Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Lulluma and Axel alone refrained from helping since she had claimed from Menes an Atlantean honeymoon for them both. They held interminable conversations together in the gardens and slept each night in a recess of the jungle. At meal times they seemed dreamy and abstracted, only anxious to get away to one of their retreats so that Semir-amis commented upon it; chiding Luiluma with gentle humour because they missed her deep chuckling laughter and feared that she had become serious for life. Axel could have informed them however that his warm passionate sweetheart had lost none of her divine merriment but reserved it for himself.

The McKay, Vladimir, Camilla and Sally had curtailed their life of complete idleness by their own wish and found the work allotted, which sometimes separated them for an hour or two, only lent fresh stimulus to their passion and gave a new interest to their lives.

Nicky had been passably good humoured for a few days after his last private encounter with Rahossis and she treated him on all occasions now with a special gentleness, but when the harvest time came he sank back into his previous discontented mood.

He prowled uneasily about the garden on his own, cast scowling looks at Quet, and alone among the people in the island behaved on occasion with downright discourtesy. The happiness of his friends, which they could hardly have concealed had they wished, drove him to silent frenzies of envy at their lot. Lulluma's passion for Axel particularly goaded him into sneers and bitter witticisms with which he fruitlessly endeavoured to irritate these two whom he termed contemptuously 'the turtle doves'. The thought that one of the beautiful Atlantean girls could surrender her every moment to 'that dry stick of a Count who was not even really handsome', which was his view of Axel, while another would not even grant him half an hour alone, was a never ceasing torture.

The island was not large enough for him to get clear of the others for any length of time, and he was constantly coming upon them in attitudes which did not shock him in the least but inflamed his jealousy and desire. His cup of misery was filled to the brim by the knowledge that he was a prisoner there for life.

For a few days he played up to Danoe. Partly in the hope of making Rahossis jealous and partly because he felt that a success with her would restore his self-respect and ease his feelings, although her slender golden beauty did not attract him half as much as more vital girls of the same type whom he had toyed with in the past at Hollywood.

Danoe, however, was having a purely platonic affair with Karnoum, her dark apparently boyish uncle, by whom she would bear her first child in a few years' time. She was by no means inexperienced already for Nicky had learned that girls did not reach even the physical age of twenty in Atlantis without having been initiated into the arts of love, but her relations with the Egyptian looking Karnoum appeared to be perfectly innocent. As they were both learning Spanish they spent a good portion of their time talking together in that language in order to practise it.

In response to Nicky's suggestions, Danoe turned an enormous pair of blue eyes upon him which showed mild surprise and, after what he considered the infuriating courtesies that all these people used, told him very sweetly that she thanked him for his offer but would be too busy with her Spanish to accept it for some months to come.

'They're all a damn sight too highbrow in this place,' Nicky told himself furiously. He forgot that, just as Camilla had become of no more interest to him than a bathing beauty now she could no longer attract him by the lure of her millions so he, robbed of his glamour as a film star, had little power to appeal to women on his looks alone. He had never been even a passably good lover in actual fact, since he was a hopeless psychologist and had never had to study women with a view to pleasing them. His easy successes in the past had all been temporary affairs with doll-like females who had become infatuated by his face and voice on the talking screen. Those casual conquests were an added handicap now for they had given him a completely false picture of himself and fostered both his impatience and conceit.

After his failure with Danoe he returned to Rahossis, upon whom the Danoe episode had had a completely negative result. She only noticed it to bless herself that she was rid of his constant spying whenever she was alone with Quet.

Once only did he succeed in getting her on his own during the harvest fortnight and that by invading her apartment in the middle of the night. She kept her temper remarkably well in the circumstances even allowing for the fact that she, and all her people, had been trained to a consideration for others as a first rule of their lives since, not content with breaking in and rousing her from her sleep he kept her up for a couple of hours with a repetition of all his old tricks.

She let him rave, posture, and weep but this time she was quite firm about the matter. Finally she told him that she had no intention of allowing him to make love to her any more, at least for three or four years to come, by which time he might have acquired some manners and a little sense. The possible time limit in her declaration shattered him more than any flat refusal. It silenced his weeping and sent him out into the night convinced that all the Atlanteans were stark staring mad and that this woman Rahossis could have no conception she was rejecting the world-famous screen star—Nicholas Costello whose fan mail was immense.

That check served to sober him for a day or two and both Axel and Menes, who were observing him shrewdly, felt that he had calmed down. He might then even have sunk into an apathetic despair had not the Harvest Festival Banquet come along.

At the Feast they were all assembled and ate heavily as before. By midnight the wine was passing freely and a joyous Saturnalia beginning. The lovers sat with arms entwined feeding each other titbits of dessert and pledging each other in the Nektar of the Gods. Camilla was lolling against Vladimir; both had approached nearer to the Atlanteans than any other members of their party in all but wisdom now, and Vladimir, who absolutely revelled in playing at being a cave man, had made a bedroom for them by arranging a platform in the fork of a high tree. Even Sally, safely embraced by the muscular arm of the McKay, had had as much wine as she could carry and no longer saw anything improper in the love dance which Peramon and Laotzii were performing as a turn in the unofficial cabaret.

Nicky squatted a little apart from the rest watching Rahossis and Quet with brooding eyes. They had not sat near each other at the meal but proceeded to do so shortly afterwards. As he watched every tentative movement in the age-old game they played together his jealousy flamed up into a burning hatred. In spite of Nahou's gentle remonstrance he insisted on abandoning the Nektar for that potent green liqueur with which they had been fortified on their exhausted arrival in the island.

At length Quet and Rahossis stood up, just a shade unsteadily, and left the Feast. Nicky rapidly swallowed a fifth portion of that fiery liquid which made his inside feel like a furnace as it went down, then he got to his feet and followed.

No one paid any attention to the departure of the three but Menes, who looked at Semiramis and then pointed to Nicky's form retreating in the shadows.

'That youth needs guidance and help. I will speak to him tomorrow and explain that he must restrain his desires for a little time. Then, if Rahossis still proves obdurate when her passion for Quet is ended you had best teach him the secret rites which will ensure her willing acceptance of him.'

Had Axel been present and seen Nicky's state, he would not have left the matter until the next day but gone after him at once, in order to intervene if necessary. As it was he and Lulluma had left the party hours before, passing into the darkness as two silent shadows wrapped in a divine content.