The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume One: Crimson Shadows Read online

  “Judas!” muttered Harrison. “A whole tong scuppered!”

  “Not dead,” corrected Erlik Khan. “Merely in a cataleptic state, induced by certain drugs introduced into their liquor by trusted servants. They were brought here in order that I might convince them of their folly in opposing me. I have a number of underground crypts like this one, wherein are implements and machines calculated to change the mind of the most stubborn.”

  “Torture chambers under River Street!” muttered the detective. “Damned if this isn’t a nightmare!”

  “You, who have puzzled so long amidst the mazes of River Street, are you surprized at the mysteries within its mysteries?” murmured Erlik Khan. “Truly, you have but touched the fringes of its secrets. Many men do my bidding–Chinese, Syrians, Mongols, Hindus, Arabs, Turks, Egyptians.”

  “Why?” demanded Harrison. “Why should so many men of such different and hostile religions serve you–”

  “Behind all differences of religion and belief,” said Erlik Khan, “lies the eternal Oneness that is the essence and root-stem of the East. Before Muhammad was, or Confucius, or Gautama, there were signs and symbols, ancient beyond belief, but common to all sons of the Orient. There are cults stronger and older than Islam or Buddhism–cults whose roots are lost in the blackness of the dawn ages, before Babylon was, or Atlantis sank.

  “To an adept, these young religions and beliefs are but new cloaks, masking the reality beneath. Even to a dead man I can say no more. Suffice to know that I, whom men call Erlik Khan, have power above and behind the powers of Islam or of Buddha.”

  Harrison lay silent, meditating over the Mongol’s words, and presently the latter resumed: “You have but yourself to blame for your plight. I am convinced that you did not come here tonight to spy upon me–poor, blundering, barbarian fool, who did not even guess my existence. I have learned that you came in your crude way, expecting to trap a servant of mine, the Druse Ali ibn Suleyman.”

  “You sent him to kill me,” growled Harrison.

  A scornful laugh put his teeth on edge.

  “Do you fancy yourself so important? I would not turn aside to crush a blind worm. Another put the Druse on your trail–a deluded person, a miserable, egoistic fool, who even now is paying the price of folly.

  “Ali ibn Suleyman is, like many of my henchmen, an outcast from his people, his life forfeit.

  “Of all virtues, the Druses most greatly esteem the elementary one of physical courage. When a Druse shows cowardice, none taunts him, but when the warriors gather to drink coffee, some one spills a cup on his abba. That is his death-sentence. At the first opportunity, he is obliged to go forth and die as heroically as possible.

  “Ali ibn Suleyman failed on a mission where success was impossible. Being young, he did not realize that his fanatical tribe would brand him as a coward because, in failing, he had not got himself killed. But the cup of shame was spilled on his robe. Ali was young; he did not wish to die. He broke a custom of a thousand years; he fled the Djebel Druse and became a wanderer over the earth.

  “Within the past year he joined my followers, and I welcomed his desperate courage and terrible fighting ability. But recently the foolish person I mentioned decided to use him to further a private feud, in no way connected with my affairs. That was unwise. My followers live but to serve me, whether they realize it or not.

  “Ali goes often to a certain house to smoke opium, and this person caused him to be drugged with the dust of the black lotos, which produces a hypnotic condition, during which the subject is amenable to suggestions, which, if continually repeated, carry over into the victim’s waking hours.

  “The Druses believe that when a Druse dies, his soul is instantly reincarnated in a Druse baby. The great Druse hero, Amir Amin Izzedin, was killed by the Arab shaykh Ahmed Pasha, the night Ali ibn Suleyman was born. Ali has always believed himself to be the reincarnated soul of Amir Amin, and mourned because he could not revenge his former self on Ahmed Pasha, who was killed a few days after he slew the Druse chief.

  “All this the person ascertained, and by means of the black lotos, known as the Smoke of Shaitan, convinced the Druse that you, detective Harrison, were the reincarnation of his old enemy Shaykh Ahmed Pasha. It took time and cunning to convince him, even in his drugged condition, that an Arab shaykh could be reincarnated in an American detective, but the person was very clever, and so at last Ali was convinced, and disobeyed my orders–which were never to molest the police, unless they got in my way, and then only according to my directions. For I do not woo publicity. He must be taught a lesson.

  “Now I must go. I have spent too much time with you already. Soon one will come who will lighten you of your earthly burdens. Be consoled by the realization that the foolish person who brought you to this pass is expiating her crime likewise. In fact, separated from you but by that padded partition. Listen!”

  From somewhere near rose a feminine voice, incoherent but urgent.

  “The foolish one realizes her mistake,” smiled Erlik Khan benevolently. “Even through these walls pierce her lamentations. Well, she is not the first to regret foolish actions in these crypts. And now I must begone. Those foolish Yat Soys will soon begin to awaken.”

  “Wait, you devil!” roared Harrison, struggling up against his chain. “What–”

  “Enough, enough!” There was a touch of impatience in the Mongol’s tone. “You weary me. Get you to your meditations, for your time is short. Farewell, Mr. Harrison–not au revoir.”

  The door closed silently, and the detective was left alone with his thoughts which were far from pleasant. He cursed himself for falling into that trap; cursed his peculiar obsession for always working alone. None knew of the tryst he had tried to keep; he had divulged his plans to no one.

  Beyond the partition the muffled sobs continued. Sweat began to bead Harrison’s brow. His nerves, untouched by his own plight, began to throb in sympathy with that terrified voice.

  Then the door opened again, and Harrison, twisting about, knew with numbing finality that he looked on his executioner. It was a tall, gaunt Mongol, clad only in sandals and a trunk-like garment of yellow silk, from the girdle of which depended a bunch of keys. He carried a great bronze bowl and some objects that looked like joss sticks. These he placed on the floor near Harrison, and squatting just out of the captive’s reach, began to arrange the evil-smelling sticks in a sort of pyramidal shape in the bowl. And Harrison, glaring, remembered a half-forgotten horror among the myriad dim horrors of River Street: a corpse he had found in a sealed room where acrid fumes still hovered over a charred bronze bowl–the corpse of a Hindu, shriveled and crinkled like old leather–mummified by a lethal smoke that killed and shrunk the victim like a poisoned rat.

  From the other cell came a shriek so sharp and poignant that Harrison jumped and cursed. The Mongol halted in his task, a match in his hand. His parchment-like visage split in a leer of appreciation, disclosing the withered stump of a tongue; the man was a mute.

  The cries increased in intensity, seemingly more in fright than in pain, yet an element of pain was evident. The mute, rapt in his evil glee, rose and leaned nearer the wall, cocking his ear as if unwilling to miss any whimper of agony from that torture cell. Slaver dribbled from the corner of his loose mouth; he sucked his breath in eagerly, unconsciously edging nearer the wall–Harrison’s foot shot out, hooked suddenly and fiercely about the lean ankle. The Mongol threw wild arms aloft, and toppled into the detective’s waiting arms.

  It was with no scientific wrestling hold that Harrison broke the executioner’s neck. His pent-up fury had swept away everything but a berserk madness to grip and rend and tear in primitive passion. Like a grizzly he grappled and twisted, and felt the vertebrae give way like rotten twigs.

  Dizzy with glutted fury he struggled up, still gripping the limp shape, gasping incoherent blasphemy. His fingers closed on the keys dangling at the dead man’s belt, and ripping them free, he hurled the corpse savagely to th
e floor in a paroxysm of excess ferocity. The thing struck loosely and lay without twitching, the sightless face grinning hideously back over the yellow shoulder.

  Harrison mechanically tried the keys in the lock at his waist. An instant later, freed of his shackles, he staggered in the middle of the cell, almost overcome by the wild rush of emotion–hope, exultation, and the realization of freedom. He snatched up the grim axe that leaned against the darkly stained block, and could have yelled with bloodthirsty joy as he felt the perfect balance of the weighty weapon, and saw the dim light gleaming on its flaring razor-edge.

  An instant’s fumbling with the keys at the lock, and the door opened. He looked out into a narrow corridor, dimly lighted, lined with closed doors. From one next to his, the distressing cries were coming, muffled by the padded door and the specially treated walls.

  In his berserk wrath he wasted no time in trying his keys on that door. Heaving up the sturdy axe with both hands, he swung it crashing against the panels, heedless of the noise, mindful only of his frenzied urge to violent action. Under his flailing strokes the door burst inward and through its splintered ruins he lunged, eyes glaring, lips asnarl.

  He had come into a cell much like the one he had just quitted. There was a rack–a veritable medieval devil-machine–and in its cruel grip writhed a pitiful white figure–a girl, clad only in a scanty chemise. A gaunt Mongol bent over the handles, turning them slowly. Another was engaged in heating a pointed iron over a small brazier.

  This he saw at a glance, as the girl rolled her head toward him and cried out in agony. Then the Mongol with the iron ran at him silently, the glowing, white-hot steel thrust forward like a spear. In the grip of red fury though he was, Harrison did not lose his head. A wolfish grin twisting his thin lips, he side stepped, and split the torturer’s head as a melon is split. Then as the corpse tumbled down, spilling blood and brains, he wheeled catlike to meet the onslaught of the other.

  The attack of this one was silent as that of the other. They too were mutes. He did not lunge in so recklessly as his mate, but his caution availed him little as Harrison swung his dripping axe. The Mongol threw up his left arm, and the curved edge sheared through muscle and bone, leaving the limb hanging by a shred of flesh. Like a dying panther the torturer sprang in turn, driving in his knife with the fury of desperation. At the same instant the bloody axe flailed down. The thrusting knife point tore through Harrison’s shirt, ploughed through the flesh over his breastbone, and as he flinched involuntarily, the axe turned in his hand and struck flat, crushing the Mongol’s skull like an egg shell.

  Swearing like a pirate, the detective wheeled this way and that, glaring for new foes. Then he remembered the girl on the rack.

  And then he recognized her at last. “Joan La Tour! What in the name–”

  “Let me go!” she wailed. “Oh, for God’s sake, let me go!”

  The mechanism of the devilish machine balked him. But he saw that she was tied by heavy cords on wrists and ankles, and cutting them, he lifted her free. He set his teeth at the thought of the ruptures, dislocated joints and torn sinews that she might have suffered, but evidently the torture had not progressed far enough for permanent injury. Joan seemed none the worse, physically, for her experience, but she was almost hysterical. As he looked at the cowering, sobbing figure, shivering in her scanty garment, and remembered the perfectly poised, sophisticated, and self-sufficient beauty as he had known her, he shook his head in amazement. Certainly Erlik Khan knew how to bend his victims to his despotic will.

  “Let us go,” she pleaded between sobs. “They’ll be back–they will have heard the noise–”

  “Alright,” he grunted; “but where the devil are we?”

  “I don’t know,” she whimpered. “Somewhere in the house of Erlik Khan. His Mongol mutes brought me here earlier tonight, through passages and tunnels connecting various parts of the city with this place.”

  “Well, come on,” said he. “We might as well go somewhere.”

  Taking her hand he led her out into the corridor, and glaring about uncertainly, he spied a narrow stair winding upward. Up this they went, to be halted soon by a padded door, which was not locked. This he closed behind him, and tried to lock, but without success. None of his keys would fit the lock.

  “I don’t know whether our racket was heard or not,” he grunted, “unless somebody was nearby. This building is fixed to drown noise. We’re in some part of the basement, I reckon.”

  “We’ll never get out alive,” whimpered the girl. “You’re wounded–I saw blood on your shirt–”

  “Nothing but a scratch,” grunted the big detective, stealthily investigating with his fingers the ugly ragged gash that was soaking his torn shirt and waist-band with steadily seeping blood. Now that his fury was beginning to cool, he felt the pain of it.

  Abandoning the door, he groped upward in thick darkness, guiding the girl of whose presence he was aware only by the contact of a soft little hand trembling in his. Then he heard her sobbing convulsively.

  “This is all my fault! I got you into this! The Druse, Ali ibn Suleyman–”

  “I know,” he grunted; “Erlik Khan told me. But I never suspected that you were the one who put this crazy heathen up to knifing me. Was Erlik Khan lying?”

  “No,” she whimpered. “My brother–Josef. Until tonight I thought you killed him.”

  He started convulsively.

  “Me? I didn’t do it! I don’t know who did. Somebody shot him over my shoulder–aiming at me, I reckon, during that raid on Osman Pasha’s joint.”

  “I know, now,” she muttered. “But I’d always believed you lied about it. I thought you killed him, yourself. Lots of people think that, you know. I wanted revenge. I hit on what looked like a sure scheme. The Druse doesn’t know me. He’s never seen me, awake. I bribed the owner of the opium-joint that Ali ibn Suleyman frequents, to drug him with the black lotos. Then I would do my work on him. It’s much like hypnotism.

  “The owner of the joint must have talked. Anyway, Erlik Khan learned how I’d been using Ali ibn Suleyman, and he decided to punish me. Maybe he was afraid the Druse talked too much while he was drugged.

  “I know too much, too, for one not sworn to obey Erlik Khan. I’m part Oriental and I’ve played in the fringe of River Street affairs until I’ve got myself tangled up in them. Josef played with fire, too, just as I’ve been doing, and it cost him his life. Erlik Khan told me tonight who the real murderer was. It was Osman Pasha. He wasn’t aiming at you. He intended to kill Josef.

  “I’ve been a fool, and now my life is forfeit. Erlik Khan is the king of River Street.”

  “He won’t be long,” growled the detective. “We’re going to get out of here some how, and then I’m coming back with a squad and clean out this damned rat hole. I’ll show Erlik Khan that this is America, not Mongolia. When I get through with him–”

  He broke off short as Joan’s fingers closed on his convulsively. From somewhere below them sounded a confused muttering. What lay above, he had no idea, but his skin crawled at the thought of being trapped on that dark twisting stair. He hurried, almost dragging the girl, and presently encountered a door that did not seem to be locked.

  Even as he did so, a light flared below, and a shrill yelp galvanized him. Far below he saw a cluster of dim shapes in a red glow of a torch or lantern. Rolling eyeballs flashed whitely, steel glimmered.

  Darting through the door and slamming it behind them, he sought for a frenzied instant for a key that would fit the lock and not finding it, seized Joan’s wrist and ran down the corridor that wound among black velvet hangings. Where it led he did not know. He had lost all sense of direction. But he did know that death grim and relentless was on their heels.

  Looking back, he saw a hideous crew swarm up into the corridor: yellow men in silk jackets and baggy trousers, grasping knives. Ahead of him loomed a curtain-hung door. Tearing aside the heavy satin hangings, he hurled the door open and leaped through, drawin
g Joan after him, slamming the door behind them. And stopped dead, an icy despair gripping at his heart.

  V

  They had come into a vast hall-like chamber, such as he had never dreamed existed under the prosaic roofs of any Western city.

  Gilded lanterns, on which writhed fantastic carven dragons, hung from the fretted ceiling, shedding a golden lustre over velvet hangings that hid the walls. Across these black expanses other dragons twisted, worked in silver, gold and scarlet. In an alcove near the door reared a squat idol, bulky, taller than a man, half hidden by a heavy lacquer screen, an obscene, brutish travesty of nature, that only a Mongolian brain could conceive. Before it stood a low altar, whence curled up a spiral of incense smoke.

  But Harrison at the moment gave little heed to the idol. His attention was riveted on the robed and hooded form which sat cross-legged on a velvet divan at the other end of the hall–they had blundered full into the web of the spider. About Erlik Khan in subordinate attitudes sat a group of Orientals, Chinese, Syrians and Turks.

  The paralysis of surprize that held both groups was broken by a peculiarly menacing cry from Erlik Khan, who reared erect, his hand flying to his girdle. The others sprang up, yelling and fumbling for weapons. Behind him, Harrison heard the clamor of their pursuers just beyond the door. And in that instant he recognized and accepted the one desperate alternative to instant capture. He sprang for the idol, thrust Joan into the alcove behind it, and squeezed after her. Then he turned at bay. It was the last stand–trail’s end. He did not hope to escape; his motive was merely that of a wounded wolf which drags itself into a corner where its killers must come at it from in front.

  The green stone bulk of the idol blocked the entrance of the alcove save for one side, where there was a narrow space between its misshapen hip and shoulder, and the corner of the wall. The space on the other side was too narrow for a cat to have squeezed through, and the lacquer screen stood before it. Looking through the interstices of this screen, Harrison could see the whole room, into which the pursuers were now storming. The detective recognized their leader as Fang Yim, the hatchet-man.