbing, dashed up
the steps, and pounded Antoinette Delatour's door with the butt of his
pistol.

"_Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?_" cried the terrified, bewildered maid.

"Flames and damnation! Open, quick!" demanded d'Artois. "_C'est moi!_"

"But she is sleeping," protested the maid, still half asleep.

"Hasten, then. If she sleeps, wake her--is she indeed----"

And as the door yielded, d'Artois, pistol in hand, charged up the
stairs, taking them three at a time. Farrell was but a jump behind him.

They pounded on Antoinette's door. No response.

"The key----" began d'Artois.

But Farrell stepped back, gathered himself, and charged the door. It
resisted the shock; but a second assault burst it open, tearing the
lock from its socket.

The floor of Antoinette's room was covered with fallen plaster. Her bed
was empty. A hole two feet square yawned in the ceiling. The turquoise
and silver slippers mocked them.

"Gone!" muttered Farrell.

"While we sat there ready for an ambush that didn't materialize," added
d'Artois.

Farrell turned to the door. D'Artois seized him by the arm.

"_Tenez!_ If you are going to tear the château to pieces," he said,
"spare yourself the trouble. They have taken her elsewhere. No effort
was made to detain us when we left because none was necessary. And they
will not be at the château, not any of them."

Farrell's eyes were cold as sword-points as they flashed back again to
the empty, canopied bed. Then the slaying rage left him.

"Right, Pierre," he admitted. "It's your move. With some head-work."

"Head-work, indeed!" retorted d'Artois with a bitter, mordant laugh.
"It was my head-work that led to this. We should have watched her."




                           _5. Ibrahim Khan_


"Now, where do we start?" demanded Farrell the following morning, as
he tasted the strong coffee that was to banish the remains of the
nightmarish sleep from which sunrise had awakened them. "You've got the
_Sûreté_--that's what you call your detective bureau, isn't it?--on
the trail. But there's a lot of this that no honest policeman could
swallow."

"It is indeed a madhouse," admitted d'Artois. "But let us sum up for
a moment: Antoinette is evidently _en rapport_ with some one in that
Garden; some one with whom she identifies herself, and whose savage
beatings in some way leave marks on Antoinette's body.

"By means of clairvoyance or other unusual perception, she recognized
the Marquis in her dream garden, her description of which tallies
closely with the traditional paradise devised by the higher Ismailians
for the deluding of their fanatical assassins.

"Assassins operating very much like the _fedawi_ of five centuries ago
murdered La Dorada, the sweetheart of the Marquis. La Dorada bears a
marked resemblance to Antoinette, though far from enough to make her a
double, except under the most favorable conditions.

"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 skulduggery. 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 beard!" 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.

"_La, 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 fool-hardy 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.




                          _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 grillework 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 rôle 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."

"They are your men, _ya sidi_," replied Farrell with a shrug. "If you
can spare them."

The old man chuckled, and his eyes for a moment smiled.

"Strike!" he commanded.

They paused for an instant before closing in. One of them, Farrell was
certain, would go down before his first thrust, but the other would
slay him. Farrell's success depended upon finesse. He shifted his feet
as if to test the footing. He glanced over his shoulder as if to assure
himself that he had room to retreat. All in a flash: and then they
sprang, blades thirsty and a-glitter.

Farrell's leap took him to the left instead of to the rear. He dropped
his knife and snatched the wrist of the nearest enemy, who, missing
his quarry, plunged forward abreast of his comrade.

His own momentum was his ruin. There was the snap of a breaking bone,
and Yusuf pitched in a heap before the dais. And Farrell, picking his
knife from the tiles, confronted Suleiman, who despite his fanatic
frenzy was profiting by Yusuf's mishap.

They circled, feinting and thrusting, seeking to shake each other's
guard. Suleiman avoided Farrell's efforts to close in to make it a test
of strength. Nor would rushing in to exchange thrusts suffice: for
if they slew each other, the Master would still not have the test he
ordered. They wove in and out, shifting and side-stepping, each seeking
an opening in the other's defense.

Then Farrell made a desperate feint at his enemy's throat. As
Suleiman's blade rose to parry, Farrell evaded, and stretched out in
a full lunge, point forward and arm extended as with a rapier. The
unexpected play caught Suleiman off guard. His downward thrust came
an instant too late: Farrell's knife sank to the hilt in the enemy's
stomach, ripping upward.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farrell, bleeding from the cut on his shoulder, emerged from the
engagement empty-handed as Suleiman collapsed.

"Well done, _ya_ Ibrahim!" approved Hassan. Then he smote a gong beside
the dais.

"_Ya_ Musa! Abbas! Khalil!" he shouted.

A panel opened at right of the dais, and three tall negroes entered.
They made no expressions of obedience; only the inarticulate gurglings
of those whose tongues have been removed.

Hassan indicated the two dead, and the one whose arm was snapped.

"To the black pool with them. All three!" Then, as two stepped forward
to execute the command, Hassan spoke to the third: "Take our new
aspirant, Ibrahim, to the Garden."

Musa bowed, and at the Master's gesture of dismissal, led Farrell
into a dimly lighted room which was arranged after the fashion of a
_majlis_, or reception hall of an Arabian house.

A narrow divan extended the full length of the wall. At the end
farthest from the entrance were the customary coffee hearth and
polished brass pots. And save for those, and the cushions and rugs with
which the divan was covered, there were no furnishings.

Farrell noted that he was not alone. Those who lay sprawled on the
divan were, apparently, likewise to visit the Garden.

"Dead-drunk ... drugged ... or spies to watch me," reflected Farrell.

Musa, who after indicating that Farrell was to seat himself, had left,
presently returned with a tray on which was a goblet and flagon. These
he set on a small tabouret, bowed, and left Farrell to refresh himself.

The proof of hand-to-hand fighting had been severe enough; but the
flagon of wine, fragrant but reeking of hasheesh, represented a more
subtle and dangerous test. If under the influence of the drug Farrell
made one remark or gesture that would betray his imposture, the
awakening would be death, either swift, or else by torture administered
to find out how much the outside world knew of the Ismailians.
Nevertheless, Farrell dared not abstain from the drugged wine. He knew
not what eyes might be regarding him through loopholes in the wall.

"_Bismillahi!_" he ejaculated, and seized the flagon, draining it
at a draft. He hoped that despite the insidious drug, his years of
wandering in the forbidden places of Asia had impressed upon him enough
of his assumed character to insure him against a fatal slip.

Farrell wondered at the suicide ordered by Hassan. The value of Ibrahim
Khan as a _fedawi_ could scarcely balance the self-slain and the two
killed in action. He reconciled this point, however, when he considered
the probability of the slain being offenders against the discipline of
the order....

The intoxication of hasheesh was gripping him. Then an artifice
occurred to Farrell. He might still save the day and avoid complete
intoxication.

"_Ya_ Musa! _Shewayya' khamr!_" he bawled drunkenly. "More wine!"

The slave came hurrying with a full flagon. Farrell's chance was to
drink so much of the drugged liquor that his stomach would rebel, and
expel it; and such sottishness would be quite in character. He seized
the flagon with unfeigned eagerness.

But the saving thought had come too late.

His heart-beat became terrifyingly slow. His arm seemed so long that
the weight of the flagon, already the size of a cask, and momentarily
becoming larger, would exert a leverage that would upset him. The room
was expanding to allow for the abnormal length of the arm that sought
to raise the wine to his lips.

Farrell became aware of a duality of identity. Half of him was
struggling fiercely to assert itself and overcome the confusion of his
senses; the other half was yielding to a languorous drowsiness, and a
soporific humming which pervaded the room.

There came finally a rustling of wings, and a piping, haunting music
that sighed amorously. All sense of time had ceased. Farrell did not
know whether he was being carried through an archway into a vast domed
vault, or whether he had floated in on clouds of overwhelming sweetness.

A fountain was bubbling, and splashing him with its spray. He stared
up at the ceiling. Its luminous blue was dusted with stars that were
arranged in unfamiliar constellations.

Drums muttered somewhere in the shifting, warm fragrance. He heard the
silvery clink-clinking of anklets. He rolled over on his side, and as
he glanced along the rose-hued tiles, he saw dainty feet with hennaed
nails stepping in cadence to the whining notes of a _kemenjah_, and the
moan of pipes.

As he made an effort to sit erect, a warm, soft arm supported his
head, and slender, golden-brown hands offered him a bowl of cold,
aromatic liquid. He drank it, and found that his reeling senses became
more stable. The girl who smiled at him had great dark eyes with
kohl-blackened lids.

Another heaped cushions behind him.

Paradise indeed; _al jannat_, temporarily offered as the reward of
whatever infamy the lord Hassan demanded, and promised for all eternity
to the fanatic _fedawi_ who died executing his commands.

There were other guests scattered about the jasmine and rose clustered
garden, and the brides of _al jannat_ were reviving them with flagons,
cold drinks, and warm caresses.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farrell made an effort to fight the illusion of distorted time and
distance, and the sensuous allure of the music and hasheesh. He rose,
and ignoring his amorous companions, set about exploring the garden.
Strange birds flitted about among the orange and pomegranate trees and
mocked him with their almost articulate cries. A parrot mimicked in a
loud voice the endearments that a Malay girl murmured in the ear of one
of the Devoted Ones.

"Where is the Golden One?" he heard a swarthy Kurd demand as he thrust
aside his slant-eyed Eurasian companion.

The last of Farrell's intoxication left him. The Golden One--Antoinette!

The girl laughed.

"She'll scratch your eyes out! Let her alone!"

"But the Master, our Lord Hassan, promised she'd greet us in Paradise,"
protested the Kurd.

Farrell knew now beyond any doubt that Antoinette had been kidnapped
to double in this satanic garden for the murdered La Dorada, to prove
to the _hasheeshin_ that the Lord Hassan indeed held the keys to the
garden of resurrection.

"_Al Asfarani_, the Golden One----" Farrell seconded the Kurd's inquiry.

"Snarling and spitting in her alcove, O Strong Man!" smiled the girl.

Farrell left her to entertain the Kurd, and wandered past the rows of
potted trees that paralleled the walls of the garden. The walls were
pierced with deep niches that formed small rooms whose arched entrances
were scarcely shoulder-high. As he glanced into each in succession, he
noted the trinkets and cosmetics and perfumes, and articles of feminine
apparel. Each bride of _al jannat_ seemed to have her own lupanar; but
they apparently preferred to lounge among the fountains and arbors.

Finally, however, Farrell found an occupied alcove. A woman lay face
down among a heap of cushions. Her hair was copper-golden, and her bare
shoulders were latticed with long, bluish stripes.

Farrell knelt at her side.

"Antoinette!" he whispered.

At the touch of his fingers on her shoulder, she started and with a
quick motion drew away. Her hand emerged from the cushions clutching a
long sharp steel skewer used in Syria for grilling meat.

It was Antoinette, wide-eyed with terror. She cried out, and stabbed
at Farrell with the skewer. The point raked his cheek as he seized her
wrist.

"'Toinette! Don't you recognize me?" he whispered hoarsely.

She regarded him for a moment, puzzled and incredulous. The skewer
dropped from her fingers. But before she could cry out in amazement,
Farrell continued, "Not a word! If any one passes by, start raising the
devil! Don't seem to recognize me ... understand?"

She nodded, but he saw that she did not grasp the point that might make
the difference between life and death. She was still bewildered.

"Oh, Glenn...." She stroked his cheek and regarded him, still
incredulously. "Are you--isn't this--my dear, this is that awful garden
I dreamed of. Only, now I have my own body, and I don't wake up----"

"Pipe down!" he commanded in a low, tense voice. "I'm supposed to be
one of these devils! You're not dreaming. Pull yourself together----"

He heard footsteps approaching. They were steady, not the jerky
lurchings of wine and hasheesh intoxication. Whoever it was, was for
Farrell a death sentence if Antoinette in her hysteria spoke one false
word.

"Scream! Claw me! As you treated the others!"

Then he seized her in his arms and murmured drunken endearments in her
ear.

But Antoinette was too dazed by the meeting to play her part. She
clung to Farrell as the one fragment of reality in all that unending
nightmare of hasheesh-drugged assassins who courted her favor, and
pawed her, and abandoned their advances only at the suggestion of more
amiable brides of _al jannat_. Instead of clawing and defying Farrell,
she clung to him, sobbing hysterically.

       *       *       *       *       *

That deliberate tread of doom, soft slipper shod, drew nearer, paused.

Farrell trembled like a trapped animal. He sought with his own feigned
drunken, amorous approaches to drown her betraying sobs and murmurs.

The swish-slap of slippers ... another halt. Farrell felt the
intentness of the gaze at his back.

He broke from Antoinette's embrace and turned. Standing just within
the entrance of the tiny room was Shirkuh the necromancer. He had seen
Farrell at the château, face to face. And he had heard. He knew.

"Ah ... La Dorada has lured you to the Garden?" he murmured with deadly
emphasis on the dead woman's name.

The smile was slow and mocking; the relentless eyes burned with a
fanatical hatred. For a moment Farrell was paralyzed with terror, and
horror at the doom from which Antoinette had no further chance of
escape.

Shirkuh relished the encounter, and gloated--but just an instant too
long.

Farrell sprang from his crouched position in one swift, fluent motion.
Shirkuh, taken cold-footed, could not draw his knife. They crashed to
the floor. But once Shirkuh recovered from the surprize of the assault,
he was more than a match for Farrell, who was battered, weary from
combat, and shaken by the drugged wine. The iron fingers of the Kurd
sank into his throat and throttled him. Shirkuh whipped his lithe body
aside, avoiding Farrell's frenzied efforts to drive home with his knee.
As Farrell's struggles subsided to a futile gasping for breath, the
Kurd's hand flashed to his belt and drew a knife----

But before the stroke descended, there was a crash and a splintering
of glass. Shirkuh toppled over, felled by a decanter that Antoinette
had broken across his head. Farrell gasped, and caught his breath, then
slowly dragged himself clear of his enemy.

Antoinette, still clutching the neck of the broken decanter, regarded
him with terror-widened eyes. Then she gestured toward Shirkuh, who
muttered and stirred.

Farrell's fingers closed about the hilt of the knife the Kurd had
dropped.

"Me or him," muttered Farrell. "If you don't want to see it, look the
other way."

The blade flashed thrice.

Farrell wiped the red steel and slipped it into his empty scabbard.
Then he sighed wearily and despairingly.

"Finish anyway ... they'll miss him ... and no place we can hide him."

Antoinette stared at the dark pool that spread across the silken rug.

"Can't cut my way out," muttered Farrell. "But you have a chance.
Pierre and the _Sûreté_ are on the job--is there any place we could
hide that fellow?"

Antoinette shook her head.

"Nowhere. The pool of the fountain isn't deep enough----"

"Never mind the fountain!" interrupted Farrell, as he leaped to his
feet. "I have a hunch. We're not quite ready to hang old man Farrell's
youngest son!"

At the entrance Farrell turned, reassured Antoinette with a gesture,
then stalked out into the Garden, chanting a bawdy song in Turki.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beside the fountain he found the object of his search: a bemuddled
Kurd, and the Eurasian girl who had finally convinced him that the
Golden One was best left to the blustering Afghan.

"Get us more wine, O Moon of Loveliness," said Farrell with his most
engaging smile. He nudged the Kurd.

The girl laughed softly.

"You look as though she gave you your fill of clawing!"

"_Ay, wallah!_" agreed Farrell with a broad grin. Then, as the girl
picked up an empty flagon, he said in a low voice to the Kurd,
"Brother, you fellows didn't approach _al Asfarani_ the right way."

He winked and beckoned.

The Kurd clambered to his feet and followed Farrell. They paused at the
arched entrance of Antoinette's alcove.

"She's in there now," whispered Farrell. "She'll not claw you."

Thus encouraged, the Kurd stepped in, Farrell following.

"_Ya sitti_," he began, addressing Antoinette. Then he started, seeing
the body of Shirkuh.

Farrell slipped past, and toward Antoinette's divan.

"Out of my way, O shamelessly Besotted!" growled the Kurd, pausing to
nudge the body with his toe.

During that instant Farrell found what he sought; and as the Kurd
decided to ignore the supposed sot, the steel skewer drove home, its
point projecting beyond his shoulders.

"Sorry, old man," muttered Farrell as he regarded the Kurd twitching
and coughing his life out in a bloody foam. Then he rapidly searched
the body.

He found no weapons.

"Disarm 'em when they come in here ... leaves me handicapped...."

He thrust Shirkuh's knife into the hand of the dying Kurd and closed
the fingers about it. Then he guided the hand of Shirkuh and clenched
it about the blunt end of the skewer.

"This may save the day," he explained to Antoinette. "Remember, they
fought and killed each other. That may give me a long enough lease on
life to come back and get you out of this hell's hole, or get word
to Pierre. Now I've got to go out into the Garden and do some quick
thinking. Something else may turn up ... no, I can't stay here with
you ... and I've got to leave the bodies where they are."

Then, as he kissed her, "Hang on. There's still a chance for you. Maybe
for us."

He strode out into the Garden, and washed his blood-stained hands
at the fountain. The Eurasian girl had not yet returned with the
replenished flagon. And as Farrell glanced about, looking for her, and
preparing to divert her from any thought of her former companion, Musa
the mute negro approached with a jar on his shoulder and a cup in his
hand.

This, Farrell surmised, would be the end of the visit to Paradise.
The negro would administer a sleeping-potion; the devoted ones would
drink, and upon awakening would find themselves lying in the _majlis_,
mysteriously translated from the empyrean realm of the Lord Hassan, and
ready for whatever butcheries he could assign them.

As Musa offered him the cup, Farrell extended his own flagon, saying,
"Fill this one, Father of Blackness. That cup of yours is too small."

The negro grinned, emptied the cup into the larger vessel, and went his
way to minister to the other guests.

The Eurasian beauty, who returned at that moment, was easily diverted,
so that Farrell contrived to spill most of the drugged wine over his
shirt-front and into the fountain. Then, as he saw the _fedawi_ succumb
to the effects of the drug, he himself lurched forward, feigning
unconsciousness.

"No chance to look around ... no chance of cutting my way out," he
reflected as he thought of Antoinette and her ghastly companions. "And
maybe the Shirkuh versus drunken Kurd formation will hold water long
enough to give me time to qualify as an assassin and be sent out to do
a bit of slaying!"

The negro was making the rounds, taking the _fedawi_ one by one from
the Garden. He picked Farrell from the paving as though he were a
bag of meal, shouldered him, and deposited him on the divan in the
anteroom, beside his drugged companions.

And from sheer weariness and the futility of further thought, Farrell
fell asleep.




                        _7. A Left-Handed Kurd_


When a cold sponge on his forehead and the rim of a copper bowl pressed
to his lips awoke Farrell, he had no idea as to the length of his sleep.

Musa helped him to his feet and led the way down a narrow passage
whose floor sloped perceptibly upward. The negro halted before a panel
and tapped thrice. As the panel slid aside, he gestured and flattened
himself against the wall so that Farrell could pass him and enter the
chamber ahead.

Farrell stepped into a circular vault fully twenty yards in diameter.
In its center was a pool, likewise circular, and surrounded by a coping
about a foot high. A dark splash on the tiles near the pool convinced
Farrell that this must be the place into which the bodies of the
victims of his test before Hassan had been tossed.

Farrell wondered if as a matter of convenience he had been conducted
to the vault before the master cut him down. One slip would suffice....

Directly opposite Farrell was an arched niche in which sat an old man
whose head was bowed in contemplation. Suspended from the crown of the
arch was a cluster of crystalline prisms that slowly rotated, giving
the effect of a glowing, coruscating ball of light.

As Farrell advanced, the door behind him slid silently into place. He
skirted the edge of the pool in the center, and wondered from what
abyss its black, untroubled waters emerged; what creatures lurked in
its darkness to devour the bodies tossed into their pit. Then, leaving
the pool, Farrell continued toward the bearded sage who still ignored
his approach.

"At thy command, _ya shaykh_!" said Farrell as he halted some five
paces from the Presence.

"Step forward," directed the ancient one, looking up and indicating a
small hearth-rug that lay at the foot of the steps that ascended to the
niche. "Look, _ya_ Ibrahim: hast thou seen me before?"

As the smoldering eyes narrowed, Farrell recognized Hassan, now
unveiled. He returned the old man's unblinking stare, and strove to
remain unperturbed by its intent concentration; but his effort was
vain. He felt a sense of futility and weakness creeping over him.

The rotating cluster of prisms now flamed and flashed with an
adamantine fire that expanded and contracted and pulsed like a living
thing. It seemed now to be glowing between the eyes of Hassan. An
overwhelming weariness assailed Farrell.

The old man's voice intoned sonorously, and as from a great distance.

"I am the keeper of the gateway ... even in the hollow of my hand I
hold _al jannat_ and its coolness to the eyes.... Yea, behold my
hand...."

Farrell regarded the outstretched hand of Hassan.

"In the hollow of my hand, even in this hand I hold _al jannat_...."

A mistiness was gathering about Hassan, and his features became
obscured so that only his glittering eyes peered through. The
outstretched hand was expanding; and strangely enough, it seemed
fitting to Farrell that this should be so, and that there should be
hazy figures, and clots of greenness appearing in the blankness above
the hand. Trees were taking root. Their outlines were hazy, and through
their immaterial substance he could just distinguish the jambs of the
niche, and the swirling mists that veiled Hassan.

The voice was now murmuring softly and compellingly.

"Even in this hand I hold the Garden.... I am the keeper and the
warden.... I accept and I reject...."

Then that which in the back of his brain had kept Farrell from utterly
succumbing to the sorcery of that murmuring voice and those burning
eyes asserted itself, and he knew that it was illusion. As he sought to
resist and deny, he felt a terrific impact as of a physical substance.
A mighty, implacable will bludgeoned him as with hammer blows. He knew
that if he continued assenting he would be for ever enslaved.

"There is no Garden. It is illusion," he asserted to himself, and
forced his lips to move and silently enunciate the negation. He
trembled with an all-compelling fear, the awful fear of losing his very
identity. That devastating will behind the cloud-veil was crushing him.
How easy to assent, and end the agony!

Great beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His face was drawn and
haggard with the torment of his battered will. But to surrender would
betray Antoinette into the hands of the enemy.

"There is no Garden," he persisted. "His hand is _empty_. EMPTY. EMPTY!"

He forced his last vestige of strength into that final declaration. The
trees dwindled to pin-heads of green, and with them vanished the gray
mists. The hand _was_ empty!

Farrell sighed from mortal weariness and relief. Then he smiled
triumphantly. He had withstood the terrific psychic assault that would
have made him a slave, and a vassal of that old man and the murderous
heritage of Asia.

Hassan smiled as at an ancient jest.

"You have withstood my will as no man before you," he said. "There was
one who resisted to the uttermost, but he dropped dead."

Hassan, the heir of Maymun the magician, the sorcerer, the heretic,
took his defeat gracefully. Then his smile became ominous and mocking.

"Who but you would have had the wit to slay Shirkuh, the chief of my
servants, then so arrange the body of another you slew, that it would
seem that they had died quarrelling over _Al Asfarani_? Subtle serpent,
you erred in putting the dagger in the right hand. That Kurd was
left-handed."

As those words hammered home, Farrell wondered if his heart would ever
again start beating. He was lost, and with him, Antoinette. Doomed by
his own cunning.

But thus far, no word about his imposture; therefore Farrell laughed
full in Hassan's face, as became the honor of the Durani clan.

"_Wallah_, you put a premium on slayers! Now what award do you give me,
seeing that I was unarmed when I slew Shirkuh?"

Hassan regarded him admiringly for a moment.

"_Billahi_, but you do belong to us! Not as a hasheesh-besotted fool to
slay and be slain, but as an Associate, and finally, an Initiate. It is
such as you that we seek, and seek in vain."

A fierce light flamed in Hassan's eyes.

"Yet your victory over my will is your doom. In the fullness of your
effort to deny the illusion, you finally spoke your negation aloud.
_And you spoke in English!_"

For an instant Farrell was dazed by the horror that had been heaped
on the soul-racking triumph he had just won. Doom was at hand--doom
inescapable, else that old man would not dare confront him alone.

With a cry of rage, Farrell sprang to throttle Hassan despite what
unseen allies he might have. But the floor sank beneath his feet as
Hassan, smiling and unmoved, fingered a knob near the jamb of the
arch. Farrell clutched at the edge of the opening through which he was
dropping. His fingers sustained him for a moment, but the momentum of
his body swinging free into vacancy broke his slender hold. He fell
into the impenetrable blackness below.




                       _8. Monsters of the Pool_

Instead of an interminable drop to the bottom of an abyss, Farrell
landed in less than a second, and feet foremost, on slippery flags.
He noted that the air was not as stagnant as one would expect in an
oubliette.

"Plenty of circulation ... just put me in temporary storage until
they get around to organizing a committee to finish me with pomp and
ceremony," he muttered as he struck a match.

Farrell saw that the walls of the dungeon were curved. He strode toward
the center, and by the light of a second match saw a massive column of
masonry which rose from floor to ceiling. He remembered the pool he had
seen on the floor above, and concluded that the pillar before him was a
hollow shaft which led to some subterranean spring in the heart of the
knoll on which Bayonne was built.

"All in one piece, unhurt, and no enemy in sight--yet!" he reflected as
he skirted the column.

Among the inevitable rubbish with which the dungeon would be littered
Farrell hoped to find some fragment of rock, scrap of wood, anything,
in fact, which would give him the means of meeting the enemy with more
than bare hands. But before he could strike his next match, Farrell saw
a glow of light at a considerable distance to his right. It faintly
outlined a low archway, and suggested possible escape from the dungeon
into which he had been dropped by Hassan. That same light, however,
betokened the immediate presence of the enemy, and perhaps an armed
sentry. Farrell therefore crept on in darkness until he was well out
of line with the source of light, then left the column and progressed
toward the wall.

His knee came into contact with something hard and metallic. He struck
a match, and saw that he had found a chain, one end of which was
attached to a massive leg-iron, and the other secured to an eye-bolt
sunk into the wall. The shank of the eye-bolt was badly corroded where
it entered the masonry. A few minutes of wrenching and tugging sufficed
to separate the chain from its anchorage. The result was a crude flail
which in a strong hand could shatter whatever skull it struck.

Farrell was armed again, and his spirits rose accordingly.

He retraced his course and crept down the passageway toward the light.
As he halted in the shelter of a jamb he saw that the vault ahead of
him was illuminated by a glowing brazier; and the scene gave him a
foretaste of what his own fate might be.

The black, oily form of a muscular negro crouched beside the brazier.
The bellows in his hands wheezed from his vigorous efforts to fan the
charcoal fire to a white heat. Tongs or other long-handled implements
projected from the incandescent mass.

Limned in harsh highlight and black shadows Farrell saw two white-robed
Ismailians whose predatory, Semitic features were stern from the
contemplation of their task. Both were armed with simitars and pistols.
The object of their scrutiny was a man who sat crouched by a pilaster.
Farrell could distinguish no features beyond the aquiline curve of his
nose, and the black, spade-shaped beard. The hands, clasped about the
knees, were fettered at the wrists.

"God!" muttered Farrell as the red glow became a dazzling whiteness.
"That lad sitting there looks for all the world like an innocent
bystander. Either that party isn't for him, or he has more guts than
any ten men I've ever seen.... I've not been here long enough for that
to be my reception committee...."

Farrell appraised the situation, and gaged the distance between his
lurking-place and the group at the brazier.

"Too far! They'd get wise before I got within striking distance ...
now if this piece of chain were only a solid bar so that I could slug,
swat, and parry instead of having to use it like a whip ... now what?"

The taller of the Ismailians glanced up, and with a gesture indicated
the ceiling. Farrell could not distinguish his words, but it was
evident that he had addressed the negro, who set aside his bellows,
picked up a length of thin rope, and rose.

Then Farrell understood. They were going to slip the cord through a
ring in the low ceiling, lash the prisoner's ankles, and suspend him so
that the white-hot irons could be applied without interference from the
victim's agonized writhing.

"Missed my chance!" growled Farrell. "They were all off guard, and I
could have cold-calked them! Too late, now."

The Ismailian on the right addressed the prisoner; but the other
was looking in Farrell's direction, though not directly at his
lurking-place. The negro was shifting the implements that projected
from the bed of coals.

Then Farrell tested the idea that came to him an instant after his
expression of disgust. He reached into his pocket and found a large
silver coin the size of an American dollar. He sent it spinning across
the vault. It struck the opposite wall and tinkled to the floor.

As the Ismailian at the left of the group started, caught the gleam of
silver, and stooped to pick it up, Farrell, whirling his flail, leaped
from cover and charged.

       *       *       *       *       *

The startled cry of the crouching negro was simultaneous with the
impact of the swinging fetter against the skull of the stooping enemy.
The massive circlet of iron crunched home as the other white-robed
enemy whirled from confronting his prisoner and drew a pistol. Farrell
knew that he could not lash out with a second blow of his flail. He
ducked as the pistol flashed, gripped the Ismailian's wrist as the
pistol cracked again, and back-heeled him. They crashed to the flags,
Farrell striving to keep the pistol out of effective action and to
disable his enemy before the giant negro recovered his wits enough to
overwhelm him.

With a fierce wrench, Farrell disarmed the Ismailian and sent the
pistol flying against the wall. And then the negro took a hand.
They pounded and crushed Farrell as they sought to drive home with
knife-thrusts which he evaded in his struggles to drive in with boot or
knee. He finally, thrashing about, seized the shackle end of his flail;
and as the Ismailian's knife darted in, Farrell jabbed the ponderous
iron to the enemy's jaw with a crushing blow.

Then the negro crushed Farrell to the paving. Farrell's struggles
were futile; the cumulative effect of previous combats was telling.
In another moment his breath would be completely cut off by those
relentless black hands....

Then an agonized yell, and the stench of burning hair and flesh. The
pressure relaxed as a shower of white-hot charcoal rained from the
frenzied enemy and seared Farrell's hands and face. But the respite,
though brief, sufficed. Farrell's boot laid the enemy out flat.

Then he rose, recovered the pistol that lay against the wall, and
turned to confront the fettered prisoner.

"Fortunately," said the prisoner, "I was able to reach the tongs and
flip that brazier into the party."

The mutual benefactors regarded each other a moment.

"_Monsieur_," began Farrell, recognizing the prisoner as a Frenchman,
"I am more interested in getting out of here than exchanging
compliments. Judging from the preparations I interrupted, you were in
for a pleasant evening, morning, or whatever it may be."

"Unfortunately," came the reply, "these fetters are rivetted, and none
of the tools they brought----"

"I'll tend to that," assured Farrell. He turned and set the brazier
right side up, then with the tongs collected the still glowing
charcoal, and fanned it once more to a white heat. "Get your chains hot
enough," he explained, "and we can break them by hand."

"_Magnifique!_" Then, regarding Farrell more intently, "But I
don't recognize you as any of the Brethren who might be kindly
disposed--though those fellows lying on the floor prove the case."

"I'm not quite what I seem," admitted Farrell as he arranged the chains
so that they could get the full heat of the brazier. Then, staring for
an instant at the prisoner and at the device engraved on the emerald
set in his massive ring, Farrell hazarded a guess that seemed warranted
by the absence of the host who had issued the invitations to the
_soirée_ at the château.

"Are you by any chance the Marquis----"

"_C'est moi!_ Des Islots, and everlastingly at your service!" The
saturnine features brightened for a moment.

As Farrell pumped the bellows, he wondered at the fortuitous meeting.

"Did Hassan put you in here?"

"No. Shirkuh, his second in command, arranged this. Hassan is too busy
to bother with details----"

"He had plenty of time for me," countered Farrell.

"Hmmm ... then Shirkuh must be occupied with some important mission,"
began the Marquis.

"The _late_ Shirkuh," corrected Farrell with a grim smile.

"_Sacré bleu!_" ejaculated the Marquis. "Did you----"

"I have the honor--and pleasure," admitted Farrell.

"Thank God! He was my evil genius. Years ago, in Syria, I joined
the Ismailians as an Associate. I was a student of the occult, you
understand. Their aim at the time was harmless enough: the overthrow of
Islam, and the pursuit of mystic speculations. For centuries the order
has had no secular significance, you comprehend.

"I advanced to the rank of Initiate, then returned to France and
organized a thaumaturgical society which was to carry on with the
researches I had made in Syria, and in High Asia. And this was all
well until fellow Ismailians came to Bayonne, one by one, and ended by
converting the thaumaturgical society into a chapter of Ismailians.

"Shirkuh was the chief of these, a prior. And then they reverted to
the tactics of the Twelfth Century. To augment the _hasheeshin_ that
they sent over, they recruited cutthroats from the underworld of Paris.
Various actresses and women of the _demi-monde_ were led to believe
that they had been admitted as Associates, and were set to work as
spies.

"There is a plot even now under way which, if successful, will upset
the French colonial empire and end in a _jihad_ that will stir up the
entire Moslem world.

"Another chapter has been organized in Lyons, with a prior in charge;
and Hassan is Grand Prior of France, acknowledging only the supreme
chief in Damascus.

"At all events, when I saw the political aspect of the Ismailians
who had gained their foothold through my thaumaturgical society, I
protested to Shirkuh--and here I am. Hot irons and other pleasant
devices were to make my end most colorful."

"Where," wondered Farrell, "does La Dorada fit into the picture?"

"Eh? La Dorada? Why, a sort of chief female spy--she is friendly with
many high officers and civilian dignitaries, you comprehend. She is----"

"_Was_," interrupted Farrell. "Three assassins finished her."

"_Diable!_" exclaimed the Marquis. He was amazed rather than grieved.

"You take it calmly, for a lover," remarked Farrell.

"Lover?" The Marquis laughed sourly. "I, her lover? Camouflage, to
account for her presence down here, and along the Riviera. As to her
being assassinated, that is easily explained: her mission must have
been completed. So she was killed to insure her continued secrecy, and
also to warn her dupes that they would follow suit if they relented or
weakened in the course dictated by Hassan. And that move makes it all
the more conclusive that France is due for an explosion."

The confusion was being untangled. Farrell wondered at Antoinette
Delatour's connection, and the source of the dreams that had haunted
her; but the chains that bound the Marquis were white-hot and ready to
break, so that conversation would have to wait.

"All right, heave!" directed Farrell.

The chains parted.

       *       *       *       *       *

They stripped the bodies of the white-robed Ismailians, and armed
themselves with their simitars and pistols, as well as taking the
extra cartridges that studded one of the belts. And the keys that had
admitted the executioners completed the equipment. As the hot ends of
the chain cooled, the Marquis bound them to his limbs so that they
would not clank.

"I wonder," said Farrell as they turned toward the iron-bound door, "if
those lads are completely out."

"_Cordieu!_ But I am absent-minded!" growled the Marquis. He drew the
simitar at his side.

As Farrell unlocked the door, he heard the sword-strokes that assured
beyond all doubt that three more had entered _al jannat_.

"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Farrell as the door closed behind them. "We
may run into a detachment on the way down here to finish me. Do you
know of any other way except the passage used by your executioners?"

The Marquis reflected for a moment as he wiped and sheathed his blade.

"I do," he replied. "But we'd stand a good chance of getting lost
and perishing in a labyrinth. This network is older than the Roman
occupation. We have reclaimed but a fraction of it. It is the sanctuary
of some awful, prehistoric past. And there were living proofs...." The
Marquis shuddered at the recollection of what he had seen. "We killed
most of them. But--as for me, I prefer to face men like ourselves!
Anyway, if Shirkuh is dead, Hassan will be busy until another Prior is
appointed. Shirkuh was an adept who studied in Tibet. A necromancer----"

Farrell shivered, and as they advanced up the passageway, told the
Marquis what he had seen at the château.

"_Canaille!_" muttered the Marquis. "The night I was imprisoned! Just
like him. And as you suspect, enough assassins in the crowd to spread
the rumor of his miracle.

"Our best chance," he resumed, "is to go to the vault where you saw
Hassan unveiled, thence to the assembly hall of the assassins. Then cut
our way out--if we can! The chances are slender----"

"How about passing by the Garden?" wondered Farrell.

"Out of our way," protested the Marquis. "But why?"

"A ... friend," replied Farrell. "Mademoiselle Delatour----"

"What?" exclaimed the Marquis with a start. "_Dieu de Dieu!_ How----"

Then he controlled his agitation, beckoned for silence.

They emerged from the darkness and turned into an upward-sloping branch
passage illuminated by torches thrust into sconces on the wall. Ahead
of them they heard the measured tread of a sentry walking his post.

"Hang back," whispered the Marquis as he fingered the hilt of the
broad-bladed knife that kept his simitar company. "I know the
passwords. And he may not know I'm a prisoner--but be ready for trouble
if he does!"

The sentry challenged the Marquis. There was an exchange of sign and
countersign. Then as the sentry saluted, the Marquis' right hand
flashed to the right; his body jerked forward. As Farrell advanced, he
saw the sentry collapse and sprawl across the tiles in a grotesque heap.

"So far, so good," muttered the Marquis as he wiped his blade, and led
the way.

A barred door yielded to the Marquis' touch on a concealed lever. They
continued on their upward march. They halted finally before a door
whose panels were of heavy and elaborately carved woodwork.

"_Diable!_" growled the Marquis as he tried the door. "Barred from the
other side. The release this side does not help us."

The mutter of drums and the plucked strings of a _sitar_ were plainly
audible.

"Better wait until the place is vacant," whispered the Marquis. "And in
the meanwhile, let's cut a loophole and see what's happening."

They drew their knives and set to work.

       *       *       *       *       *

Peering through the loophole, Farrell could see the arched niche from
whose foot he had been precipitated into the dungeon below. Hassan was
again, or perhaps still, at his post. He was veiled, but there was no
mistaking the posture and the expression of the eyes.

Sitting cross-legged along the curved wall of the vault were a score of
Ismailians in white ceremonial robes. They wore white turbans, scarlet
slippers, and belts of the same color: and all were armed with the
richly adorned simitars suitable to a formal assembly.

A group of musicians squatted on the floor, along the coping of the
circular pool, whose dark water reflected the spectral glow that
pervaded the vault. The wind instruments joined the music with a
demoniac sobbing and moaning, and a brazen gong clanged.

Four litter-bearers emerged from an entrance. Attendants followed them,
bearing tripods of bronze. Farrell shuddered at the similarity of that
scene to the horrible beauty of the resurrection of La Dorada. Then he
noted that the figure on the litter was that of a man.

As the shroud was lifted, he recognized Shirkuh of the clan of Shadi.
The Prior of the Ismailians was to receive the final homage of his
subordinates. The pipes wailed mournfully in honor of that desecrator
of the dead. Farrell sighed with relief, and glanced at the Marquis.

He peered once more through the loophole.

"Good God!" he gasped in dismay.

Four more litter-bearers were filing into the vault, and after them
came attendants with tripods. The tiny feet and the feminine curves
that the shroud revealed unmistakably betokened a woman's body.

Farrell's cheeks whitened beneath their stain as he caught the glint of
red-gold hair.

An attendant stripped the brocaded shroud from the body.

Antoinette Delatour, sleeping--or dead.

With an inarticulate growl of rage, Farrell gathered himself to charge
the door with his shoulder. But the hand of the Marquis gripping his
arm restrained him.

"Wait!" whispered the Marquis. "It is hopeless, now. But later--stand
fast. I will tell you--you see, I am acquainted----"

Farrell stared somberly at his companion. He saw that the Marquis' face
was white and that his eyes flamed with wrath. The hand on Farrell's
arm trembled.

"All right," he conceded. He wondered at the Marquis' incoherence
and agitation in excess of what he would expect of a right-minded
gentleman. He gained assurance from the Marquis' apparent knowledge of
what was to be; but with it came the dread of some new peak of horror.

"Great God!" muttered Farrell, remembering once more the necromantic
ritual at the château. "Is she----" Then, in a flare of rage and grief,
"I'm going through!"

"Restrain yourself!" commanded the Marquis. "I know."

Farrell shook his head, and turned to the loophole.

The attendants and the litter-bearers were filing out of the vault.

The Grand Prior, Hassan, rose from his cushions.

"Brethren and servants of the Seventh Imam," he began, "your Prior, the
learned Shirkuh, has crossed the Border. He who could raise the dead
can not resurrect himself. But we, _inshallah_, can send a courier to
lead him back to us."

As his upraised hand dropped to his side, a monstrous peal of bronze
echoed and reverberated through the vault. The assembled Ismailians
stirred, and corrected their posture, so that their feet and hands were
placed with ritual precision. Even their features assumed a oneness of
expression: an intent, solemn stare. The silence became absolute. The
musicians sat motionless, awaiting the signal to sound off.

The Grand Prior nodded.

The single-stringed violins, the moaning pipes and the purring drums
wove a harmony that sighed and sobbed like a fallen angel bewailing his
lost estate. The great gong pealed with mighty, brazen reverberations.
Acolytes filed into the vault, and paced in cadence to the music, and
rhythmically swung fuming censers as they passed thrice in procession
about the dead, and the exquisite unclad beauty of the living woman.
And as the acolytes retreated, Hassan descended from his dais.

He drew on the floor with a piece of chalk a circle several paces in
diameter, and within it a pentacle. Each of the five points he marked
with cabalistical symbols. Then with a ceremonious gesture he summoned
three Initiates from among those who sat waiting beside the dais. Each
Initiate took his post at his assigned station; then all four bowed to
the fifth vertex and the Presence that was to be summoned.

Hassan intoned a sentence; and the Initiates, beginning at his left,
each in turn chanted a line of the invocation. Those without the circle
solemnly pronounced a fifth sonorous phrase.

"For the vacant corner," whispered the Marquis to Farrell. "They are
representing the One they are calling to occupy the fifth angle."

And thus they continued their prodigious utterances, four verses
riming in succession, with the surge and thunder of the unrimed,
antiphonal response from without. Each time the circle was completed,
the riming syllable changed; and from the Arabic with which they had
started, they shifted to Himyaric, and then to obscure, antique tongues
whose sound was an elemental roar of deep gutturals. Then finally came
a primal, bestial murmuring and muttering, a chirping and clucking of
the tongues that were spoken by those who wandered through the Void
before the first man walked the earth. And recurring through the entire
progression was a portentous name that is seldom pronounced above a
whisper.

The very features of the Initiates changed as they pronounced those
rustling, shivering syllables. They were achieving a unity with that
which crept and crawled and loathsomely slunk through chaos and reviled
the unborn stars, and mocked the light that was to be....

       *       *       *       *       *

Farrell, staring now with a dread that obliterated every other emotion,
saw that a Presence was materializing at the fifth vertex. A vibrant
glow like the luminous vapor of a mercury arc was momentarily becoming
more dense and substantial. Lambent flames played about the brows of
the Initiates in the pentacle. A terrific tension pervaded the vault.
The bluish glow became deeper, and was shot with flashes of crimson
and yellowish green. Each drawn face was now a ghastly slate-gray: the
Presence at the fifth vertex was drawing the living essence from the
swaying, gesturing bodies of Hassan and his trio of Initiates.

The Presence took human form: a lordly, satanic visage and a
magnificently muscled body that quivered and throbbed to the droning
chant. Then, rich and clear as a god calling across the wastes of
space, the Presence began declaiming:

"_Al Asfarani! Al Asfarani! Al Asfarani!_ I come from the realm of fire
to command you! I have come out of the depths! Harken! Harken! Harken!
_Al Asfarani!_ Golden One! Step forth from your body and walk into the
darkness among those whose bread is dust! Walk among the lonely dead
and seek Shirkuh! Call him by his name and take him by the hand! Guide
him from the shadows and into the morning!"

[Illustration: "_A terrific tension pervaded the tumult. The Presence
took human form!_"]

The unconscious woman shuddered at the sound of that mighty voice. She
made a despairing gesture as if to resist the command that came from
the fifth vertex. Then she relaxed.

The Presence continued his prodigious chant. Even the brazen
reverberation of the gongs was drowned by his awful utterance.

A thin streamer, like the thread of smoke rising from an
almost-quenched altar flame, rose from Antoinette Delatour's
half-parted lips.

"_Cordieu!_" shouted the Marquis in Farrell's ear. "They're doing it!"

His gestures rather than his voice stirred Farrell to action. They
retreated, then charged crashing against the door. It resisted the
shock. Farrell drew his simitar and hacked at the tropical hardwood. A
carven panel splintered.

"Good God! Look!" he yelled in despair.

The Presence was now towering toward the ceiling. It was bending over
like a monstrous serpent in human form, arching and writhing, reaching
as though over some invisible wall, making passes and gestures over the
silver-white body of Antoinette.

The Initiates in the pentacle were paper-white. They swayed to the
cadence of that great voice whose concussion was now making the very
vault tremble.

The train of smoke-like vapor that emerged from Antoinette's lips was
becoming more dense, and hovered over her body like a veil.

"Quick!" shouted the Marquis, as they frantically hacked the stout
wood. "Hold them, while I exorcise the Presence!"

The door was reinforced with iron rods that bound it together. Their
blades were nicked and saw-toothed from the fierce assault.

"Again!" cried the Marquis as his simitar flashed home.

A chunk of the hardwood tore loose from its severed reinforcement. They
shouldered through, torn and cut by the splinters and the ragged ends
of the rods they had hacked.

A musician cried out and sprang to his feet. And then one of the
Initiates who sat beside the dais saw Farrell and the Marquis as they
dashed across the circular vault. He aroused his comrades from their
fascinated contemplation of the invocation of which they were now
accessories rather than principals. They started as from a deep sleep,
stared for an instant, then drew their simitars and charged to meet
the intruders, and to protect the left flank of the pentacle, from
which the Presence still leaned over the unconscious girl, intoning the
mighty commands that would send her across the Border.

Shoulder to shoulder, Farrell and the Marquis met the assault with
deliberate, deadly pistol fire. The attack was checked; but the enemy
stood fast and firm, protecting the pentacle. And despite the hail of
lead they had poured into the ranks of the Ismailians, Farrell and his
ally were still outnumbered ten to one.

The musicians were salvaging weapons.

There was not enough time to reload the pistols. The Ismailians had
recovered from the shock of their murderous reception, and seeing their
advantage, leaped forward, blades ready.

Then a clash of steel, and a red mill of slaughter. The Marquis
fought with vengeful desperation. He wove in and out, side-stepping
and parrying, shearing and slaying. And Farrell, keeping at his side,
carved a gory path into the enemy. He fought with a blind, unreasoning
fury, seeking to hack his way through the press and clear a road for
the Marquis who could cope with that monstrous Presence that was in
thunderous tones chanting the life and vital essence from Antoinette.

The enemy, sensing that the Marquis was the keystone of the arch,
concentrated their attack on him; and despite his exquisite
swordsmanship, he was being slashed to pieces by a desperation and
force that discounted his skill.

He sank once beneath a whirlwind of blades, and recovered under the
shelter of Farrell's blade; but he was coughing blood from a deep wound.

And Hassan and his trio had left the pentacle. The Presence, now
endowed with the power borrowed from all that the Initiates had
conjured from across the Border, was self-sustaining and no longer
needed its portion of human vitality.

Hassan, behind the line of the assault, directed his Initiates in the
attack.

"Cut him down, O sons of flat-nosed mothers!" he cried, as he saw the
Marquis recover and press forward.

But that magnificent last effort burned out. With a cry of mortal rage,
the Marquis lashed out with a final, devastating stroke, then collapsed
on a heap of slain.

"Finish!" despaired Farrell. He was doomed, and Antoinette also--even
though he could cut his way out. An adept was required to exorcise
that terrific Presence that was drawing her from her body.

But the enemy, instead of closing in to hew him to pieces, gaped
stupidly, then yelled in terror. They were staring at something at his
right, and to the rear. He glanced over his shoulder, compelled by the
consternation that stopped them where they stood.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farrell lowered his own point, himself struck with awe. He recalled
what the Marquis had said about the denizens of that labyrinth of
passages.

A monstrous, amorphous thing had emerged from the circular pool
into which Hassan had ordered the dead _fedawi_ to be flung. It was
misshapen, and grotesque in its vague semblance to humanity. Its
bulbous head had a single, circular eye the size of a saucer. It
glittered glassily in the bluish, spectral light. The limbs were
shapeless and ponderous, and it lumbered, dripping wet, across the
tiles. Its feet fell with a metallic clank, and its breath hissed and
wheezed.

A second and similar creature was emerging from the water, even as the
first advanced with slow, laborious pace. The hand clutched a short
iron bar.

The bar rose in a sweeping arc and crunched down on the skull of an
Ismailian, spattering blood and brain in a shower. The second monster
clambered over the coping, unlimbered a bludgeon, and with gruesome
deliberation picked a victim and struck.

There was a moment of silence unbroken save for the wheezing breath
of the creatures from the pit. Then the Ismailians yelled in mortal
terror. They forgot Farrell with his dripping blade and bewildered
eyes; they forgot the Marquis, who stirred, and strove to lash out
once more with his red scimitar; they forgot the golden-haired girl,
and the malevolent Presence that, now silent, throbbed and pulsed, an
aggregate of quivering, electric-bluish cold fire.

They broke and fled toward the splintered door.

At the height of their panic, Farrell understood. The monsters were men
in diving-suits.

The Marquis was down. Farrell could not himself thwart that monster
that was drinking Antoinette's vital essence and taking her across
the Border beyond recall; but he could slay until he dropped from
wounds, or from weariness of slaughter. He hurdled the hedge of fallen
Ismailians and with a cry of rage and grief joined his allies to exact
vengeance.

A third diver was at that moment emerging from the pool and joining the
assault against the frenzied enemy, striking them down with remorseless
precision as they struggled to crowd through the splintered panel of
the door that had given Farrell admittance.

Farrell, however, was not the only one whose wits had recovered from
the terror inspired by the apparitions from the black pool.

"Back and face them, _ya mumineen_!" shouted Hassan. "They are men like
ourselves!"

But his attempt to rally his men was vain. Those who abandoned their
efforts to crowd through the jammed door, and circled around to escape
by way of the opposite entrance, were blocked by the arrival of a file
of _fedawi_ who, knives drawn, had come running from the assembly hall.

The dripping revolvers that the divers drew as they discarded their
grappling-irons crackled and flamed, pouring a deadly fire into the new
center of action.

Then Farrell conceived the desperate device of capturing Hassan
and forcing him to recall the elemental monster that was drinking
Antoinette's life. He leaped forward, cutting and slashing his way
through the few who interposed.

"We meet in Paradise, _ya mumineen_!" Hassan shouted, seeing that the
day was lost. And before Farrell could seize him, Hassan released the
trap-door before the dais and dropped into the vault below.

The last hope was gone. Pursuit through those subterranean mazes would
be futile. As Farrell turned from the yawning trap that had allowed the
arch-enemy to escape, the rage of slaughter left him. The crackle of
pistols died out. He saw that the circular chamber was cleared of all
but the dead and wounded Ismailians. The divers, handicapped by their
heavy suits, could not carry out an effective pursuit of the survivors
of their deadly fire.

Weary and despairing, Farrell nerved himself to confront the diabolical
creature that was drawing Antoinette across the border. He turned----

The Marquis des Islots was raising his hacked, bleeding body from a
heap of slain. He tottered, swayed, then advanced toward the lambent
flame-presence. Farrell stared in fascination as that gory wreck of
a man advanced, making ritual gestures with his faltering hands, and
muttering in a low voice.

The Presence was shrinking and dimming, and that shimmering exhalation
from Antoinette's lips was being retracted. The Marquis sustained
himself with will alone. He staggered, sank--Farrell's heart sank with
him--he recovered, stepped forward again, still gesticulating and
murmuring. The Presence leaned forward to confront him, and menaced him
with its remaining energy, seeking to outlive the dying adept.

The Marquis' bleeding, gashed face was drawn and white; his eyes
were fixed and staring. He achieved another pass; then he collected
himself, paused, and instead of murmuring, thundered a final phrase of
command.

The Presence vanished; and the last vestige of grayish, luminous haze
disappeared between Antoinette's lips.

Farrell leaped forward in time to catch the Marquis as he collapsed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The divers, returning from the farther entrance at which the Ismailians
had made their last stand, lifted one another's domed helmets. Then,
grimy and exultant, Pierre d'Artois and the two members of the _Sûreté_
gathered about Farrell and the Marquis, who was regaining a little of
his strength.

"_Messieurs_," he said, as he gestured toward Antoinette, "she is safe.
She will presently awaken. It can not return. _Jamais!_... It was my
fault ... in the beginning ... but this infamy was not my intent.... I
loved her, but she rejected me ... persistently. And for revenge ...
and to break her spirit ... I administered without her knowledge a
compound ... of hypnotic drugs ... so that she and that Syrian girl
would each night exchange bodies ... then Hassan took a hand...."

He regarded d'Artois for a moment.

"You, _monsieur_, doubtless understand----" Then, to Farrell, "But this
last infamy ... was not mine--Shirkuh and Hassan--I tried to make ...
amends----"

For an instant Farrell regarded the dying man with revulsion. Then he
saw the remorse on the drawn, blood-splashed features, and thought
of the Marquis' last gallant stand, confronting and exorcising that
diabolical presence from beyond the Border.

"Stout fellow," he muttered, as he grasped the Marquis' hand.

"_C'est fini_," murmured d'Artois a moment later. "Magnificent in his
death as he was misguided in his life ... dying on his feet, he had the
will to conquer, and make restitution."

Then d'Artois rose and glanced about him.

"Do you know the way out of here?"

"Through that door," directed Farrell. "He told me, before we made our
rush."

"_Messieurs_," suggested d'Artois, "be ready with your pistols, should
any of these assassins be lingering. I will take charge of the young
lady, and you, my friend, lead the way. _Monsieur le Marquis_ perhaps
deserves greater courtesy, but we can not carry his body and take the
risk of being caught without weapons drawn and ready."

Farrell led the way. Without much difficulty, he found the passage
that opened into the vault where he had lain while regaining his
consciousness preliminary to submitting to Hassan's tests. And from
there they finally emerged in the heart of the citadel. A few moments
later Farrell and d'Artois, carrying Antoinette, met Raoul where he was
waiting at the wheel of the Renault.




                       _9. D'Artois Is Envious_


Antoinette, an hour later, was entirely herself.

"Oh, it's wonderful to be out of that awful garden," she said, and
curled herself up in the depth of a large, upholstered chair. "And now
that _Monsieur le Médicin_ admits that I'm as good as new, you might
satisfy my curiosity on a few points. How did you ever----"

She glanced up at Farrell, who had seated himself on the arm of her
chair. He was not yet through convincing himself that Satan's Garden
was a thing of the past, and insisted on keeping Antoinette within
arm's reach.

"Suppose you ask Pierre," he said.

D'Artois laughed.

"After all, _mon vieux_, you were responsible. We found two bodies
floating down the Nive. One of them wore--oh, very becomingly, I assure
you!--a knife in his stomach. The _Sûreté_ informed me. I identified
the knife. It was one of mine, which you had taken from my collection
to wear while disguised as Ibrahim the Afghan ruffian.

"'_Alors_,' said I, 'Ibrahim Khan has given good account of himself.
Perhaps, but God forbid, his own body will follow. I assure you that we
watched with anxiety. But no further signs. At low tide, however--you
know, the Nive rises and falls with the tide, since we're so close to
the sea--we found another body, mainly as the result of our continued
close watch for yours. This one was wedged near the central of the
seven bridges. We investigated, and found an uncharted drain of
considerable diameter.

"'_Mordieu_,' said I to _Monsieur_ the Prefect, 'if bodies came out,
bodies can also go in.' We got diving-suits. The tide in the meanwhile
rose, but we had the location well marked. We advanced up the drain
until we came to a dead end. Even before we left the water we heard the
clash and crackle of your skirmish----"

"Massacre, you mean," interpolated Farrell, grinning as much as his
bandages permitted. "Not a second too soon."

"_Eh bien_, we shut our exhaust air-valves and thus rose to the
surface. Our grappling-irons snagged to the coping helped us unaided
over the top. Then we sliced our airlines and lifelines, opened our
exhausts and----"

"Scared them out of a week's growth!" added Farrell as d'Artois paused
to light a cigarette. "But that damnable thing all of quivering
fire--good Lord!"

"That," submitted d'Artois, "is something that I can explain but
vaguely, if at all. I called it some more mummery, and decided, rather
hastily, perhaps, that you and the Marquis needed help first of all.
On reflection, and in view of some of your remarks since we left, I am
of the opinion that it was either an elemental conjured up by those
devil-mongering adepts, or else a wandering and malignant astral that
was energized by the vital essence of the adepts, or perhaps by the
vibration concentration of their ritual. _Monsieur le Marquis_, God
rest his erring soul, could doubtless explain what it was, since he
used his last spark of will to combat it and thwart its attempt to
convert Mademoiselle Antoinette into--what did you tell me?--a courier
to call Shirkuh from the hell in which he now must be roasting.

"I would very much relish," continued d'Artois, "questioning Hassan,
who devised all that deviltry. But alas! he escaped. And while you,
both of you, were causing the good doctor a certain amount of concern,
I heard that the _Sûreté_ and a handful of _gendarmes_ cleaned out the
entire nest. Unhappily, two were taken alive of that crew of assassins.
And of course, those lovely ladies of the garden."

Farrell sighed from weariness and contentment, then grimaced from the
ache of his wounds.

"The Marquis," he observed, "didn't have time to explain how that
hypnotic drug enabled him to project Antoinette's _self_ into the
body of the Syrian bride of the garden--Lord, it's impossible to
imagine how a brave fellow like him could have let his resentment and
disappointment carry him to such lengths! Having her scourged by proxy,
so to speak."

"Too much occultism and devil-mongering upset his brilliant mind,"
replied d'Artois. "Somber, gloomy, and drunk with his talents. And
translating Antoinette into the body of a bride of the garden, whom he
could flog at will, was his warped expression of denied affection. As
to just how he accomplished it, we can but surmise. Strange drugs are
compounded in the Orient. When I complete the analysis of the pastries
they offered us that night at the château, I may further enlighten you."

"But the stripes and welts that appeared on Antoinette's body?"
wondered Farrell.

"For once you ask me something simple," retorted d'Artois. "Did you
know that if a hypnotic is touched with a pencil, for example, and
offered the suggestion that it is a red-hot iron, he will develop a
blister, and all the symptoms of a burn at the spot touched? Moll and
others concede that point with very little argument. It has often been
experimentally demonstrated.

"_Alors_, the body of the Syrian girl was scourged. Antoinette's
_self_, though in a borrowed body, retained what we can roughly call
an astral connection with her own body; otherwise she could not have
returned to it at the end of each ordeal. And through this connection,
the body of Antoinette developed the same welts that were raised on
the skin of the Syrian girl; just as, by rough analogy, the hypnotic
subject through suggestion shows all outward signs of a burn. And the
marks of the heavy anklets the Syrian bride of the garden wore were
similarly branded on Antoinette's ankles.

"The Marquis during his unsuccessful courtship of Antoinette had ample
opportunities to administer the hypnotic drug at which he hinted, so
that his influence could have been gained without her knowledge. This,
together with the objective symptoms, convinces me that if it was not
the conventional hypnosis we know, it was at least a quasi-hypnosis.
And as you know, there are vegetable compounds which, if properly
administered, will effect a partial release of the astral counterpart
of a body, or its spiritual essence. To pursue it to its origin would
lead you to a study of Egyptian magic, and the nine traditional
elements of every living human body.

"I will leave all this to you, _mon vieux_, to study, this matter of
stigmata resulting from suggestion and other psychic influences. Me, I
am no lecturer.

"And as to Antoinette's Arabic remarks in her sleep: the bride of the
garden, dispossessed of her body for the time, sought Antoinette's. And
by that astral connection which she retained with her own, she felt the
scourgings administered in the garden, and expressed herself, through
Antoinette's lips, as you heard."

D'Artois emerged from his chair and bowed with formal precision.

"I will therefore leave you here, my blundering Afghan, to have your
wounds properly nursed while I go about doing all that an old man
can do under the circumstances: envy you, and write a monograph on
_Messieurs les Assassins_, and Satan's Garden, from which you so
happily emerged."

With a peremptory gesture, he cut short Antoinette's insistence upon
his pausing for at least a moment. Then, halting at the door, he
concluded as he glanced at Farrell, "_Mordieu_, and to think that you
enjoyed all that fine sword-play, while I, Pierre d'Artois, had to
wear a diving-suit to find a fight, and then had to use a crowbar! In
_several_ ways I envy you."


                                THE END





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