Chapter II: Part 2

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.