Bride of Osiris Read online

  The muffled figure spoke once more. “Give her the best of care, Thansor. I will go, now, and return when she is in a calmer mood.”

  Thansor made deep obeisance as the figure departed. When the door had closed and the gate clanged shut behind it, she turned once more to Doris.

  “It was a mistake for you to receive our mighty lord in this fashion,” she said. “You had naught to fear, for he merely wished to make sure you were the right girl.”

  Still trembling from the shock of her terrifying experience, Doris looked up into the little piglike eyes.

  “The right girl for what?”

  “There, there. We shall not talk of it tonight. You have been chosen, among all the beautiful women of the earth, for the greatest honor that can come to any woman. Tomorrow you shall know. Tomorrow, when you have rested and “grown stronger, I shall instruct and prepare you. Let me help you to bed now.”

  The appearance of the bed to which the woman led her was not exactly conducive to peaceful slumber., It was supported by two lean, fierce-looking hunting leopards, carved from hard wood and lacquered orange and black.

  When, however, she had donned her sleeping garment and crept beneath the covers, she found it more downy and comfortable than she ever imagined a bed could be.

  For a long time—it seemed several hours—she lay there tossing restlessly, the pudgy, blue-robed figure at her bedside, but outraged nature finally asserted itself and sleep claimed her.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE HALL OF THE TWO TRUTHS

  THE first thing that smote Alan Buell’s returning consciousness was a feeling of nausea and an intense thirst. He craved cold, clear water—buckets of it, barrels of it, whole rivers and lakes of it. His tongue was swollen and furry, his lips were parched and hot, and he discovered, as he sat up to look about him, that every muscle in his body was the seat of a separate, distinct, and intensely painful ache. Another discovery was even more of a shock. On leaning forward to arise he was brought up with a jerk by a stout chain attached to a heavy metal collar that circled his neck. The other end was fastened to a ring in the rough stone wall behind him. Similarly fettered, Dan Rafferty was lying near by, snoring lustily.

  The room was of stone—floor, walls and ceiling. A grated steel door admitted light from what was evidently a corridor without.

  A heavy, measured tread sounded in the corridor. Presently a man passed the door. Buell gasped in amazement when he saw that the man was not only a giant, nearly seven feet in height, but that he wore the uniform of a soldier of ancient Egypt. In his right hand he carried a long, heavy spear. A sharply curved simitar dangled from the left side of his belt.

  Dan Rafferty, awakened by the clatter, sat up and clasped his head in his hands.

  “Oh, what a headache!” he groaned. “They’ve chained us up like a couple av dogs, too, the blitherin’ swabs.”

  “What do you suppose they doped us with?” asked Buell. “It was like a mixture of white lightning, quinine and T.N.T.”

  “Acts like some dope I wance got in a joint in Port Said,” replied Rafferty. “It was me buddy, Tim Rourke, got me to go into the place. The effect was the same, only we ate the stuff instid of inhalin’ it. ‘Hashish’ is what them Naygurs called it.”

  “It gives you a queer bunch of hallucinations.”

  “An’ a hell av a mornin’ after. Sure, I feel as if a herd av wild elephants had been playin’ follie-the-leader on me frame.”

  Fully an hour elapsed before anyone entered their cell., Then a negro, clad in a turban, loin-cloth and sandals, brought them food on a tray.

  He was admitted by the giant guard, who stood with spear held in readiness for a thrust while the food was placed on the floor. It consisted of some round, hard biscuits, dried dates, and a cup of water apiece.

  Buell’s stomach rebelled at the sight of food, but he drank the water eagerly. Rafferty, whose gastronomic ability seemed unimpaired, munched his biscuits and dates and sipped his water sparingly.

  “A foine layout of chow they hand you in this callyboose,” he remarked. “It wouldn’t kape a guinea-pig alive, much less a human.”

  “Take mine, too, if you want it,” said Buell. “I can’t even bear to look at it.”

  “It’s lucky I am with a seaman’s stomach,” replied Rafferty, “that is, providin’ I can manage to get it dacently filled now and then.”

  He consumed the second plate of food and, apparently much refreshed, amused himself by trying his strength on the staple to which his chain was fastened, at odd moments when the tall guard was out of hearing.

  Buell, more sick than ever from having drunk the water, tried to get some sleep. He was just falling into a doze when the lock clicked and the cell door was flung wide. Pour men, each over seven feet tall, and dressed and armed like their guard, entered. They were followed by another, armed only with a simitar, who seemed to be in command. He ordered both detectives handcuffed—then took a bunch of keys from his girdle and unlocked the metal collars that held them. Each man was then led away between two guards.

  THEY were hustled through a maze of arched, dimly lit corridors, and halted at length in what appeared to be a rather large anteroom. Three other prisoners, guarded and handcuffed like themselves, were lined up before a closed door. Two were dressed in ancient Egyptian costumes. The third wore the clothing of modern civilization.

  After a wait of perhaps fifteen minutes two raps sounded at the door. A guard, opening it a little way, held whispered conversation with someone on the other side, then holding one hand aloft, he announced:

  “It is the command of the mighty Osiris, Son of the Setting Sun and Lord of the Nether World, that these wandering souls be brought before him in the Hall of the Two Truths, where his righteous judgment will be passed on them.”

  He swung the door wide, all lights were extinguished, and the prisoners were led forward in utter darkness. Buell, the last in line, heard the door close after him. A moment later his guards brought him to a halt and he heard the butts of their spears as they grounded them on the stone floor.

  Straining his eyes in the inky blackness, Buell at length beheld a tiny phosphorescent pinpoint of light a considerable distance ahead of him. It was round at first, but as it grew he noted that it spread more rapidly from side to side than from top to bottom, until it took on the shape and semblance of a flashing human eye a foot and a half in width. Beneath the eye another point of light glowed and grew momentarily larger. Gradually, eerily, a white-clad human form was revealed, seated on a massive, jewel-encrusted throne. On the head was a dazzling white crown adorned with plumes and horns and fronted with a burnished golden disk. In the hands, held crossed against the breast, were a shepherd’s crook and a three-lashed whip. What attracted his attention the mast, however, was the face—impassive, yet conveying the impression of concealed craft and cruelty. The eyebrows were heavy, overshadowing the glittering black eyes, and met in a straight line above the aquiline nose. Jaws and lips were clean-shaven except at the point of the chin, from which a long, narrow, tightly waxed beard curved downward and outward like the inverted blade of a sickle.

  Something about the face—the expression—seemed strangely familiar. Buell racked his brain in an effort to recall where he had seen it before. Then his attention was attracted by a new demonstration. A beam of bright light shot suddenly from the pupil of the huge eye, making a brilliant white circle on the floor before the throne. Into the circle stepped a weird figure with a hideous jackal mask, and bowed low before the white-crowned ruler, who asked:

  “What would you, Anubis?”

  “The prisoners are ready to be judged, mighty Osiris.”

  “Then bring them forward, one at a time.”

  The jackal-masked Anubis advanced on the prisoners, followed by the circle of light. Roughly seizing the first man—the one who was dressed in the raiment of modern civilization—he dragged him before the throne and forced him to his knees.

  The circle of light
widened and two more masked figures stepped forward. The head of one was covered by a hood, fronted with the head and neck of an ibis. The other wore a hawk-mask before his face and a similar hood over head and neck. The man with the hawk-mask stepped up beside the prisoner.

  “Mighty Osiris,” he said, “I present Ammut, who was called Samuel Whitford the banker in the upper world. I charge him with having attacked his conductors with the intent to do them bodily injury while they were guiding him, at his own behest, into the blessed realm of Karneter.”

  The ibis-masked figure, holding a strip of papyrus before him, wrote rapidly thereon as if making a record of the name and charges.

  “Have you aught to say for yourself, Ammut?” The man on the throne transfixed the cowering prisoner with a stern glance.

  “They put a hood over my head and I objected,” he replied. “Then they beat me and put manacles on my hands. Was it for treatment such as this that I paid you a hundred thousand dollars? Is this the fate of those who give up their all to follow the teachings of Mezzar Hashin ?”

  The figure on the throne scowled darkly down at him.

  “For you, Mezzar Hashin has ceased to exist,” he said. “His temple is in the upper world. You are now in the realm of Osiris, Lord of Karneter. Had you been tractable when conducted hither you would have been given the post of high authority promised you. As it is, you must be punished.”

  He turned to the ibis-masked figure.

  “Thoth, you will record for Ammut a year at the hand-pumps. At the end of that period he will again be brought before us. We have spoken.”

  With the short crook in his right hand he struck a gong beside the throne. Then, from out the darkness at the right, came the sound of deep-throated roars, screeches and growls. Two crouching figures, hideously masked and costumed, bounded into the circle of light. Their heads were covered with grinning crocodile masks. Necks and shoulders were encased in shaggy lion’s manes, and arms and body down to the waist in the skins of the same beast., Below the waist appeared the rounded rumps, stubby tails, and clubbed feet of hippopotami. Roaring lustily, they seized the hapless prisoner and hurried him away into the darkness at the left.

  The next prisoner was brought before the throne in the same manner by Anubis.

  “Whom have we here, Horus?”

  The hawk-masked Horus replied:

  “Punjad, whom I accuse of stealing a bottle of wine from the cellars of the temple.”

  “What have you to say for yourself, knave?” thundered the Lord of Karneter.

  The miserable man prostrated himself before the throne, admitted his guilt, and begged for mercy.

  “Give him forty lashes!”

  This time three of the grotesque roaring figures bounded into the light. Two of them removed the prisoner’s upper garment and hurled him to the floor. The third, who carried a heavy whip with three lashes, cut viciously into the bared back of the writhing, shrieking victim again and again, while Thoth counted and recorded the strokes. The shrieks died down to low moans before the thirtieth stroke, and ceased before the thirty-fifth as the man swooned, but the whip cut mercilessly on at the mangled, bleeding back until the sentence was completed. Then the limp body was dragged out into the darkness at the left.

  Anubis conducted the third prisoner before the throne.

  Again Horus stepped into the circle of light.

  “Mighty Osiris,” he said. “I present Jethlo, guard of the most holy Temple of Re. I charge him with profaning the sanctuary by improper advances to the vestal virgin, Delra.”

  The Lord of Karneter glared down at the prisoner.

  “Do you deny this, wretch?” he roared.

  The accused man did not grovel like the one who had gone before him.

  “I did but present her with a bauble—a locket which she greatly admired,” he replied.

  “So! You have betrayed a trust and profaned the sanctuary of our Father by casting covetous eyes on a holy virgin.”

  He struck the gong and two of the hideously masked creatures again bounded into the circle of light.

  “My faithful Am-mits, you will take this vile wretch to Sebek, who will convey him to that inner Karneter whence no man retumeth.”

  The circle of light moved backward from the throne, following the steps of the prisoner and his two weird conductors. Though he evidently knew what was coming, he did not flinch or falter, but walked forward with head erect and lips set grimly.

  Presently the light flashed back from tall brass bars surrounding a circular pool of water about twenty-five feet in diameter. As the three men paused before a barred gate,

  Buell noticed the phosphorescent gleam of a pair of eyes and the glint of a wet snout in the water. One of the conductors opened the gate, the other pushed the prisoner within, and it was shut with a clang. There followed a sudden rush through the rippling water. Then the yawning, tooth-filled jaws of Sebek, the sacred crocodile, opened and snapped at their victim. He leaped back and ran around the edge of the pool, only to be felled by a blow from the powerful tail.

  A moment later a few bloody bubbles marked the spot where he had been dragged beneath the water.

  Again the circle of light swung back before the throne and rested on the solitary figure of the jackal-headed Anubis.

  “How many prisoners remain?” asked the Lord of Karneter.

  “There are but two, mighty Osiris. Those who were detectives in the upper world.”

  “They came together seeking admittance to Karneter. Bring both that we may judge them together.”

  Buell, manacled and helpless in the grip of his giant guards, had a feeling of impending doom as the repulsively masked Anubis advanced in the moving circle of light.

  AS BUELL and Rafferty were led before the throne, the former again scanned the face of the man seated thereon. The closer view brought full recognition. He was the man of whom Doris Lee had been in mortal fear at the opera and later at the cafe, from in front of which she had been abducted. Evidently he had worn a heavy false beard and mustache both to serve as a disguise and to cover the odd, sickle-shaped beard which would have made him conspicuous anywhere in Chicago.

  Horus of the hawk-mask stepped into the circle of light.

  “Mighty Osiris,” he proclaimed, “I present Dan Rafferty and Alan Buell of the upper world. They sought admittance at the gates of Karneter, saying that they bore a message to the High One.”

  The man on the throne looked down at them from beneath beetling brows.

  “We await the message,” he said.

  The ibis-masked Thoth poised his pencil expectantly.

  Rafferty looked at Buell and Buell looked back at Rafferty. There was a moment of ominous silence.

  “Quick! The message snapped Horus.

  Buell gazed defiantly throneward. “I demand the immediate release of my fiancée, Doris Lee,” he said.

  A sneering smile curled the lips of the potentate.

  “A jackal may demand his mate from a lion,” he replied, “and as readily gain the favor. Your insolence is in keeping with your rashness in entering Karneter. Know you, then, that she who was Doris Lee in the upper world exists no more as such. She is being prepared for the ceremony which will be the crowning event of the great Festival of Re four days hence, when she will become Isis, bride of Osiris, and co-ruler with him of the blessed realm of Karneter. But enough of this. “We must to business. He who was Dan Rafferty will henceforth be called Baku. He has been an electrician, a policeman, a sailor and a detective. Put him to work at his first occupation.”

  “Now how the divvil did yez know I was a trouble-shooter fer the Western Electric?” he exclaimed.

  “Silence!” commanded Horus.

  “The mighty Osiris sees all—knows all.”

  The potentate struck the gong and two roaring, hideously masked Am-mits leaped into the circle of light. They seized Dan Rafferty and hurried him away, leaving Buell with Anubis, Horus and the scribbling Thoth.

  “As
for him who was Alan Buell in the upper world,” said the potentate when the roaring had subsided, “his name shall be ‘N’. We have selected him for the high honor of impersonating the Osiris N at the Festival of Re.”

  “May I ask,” queried Buell, “the reason for this unmerited kindness?”

  “ ’Tis but a trifling thing, and will soon be ended,” was the reply. “Before the festival is over you will have entered that inner Karneter wdience no man returneth.”

  “You mean I am to be killed?”

  “Precisely, but there is nothing about that for you to be greatly concerned over. You will not know when the blow is struck, nor will you know aught afterward, so far as this physical world is concerned.”

  He smote the gong and the noisy Am-mits rushed Buell off into the darkness.

  The strange, thrilling and weird adventures that befell Doris and Buell and Rafferty in the underground city of Karneter will be narrated I in next month’s issue.

  The Story So Far

  DORIS LEE is kidnaped and carried to an underground city beneath Chicago to become the bride of Mezzar Hashin, who rules there in Egyptian fashion under the name of Osiris. Alan Buell and Dan Rafferty, trying to find and rescue Doris, are captured in the subterranean city of Karneter and led before Osiris for trial. Rafferty is assigned a post as electrician, but Buell is chosen to impersonate the Osiris N at the Festival of Re, when he will be put to death.

  CHAPTER 9

  DELRA, VESTAL VIRGIN

  WHEN Dan. Rafferty was dragged, out of the Hall of the Two Truths he thought he emerged in bright sunlight. One of the Am-mits summoned a giant soldier who lolled at the entrance with a score of companions and handed him a strip of papyrus. After scanning the characters thereon, the fellow removed Rafferty’s manacles and led him away. They were walking the streets of a city that reminded Dan of the Orient with its flat-roofed buildings and gaudily attired inhabitants; yet somehow it was different. It was almost as if he had been conveyed to another world. Even the blue vault of heaven above him seemed unnatural—almost unreal. The sun, too, had an artificial look. Mystified, he hurried on.