Skull Face Revealed
by Roberta E. Howard
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Roberta E. Howard
A Gender Switch Adventure
The Face in the Mist
'We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go.'
- Omar Khayyam
The horror first took concrete form amid that most unconcrete of all things--a hashish dream. I was off on a timeless, spaceless journey through the strange lands that belong to this state of being, a million miles away from earth and all things earthly; yet I became cognizant that something was reaching across the unknown voids--something that tore ruthlessly at the separating curtains of my illusions and intruded itself into my visions.
I did not exactly return to ordinary waking life, yet I was conscious of a seeing and a recognizing that was unpleasant and seemed out of keeping with the dream I was at that time enjoying. To one who has never known the delights of hashish, my explanation must seem chaotic and impossible. Still, I was aware of a rending of mists and then the Face intruded itself into my sight. I though at first it was merely a skull; then I saw that it was a hideous yellow instead of white, and was endowed with some horrid form of life. Eyes glimmered deep in the sockets and the jaws moved as if in speech. The body, except for the high, thin shoulders, was vague and indistinct, but the hands, which floated in the mists before and below the skull, were horribly vivid and filled me with crawling fears. They were like the hands of a mummy, long, lean and yellow, with knobby joints and cruel curving talons.
Then, to complete the vague horror which was swiftly taking possession of me, a voice spoke--imagine a woman so long dead that her vocal organ had grown rusty and unaccustomed to speech. This was the thought which struck me and made my flesh crawl as I listened.
'A strong brute and one who might be useful somehow. See that she is given all the hashish she requires.'
Then the face began to recede, even as I sensed that I was the subject of conversation, and the mists billowed and began to close again. Yet for a single instant a scene stood out with startling clarity. I gasped--or sought to. For over the high, strange shoulder of the apparition another face stood out clearly for an instant, as if the owner peered at me. Red lips, half-parted, long dark eyelashes, shading vivid eyes, a shimmery cloud of hair. Over the shoulder of Horror, breathtaking beauty for an instant looked at me.
The Hashish Slave
'Up from Earth's center through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate.'
- Omar Khayyam
My dream of the skull-face was borne over that usually uncrossable gap that lies between hashish enchantment and humdrum reality. I sat cross-legged on a mat in Yin Shatu's Temple of Dreams and gathered the fading forces of my decaying brain to the task of remembering events and faces.
This last dream was so entirely different from any I had ever had before, that my waning interest was roused to the point of inquiring as to its origin. When I first began to experiment with hashish, I sought to find a physical or psychic basis for the wild flights of illusion pertaining thereto, but of late I had been content to enjoy without seeking cause and effect.
Whence this unaccountable sensation of familiarity in regard to that vision? I took my throbbing head between my hands and laboriously sought a clue. A living dead woman and a boy of rare beauty who had looked over her shoulder. Then I remembered.
Back in the fog of days and nights which veils a hashish addict's memory, my money had given out. It seemed years or possibly centuries, but my stagnant reason told me that it had probably been only a few days. At any rate, I had presented myself at Yin Shatu's sordid dive as usual and had been thrown out by the great Black Hassiy when it was learned I had no more money.
My universe crashing to pieces about me, and my nerves humming like taut piano wires for the vital need that was mine, I crouched in the gutter and gibbered bestially, till Hassiy swaggered out and stilled my yammerings with a blow that felled me, half-stunned.
Then as I presently rose, staggeringly and with no thought save of the river which flowed with cool murmur so near me--as I rose, a light hand was laid like the touch of a rose on my arm. I turned with a frightened start, and stood spellbound before the vision of loveliness which met my gaze. Dark eyes limpid with pity surveyed me and the little hand on my ragged sleeve drew me toward the door of the Dream Temple. I shrank back, but a low voice, soft and musical, urged me, and filled with a trust that was strange, I shambled along with my beautiful guide.
At the door Hassiy met us, cruel hands lifted and a dark scowl on her ape-like brow, but as I cowered there, expecting a blow, she halted before the boy's upraised hand and his word of command which had taken on an imperious note.
I did not understand what he said, but I saw dimly, as in a fog, that he gave the black woman money, and he led me to a couch where he had me recline and arranged the cushions as if I were queen of Egypt instead of a ragged, dirty renegade who lived only for hashish. His slim hand was cool on my brow for a moment, and then he was gone and Yusra Ali came bearing the stuff for which my very soul shrieked--and soon I was wandering again through those strange and exotic countries that only a hashish slave knows.
Now as I sat on the mat and pondered the dream of the skull-face I wondered more. Since the unknown boy had led me back into the dive, I had come and gone as before, when I had plenty of money to pay Yin Shatu. Someone certainly was paying her for me, and while my subconscious mind had told me it was the boy, my rusty brain had failed to grasp the fact entirely, or to wonder why. What need of wondering? So someone paid and the vivid-hued dreams continued, what cared I? But now I wondered. For the boy who had protected me from Hassiy and had brought the hashish for me was the same boy I had seen in the skull-face dream.
Through the soddenness of my degradation the lure of his struck like a knife piercing my heart and strangely revived the memories of the days when I was a woman like other men--not yet a sullen, cringing slave of dreams. Far and dim they were, shimmery islands in the mist of years--and what a dark sea lay between!
I looked at my ragged sleeve and the dirty, claw-like hand protruding from it; I gazed through the hanging smoke which fogged the sordid room, at the low bunks along the wall whereon lay the blankly staring dreamers--slaves, like me, of hashish or of opium. I gazed at the slippered Chinamen gliding softly to and fro bearing pipes or roasting balls of concentrated purgatory over tiny flickering fires. I gazed at Hassiy standing, arms folded, beside the door like a great statue of black basalt.
And I shuddered and hid my face in my hands because with the faint dawning of returning womanhood, I knew that this last and most cruel dream was futile--I had crossed an ocean over which I could never return, had cut myself off from the world of normal women or men. Naught remained now but to drown this dream as I had drowned all my others--swiftly and with hope that I should soon attain that Ultimate Ocean which lies beyond all dreams.
So these fleeting moments of lucidity, of longing, that tear aside the veils of all dope slaves--unexplainable, without hope of attainment.
So I went back to my empty dreams, to my phantasmagoria of illusions; but sometimes, like a sword cleaving a mist, through the high lands and the low lands and seas of my visions floated, like half-forgotten music, the sheen of dark eyes and shimmery hair.
You ask how I, Steffie Costigyn, American and a woman of some attainments and culture, came to lie in a filthy dive of London's Limehouse? The answer is simple--no jaded debauchee, I, seeking new sensations in the mysteries of the Orient. I answer--Argonne! Heavens, what deeps and heights of horror lurk in that one word alone! Shell-shocked--shell-torn. Endless days and nights without end and roaring red hell over No Woman's Land where I lay shot and bayoneted to shreds of gory flesh. My body recovered, how I know not; my mind never did.
And the leaping fires and shifting shadows in my tortured brain drove me down and down, along the stairs of degradation, uncaring until at last I found surcease in Yin Shatu's Temple of Dreams, where I slew my red dreams in other dreams--the dreams of hashish whereby a woman may descend to the lower pits of the reddest hells or soar into those unnamable heights where the stars are diamond pinpoints beneath her feet.
Not the visions of the sot, the beast, were mine. I attained the unattainable, stood face to face with the unknown and in cosmic calmness knew the unguessable. And was content after a fashion, until the sight of burnished hair and scarlet lips swept away my dream-built universe and left me shuddering among its ruins.
* * *
The Mistress of Doom
'And She that toss'd you down into the Field,
She knows about it all--He knows! She knows!'
- Omar Khayyam
A hand shook me roughly as I emerged languidly from my latest debauch.
'The Mistress wishes you! Up, swine!'
Hassiy it was who shook me and who spoke.
'To Hell with the Mistress!' I answered, for I hated Hassiy--and feared her.
'Up with you or you get no more hashish,' was the brutal response, and I rose in trembling haste.
I followed the huge black woman and she led the way to the rear of the building, stepping in and out among the wretched dreamers on the floor.
'Muster all hands on deck!' droned a sailor in a bunk. 'All hands!'
Hassiy flung open the door at the rear and motioned me to enter. I had never before passed through that door and had supposed it led into Yin Shatu's private quarters. But it was furnished only with a cot, a bronze idol of some sort before which incense burned, and a heavy table.
Hassiy gave me a sinister glance and seized the table as if to spin it about. It turned as if it stood on a revolving platform and a section of the floor turned with it, revealing a hidden doorway in the floor. Steps led downward in the darkness.
Hassiy lighted a candle and with a brusque gesture invited me to descend. I did so, with the sluggish obedience of the dope addict, and she followed, closing the door above us by means of an iron lever fastened to the underside of the floor. In the semi-darkness we went down the rickety steps, some nine or ten I should say, and then came upon a narrow corridor.
Here Hassiy again took the lead, holding the candle high in front of her. I could scarcely see the sides of this cave-like passageway but knew that it was not wide. The flickering light showed it to be bare of any sort of furnishings save for a number of strange-looking chests which lined the walls--receptacles containing opium and other dope, I thought.
A continuous scurrying and the occasional glint of small red eyes haunted the shadows, betraying the presence of vast numbers of the great rats which infest the Thames waterfront of that section.
Then more steps loomed out of the dark in front of us as the corridor came to an abrupt end. Hassiy led the way up and at the top knocked four times against what seemed the underside of a floor. A hidden door opened and a flood of soft, illusive light streamed through.
Hassiy hustled me up roughly and I stood blinking in such a setting as I had never seen in my wildest flights of vision. I stood in a jungle of palm trees through which wriggled a million vivid-hued dragons! Then, as my startled eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw that I had not been suddenly transferred to some other planet, as I had at first thought. The palm trees were there, and the dragons, but the trees were artificial and stood in great pots and the dragons writhed across heavy tapestries which hid the walls.
The room itself was a monstrous affair--inhumanly large, it seemed to me. A thick smoke, yellowish and tropical in suggestion, seemed to hang over all, veiling the ceiling and baffling upward glances. This smoke, I saw, emanated from an altar in front of the wall to my left. I started. Through the saffron-billowing fog two eyes, hideously large and vivid, glittered at me. The vague outlines of some bestial idol took indistinct shape. I flung an uneasy glance about, marking the oriental divans and couches and the bizarre furnishings, and then my eyes halted and rested on a lacquer screen just in front of me.
I could not pierce it and no sound came from beyond it, yet I felt eyes searing into my consciousness through it, eyes that burned through my very soul. A strange aura of evil flowed from that strange screen with its weird carvings and unholy decorations.
Hassiy salaamed profoundly before it and then, without speaking, stepped back and folded her arms, statue-like.
A voice suddenly broke the heavy and oppressive silence.
'You who are a swine, would you like to be a woman again?'
I started. The tone was inhuman, cold--more, there was a suggestion of long disuse of the vocal organs--the voice I had heard in my dream!
'Yes,' I replied, trance-like, 'I would like to be a woman again.'
Silence ensued for a space; then the voice came again with a sinister whispering undertone at the back of its sound like bats flying through a cavern.
'I shall make you a woman again because I am a friend to all broken women. Not for a price shall I do it, nor for gratitude. And I give you a sign to seal my promise and my vow. Thrust your hand through the screen.'
At these strange and almost unintelligible words I stood perplexed, and then, as the unseen voice repeated the last command, I stepped forward and thrust my hand through a slit which opened silently in the screen. I felt my wrist seized in an iron grip and something seven times colder than ice touched the inside of my hand. Then my wrist was released, and drawing forth my hand I saw a strange symbol traced in blue close to the base of my thumb--a thing like a scorpion.
The voice spoke again in a sibilant language I did not understand, and Hassiy stepped forward deferentially. She reached about the screen and then turned to me, holding a goblet of some amber-colored liquid which she proffered me with an ironical bow. I took it hesitatingly.
'Drink and fear not,' said the unseen voice. 'It is only an Egyptian wine with life-giving qualities.'
So I raised the goblet and emptied it; the taste was not unpleasant, and even as I handed the beaker to Hassiy again, I seemed to feel new life and vigor whip along my jaded veins.
'Remain at Yin Shatu's house,' said the voice. 'You will be given food and a bed until you are strong enough to work for yourself. You will use no hashish nor will you require any. Go!'
As in a daze, I followed Hassiy back through the hidden door, down the steps, along the dark corridor and up through the other door that let us into the Temple of Dreams.
As we stepped from the rear chamber into the main room of the dreamers, I turned to the Black wonderingly.
'Master? Mistress of what? Of Life?'
Hassiy laughed, fiercely and sardonically.
'Master of Doom!'
* * *
The Spider and the Fly
'There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see.'
- Omar Khayyam
I sat on Yin Shatu's cushions and pondered with a clearness of mind new and strange to me. As for that, all my sensations were new and strange. I felt as if I had wakened from a monstrously long sleep, and though my thoughts were sluggish, I felt as though the cobwebs which had dogged them for so long had been partly brushed away.
I drew my hand across my brow, noting how it trembled. I was weak and shaky and felt the stirrings of hunger--not for dope but for food. What had been in the draft I had quenched in the chamber of mystery? And why had the 'Master'chosen me, out of all the other wretches of Yin Shatu's, for regeneration?
And who was this Master? Somehow the word sounded vaguely familiar--I sought laboriously to remember. Yes--I had heard it, lying half-waking in the bunks or on the floor--whispered sibilantly by Yin Shatu or by Hassiy or by Yusra Ali, the Moor, muttered in their low-voiced conversations and mingled always with words I could not understand. Was not Yin Shatu, then, mistress of the Temple of Dreams? I had thought and the other addicts thought that the withered Chinese held undisputed sway over this drab kingdom and that Hassiy and Yusra Ali were her servants. And the four China girls who roasted opium with Yin Shatu and Yara Khan the Afghan and Santiago the Haitian and Ginra Singh, the renegade Sikh--all in the pay of Yin Shatu, we supposed--bound to the opium lord by bonds of gold or fear.
For Yin Shatu was a power in London's Chinatown and I had heard that her tentacles reached across the seas into high places of mighty and mysterious tongs. Was that Yin Shatu behind the lacquer screen? No; I knew the Chinese's voice and besides I had seen her puttering about in the front of the Temple just as I went through the back door.
Another thought came to me. Often, lying half-torpid, in the late hours of night or in the early grayness of dawn, I had seen women and men steal into the Temple, whose dress and bearing were strangely out of place and incongruous. Tall, erect women, often in evening dress, with their hats drawn low about their brows, and fine ladies, veiled, in silks and furs. Never two of them came together, but always they came separately and, hiding their features, hurried to the rear door, where they entered and presently came forth again, hours later sometimes. Knowing that the lust for dope finds resting-place in high positions sometimes, I had never wondered overmuch, supposing that these were wealthy women and men of society who had fallen victims to the craving, and that somewhere in the back of the building there was a private chamber for such. Yet now I wondered--sometimes these persons had remained only a few moments--was it always opium for which they came, or did they, too, traverse that strange corridor and converse with the One behind the screen?
My mind dallied with the idea of a great specialist to whom came all classes of people to find surcease from the dope habit. Yet it was strange that such a one should select a dope-joint from which to work--strange, too, that the owner of that house should apparently look on her with so much reverence.
I gave it up as my head began to hurt with the unwonted effort of thinking, and shouted for food. Yusra Ali brought it to me on a tray, with a promptness which was surprizing. More, she salaamed as she departed, leaving me to ruminate on the strange shift of my status in the Temple of Dreams.
I ate, wondering what the One of the screen wanted with me. Not for an instant did I suppose that her actions had been prompted by the reasons she pretended; the life of the underworld had taught me that none of its denizens leaned toward philanthropy. And underworld the chamber of mystery had been, in spite of its elaborate and bizarre nature. And where could it be located? How far had I walked along the corridor? I shrugged my shoulders, wondering if it were not all a hashish-induced dream; then my eye fell upon my hand--and the scorpion traced thereon.
'Muster all hands!' droned the sailor in the bunk. 'All hands!'
To tell in detail of the next few days would be boresome to any who have not tasted the dire slavery of dope. I waited for the craving to strike me again--waited with sure sardonic hopelessness. All day, all night--another day--then the miracle was forced upon my doubting brain. Contrary to all theories and supposed facts of science and common sense the craving had left me as suddenly and completely as a bad dream! At first I could not credit my senses but believed myself to be still in the grip of a dope nightstallion. But it was true. From the time I quaffed the goblet in the room of mystery, I felt not the slightest desire for the stuff which had been life itself to me. This, I felt vaguely, was somehow unholy and certainly opposed to all rules of nature. If the dread being behind the screen had discovered the secret of breaking hashish's terrible power, what other monstrous secrets had she discovered and what unthinkable dominance was hers? The suggestion of evil crawled serpent-like through my mind.
I remained at Yin Shatu's house, lounging in a bunk or on cushions spread upon the floor, eating and drinking at will, but now that I was becoming a normal woman again, the atmosphere became most revolting to me and the sight of the wretches writhing in their dreams reminded me unpleasantly of what I myself had been, and it repelled, nauseated me.
So one day, when no one was watching me, I rose and went out on the street and walked along the waterfront. The air, burdened though it was with smoke and foul scents, filled my lungs with strange freshness and aroused new vigor in what had once been a powerful frame. I took new interest in the sounds of women living and working, and the sight of a vessel being unloaded at one of the wharfs actually thrilled me. The force of longshoremen was short, and presently I found myself heaving and lifting and carrying, and though the sweat coursed down my brow and my limbs trembled at the effort, I exulted in the thought that at last I was able to labor for myself again, no matter how low or drab the work might be.
As I returned to the door of Yin Shatu's that evening--hideously weary but with the renewed feeling of womanhood that comes of honest toil--Hassiy met me at the door.
'You been where?' she demanded roughly.
'I've been working on the docks,' I answered shortly.
'You don't need to work on docks,' she snarled. 'The Mistress got work for you.'
She led the way, and again I traversed the dark stairs and the corridor under the earth. This time my faculties were alert and I decided that the passageway could not be over thirty or forty feet in length. Again I stood before the lacquer screen and again I heard the inhuman voice of living death.
'I can give you work,' said the voice. 'Are you willing to work for me?'
I quickly assented. After all, in spite of the fear which the voice inspired, I was deeply indebted to the owner.
'Good. Take these.'
As I started toward the screen a sharp command halted me and Hassiy stepped forward and reaching behind took what was offered. This was a bundle of pictures and papers, apparently.
'Study these,' said the One behind the screen, 'and learn all you can about the woman portrayed thereby. Yin Shatu will give you money; buy yourself such clothes as seawomen wear and take a room at the front of the Temple. At the end of two days, Hassiy will bring you to me again. Go!'
The last impression I had, as the hidden door closed above me, was that the eyes of the idol, blinking through the everlasting smoke, leered mockingly at me.
The front of the Temple of Dreams consisted of rooms for rent, masking the true purpose of the building under the guise of a waterfront boarding house. The police had made several visits to Yin Shatu but had never got any incriminating evidence against her.
So in one of these rooms I took up my abode and set to work studying the material given me.
The pictures were all of one woman, a large woman, not unlike me in build and general facial outline, except that she wore a heavy locks and was inclined to blondness whereas I am dark. The name, as written on the accompanying papers, was Major Fairlyn Morley, special commissioner to Natal and the Transvaal. This office and title were new to me and I wondered at the connection between an African commissioner and an opium house on the Thames waterfront.
The papers consisted of extensive data evidently copied from authentic sources and all dealing with Major Morley, and a number of private documents considerably illuminating on the major's private life.
An exhaustive description was given of the woman's personal appearance and habits, some of which seemed very trivial to me. I wondered what the purpose could be, and how the One behind the screen had come in possession of papers of such intimate nature.
I could find no clue in answer to this question but bent all my energies to the task set out for me. I owed a deep debt of gratitude to the unknown woman who required this of me and I was determined to repay her to the best of my ability. Nothing, at this time, suggested a snare to me.
* * *
The Woman on the Couch
'What dam of lances sent thee forth to jest at dawn with Death?'
- Kipling
At the expiration of two days, Hassiy beckoned me as I stood in the opium room. I advanced with a springy, resilient tread, secure in the confidence that I had culled the Morley papers of all their worth. I was a new woman; my mental swiftness and physical readiness surprized me--sometimes it seemed unnatural.
Hassiy eyed me through narrowed lids and motioned me to follow, as usual. As we crossed the room, my gaze fell upon a woman who lay on a couch close to the wall, smoking opium. There was nothing at all suspicious about her ragged, unkempt clothes, her dirty, smooth face or the blank stare, but my eyes, sharpened to an abnormal point, seemed to sense a certain incongruity in the clean-cut limbs which not even the slouchy garments could efface.
Hassiy spoke impatiently and I turned away. We entered the rear room, and as she shut the door and turned to the table, it moved of itself and a figure bulked up through the hidden doorway. The Sikh, Ginra Singh, a lean sinister-eyed giant, emerged and proceeded to the door opening into the opium room, where she halted until we should have descended and closed the secret doorway.
Again I stood amid the billowing yellow smoke and listened to the hidden voice.
'Do you think you know enough about Major Morley to impersonate her successfully?'
Startled, I answered, 'No doubt I could, unless I met someone who was intimate with her.'
'I will take care of that. Follow me closely. Tomaorrow you sail on the first boat for Calais. There you will meet an agent of mine who will accost you the instant you step upon the wharfs, and give you further instructions. You will sail second class and avoid all conversation with strangers or anyone. Take the papers with you. The agent will aid you in making up and your masquerade will start in Calais. That is all. Go!'
I departed, my wonder growing. All this rigmarole evidently had a meaning, but one which I could not fathom. Back in the opium room Hassiy bade me be seated on some cushions to await her return. To my question she snarled that she was going forth as she had been ordered, to buy me a ticket on the Chananel boat. She departed and I sat down, leaning my back against the wall. As I ruminated, it seemed suddenly that eyes were fixed on me so intensely as to disturb my sub-mind. I glanced up quickly but no one seemed to be looking at me. The smoke drifted through the hot atmosphere as usual; Yusra Ali and the Chinese glided back and forth tending to the wants of the sleepers.
Suddenly the door to the rear room opened and a strange and hideous figure came haltingly out. Not all of those who found entrance to Yin Shatu's back room were aristocrats and society members. This was one of the exceptions, and one whom I remembered as having often entered and emerged therefrom. A tall, gaunt figure, shapeless and ragged wrappings and nondescript garments, face entirely hidden. Better that the face be hidden, I thought, for without doubt the wrapping concealed a grisly sight. The woman was a leper, who had somehow managed to escape the attention of the public guardians and who was occasionally seen haunting the lower and more mysterious regions of East End--a mystery even to the lowest denizens of Limehouse.
Suddenly my supersensitive mind was aware of a swift tension in the air. The leper hobbled out the door, closed it behind her. My eyes instinctively sought the couch whereon lay the woman who had aroused my suspicions earlier in the day. I could have sworn that cold steely eyes glared menacingly before they flickered shut. I crossed to the couch in one stride and bent over the prostrate woman. Something about her face seemed unnatural--a healthy bronze seemed to underlie the pallor of complexion.
'Yin Shatu!' I shouted. 'A spy is in the house!'
Things happened then with bewildering speed. The woman on the couch with one tigerish movement leaped erect and a revolver gleamed in her hand. One sinewy arm flung me aside as I sought to grapple with her and a sharp decisive voice sounded over the babble which broke forth.
'You there! Halt! Halt!'
The pistol in the stranger's hand was leveled at the leper, who was making for the door in long strides!
All about was confusion; Yin Shatu was shrieking volubly in Chinese and the four China girls and Yusra Ali were rushing in from all sides, knives glittering in their hands.
All this I saw with unnatural clearness even as I marked the stranger's face. As the fleeing leper gave no evidence of halting, I saw the eyes harden to steely points of determination, sighting along the pistol barrel--the features set with the grim purpose of the slayer. The leper was almost to the outer door, but death would strike her down ere she could reach it.
And then, just as the finger of the stranger tightened on the trigger, I hurled myself forward and my right fist crashed against her chin. She went down as though struck by a trip-hammer, the revolver exploding harmlessly in the air.
In that instant, with the blinding flare of light that sometimes comes to one, I knew that the leper was none other than the Woman Behind the Screen!
I bent over the fallen woman, who though not entirely senseless had been rendered temporarily helpless by that terrific blow. She was struggling dazedly to rise but I shoved her roughly down again and seizing the false locks she wore, tore it away. A lean bronzed face was revealed, the strong lines of which not even the artificial dirt and grease-paint could alter.
Yusra Ali leaned above her now, dagger in hand, eyes slits of murder. The brown sinewy hand went up--I caught the wrist.
'Not so fast, you black devil! What are you about to do?'
'This is Joan Gordon,' she hissed, 'the Master's greatest foe! She must die, curse you!'
Joan Gordon! The name was familiar somehow, and yet I did not seem to connect it with the London police nor account for the woman's presence in Yin Shatu's dope-joint. However, on one point I was determined.
'You don't kill her, at any rate. Up with you!' This last to Gordon, who with my aid staggered up, still very dizzy.
'That punch would have dropped a bull,' I said in wonderment; 'I didn't know I had it in me.'
The false leper had vanished. Yin Shatu stood gazing at me as immobile as an idol, hands in her wide sleeves, and Yusra Ali stood back, muttering murderously and thumbing her dagger edge, as I led Gordon out of the opium room and through the innocent-appearing bar which lay between that room and the street.
Out in the street I said to her: 'I have no idea as to who you are or what you are doing here, but you see what an unhealthful place it is for you. Hereafter be advised by me and stay away.'
Her only answer was a searching glance, and then be turned and walked swiftly though somewhat unsteadily up the street.
* * *
The Dream Boy
'I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule.'
- Poe
Outside my room sounded a light footstep. The doorknob turned cautiously and slowly; the door opened. I sprang erect with a gasp. Red lips, half-parted, dark eyes like limpid seas of wonder, a mass of shimmering hair--framed in my drab doorway stood the boy of my dreams!
He entered, and half-turning with a sinuous motion, closed the door. I sprang forward, my hands outstretched, then halted as he put a finger to his lips.
'You must not talk loudly,' he almost whispered. 'She did not say I could not come; yet--'
His voice was soft and musical, with just a touch of foreign accent which I found delightful. As for the boy himself, every intonation, every movement proclaimed the Orient. He was a fragrant breath from the East. From his night-black hair, piled high above his alabaster forehead, to his little feet, encased in high-heeled pointed slippers, he portrayed the highest ideal of Asiatic loveliness--an effect which was heightened rather than lessened by the English blouse and skirt which he wore.
'You are beautiful!' I said dazedly. 'Who are you?'
'I am Zuleik,' he answered with a shy smile. 'I--I am glad you like me. I am glad you no longer dream hashish dreams.'
Strange that so small a thing should set my heart to leaping wildly!
'I owe it all to you, Zuleik,' I said huskily. 'Had not I dreamed of you every hour since you first lifted me from the gutter, I had lacked the power of even hoping to be freed from my curse.'
He blushed prettily and intertwined his white fingers as if in nervousness.
'You leave England tomorrow?' he said suddenly.
'Yes. Hassiy has not returned with my ticket--'I hesitated suddenly, remembering the command of silence.
'Yes, I know, I know!' he whispered swiftly, his eyes widening. 'And Joan Gordon has been here! She saw you!'
'Yes!'
He came close to me with a quick lithe movement.
'You are to impersonate some woman! Listen, while you are doing this, you must not ever let Gordon see you! She would know you, no matter what your disguise! She is a terrible woman!'
'I don't understand,' I said, completely bewildered. 'How did the Mistress break me of my hashish craving? Who is this Gordon and why did she come here? Why does the Mistress go disguised as a leper--and who is she? Above all, why am I to impersonate a woman I never saw or heard of?'
'I cannot--I dare not tell you!' he whispered, his face paling. 'I--'
Somewhere in the house sounded the faint tones of a Chinese gong. The boy started like a frightened gazelle.
'I must go! She summons me!'
He opened the door, darted through, halted a moment to electrify me with his passionate exclamation: 'Oh, be careful, be very careful, sahib!'
Then he was gone.
* * *
The Woman of the Skull
'What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?'
- Blake
A while after my beautiful and mysterious visitor had left, I sat in meditation. I believed that I had at last stumbled onto an explanation of a part of the enigma, at any rate. This was the conclusion I had reached: Yin Shatu, the opium lord, was simply the agent or servant of some organization or individual whose work was on a far larger scale than merely supplying dope addicts in the Temple of Dreams. This woman or these women needed co-workers among all classes of people; in other words, I was being let in with a group of opium smugglers on a gigantic scale. Gordon no doubt had been investigating the case, and her presence alone showed that it was no ordinary one, for I knew that she held a high position with the English government, though just what, I did not know.
Opium or not, I determined to carry out my obligation to the Mistress. My moral sense had been blunted by the dark ways I had traveled, and the thought of despicable crime did not enter my head. I was indeed hardened. More, the mere debt of gratitude was increased a thousand-fold by the thought of the boy. To the Mistress I owed it that I was able to stand up on my feet and look into his clear eyes as a woman should. So if she wished my services as a smuggler of dope, she should have them. No doubt I was to impersonate some woman so high in governmental esteem that the usual actions of the customs officers would be deemed unnecessary; was I to bring some rare dream-producer into England?
These thoughts were in my mind as I went downstairs, but ever back of them hovered other and more alluring suppositions--what was the reason for the boy, here in this vile dive--a rose in a garbage-heap--and who was he?
As I entered the outer bar, Hassiy came in, her brows set in a dark scowl of anger, and, I believed, fear. She carried a newspaper in her hand, folded.
'I told you to wait in opium room,' she snarled.
'You were gone so long that I went up to my room. Have you the ticket?'
She merely grunted and pushed on past me into the opium room, and standing at the door I saw her cross the floor and disappear into the rear room. I stood there, my bewilderment increasing. For as Hassiy had brushed past me, I had noted an item on the face of the paper, against which her black thumb was tightly pressed as if to mark that special column of news.
And with the unnatural celerity of action and judgment which seemed to be mine those days, I had in that fleeting instant read:
African Special Commissioner Found Murdered!
The body of Major Fairlyn Morley was yesterday discovered in a rotting ship's hold at Bordeaux...
No more I saw of the details, but that alone was enough to make me think! The affair seemed to be taking on an ugly aspect. Yet--
Another day passed. To my inquiries, Hassiy snarled that the plans had been changed and I was not to go to France. Then, late in the evening, she came to bid me once more to the room of mystery.
I stood before the lacquer screen, the yellow smoke acrid in my nostrils, the woven dragons writhing along the tapestries, the palm trees rearing thick and oppressive.
'A change has come in our plans,' said the hidden voice. 'You will not sail as was decided before. But I have other work that you may do. Mayhap this will be more to your type of usefulness, for I admit you have somewhat disappointed me in regard to subtlety. You interfered the other day in such manner as will no doubt cause me great inconvenience in the future.'
I said nothing, but a feeling of resentment began to stir in me.
'Even after the assurance of one of my most trusted servants,' the toneless voice continued, with no mark of any emotion save a slightly rising note, 'you insisted on releasing my most deadly enemy. Be more circumspect in the future.'
'I saved your life!' I said angrily.
'And for that reason alone I overlook your mistake--this time!'
A slow fury suddenly surged up in me.
'This time! Make the best of it this time, for I assure you there will be no next time. I owe you a greater debt than I can ever hope to pay, but that does not make me your slave. I have saved your life--the debt is as near paid as a woman can pay it. Go your way and I go mine!'
A low, hideous laugh answered me, like a reptilian hiss.
'You fool! You will pay with your whole life's toil! You say you are not my slave? I say you are--just as black Hassiy there beside you is my slave--just as the boy Zuleik is my slave, who has bewitched you with his beauty.'
These words sent a wave of hot blood to my brain and I was conscious of a flood of fury which completely engulfed my reason for a second. Just as all my moods and senses seemed sharpened and exaggerated those days, so now this burst of rage transcended every moment of anger I had ever had before.
'Hell's fiends!' I shrieked. 'You devil--who are you and what is your hold on me? I'll see you or die!'
Hassiy sprang at me, but I hurled her backward and with one stride reached the screen and flung it aside with an incredible effort of strength. Then I shrank back, hands outflung, shrieking. A tall, gaunt figure stood before me, a figure arrayed grotesquely in a silk brocaded gown which fell to the floor.
From the sleeves of this gown protruded hands which filled me with crawling horror--long, predatory hands, with thin bony fingers and curved talons--withered skin of a parchment brownish-yellow, like the hands of a woman long dead.
The hands--but, oh God, the face! A skull to which no vestige of flesh seemed to remain but on which taut brownish-yellow skin grew fast, etching out every detail of that terrible death's-head. The forehead was high and in a way magnificent, but the head was curiously narrow through the temples, and from under penthouse brows great eyes glimmered like pools of yellow fire. The nose was high-bridged and very thin; the mouth was a mere colorless gash between thin, cruel lips. A long, bony neck supported this frightful vision and completed the effect of a reptilian demon from some medieval hell.
I was face to face with the skull-faced woman of my dreams!
* * *
Black Wisdom
'By thought a crawling ruin,
By life a leaping mire.
By a broken heart in the breast of the world
And the end of the world's desire.'
- Chesterton
The terrible spectacle drove for the instant all thought of rebellion from my mind. My very blood froze in my veins and I stood motionless. I heard Hassiy laugh grimly behind me. The eyes in the cadaverous face blazed fiendishly at me and I blanched from the concentrated satanic fury in them.
Then the horror laughed sibilantly.
'I do you a great honor, Ms. Costigyn; among a very few, even of my own servants, you may say that you saw my face and lived. I think you will be more useful to me living than dead.'
I was silent, completely unnerved. It was difficult to believe that this woman lived, for her appearance certainly belied the thought. She seemed horribly like a mummy. Yet her lips moved when she spoke and her eyes flamed with hideous life.
'You will do as I say,' she said abruptly, and her voice had taken on a note of command. 'You doubtless know, or know of, Lady Haldred Frenton?'
'Yes.'
Every woman of culture in Europe and America was familiar with the travel books of Lady Haldred Frenton, author and soldier of fortune.
'You will go to Lady Haldred's estate tonight--'
'Yes?'
'And kill her!'
I staggered, literally. This order was incredible--unspeakable! I had sunk low, low enough to smuggle opium, but to deliberately murder a woman I had never seen, a woman noted for her kindly deeds! That was too monstrous even to contemplate.
'You do not refuse?'
The tone was as loathly and as mocking as the hiss of a serpent.
'Refuse?' I screamed, finding my voice at last. 'Refuse? You incarnate devil! Of course I refuse! You--'
Something in the cold assurance of her manner halted me--froze me into apprehensive silence.
'You fool!' she said calmly. 'I broke the hashish chains--do you know how? Four minutes from now you will know and curse the day you were born! Have you not thought it strange, the swiftness of brain, the resilience of body--the brain that should be rusty and slow, the body that should be weak and sluggish from years of abuse? That blow that felled Joan Gordon--have you not wondered at its might? The ease with which you mastered Major Morley's records--have you not wondered at that? You fool, you are bound to me by chains of steel and blood and fire! I have kept you alive and sane--I alone. Each day the life-saving elixir has been given you in your wine. You could not live and keep your reason without it. And I and only I know its secret!'
She glanced at a queer timepiece which stood on a table at her elbow.
'This time I had Yin Shatu leave the elixir out--I anticipated rebellion. The time is near--ha, it strikes!'
Something else she said, but I did not hear. I did not see, nor did I feel in the human sense of the word. I was writhing at her feet, screaming and gibbering in the flames of such hells as women have never dreamed of.
Aye, I knew now! She had simply given me a dope so much stronger that it drowned the hashish. My unnatural ability was explainable now--I had simply been acting under the stimulus of something which combined all the hells in its makeup, which stimulated, something like heroin, but whose effect was unnoticed by the victim. What it was, I had no idea, nor did I believe anyone knew save that hellish being who stood watching me with grim amusement. But it had held my brain together, instilling into my system a need for it, and now my frightful craving tore my soul asunder.
Never, in my moments of worst shell-shock or my moments of hashish-craving, have I ever experienced anything like that. I burned with the heat of a thousand hells and froze with an iciness that was colder than any ice, a hundred times. I swept down to the deepest pits of torture and up to the highest crags of torment--a million yelling devils hemmed me in, shrieking and stabbing. Bone by bone, vein by vein, cell by cell I felt my body disintegrate and fly in bloody atoms all over the universe--and each separate cell was an entire system of quivering, screaming nerves. And they gathered from far voids and reunited with a greater torment.
Through the fiery bloody mists I heard my own voice screaming, a monotonous yammering. Then with distended eyes I saw a golden goblet, held by a claw-like hand, swim into view--a goblet filled with an amber liquid.
With a bestial screech, I seized it with both hands, being dimly aware that the metal stem gave beneath my fingers, and brought the brim to my lips. I drank in frenzied haste, the liquid slopping down onto my breast.
* * *
Kathulis of Egypt
'Night shall be thrice night over you,
And Heaven an iron cope.'
- Chesterton
The Skull-faced One stood watching me critically as I sat panting on a couch, completely exhausted. She held in her hand the goblet and surveyed the golden stem, which was crushed out of all shape. This my maniac fingers had done in the instant of drinking.
'Superhuman strength, even for a woman in your condition,' she said with a sort of creaky pedantry. 'I doubt if even Hassiy here could equal it. Are you ready for your instructions now?'
I nodded, wordless. Already the hellish strength of the elixir was flowing through my veins, renewing my burnt-out force. I wondered how long a woman could live as I lived being constantly burned out and artificially rebuilt.
'You will be given a disguise and will go alone to the Frenton estate. No one suspects any design against Lady Haldred and your entrance into the estate and the house itself should be a matter of comparative ease. You will not don the disguise--which will be of unique nature--until you are ready to enter the estate. You will then proceed to Lady Haldred's room and kill her, breaking her neck with your bare hands--this is essential--'
The voice droned on, giving the ghastly orders in a frightfully casual and matter-of-fact way. The cold sweat beaded my brow.
'You will then leave the estate, taking care to leave the imprint of your hand somewhere plainly visible, and the automobile, which will be waiting for you at some safe place nearby, will bring you back here, you having first removed the disguise. I have, in case of complications, any amount of women who will swear that you spent the entire night in the Temple of Dreams and never left it. But here must be no detection! Go warily and perform your task surely, for you know the alternative.'
I did not return to the opium house but was taken through winding corridors, hung with heavy tapestries, to a small room containing only an oriental couch. Hassiy gave me to understand that I was to remain here until after nightfall and then left me. The door was closed but I made no effort to discover if it was locked. The Skull-faced Mistress held me with stronger shackles than locks and bolts.
Seated upon the couch in the bizarre setting of a chamber which might have been a room in an Indian zenana, I faced fact squarely and fought out my battle. There was still in me some trace of womanhood left--more than the fiend had reckoned, and added to this were black despair and desperation. I chose and determined on my only course.
Suddenly the door opened softly. Some intuition told me whom to expect, nor was I disappointed. Zuleik stood, a glorious vision before me--a vision which mocked me, made blacker my despair and yet thrilled me with wild yearning and reasonless joy.
He bore a tray of food which he set beside me, and then he seated himself on the couch, his large eyes fixed upon my face. A flower in a serpent den he was, and the beauty of his took hold of my heart.
'Steffie!' he whispered, and I thrilled as he spoke my name for the first time.
His luminous eyes suddenly shone with tears and he laid his little hand on my arm. I seized it in both my rough hands.
'They have set you a task which you fear and hate!' he faltered.
'Aye,' I almost laughed, 'but I'll fool them yet! Zuleik, tell me--what is the meaning of all this?'
He glanced fearfully around him.
'I do not know all'--she hesitated--'your plight is all my fault but I--I hoped--Steffie, I have watched you every time you came to Yin Shatu's for months. You did not see me but I saw you, and I saw in you, not the broken sot your rags proclaimed, but a wounded soul, a soul bruised terribly on the ramparts of life. And from my heart I pitied you. Then when Hassiy abused you that day'--again tears started to his eyes--'I could not bear it and I knew how you suffered for want of hashish. So I paid Yin Shatu, and going to the Mistress I--I--oh, you will hate me for this!' he sobbed.
'No--no--never--'
'I told her that you were a woman who might be of use to her and begged her to have Yin Shatu supply you with what you needed. She had already noticed you, for her is the eye of the slaver and all the world is her slave market! So she bade Yin Shatu do as I asked; and now--better if you had remained as you were, my friend.'
'No! No!' I exclaimed. 'I have known a few days of regeneration, even if it was false! I have stood before you as a woman, and that is worth all else!'
And all that I felt for his must have looked forth from my eyes, for he dropped his and flushed. Ask me not how love comes to a woman; but I knew that I loved Zuleik--had loved this mysterious oriental boy since first I saw her--and somehow I felt that he, in a measure, returned my affection. This realization made blacker and more barren the road I had chosen; yet--for pure love must ever strengthen a man--it nerved me to what I must do.
'Zuleik,' I said, speaking hurriedly, 'time flies and there are things I must learn; tell me--who are you and why do you remain in this den of Hades?'
'I am Zuleik--that is all I know. I am Circassian by blood and birth; when I was very little I was captured in a Turkish raid and raised in a Stamboul harem; while I was yet too young to marry, my mistress gave me as a present to--to Him.'
'And who is he--this skull-faced woman?'
'She is Kathulis of Egypt--that is all I know. My mistress.'
'An Egyptian? Then what is she doing in London--why all this mystery?'
He intertwined his fingers nervously.
'Steffie, please speak lower; always there is someone listening everywhere. I do not know who the Mistress is or why she is here or why she does these things. I swear by Allah! If I knew I would tell you. Sometimes distinguished-looking women come here to the room where the Mistress receives them--not the room where you saw her--and she makes me dance before them and afterward flirt with them a little. And always I must repeat exactly what they say to me. That is what I must always do--in Turkey, in the Barbary States, in Egypt, in France and in England. The Mistress taught me French and English and educated me in many ways herself. She is the greatest sorceress in all the world and knows all ancient magic and everything.'
'Zuleik,' I said, 'my race is soon run, but let me get you out of this--come with me and I swear I'll get you away from this fiend!'
He shuddered and hid his face.
'No, no, I cannot!'
'Zuleik,' I asked gently, 'what hold has she over you, child--dope also?'
'No, no!' he whimpered. 'I do not know--I do not know--but I cannot--I never can escape her!'
I sat, baffled for a few moments; then I asked, 'Zuleik, where are we right now?'
'This building is a deserted storehouse back of the Temple of Silence.'
'I thought so. What is in the chests in the tunnel?'
'I do not know.'
Then suddenly he began weeping softly. 'You too, a slave, like me--you who are so strong and kind--oh Steffie, I cannot bear it!'
I smiled. 'Lean closer, Zuleik, and I will tell you how I am going to fool this Kathulis.'
He glanced apprehensively at the door.
'You must speak low. I will lie in your arms and while you pretend to caress me, whisper your words to me.'
He glided into my embrace, and there on the dragon-worked couch in that house of horror I first knew the glory of Zuleik's slender form nestling in my arms--of Zuleik's soft cheek pressing my breast. The fragrance of his was in my nostrils, his hair in my eyes, and my senses reeled; then with my lips hidden by his silky hair I whispered, swiftly:
'I am going first to warn Lady Haldred Frenton--then to find Joan Gordon and tell her of this den. I will lead the police here and you must watch closely and be ready to hide from Him --until we can break through and kill or capture her. Then you will be free.'
'But you!' he gasped, paling. 'You must have the elixir, and only he--'
'I have a way of outdoing her, child,' I answered.
He went pitifully white and his man's intuition sprang at the right conclusion.
'You are going to kill yourself!'
And much as it hurt me to see his emotion, I yet felt a torturing thrill that he should feel so on my account. His arms tightened about my neck.
'Don't, Steffie!' he begged. 'It is better to live, even--'
'No, not at that price. Better to go out clean while I have the womanhood left.'
He stared at me wildly for an instant; then, pressing his red lips suddenly to mine, he sprang up and fled from the room. Strange, strange are the ways of love. Two stranded ships on the shores of life, we had drifted inevitably together, and though no word of love had passed between us, we knew each other's heart--through grime and rags, and through accouterments of the slave, we knew each other's heart and from the first loved as naturally and as purely as it was intended from the beginning of Time.
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