Chapter I: Part 1

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.

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."

* * * * *