Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

When the sound had ceased, they went on again in the same order as before, slipping swiftly along one wall of the court, then half way down another and in through another door. They were now in a pillared hall and, having crossed it, turned right into a broad passage. Next moment a door in it opened and a man came out. He paused to stare at them. Without a second's hesitation, all three of Roger's companions flung themselves upon him. Before he had time to shout, a hand was clapped over his mouth and he was borne to the ground. With swift, terrifying efficiency they strangled him.

The ruthless act confirmed Roger's belief that, whatever the cost, his rescuers meant to cover their tracks and leave it to be supposed that he had managed to escape unaided.

Leaving the body where it lay, they hurried on, and went through another doorway that led into a large walled garden. From somewhere in the distance there came the sound of plaintive Eastern music, then of a woman's laughter. High above the walls the fronds of tall palm trees whispered in a gentle breeze. But as they crossed the garden Roger saw that its lily ponds were sheltered, so that their waters remained unruffled and mirrored the bright stars above. A heady scent filled the air from big banks of moonflowers, and from one of these against the far wall a hugely fat figure silently emerged. In a little piping voice that proclaimed him to be a eunuch, he said something to the man in the red jacket. There came the clink of coin as a small bag changed hands, then the eunuch turned and led the way to a low door in the wall. Its well-​oiled bolts were pulled back and a moment later Roger and his rescuers were out in a dark street.

Quickly they made their way along it, and through others, some of which were so narrow that the jutting balconies of the houses in them were not much more than a yard apart, and almost shut out the stars. Occasionally a figure shuffled past or, vaguely seen, stirred in the shadow of a doorway. Now and then a dog barked, and once they had to step aside into the mouth of an alley to let a closely curtained palanquin pass. Here and there chinks of light gleamed between shutters or threw up the criss-​cross woodwork fencing in the balconies overhead so that, although there was so little movement to be seen, there was a mysterious sense of wakeful life still pulsing behind the dark facades of many of the houses.

It was this which told Roger that it could not be as late as he had thought. He knew that it must have been about nine o'clock when he had been brought before the Rajah, but after that he had lost all sense of time. Although the agony he had endured in the dungeon had seemed interminable, he thought now that he had probably not been down there for much more than two hours; and as his rescue had obviously been carefully planned, it seemed probable that it would have been timed for the hour at which most of the inmates of the palace were settling down for the night, rather than later when any sound of movement would have attracted attention from the guards.

After ten minutes' walk the party pulled up half way along a high wall, above which the tops of trees could be vaguely seen. The leader rapped in a pattern of knocks on a door in it, and at this signal the door was opened. They crossed a small garden and entered the house by a fretwork swing gate, which gave directly onto a room with silk-​covered walls. In it an elderly woman was seated behind a low table sorting out a quantity of seed-​pearls and beads of different shapes and colours. The sari she wore was quite plain but of dark rich material. She had a hook nose and fine eyes which showed that when younger she must have been very handsome; age had given her a downy moustache.

The man in the red jacket went down on his knees before her and touched the ground with his forehead. Roger had already realised that she must be someone of importance and made her a low bow. His other two rescuers had disappeared. The old lady stood up and said something to their leader that caused him to open his mouth in a laugh, which suddenly revealed that he was a tongue less mute. With a wave of her hand she then dismissed him and turning to Roger, said in Persian:

'Leave that blood-​stained garment on the floor and come with me.'

Already agog with curiosity to learn who these people were, and why they should have gone to such lengths to save him, Roger threw off the jailer's robe and followed her through a curtained doorway into a larger and more richly furnished room. At one side of it a man was sitting cross-​legged on a divan. He had on a pale blue robe patterned with gold thread, and a very large flat turban, and was smoking a hookah, it was not until Roger had bowed and looked up again that he recognised him, by his fine grey upturned moustache as the nobleman who had been seated on a stool in front of the young Rajah's throne. At these much closer quarters it was also apparent that he was afflicted with an appalling squint.

Speaking as quickly as his Persian permitted, Roger at once began to express his unbounded gratitude, but his saviour cut him short by holding up his hand, waving him to be seated on a big leather pouf, and saying in the same language:

'Know Brook Sahib that I am the Wazier Rai-​ul-​daula, and that I have saved your life because I have hopes that you can save mine. But time is precious. Tell me what you know of Bahna and the wizard, Malderini, who bears you so great a hatred?'

'Of Bahna I know little, Excellency,' Roger replied; 'only that the old Rajah died about a year ago, and that the young one defies the Company. The Venetian I met while he was in England on a mission for his Government, and I inflicted serious injury on him in a duel. He was married to an Indian Princess, but I had not the remotest idea that he was in India or what had brought him here.'

'You know no more of him than that?'

'No; except that, although he wields hypnotic power through his eyes, he is not a true magician. My duel with him was owing to his being caught out as a fraud.'

'Yet, through his eyes his power is great. I am one of the very few immune from it; and only because of this.' The Wazier made a gesture towards his own eyes, and Roger realised that, on account of their terrible squint, Malderini would not be able to focus his directly on them.

'I must, then, tell you of Bahna,' Rai-​ul-​daula went on. 'The late Rajah was my brother and, at the time of which I shall first speak, I was his ambassador to the court of Delhi; so of these events I was not a witness, but I received entirely reliable accounts of them afterwards. It was fourteen years ago that the Malderinis came to India. While they traded for jewels they studied the arts of the fakirs, and by the time they reached Bahna they had mastered many of the hidden mysteries.'

'They?' Roger repeated. 'Does your Excellency mean that Malderini had with him a wife?'

'No, no; the woman was his sister-​a twin sister. They are said to have been so remarkably alike that but for their clothes they could hardly be told apart, and "both of them possessed the power to mesmerise. Very soon the woman had gained a great influence over the ladies of the harem, and she used it to get them to persuade my brother to give the man for a wife the little Princess Sirisha. She was my brother's only child by his first wife; so a fine marriage portion went with her, and she was heiress on my brother's death to a far greater sum.

'Naturally, he was averse to such a match. For one thing he did not wish to see her fortune going to a foreigner instead of to a Prince of some other reigning house, an alliance with which would have been of value to Bahna. For another, the Princess was only nine years old; so over young to marry. But the ladies were set upon it and made his life a misery; the man