CHAPTER XX
THE GOLDEN PAVILION
When I opened my eyes it was to a conviction that I dreamed. Ilay upon a cushioned divan in a small apartment which I find myselfat a loss adequately to describe.
It was a yellow room, then, its four walls being hung with yellowsilk, its floor being entirely covered by a yellow Persian carpet.One lamp, burning in a frame of some lemon coloured wood and havingits openings filled with green glass, flooded the place with aghastly illumination. The lamp hung by gold chains from the ceiling,which was yellow. Several low tables of the same lemon-hued woodas the lamp-frame stood around; they were inlaid in fanciful designswith gleaming green stones. Turn my eyes where I would, clutch myaching head as I might, this dream chamber would not disperse, butremained palpable before me--yellow and green and gold.
There was a niche behind the divan upon which I lay framed aboutwith yellow wood. In it stood a golden bowl and a tall pot ofyellow porcelain; I lay amid yellow cushions having golden tassels.Some of them were figured with vivid green devices.
To contemplate my surroundings assuredly must be to court madness.No door was visible, no window; nothing but silk and luxury, yellowand green and gold.
To crown all, the air was heavy with a perfume wholly unmistakableby one acquainted with Egypt's ruling vice. It was the reek ofsmouldering hashish--a stench that seemed to take me by the throat,a vapour damnable and unclean. I saw that a little censer, goldenin colour and inset with emeralds, stood upon the furthermost cornerof the yellow carpet. From it rose a faint streak of vapour; and Ifollowed the course of the sickly scented smoke upward through thestill air until in oily spirals it lost itself near to the yellowceiling. As a sick man will study the veriest trifle I studiedthat wisp of smoke, pencilled grayly against the silken draperies,the carven tables, against the almost terrifying persistency of theyellow and green and gold.
I strove to rise, but was overcome by vertigo and sank back againupon the yellow cushions. I closed my eyes, which throbbed andburned, and rested my head upon my hands. I ceased to conjectureif I dreamed or was awake. I knew that I felt weak and ill, thatmy head throbbed agonizingly, that my eyes smarted so as to renderit almost impossible to keep them open, that a ceaseless hummingwas in my ears.
For some time I lay endeavouring to regain command of myself, toprepare to face again that scene which had something horrifyingin its yellowness, touched with the green and gold.
And when finally I reopened my eyes, I sat up with a suppressed cry.For a tall figure in a yellow robe from beneath which peeped yellowslippers, a figure crowned with a green turban, stood in the centreof the apartment!
It was that of a majestic old man, white bearded, with aquilinenose, and the fierce eagle eyes of a fanatic set upon me sternly,reprovingly.
With folded arms he stood watching me, and I drew a sharp breath androse slowly to my feet.
There amid the yellow and green and gold, amid the abominable reekof burning hashish I stood and faced Hassan of Aleppo!
No words came to me; I was confounded.
Hassan spoke in that gentle voice which I had heard only once before.
"Mr. Cavanagh," he said, "I have brought you here that I might warnyou. Your police are seeking me night and day, and I am fully aliveto my danger whilst I stay in your midst. But for close upon athousand years the Sheikh-al-jebal, Lord of the Hashishin, hasguarded the traditions and the relics of the Prophet, Salla-'llahu'ale yhi wasellem! I, Hassan of Aleppo, am Sheikh of the Orderto-day, and my sacred duty has brought me here."
The piercing gaze never left my face. I was not yet by any meansmy own man and still I made no reply.
"You have been wise," continued Hassan, "in that you have nevertouched the sacred slipper. Had you lain hands upon it, no secrecycould have availed you. The eye of the Hashishin sees all. Thereis a shaft of light which the true Believer perceives at night ashe travels toward El-Medineh. It is the light which uprises, aspiritual fire, from the tomb of the Prophet (Salla-'llahu 'aleyhiwasellem!). The relics also are radiant, though in a lesser degree."
He took a step toward me, spreading out his lean brown hands, palmsdownward.
"A shaft of light," he said impressively, "shines upward now fromLondon. It is the light of the holy slipper." He gazed intentlyat the yellow drapery at the left of the divan, but as though hewere looking not at the wall but through it. His features workedconvulsively; he was a man inspired. "I see it now!" he almostwhispered--"that white light by which the guardians of the relicmay always know its resting place!"
I managed to force words to my lips.
"If you know where the slipper is," I said, more for the sake oftalking than for anything else, "why do you not recover it?"
Hassan turned his eyes upon me again.
"Because the infidel dog," he cried loudly, "who has soiled it withhis unclean touch, defies us--mocks us! He has suffered the lossof the offending hand, but the evil ginn protect him; he is inspiredby efreets! But God is great and Mohammed is His only Prophet! Weshall triumph; but it is written, oh, daring infidel, that you againshall become the guardian of the slipper!"
He spoke like some prophet of old and I stared at him fascinated.I was loth to believe his words.
"When again," he continued, "the slipper shall be in the receptacleof which you hold the key, that key must be given to me!"
I thought I saw the drift of his words now; I thought I perceivedwith what object I had been trapped and borne to this mysteriousabode for whose whereabouts the police vainly were seeking. By theexercise of the gift of divination it would seem that Hassan ofAleppo had forecast the future history of the accursed slipper orbelieved that he had done so. According to his own words I wasdoomed once more to become trustee of the relic. The key of thecase at the Antiquarian Museum, to which he had prophesied theslipper's return, would be the price of my life! But--
"In order that these things may be fulfilled," he continued, "I mustpermit you to return to your house. So it is written, so it shallbe. Your life is in my hands; beware when it is demanded of youthat you hesitate not in yielding up the key!"
He raised his hands before him, making a sort of obeisance, I doubtnot in the direction of Mecca, drew aside one of the yellow hangingsbehind him and disappeared, leaving me alone again in that nightmareapartment of yellow and green and gold. A moment I stood watchingthe swaying curtain. Utter silence reigned, and a sort of panicseized me infinitely greater than that occasioned by the presenceof the weird Sheikh. I felt that I must escape from the place orthat I should become raving mad.
I leapt forward to the curtain which Hassan had raised and jerkedit aside; it had concealed a door. In this door and about levelwith my eyes was a kind of little barred window through which shonea dim green light. I bent forward, peering into the place beyond,but was unable to perceive anything save a vague greenness.
And as I peered, half believing that the whole episode was adreadful, fevered dream, the abominable fumes of hashish grew, orseemed to grow, quite suddenly insupportable. Through the squareopening, from the green void beyond, a cloud of oily vapour, pungent,stifling, resembling that of burning Indian hemp, poured out andenveloped me!
With a gasping cry I fell back, fighting for breath, for a breathof clean air unpolluted with hashish. But every inhalation drewdown into my lungs the fumes that I sought to escape from. Iexperienced a deathly sickness; I seemed to be sinking into a seaof hashish, amid bubbles of yellow and green and gold, and I knewno more until, struggling again to my feet, surrounded by utterdarkness--I struck my head on the corner of my writing-table ... forI lay in my own study!
My revolver, unloaded, was upon the table beside me. The night wasvery still. I think it must have been near to dawn.
"My God!" I whispered, "did I dream it all? Did I dream it all?"