Part 6

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

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

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

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

Farrell shook his head, and turned to the loophole.

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

The Grand Prior, Hassan, rose from his cushions.

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

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

The Grand Prior nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The musicians were salvaging weapons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

They broke and fled toward the splintered door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

He regarded d'Artois for a moment.

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

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

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

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

Then d'Artois rose and glanced about him.

"Do you know the way out of here?"

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

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

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

_9. D'Artois Is Envious_

Antoinette, an hour later, was entirely herself.

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

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

"Suppose you ask Pierre," he said.

D'Artois laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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