Абрахам Меррит - Seven Footprints To Satan

A gong sounded. The curtains were plucked aside. In each of the openings stood a slave, their eyes fastened upon Satan with a horrified eagerness. I shivered. It was like an eruption of the damned.

Satan beckoned. A man stepped forward toward the dais. I took him for an American, a Westerner. He was tall and lanky, and in his gait something of the rocking habit of the range rider. His face was the hawk-like type that the mountain country breeds, and, curiously, it made the peculiar pallor and dilated eyes mask-like and grotesque. His mouth was thin and bitter.

Like the woman, he prostrated himself before Satan. The veiled figure with the goblet held it out to the ewer bearer who poured into it a green liquid. The cup bearer handed the goblet to Satan.

"Rise," he commanded. The suppliant sprang to his feet, burning gaze upon the cup. The unholy ritual began again!

"You, man who was Robert Taylor, who am I?"

"You are Satan!"

"And what am I, Satan?" Again the blasphemous avowal: "You are my God!"

"You shall have no God but me!"

"I have no God but you, Satan!"

"What is it, man, that is your desire?" The slave straightened, his voice lost its lifelessness. His face grew cruel as that of the executioner's own.

"To kill the man I hate… to find him… to ruin him… to kill him slowly in many ways!"

"As you killed him once- too swiftly," said Satan maliciously, and then, again tonelessly:

"Through me you shall find him whom you hate, and slay him as you desire! Drink!"

He drank and passed. Twice more I heard the clang of the summoning gong, and twice I watched the white faces of these doomed ones with their avid eyes appear through the silver curtains and disappear behind them. I heard one man ask for dominance over a kingdom of beasts. Another for a Paradise of women.

And Satan promised, and gave them the green draught. The kehjt!

The subtle, devilish drug that gave to its drinkers the illusion of fulfilled desire. That turned the mind upon itself, to eat itself. And that by some hellish alchemy dissolved the very soul.

I stared on, fascinated, Eve forgotten. But if I had forgotten, Barker had not. The crack through which I was looking closed. He touched me, and we arose. Soundlessly we slipped up the ramp through the dim, black passage. I felt a bit sick.

It had been no nice picture, that of Satan wallowing in the worship of those slaves of his, dealing them out love and hate, dark power and lust, sardonically and impartially giving each what he or she most desired.

Illusions, yes. But more real than life to the drinkers when the drug had them. But, God, their awakening!

And after that awakening the burning craving to escape reality! To return to that place of illusion to which the kehjt was the only key!

No wonder that the three of the museum affair had gone to their deaths with such blind obedience!

And, if Satan was not what he pretended, very surely he was not disgracing that power whose name he had taken.

I had paid little attention to where we were going, blindly following Barker's lead.

"Well," he whispered, suddenly, "was I right? Wasn't it a h'alley into 'Ell? What price Satan now, Cap'n?"

I came back to myself with nerves jumping.

"A drug dealer," I answered him. "A dope den а la Ritz. That's all. I've seen opium joints in China that would make it look like a trench dugout. And the pipe hitters there would cut your throat for a pill just as quick as these would for Satan."

Neither of which assertions was at all true, but it gave me comfort to say them.

"Yes?" he said, cynically. "Well, it's a good wye to think. I 'opes you keep on thinkin' that wye, Cap'n."

I hoped that I might begin to think so.

"Soft along 'ere," he whispered. We were moving like ghosts in the darkness of a passage. I had an indistinct memory of having entered several lifts. Of even the probable location of my room I had not the slightest idea.

"'Ere we are," he muttered, and stood for an instant listening. I thrust my hand into the pocket where I had slipped my wrist watch, that its illuminated dial might not betray us. I took a swift look. It was almost half past midnight.

Barker drew me forward. There was a faint scent in the air, a delicate fragrance.

Eve's! We were in her room.

"Beat her to it," I whispered incautiously.

There was a rustle, as of some one sitting hastily up in bed.

"Who's there?" came Eve's voice, softly. "I've got my finger on the alarm!"

"It's me- Jim," I answered, as softly as she, but mighty hastily.

"Jim!" A subdued light gleamed suddenly. "Where have you been? I've been worried to death about you!"

Eve was leaning forward from her pillows, brown eyes wide and luminous, silken mop of hair a bit tousled. She looked like a wakeful little girl who had been exasperatedly pulling it. She was, also, the prettiest thing I had ever seen. Every time I looked at Eve she seemed prettier. I wondered where she was going to stop. She had on some sort of a lacy pink negligee. All the rest of my life, I knew, my heart would beat faster whenever I saw a lacy pink negligee, even when it was only in a shop window.

She slipped out of bed, ran straight to me, and kissed me. It was so pleasant that I entirely forgot everything else.

I became aware of a queer noise behind me. Harry was teetering from side to side, his hands clasped, his eyes half closed and moist, his face ecstatic, and he was crooning like an affectionate parrot. He was a sentimental little burglar, Harry.

Eve looked, and laughed.

"If you want to say 'Bless you, my children,' go ahead, Harry," she said mischievously.

He blinked, snapped out of it, and grinned at her.

"Made me think of me an' Maggie," he said. "Just like when we was courtin'. Fair warmed my 'eart, it did."

"Well," I said, "I move that this meeting comes to order. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and not much time to do it. What's the chance of us being interrupted, Eve?"

"Hardly any," she answered. "Frankly, everybody does as they like about having room parties. So everybody is extraordinarily discreet about visiting without an invitation. On the other hand, Jim, you're the one person it wouldn't do to have found here. Our aversion to each other has been so marked, darling, you know. Satan would be bound to hear about it. And the second he did- "

She didn't have to finish the sentence. I had a very clear idea of what Satan would do.

"It would be hard to explain Barker, too," she added.

"How about it, Harry?" I asked him. "Likely to be any calls for you? Any awkward searching parties?"

"Not unless something big goes wrong," he said. "If they look for me in my room, I can say I was workin' somewhere else. Satan won't be 'untin' me, that's certain."

"Well," I said, "we have to take some chances. But we'll talk low and in the dark."

Eve stepped over, and put out the lamp. She drew aside the heavy curtains from one of the windows. A faint light flickered in from the moon hidden behind a hazy sky. Barker and I moved the chaise longue to a shadowed corner. The three of us sat down upon it.

We talked. Not the slightest use of setting down a word of it. We got nowhere. A few schemes gleamed brightly for an instant, and then went glimmering like will-o'-the-wisps. The spell of what I had beheld in Satan's unholy shrine was heavy on me, try as I would to throw it off. I had to fight a sense of futility. We were like three flies in a web of the Temple of the Footsteps. If we got out of one, it was only to find ourselves in another. But steadily Eve's warm, soft body pressing against mine, her courage, her trust, armed me against the devastating sapping of my confidence. There was a way. There must be a way.