Two-Gun Bob, page 150
The old man frowned. “The garments I can procure from my own shop. But how am I to secure the helmet and mask?”
“That is thy affair. Gold can open any door, they say. Go!”
As soon as Nureddin had departed, reluctantly, Gordon kicked off his boots, and next removed his mustache, using the keen-edged dagger for a razor. With its removal vanished the last trace of Shirkuh the Kurd.
Twilight had come to Rub el Harami. The room seemed full of a blue mist, blurring objects. Gordon had lighted a bronze lamp when Nureddin returned with the articles El Borak had ordered.
“Lay them on the table and sit down on the divan with your hands behind you,” Gordon commanded.
When the merchant had done so, the American bound his wrists and ankles. Then Gordon donned the boots and the robe, placed the black lacquered steel helmet on his head, and drew the black cloak about him; lastly he put on the mask which fell in folds of black silk to his breast, with two slits over his eyes. Turning to Nureddin, he asked:
“Is there a likeness between me and another?”
“Allah preserve us! You are one with Dhira Azrail, the executioner of the Black Tigers, when he goes forth to slay at the emir’s command.”
“Good. I have heard much of this man who slays secretly, who moves through the night like a black jinn of destruction. Few have seen his face, men say.”
“Allah defend me from ever seeing it!” said Nureddin fervently.
Gordon glanced at the skylight. Stars twinkled beyond it.
“I go now from your house, Nureddin,” said he. “But lest you rouse the household in your zeal of hospitality, I must gag you and your son.”
“We will smother!” exclaimed Nureddin. “We will starve in this room!”
“You will do neither one nor the other,” Gordon assured him. “No man I gagged ever smothered. Has not Allah given you nostrils through which to breathe? Your servants will find you and release you in the morning.”
This was deftly accomplished, and Gordon advised:
“Observe that I have not touched your moneybags, and be grateful!”
He left the room, locking the door behind him. He hoped it would be several hours before either of his captives managed to work the gag out of his mouth and arouse the household with his yells.
Moving like a black-clad ghost through the dimly lighted corridors, Gordon descended the winding stair and came into the lower hallway. A black slave sat cross-legged at the foot of the stair, but his head was sunk on his broad breast, and his snores resounded through the hall. He did not see or hear the velvet-footed shadow that glided past him. Gordon slid back the bolt on the door and emerged into the garden, whose broad leaves and petals hung motionless in the still starlight. Outside, the city was silent. Men had gone early behind locked doors, and few roamed the streets, except those patrols searching ceaselessly for El Borak.
He climbed the wall and dropped into the narrow alley. He knew where the common jail was, for in his role of Shirkuh he had familiarized himself with the general features of the town. He kept close to the wall, under the shadows of the overhanging balconies, but he did not slink. His movements were calculated to suggest a man who has no reason for concealment, but who chooses to shun conspicuousness.
The streets seemed empty. From some of the roof gardens came the wail of native citterns, or voices lifted in song. Somewhere a wretch screamed agonizingly to the impact of blows on naked flesh.
Once Gordon heard the clink of steel ahead of him and turned quickly into a dark alley to let a patrol swing past. They were men in armor, on foot, but carrying cocked rifles at the ready and peering in every direction. They kept close together, and their vigilance reflected their fear of the quarry they hunted. When they rounded the first corner, he emerged from his hiding place and hurried on.
But he had to depend on his disguise before he reached the prison. A squad of armed men rounded the corner ahead of him, and no concealment offered itself. At the sound of their footsteps he had slowed his pace to a stately stride. With his cloak folded close about him, his head slightly bent as if in somber meditation, he moved on, paying no heed to the soldiers. They shrank back, murmuring:
“Allah preserve us! It is Dhira Azrail — the Arm of the Angel of Death! An order has been given!”
They hurried on, without looking back. A few moments later Gordon had reached the lowering arch of the prison door. A dozen guardsmen stood alertly under the arch, their rifle barrels gleaming bluely in the glare of a torch thrust in a niche in the wall. These rifles were instantly leveled at the figure that moved out of the shadows. Then the men hesitated, staring wide-eyed at the somber black shape standing silently before them.
“Your pardon!” entreated the captain of the guard, saluting. “We could not recognize — in the shadow — We did not know an order had been given.”
A ghostly hand, half muffled in the black cloak, gestured toward the door, and the guardsmen opened it in stumbling haste, salaaming deeply. As the black figure moved through, they closed the door and made fast the chain.
“The mob will see no show in the suk after all,” muttered one.
VII
IN THE PRISON
In the cell where Brent and his companions lay, time dragged on leaden feet. Hassan groaned with the pain of his broken arm. Suleiman cursed Ali Shah in a monotonous drone. Achmet was inclined to talk, but his comments cast no light of hope on their condition. Alafdal Khan sat like a man in a daze.
No food was given them, only scummy water that smelled. They used most of it to bathe their wounds. Brent suggested trying to set Hassan’s arm, but the others showed no interest. Hassan had only another day to live. Why bother? Then there was nothing with which to make splints.
Brent mostly lay on his back, watching the little square of dry blue Himalayan sky through the barred window.
He watched the blue fade, turn pink with sunset and deep purple with twilight; it became a square of blue-black velvet, set with a cluster of white stars. Outside, in the corridor that ran between the cells, bronze lamps glowed, and he wondered vaguely how far, on the backs of groaning camels, had come the oil that filled them.
In their light a cloaked figure came down the corridor, and a scarred sardonic face was pressed to the bars. Achmet gasped, his eyes dilated.
“Do you know me, dog?” inquired the stranger.
Achmet nodded, moistening lips suddenly dry.
“Are we to die tonight, then?” he asked.
The head under the flowing headdress was shaken.
“Not unless you are fool enough to speak my name. Your companions do not know me. I have not come in my usual capacity, but to guard the prison tonight. Ali Shah fears El Borak might seek to aid you.”
“Then El Borak lives!” ejaculated Brent, to whom everything else in the conversation had been unintelligible.
“He still lives.” The stranger laughed. “But he will be found, if he is still in the city. If he has fled — well, the passes have been closed by heavy guards, and horsemen are combing the plain and the hills. If he comes here tonight, he will be dealt with. Ali Shah chose to send me rather than a squad of riflemen. Not even the guards know who I am.”
As he turned away toward the rear end of the corridor, Brent asked:
“Who is that man?”
But Achmet’s flow of conversation had been dried up by the sight of that lean, sardonic face. He shuddered, and drew away from his companions, sitting cross-legged with bowed head. From time to time his shoulders twitched, as if he had seen a reptile or a ghoul.
Brent sighed and stretched himself on the straw. His battered limbs ached, and he was hungry.
Presently he heard the outer door clang. Voices came faintly to him, and the door closed again. Idly he wondered if they were changing the guard. Then he heard the soft rustle of cloth. A man was coming down the corridor. An instant later he came into the range of their vision, and his appearance clutched Brent with an icy dread. Clad in black from head to foot, a spired helmet gave him an appearance of unnatural height. He was enveloped in the folds of a black cloak. But the most sinister implication was in the black mask which fell in loose folds to his breast.
Brent’s flesh crawled. Why was that silent, cowled figure coming to their dungeon in the blackness and stillness of the night hours?
The others glared wildly; even Alafdal was shaken out of his daze. Hassan whimpered:
“It is Dhira Azrail!”
But bewilderment mingled with the fear in Achmet’s eyes.
The scar-faced stranger came suddenly from the depths of the corridor and confronted the masked man just before the door. The lamplight fell on his face, upon which played a faint, cynical smile.
“What do you wish? I am in charge here.”
The masked man’s voice was muffled. It sounded cavernous and ghostly, fitting his appearance.
“I am Dhira Azrail. An order has been given. Open the door.”
The scarred one salaamed deeply, and murmured: “Hearkening and obedience, my lord!”
He produced a key, turned it in the lock, pulled open the heavy door, and bowed again, humbly indicating for the other to enter. The masked man was moving past him when Achmet came to life startlingly.
“El Borak!” he screamed. “Beware! He is Dhira Azrail!”
The masked man wheeled like a flash, and the knife the other had aimed at his back glanced from his helmet as he turned. The real Dhira Azrail snarled like a wild cat, but before he could strike again, El Borak’s right fist met his jaw with a crushing impact. Flesh, and bone, and consciousness gave way together, and the executioner sagged senseless to the floor.
As Gordon sprang into the cell, the prisoners stumbled dazedly to their feet. Except Achmet, who, knowing that the scarred man was Dhira Azrail, had realized that the man in the mask must be El Borak — and had acted accordingly — they did not grasp the situation until Gordon threw his mask back.
“Can you all walk?” rapped Gordon. “Good! We’ll have to pull out afoot. I couldn’t arrange for horses.”
Alafdal Khan looked at him dully.
“Why should I go?” he muttered. “Yesterday I had wealth and power. Now I am a penniless vagabond. If I leave Rub el Harami, the ameer will cut off my head. It was an ill day I met you, El Borak! You made a tool of me for your intrigues.”
“So I did, Alafdal Khan.” Gordon faced him squarely. “But I would have made you emir in good truth. The dice have fallen against us, but our lives remain. And a bold man can rebuild his fortune. I promise you that if we escape, the ameer will pardon you and these men.”
“His word is not wind,” urged Achmet. “He has come to aid us, when he might have escaped alone. Take heart, my lord!”
Gordon was stripping the weapons from the senseless executioner. The man wore two German automatics, a tulwar, and a curved knife. Gordon gave a pistol to Brent, and one to Alafdal; Achmet received the tulwar, and Suleiman the knife, and Gordon gave his own knife to Hassan. The executioner’s garments were given to Brent, who was practically naked. The oriental garments felt strange, but he was grateful for their warmth.
The brief struggle had not produced any noise likely to be overheard by the guard beyond the arched door. Gordon led his band down the corridor, between rows of empty cells, until they came to the rear door. There was no guard outside, as it was deemed too strong to be forced by anything short of artillery. It was of massive metal, fastened by a huge bar set in gigantic iron brackets bolted powerfully into the stone. It took all Gordon’s strength to lift it out of the brackets and lean it against the wall, but then the door swung silently open, revealing the blackness of a narrow alley into which they filed.
Gordon pulled the door to behind them. How much leeway they had he did not know. The guard would eventually get suspicious when the supposed Dhira Azrail did not emerge, but he believed it would take them a good while to overcome their almost superstitious dread of the executioner enough to investigate. As for the real Dhira Azrail, he would not recover his senses for hours.
The prison was not far from the west wall. They met no one as they hurried through winding, ill-smelling alleys until they reached the wall at the place where a flight of narrow steps led up to the parapets. Men were patrolling the wall. They crouched in the shadows below the stair and heard the tread of two sentries who met on the firing ledge, exchanged muffled greetings, and passed on. As the footsteps dwindled, they glided up the steps. Gordon had secured a rope from an unguarded camel stall. He made it fast by a loose loop to a merlon. One by one they slid swiftly down. Gordon was last, and he flipped the rope loose and coiled it. They might need it again.
They crouched an instant beneath the wall. A wind stole across the plain and stirred Brent’s hair. They were free, armed, and outside the devil city. But they were afoot, and the passes were closed against them. Without a word they filed after Gordon across the shadowed plain.
At a safe distance their leader halted, and the men grouped around him, a vague cluster in the starlight.
“All the roads that lead from Rub el Harami are barred against us,” he said abruptly. “They’ve filled the passes with soldiers. We’ll have to make our way through the mountains the best way we can. And the only direction in which we can hope to eventually find safety is the east.”
“The Great Range bars our path to the east,” muttered Alafdal Khan. “Only through the Pass of Nadir Khan may we cross it.”
“There is another way,” answered Gordon. “It is a pass which lies far to the north of Nadir Khan. There isn’t any road leading to it, and it hasn’t been used for many generations. But it has a name — the Afridis call it the Pass of Swords — and I’ve seen it from the east. I’ve never been west of it before, but maybe I can lead you to it. It lies many days’ march from here, through wild mountains which none of us has ever traversed. But it’s our only chance. We must have horses and food. Do any of you know where horses can be procured outside the city?”
“Yonder on the north side of the plain,” said Achmet, “where a gorge opens from the hills, there dwells a peasant who owns seven horses — wretched, flea-bitten beasts they are, though.”
“They must suffice. Lead us to them.”
The going was not easy, for the plain was littered with rocks and cut with shallow gullies. All except Gordon were stiff and sore from their beatings, and Hassan’s broken arm was a knifing agony to him. It was after more than an hour and a half of tortuous travel that the low mud-and-rock pen loomed before them and they heard the beasts stamping and snorting within it, alarmed by the sounds of their approach. The cluster of buildings squatted in the widening mouth of a shallow canyon, with a shadowy background of bare hills.
Gordon went ahead of the rest, and when the peasant came yawning out of his hut, looking for the wolves he thought were frightening his property, he never saw the tigerish shadow behind him until Gordon’s iron fingers shut off his wind. A threat hissed in his ear reduced him to quaking quiescence, though he ventured a wail of protest as he saw other shadowy figures saddling and leading out his beasts.
“Sahibs, I am a poor man! These beasts are not fit for great lords to ride, but they are all of my property! Allah be my witness!”
“Break his head,” advised Hassan, whom pain made bloodthirsty.
But Gordon stilled their captive’s weeping with a handful of gold which represented at least three times the value of his whole herd. Dazzled by this rich reward, the peasant ceased his complaints, cursed his whimpering wives and children into silence, and at Gordon’s order brought forth all the food there was in his hut — leathery loaves of bread, jerked mutton, salt, and eggs. It was little enough with which to start a hard journey. Feed for the horses was slung in a bag behind each saddle, and loaded on the spare horse.
While the beasts were being saddled, Gordon, by the light of a torch held inside a shed by a disheveled woman, whittled splints, tore up a shirt for bandages, and set Hassan’s arm — a sickening task, because of the swollen condition of the member. It left Hassan green-faced and gagging, yet he was able to mount with the others.
In the darkness of the small hours they rode up the pathless gorge which led into the trackless hills. Hassan was insistent on cutting the throats of the entire peasant family, but Gordon vetoed this.
“Yes, I know he’ll head for the city to betray us, as soon as we get out of sight. But he’ll have to go on foot, and we’ll lose ourselves in the hills before he gets there.”
“There are men trained like bloodhounds in Rub el Harami,” said Achmet. “They can track a wolf over bare rock.”
Sunrise found them high up in the hills, out of sight of the plain, picking their way up treacherous shale-littered slopes, following dry watercourses, always careful to keep below the sky line as much as possible. Brent was already confused. They seemed lost in a labyrinth of bare hills, in which he was able to recognize general directions only by glimpses of the snow-capped peaks of the Great Range ahead.
As they rode, he studied their leader. There was nothing in Gordon’s manner by which he could recognize Shirkuh the Kurd. Gone was the Kurdish accent, the boyish, reckless merry-mad swagger, the peacock vanity of dress, even the wide-legged horseman’s stride. The real Gordon was almost the direct antithesis of the role he had assumed. In place of the strutting, gaudily clad, braggart youth, there was a direct, hard-eyed man, who wasted no words and about whom there was no trace of egotism or braggadocio. There was nothing of the Oriental about his countenance now, and Brent knew that the mustache alone had not accounted for the perfection of his disguise. That disguise had not depended on any mechanical device; it had been a perfection of mimicry. By no artificial means, but by completely entering into the spirit of the rôle he had assumed, Gordon had altered the expression of his face, his bearing, his whole personality. He had so marvelously portrayed a personality so utterly different from his own, that it seemed impossible that the two were one. Only the eyes were unchanged — the gleaming, untamed black eyes, reflecting a barbarism of vitality and character.
