El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (24 page)

“Look!” He rose and beckoned Gordon to follow him. The giant blacks closed in on each side of the Shaykh, and he led the way into an alcove
unsuspected until one of the negroes drew aside a tapestry behind the throne. They stood in a latticed balcony looking down into a garden enclosed by a fifteen-foot wall, which wall was almost completely masked by thick shrubbery. An exotic fragrance rose from masses of trees, shrubs and blossoms, and silvery fountains tinkled musically. Gordon saw women moving among the trees, unveiled and scantily clad in filmy silk and jewel-crusted velvet — slim, supple girls, Arab and Persian and Hindu, mostly, and he suddenly saw the explanation of the mysterious disappearances of certain Indian girls, which of late years had increased too greatly to be explained by casual kidnappings by native princelings. Men, looking like opium-sleepers, lay under the trees on silken cushions, and native music wailed melodiously from unseen musicians. It was easy to understand how an Oriental, his senses at once drugged and inflamed by
hashish
, would believe himself to be in the Prophet’s Paradise, upon awakening in that fantastic garden.

“I have copied, and improved upon, the
hashish
garden of Hassan ibn Sabah,” said the Shaykh, at last closing the cleverly disguised casement and turning back into the throne-room. “I show you this because I do not intend to have you ‘taste Paradise’ like these others. I am not such a fool as to believe that you would be duped like them. It is not necessary. It does no harm for you to know these secrets. If Bagheela does not approve of you, your knowledge will die with you; if he does, then you have learned no more than you will learn in any event as one of the Sons of the Mountain.

“You can rise high in the empire I am building. I shall become as powerful as my ancestor was. Three years I was preparing. Then I began to strike. Within the last year my
fedauis
have gone forth with poisoned daggers as they went forth in the old days, knowing no law but my will, incorruptible, invincible, seeking death rather than life.”

“And your ultimate ambition?”

“Have you not guessed it?” The Persian almost whispered it, his eyes wide and blank with his strange fanaticism.

“Who wouldn’t? But I’d rather hear it from your lips.”

“I will rule all Asia! Sitting here in Shalizahr I will control the destinies of the world! Kings on their thrones will be but puppets dancing on my strings. Those who dare disobey my commands shall die suddenly. Soon none will dare disobey. Power will be mine. Power! Allah! What is greater?”

Gordon did not reply. He was comparing the Shaykh’s repeated references to his absolute power, with his remarks concerning the mysterious Bagheela who must decide Gordon’s status. This would seem to indicate that the Shaykh’s authority was not supreme in Shalizahr, after all. Gordon wondered who this Bagheela was. The term merely meant panther, and was probably a little like his own native name of El Borak.

“Where is the Sikh, Lal Singh?” he demanded abruptly. “Your Yezidees carried him away, after they murdered Ahmed Shah.”

The Persian’s expression of surprize and ignorance was overdone.

“I do not know to whom you refer. The Yezidees brought back no captive with them from the Gorge of Ghosts.”

Gordon knew he was lying, but also realized that it would be useless to push his questioning further at that time. He could not imagine why Othman should deny knowledge of the Sikh, whom he was sure had been brought into the city, but it might be dangerous to press the matter, after a formal denial by the Persian.

The Shaykh motioned to the black who again smote the gong, and again Musa entered, salaaming.

“Musa will show you to a chamber where food and drink will be brought you,” he said. “You are not a prisoner, of course. No guard will be placed over you. But I must ask you not to leave your chamber until I send for you. My men are suspicious of
Feringhi
, and until you are formally initiated into the society —”

He left the sentence unfinished.

The impassive Musa conducted Gordon through the bronze doors, past the files of glittering guardsmen, and along a narrow, winding corridor which branched off from the broad hallway. Some distance from the audience-chamber he led Gordon into a chamber with a domed ceiling of ivory and sandal-wood, and one heavy, brass-braced mahogany door. There were no windows. Air and light circulated through concealed apertures in the dome. The walls were hung with rich tapestries, the floor hidden by cushion-strewn carpets. But a velvet divan was the only piece of furniture.

Musa bowed himself out without a word, shutting the door behind him, and Gordon seated himself on the couch. This was the most bizarre situation he had ever found himself in, in the course of a life packed with wild adventures and bloody episodes. He felt out of place in his boots and dusty khakis, in this mysterious city that turned the clock of Time back nearly a thousand years. There was a curious sensation of having strayed out of his own age into a lost and forgotten Past; a Past he had known before. It was almost like a flash of memory in which he saw himself, a black-haired, black-eyed warrior from a far western isle, clad in the chain mail of a Crusader, striding through the intrigue-veiled mazes of an Assassin city.

He shook himself impatiently. He more than half believed in rein carnation,
but this affair was no ordinary revival of mysticism. The Shaykh Al Jebal might rule supreme in Shalizahr where sleeping ages woke in immemorial life, but Gordon sensed something behind this — a dim gigantic shape looming behind these veils of mystery and illusion.

What was the prize for which the great nations of the world sparred behind locked doors? India! The golden key to Asia.

Something more than the mad whim of a Persian dreamer lay behind this fantastic plot. Rebuilding the city alone would have required a stupendous expenditure of money. He questioned Othman’s assertion that he had supplied the money out of his own private fortune. He doubted if any Persian fortune would have proven sufficient. The building of Shalizahr indicated powerful backing, with unlimited resources.

Then Gordon forgot all other angles of the adventure in concern over the fate of Lal Singh. Impassive in contemplating his own peril, and the destiny of nations, he rose and paced the floor like a caged tiger as he brooded over the mystery of the Sikh’s disappearance. Why had Othman denied knowledge of the prisoner? That had a sinister suggestion.

Gordon seated himself as he heard sandalled feet pad in the corridor outside, and immediately the door opened and Musa entered, followed by a huge negro bearing viands in gold dishes, and a golden jug of wine. Musa closed the door quickly, but not before Gordon had a glimpse of a helmet spike protruding from the tapestries which obviously hid an alcove across the corridor. So Othman had lied when he said no guard would be placed to watch him. Gordon instantly considered himself absolved of any implied agreement to remain in the chamber.

“Wine of Shiraz,
sahib
, and food,” Musa indicated, unnecessarily. “Presently a girl beautiful as a
houri
shall be sent to entertain the
sahib.
”

Gordon opened his mouth to decline, when he realized that the girl would be sent anyway, to spy on him, so he nodded acquiescingly.

Musa motioned the slave to set down the food, and he himself tasted each dish and sipped liberally of the wine, before bowing himself out of the room, herding the negro before him. Gordon, alert as a hungry wolf in a trap, noted that the Persian tasted the wine last, and that he stumbled slightly as he left the chamber. When the door closed behind the man, Gordon lifted the wine jug and smelled deeply of the contents. Mingled with the scent of the wine, so faint that only nostrils like his could have detected it, was an aromatic odor he recognized. It was not that of a poison, but only a nameless Oriental drug which induced deep slumber for a short time. The taster had hurried to leave the room before he was overcome. Gordon wondered if, after all, Othman planned to have him conveyed to the Garden of the Houris.

Investigation, armed by experience acquired through years of Eastern
intrigues, convinced him that the food had not been tampered with, and he fell to with gusto.

He had scarcely completed the meal when the door opened again, just long enough to allow a slim, supple figure to slip through: a girl clad in gold breastplates, jewel-crusted girdle, and filmy silk trousers. She might have stepped out of the
harim
of Haroun ar Raschid. But Gordon came to his feet like a steel spring uncoiling, for he recognized her even before she lifted her filmy
yasmaq
.

“Azizun! What are you doing here?”

Her wide dark eyes were dilated with fear and excitement; her words tumbled over one another as her white fingers fluttered at his hands in a pathetically childish way.

“They stole me, one night as I walked in my father’s garden in Delhi,
sahib
.

“They carried me in a caravan of men posing as horse-traders, to Peshawar, and so through the Khyber, and at last to this city of devils, with six other girls stolen in India. Their slave caravans ply constantly under the very sight of the British. The girls are made to sit in the covered wagons, heavily veiled, and not daring to cry out for aid, for a knife is always near them, until the Khyber is passed. Beyond the Khyber none heeds the cries of a stolen woman. In India they are passed as the wives and daughters and sisters of the ‘horse-traders’. At Peshawar there is an Indian official who is in the pay of the
Batinis
. Scores of Indian girls are passed through the Khyber yearly with his aid.”

Gordon did not swear, but his thoughts were profane and murderous. It stung him to a dangerous rage to reflect that this abominable traffic had been carried on under his very nose; and it also indicated the efficiency and organization of the Ismailians.

“What’s this official’s name?” he asked grimly.

“Ditta Ram.”

“I know the swine!” A contracting of the lip muscles evidenced a ferocious satisfaction as Gordon recognized his opportunity to repay an old score. Then he came back to the present. Exposure of Ditta Ram and a knife-thrust in his fat belly in the fight that was sure to follow, was somewhere in the future. Azizun was speaking, stammering in her haste.

“I have dwelt here a month! I have almost died of shame. I have seen other girls die under torture. They have made me a ‘
houri
’ in their foul garden of Paradise. My heart almost burst when I saw you brought in among Muhammad ibn Ahmed’s swordsmen. I was watching from a tapestried doorway. While I racked my brain to get a word with you, the Master of the Girls came to send a girl to the
sahib
to coax from him his secrets, if he had any. I prevailed upon him to send me. He thinks I am your enemy. I told him you slew my brother.” She meditated for a moment over the enormity of the lie; her brother was one of Gordon’s best friends.

“Tell me, Azizun, do you know anything of Lal Singh, the Sikh?”

“Yes,
sahib!
They brought him here captive to make
a fedaui
of him, for no Sikh has yet joined the cult, and the Masters are very desirous of securing one who has power in the Punjab. But Lal Singh is a very powerful man, as the
sahib
knows, and after they reached the city and delivered him into the hands of the Arab guards, he broke free and with his bare hands slew the brother of Muhammad ibn Ahmed. Muhammad demanded his head and he is too powerful even for Othman to refuse in this matter.”

“So that’s why the Shaykh lied about Lal Singh,” muttered Gordon.

“Yes,
sahib
. Lal Singh lies in a dungeon below the palace, and tomorrow he is to be given to the Arab for torture and execution.”

Gordon’s face did not exactly change its expression, but it darkened and became sinister.

“Lead me tonight to Muhammad’s sleeping quarters,” he requested, his narrowing eyes betraying his deadly intention.

“Nay, he sleeps among his warriors, all proven swordsmen of the desert, too many even for thy blade, Prince of Swords. I will lead you to Lal Singh!”

“What of the guard hidden in the corridor?”

“There is a secret way from this room to the dungeons. He will not see us leave the chamber. And he will not open the door, or allow any one else to enter until he has seen me leave.”

She drew aside the tapestry on the wall opposite the door and pressed on an arabesqued design. A panel swung inward, revealing a narrow stair that wound down into lightless depths.

“The masters think their slaves do not know their secrets,” she muttered. “Come.” She produced and lighted a tiny candle, and holding it aloft in her slender hand she led the way onto the stair, pulling the panel to after them.
They descended until Gordon estimated that they were well beneath the palace, and then struck a narrow, level tunnel which ran away from the foot of the stair.

“We are under one of the outer gardens now,” she said. “A Rajput who planned to run away from Shalizahr showed me this secret way. I planned to escape with him. We hid weapons and food here. He was caught and put to the torture, but died without betraying me. Here is the sword he hid.” She paused and fumbled in a niche, drawing out a blade which she proffered Gordon. He took it, believing that he would need such a weapon before they won clear.