I would not have gone so readily, perhaps not at all, except for Pietro’s willingness to go with me. But in my passion for the prize I had not scrutinized this; I had taken it for proof that my plan was sound and the danger slight. Partly to busy my mind against the horror of imagination, I marveled over it now, only to find that I had been self-betrayed. Any plan I had proposed would have suited Pietro. He had let me decide how great a risk to run, as I might have known had I remembered that he was a Tatar. Slaves of his tribe had brought the highest price of any male slaves in Venice, simply because of their wholehearted service and their unshakable loyalty. They did what their masters told them with the thoughtless directness of a dog.
Still I did not turn back. I could not, my will to go on being thoughtless and direct. For all I knew we were a dog leading a dog to a dog’s death.
Where the last lamp dimmed out we found the exit to the balcony and then the door of the Room of Wonders. From an Indian merchant in the caravanserai I had obtained a small saw of extreme hardness that ivory workers used, and after hundreds of thrusts and withdrawals, it scratched through the ancient wooden padlock. With a quick stroke of a plunger in an ivory cylinder I ignited tinder and brought it to a lamp with only one bright face no bigger than my hand.
Its beam moved slowly about the room. First it revealed the ugly faces of an idol with ten hands and three superimposed heads, perhaps a great god of yore now discredited and shamed and stuffed away, but more likely a deity of awful potence, revealed in the temples only at foretold and eerie hours. In spite of my aching haste, I could not stop the round ray from exposing every one of a long row of devil masks fastened to the wall, and looking at them, I could not hold it steady. These were fashioned of wood, leather, hair, and the like; their teeth might be stones and their glaring eyes no more than light-reflecting glass. Yet it seemed that I knew every one. Each was a flawless image of a face beheld in nightmares or delirium or in madness and perhaps in intimations of Hell—sights that in our sunlit hours we deny that we have seen, but which our souls remember all too well.
In a corner leaned a thin, long chalkwhite trumpet that my gaze would not skip. Its slightly crooked shaft was of human thighbones hollowed out and set end to end; its mouth was a cleverly carved human skull. Gongs for calling friendly spirits and driving away inimical ones hung from the rafters; baskets and boxes used in human decapitation and dismemberment tricks stood about, and their dusty, shabby genuineness appalled my spirit. There were wooden and copper idols representing the male and female principles in nature; drums hooped with human rib bones for rainmaking and thundermaking; a girdle of infant skulls; and dried human hands and feet that were caused to move and walk by diabolical arts.
Then the lamp jumped in my hand, for among multicolored robes and frumpery of various sorts hung some suits of salamander skin, snow-white from being newly washed in fire.
When we had rolled one of them into as compact a space as possible, there began the long agony of our retreat. Perhaps I walked in the Devil’s care tonight, as Sheba had entreated, because I led my companion safely off the balcony, passed the wan lamps of the stone corridor, and down the upper stairs. I found myself half believing in the auspice, my scalp tingling and my cold skin thrilling—then it seemed that the Devil had played with me only to let me fall.
From the dim flight below rose a sudden murmur of voices. They were obviously male, and an instant later the lamp in the wall niche revealed the shapes of two of the red-robed Swastika priests climbing the steps. Their heads were bent to find good foothold but they had only to look up to discover us. And we could not retreat to certain exposure in the lamp-studded hall.
The plan of defense taking instantaneous shape in my mind was violent attack from above. I visioned both of us pouncing down atop the bent-headed pair and stabbing them to death before they could resist or even cry an alarm. Swifter than thought, my terrors were being transmuted into that animal fury which alone, storming the brain, can empower such a violent act, when quick-witted, keen-eyed Pietro snatched me by the arm. He had seen a dark recess in the wall beside the landing. In an instant we were both pressed against the wall. Unless the two lamas looked fully and sharply to one side they would surely pass by us. But Pietro saw me draw my dagger and with what I thought was a beaming smile on the dim blur of his face, he bared his own. If at any instant we should be discovered, I had no doubt of our concerted attack in the very next.
Then there came an instant in which Pietro’s good tactics came close to failure from a strange cause. As the foremost lama was about to finish crossing the open space and his fellow was just emerging into our sight, the impulse to kill now gripped me with great force. It seemed composed of an unreasoning terror that had usually spared me in the climax of great trials—certainly I saw no sign or likely prospect of our being discovered. Still, I resisted it with a sense of darkening hope. Perhaps I could not have done so except for Pietro’s shoulders having edged in front of mine as he took a warlike stand. The trifling obstacle weighed on the side of my inertia. I accepted it as a provision of Fate.
The two monks passed out of sight. The shuffle of their bare feet on the stone quickly died away. Pietro and I resumed our flight; and now Good Fortune kept company with us, and I could be glad I had not risked battle, and Fear became a little cold snake in his den deep in my brain. We found Sheba at the meeting place and I laughed at her popping eyes. She stuffed our loot in her washing sheet and took off by a picked route to the woman’s ghat. Pietro and I rode furtively until we passed a famous bagnio, then went to the caravanserai by separate paths. I stood watching a caravan unloading in the courtyard when Sheba came into the firelight with a white bundle on her head. When I saw its wet glimmer and a trickle of water down her face, I blessed the head that was as long as her heart was loyal.
We appeared not to notice each other as she made for my quarters, but I caught the sharp glance she threw. That it was deeply troubled I could not doubt. After a few seconds’ wait, I followed her and found her shivering in the dark passage. She led me through the door and closed it softly.
“Two men followed me to the gate,” she whispered.
“When did you first notice them?”
“On the way back from the ghat. But I think they may have been behind me all the way.”
“Perhaps they wanted only——”
“No, they took too much care not to show themselves. I think they were following you when you came to the meeting place. Are you sure no one saw you?”
I remembered the two monks who walked by the alcove looking straight ahead.
“No, I can’t be sure.”
“Is there an empty room with an unlocked door where I can hide this?” she asked quickly.
“It would take a long search. You’d better put it on your head again and go out the main gate of the caravanserai. I’ll see if the coast is clear.”
I walked quickly ahead of her as far as the courtyard, then what I saw caused me to turn back.
“Put it in my room and lock the door and bring me the key,” I told her.
She went about obeying the order as swiftly as she dared. Yet by the time she had finished the shape of coming events became far more clear. Of the fifty long-haired, foul-faced priests of the Swasti whom I saw entering the gate, all but one had squatted in two long rows before the dung fire. One, who wore a larger rosary and carried a longer staff, stood in front of the rest, beating his breast and yelling in a high-pitched gobble.