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!"