Lazare’s long fingers touched the strings, and the serpent’s fourfold tongue twanged softly, exotically, a tune like no other Picard had heard. The ancient instrument responded with delicate reverberation, the snake’s puffed hollow body echoing the minor air, as a spell fell over the parlor.
There was something in the song—Picard could not remain aloof from it. A strange feeling came over him, the feeling that he was rootless, homeless, an endless wanderer. For an instant his Paris was gone, and the jeweled women were stars, twinkling in a vast empty space.
The bass string returned, thumping softly, as if to an incessant drumbeat, and Picard felt still more alone, on the distant wind. Blown upon a carpet, floating out upon the finely woven song, he felt himself returning to Algeria, to the war. The salon of dreams was far behind him and he was racing on the sands toward the lamplight of a tent. He had it all in his hands—youth, the reins of a good horse, the music of a military encampment calling him.
Lazare’s jeweled fingers flashed, ending the song abruptly, dramatically, the last bass note dying softly as the room was held in suspension, Picard no less than the others, as the dream dissolved, a dream one should certainly not forget.
He found himself staring down at the magnificent carpet which covered the salon floor—a Persian rug woven in patterns that suggested ever-deepening webs and wells. And the hanging vines around us, how easily one escapes. Magic carpets to the stars, noble suckers, magic carpets for all!
A young bearded man went toward Lazare; the fellow’s clothes were ordinary, his manner that of an observer, a fact which Picard affirmed a moment later when the young man identified himself as a journalist and took a pad and pen from his pocket. “Did you write that piece yourself, Monsieur Lazare?”
“It was given to me by a friend,” said Lazare.
“And whom might that be?”
“The vulture-priestess of El Kab.”
“El Kab? That’s an Egyptian city, is it not?”
“It had another name, when the priestess played for me.”
“And when were you traveling in Egypt, Monsieur Lazare? Recently?”
“In the forty-third century B.C.”
“The forty-third century?”
“Our king was known as the Scorpion,” said Lazare, placing the ancient instrument down. “I believe it was actually he who composed the song, though I received it from his attendant priestess.”
“A moment, Monsieur Lazare, a moment please! Are you saying you learned this song five thousand years ago?”
An elegant young woman, adorned with a massive chignon held by a startling diamond pin, came forward, her body obviously still charmed by the music. “I have heard you tell others differently about this song, Monsieur Lazare.”
“Have I?” The host smiled. “Oh well, it has undergone many transformations...”
“You said the other night it was written by the father of Cleopatra.”
“The song, dear child, is a traveler through time. It visits now one fellow, and now another...”
Lazare’s voice grew softer then, and the young woman moved closer to him, as the reporter came away from the little tête-à-tête shaking his head, and joining Duval and Picard at the wine table.
“He would have us believe he was alive five thousand years ago,” muttered the reporter, accepting a snifter of brandy.
“And do you?” asked Duval.
“I... I don’t know.”
“It strikes me, monsieur, that you might be interested in the opening of a new gold mine, in Africa...”
“Monsieur Fanjoy?”
Picard turned. The butler was standing beside him, and the gold tray was extended. On it was the card of Paul Fanjoy, Africa Oyster Bed Company, and across the bottom of the card was written:
25 seconds, no more!
Picard walked in the tiptoeing way of his foppish puppet, Monsieur Fanjoy. He was conscious of the eyes of others upon him, for now he was the chosen guest, about to be initiated into the mysteries. He smiled insipidly, acting altogether naive and playful as he followed the butler across the room, toward the large oak door.
They walked through the doorway, into a hall lit by arabesque lamps. Ahead of them was another door, carved with floral designs, and it opened from within as Picard approached.
A tall Hindoo in white robe and turban awaited him inside. The room was windowless. Small candles burned in twisted-silver holders. The Hindoo led Picard to a snake-legged table, on which a crystal ball was set. Picard looked into the ball, saw nothing in its spherical depths.
But the incensed atmosphere and the flickering candles produced a momentary illusion—the room seemed to curve gently around him, as if he were standing inside a transparent bubble. Lazare’s operation is all suggestiveness—strange backdrops and dim lights, effects to weaken the mind and make the imagination run riot. I’ll wager people see all sorts of things in that ball.
The Hindoo took Picard by the elbow and moved him to another table, on which a small telegraph machine was mounted. The machine started to click; the Hindoo opened a drawer in the table, beneath the telegraph instrument, and withdrew a piece of paper which he thrust into Picard’s hand. A tiny chime sounded somewhere in the room, and the butler entered.
“This way, Monsieur Fanjoy,” he said, leading his guest back into the dimly lit corridor.
“One moment,” said Picard, stopping beneath a lamp. He opened the piece of paper.
PAUL PICARD—THE SPY WILL DIE
The butler opened the door to the parlor and Picard stepped through. The puppet, Monsieur Fanjoy, was completely gone, relegated to the everlasting scrap heap of punctured disguises. Picard tried to get his bearings, felt ridiculous, a laughing-stock.
He saw the host, then, leaning against a window in the corner of the room, withdrawn from the guests. Picard went toward him, the swift poison of anger spreading through his veins. He wanted to break a few things apart, among them, Lazare’s neck. He suppressed his violence; the monster raged inside him instead, smashing the chandeliers and coffee table in his liver and stomach, ruining his digestion, but it’s considerably better than ruining number 87, rue de Richelieu, thought Picard, as he closed the gap between himself and his host. The Prefect would not take kindly to such a brawl. Go calmly, Picard, you’re not in the army any more.
“Monsieur Lazare?”
“Yes?”
“You have threatened me with this note.”
“But of course.” Lazare was quietly confident. Picard observed Duval moving closer, eavesdropping on the conversation. The host smiled at Picard and gestured toward the wine table. “Drink with me, Inspector, and forget you were ever given this assignment. It will be much the wiser move for you to make.”
Picard’s monster flung an upholstered chair through his gall bladder; he turned, walked through the crowded salon toward the door, the bit of telegraph paper still crumpled in his fist. The polished floor of the hallway reflected the round yellow wall lamps, and each step he took was into a faintly glowing sphere.
The footman awaited him at the outer door, producing his cape and hat from the cloakroom. He slipped into them, couldn’t shake the notion that Lazare was somehow following him, his countenance concealed in the glow of the yellow wall lamps, his shadow gliding unseen in the muted depths of the glistening parquet floor. But the hall was empty, save for Duval, who received his own cape from the footman and stepped with Picard into the courtyard.
“Inspector? Did I hear him address you as a police inspector?”
“Yes,” snarled Picard. “So watch your step, Duval.”
“No one’s to be trusted these days,” sighed Duval, as they walked through the iron gate to the rue de Richelieu. Duval hailed a carriage, climbed into it, and opened the window. “Can I leave you someplace? No? Then good hunting, Inspector. And remember, Eldorado Investments welcomes all investors, no matter how small.” The driver cracked his whip and the carriage rolled away.
Picard walked
slowly away from the Lazare household, into the lights and traffic of the boulevard Montmartre. How did Lazare know I was coming? One of his spies at police headquarters, perhaps. A logical place for one. It’s happened before, headquarters troubled by a leak, subsequently plugged by hot lead. I smell fried potatoes.
He found the seller, an old woman with a portable stove. She handed him a portion of the potatoes, wrapped in white paper, and he walked on, toward Pigalle.
Lazare knows how to unnerve his guests, I’m still feeling strange. But in truth, Picard, you’ve felt strange for half your life. Too much cognac, too many all-night card games, depravity in general, and most recent, your two-story fall from a burning building. These things do not lead to inner steadiness.
I feel another of my worthless resolutions coming on.
He finished his potatoes, threw the paper away, unsatisfied, knowing it was the type of case that would cause inordinate hunger for weeks, months, for as long as it took to nail Lazare.
He paused before a crêpe seller’s stand, thought better of it, moved on toward the Café Orient. If one sampled too much street food an unpleasant rash could develop. His face had swollen like an overripe tomato while following Cajetan Seveck, the white slaver.
He was like you, Monsieur Lazare, with great dreams of conquest. Wanted to rule the Empire. You can compare notes with him, over a tin plate in the penitentiary.
The glass doors of the Café Orient had yellow dragons painted on them, yellow with hollow eyes, illuminated by lights from within the café. Here is Lazare’s secret, whispered the dragons as he pushed through the swinging glass, moving its dragons aside.
He took a table on its glass-enclosed terrace, glanced around at the array of thieves, smugglers, and pimps who sat in the flickering candlelight. He hoped that someone in the café of bad company would prove annoying, so that he might knock a few heads together—and so he was left alone, steeping in the atmosphere of tobacco, sauerkraut, and stolen goods. The brazier glowed, casting a dancing light on the terrace, where the voices remained low, and the dancing light made the underworld faces still more menacing, like denizens of fire. He thought of others he’d known from this quarter, St. Gervais, the bodyguard of David Orleans, who could break a six-inch board with his head, Abdul the Bird, ruler of the rooftops of Paris. These, and others, haunted the grillwork of the brazier, played amongst the coals. He’d gone against them and they were dead, reduced to phantom memories, to ashes.
And now Lazare. But how to take him—no good sniffing around his salon, he’s in complete control there. Speak with his guests, perhaps, those with whom he’s had financial dealings. But if he’s blackmailing them, they aren’t going to speak out.
Face it, Picard, you want to take a jaunt to Vienna, see some sights, recuperate a bit in the country, expenses paid by the Prefecture, and pick up Lazare’s threads along the way. Much better than talking to a bunch of idiots so dumb they’ve let him swindle them. Speak to the Viennese police, pin the bastard down the sure way, right through his velvet wings.
He sat back in his chair, drumming his fingers in anticipation of the journey. A young woman, alone at the end of night, saw his restlessness and moved in. She was a brunette in mauve, her eyelids painted with some dark witchery, and she slipped into the seat beside him, already smiling, for she knew she’d hooked him perfectly.
He nodded slowly. The firelight played upon her face, her coiled chignon; I’ll take it down, remove the pins and see it spread upon her pillow.
He reached out, touched the tiny bell earrings which descended from the smooth swaths of her hair.
“Do you wish something?” she asked, at the ringing of the bells.
“I do.”
She smiled again, and looked down at her shiny black boots, one dangling above the other, her legs crossed and revealing only the slightest bit of pale-blue stocking.
“Shall we go then?” said Picard, standing. She stood with him, and slipped her arm into his as they left the café. Her black satin jacket became one with the dark street for a moment, until they stepped beneath the lamppost, and she was radiant again, her jacket sewn with a pale thread that caught the light, revealing a faint diamond-shaped pattern—which suddenly became the hundred gleaming eyes of a Hindoo sorcerer.
“Are you unwell?” she asked, for he’d paused in the street, a feeling of suffocation upon him.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I had some wine...”
“The wine of the Café Orient isn’t fit to wash one’s feet in.”
They walked along Pigalle, and she stopped at a tenement not unlike his own, where no questions were asked, and where the stairs were similarly teetering and filthy. She carefully raised the hem of her gown, above the garbage and broken bottles on the second landing. Perhaps sensing his thoughts, she turned and smiled. “It’s a ruin, I know.”
“But you...” he said, gesturing to her beauty.
“I too am ruined,” she said with a laugh, taking a key from her beaded purse.
She opened the door, and the room was the usual sort of Pigalle hole, an indelible smell of old wine and stale tobacco permeating it, the walls cracked and peeling. Generations of drifters had used it, and Picard felt at home, though not completely, for there was a delicate feminine thing which sought to hold its own against the smell, the dreariness. Her table had a lace cloth, her windows were hung with soft curtains, and her open closet was a silken tabernacle, where brocaded flowers bloomed in shadow and lovely butterflies danced. She had just now removed her boots, and was seated on the bed, wiggling her toes within her stockings.
Picard, still in his cape, knelt at her feet, held them gently in his hands. She leaned back, stretched her legs out; her stockings were embroidered with a design of dark-blue clocks. The voluminousness of her underwear made further exploration difficult; their fingers went together to the buttons which held her gown. It came off easily, leaving her arms and shoulders bare. The floorboards rumbled, the windows rattled.
“They’re working nights,” she said, dropping the strap of her camisole. “Blasting in the sewers.”
“No,” he said, helping her lower the other strap. “It’s because of you the room shakes.”
She smiled; a single candle burned in a stone lantern beside the bed, and the flame was fanned by passing petticoats, gently tossed toward a chair. He saw that the clocks upon her stockings continued upward till they were met by red lace garters; when the garters came away her soft white flesh was imprinted with momentary rings that faded even before he placed his lips upon the peach fuzz of her thighs.
“Your jacket,” she whispered, opening the buttons; her fingers touched the smooth butt of his revolver and stiffened, but he removed his jacket with an innocent smile, hanging it over the bedpost.
Her perfume reigned now, obliterating the wine and tobacco smell of the room. Naked she was even more lovely, and she knelt on the bed, waiting as Picard stepped out of his underwear. “I think you might crush me,” she said, seeing his barrel-framed body.
Picard stretched out beside her on the bed, taking the pins from her hair. It tumbled around her shoulders; her eyes were still amused by his physique, which she took in slowly, running her fingers over his shoulders, his neck, twining her fingertips in the tangle of grey-black hair that covered his rock-hard chest. His gut was where his torso weakened, where all the lemon tarts had settled, and she rolled the fat playfully, lingering on the scar that crossed his belly like an obscene grin. “Someone carved you badly, darling.”
“There was a large stone in my bladder,” said Picard. “The largest ever seen in French medicine. Large and perfectly formed.”
She knelt between his legs and brought her lips to the scar, kissing it gently. “Your surgeon was a butcher.”
“He was an American dentist.” Picard reached toward the chair on which his jacket was slung and put his hand into the vest pocket. “I carry the stone with me wherever I go.”
She raised her head, looke
d at him curiously.
“Here,” he said, taking the largest of the three brilliant pearls from his handkerchief. “You may have it.”
She laughed and took the pearl in her hand. “A perfect fake.”
“Have it appraised before you throw it away.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s real?”
Picard reached into his jacket again. “My card.”
“Africa Oyster Bed Company.” The young woman looked up with a grin. “Are you good bed company, Monsieur Fanjoy?”
“We’ll see,” said Picard, drawing her to him, and turning her, so that her back was to him. They lay that way, stretched out against each other, and he slipped his left arm beneath her ribs and wrapped his right arm around her waist, so that he could squeeze both her breasts.
“Especially the left one, Monsieur Fanjoy,” she said softly; he gave it careful attention, laying his palm against the nipple and rubbing it quickly and lightly. The sewer crew blasted again, rattling the street, the foundations, her few dishes.
“Is it me, Fanjoy?” she asked, putting her hands between her legs and taking hold of him, putting him where she wanted him.
“Yes,” he said, kissing her shoulders and stroking her gently. She pressed back against him; it was his favorite position, for he knew he was too heavy for women, and he was also lazy. This way he could lie like a magnificent pig, fondling her breast, fondling her little wet beard. He’d seen a painting somewhere—the Empress riding to Fontainebleau—it came to him now, then faded, and other things came and went, a gondola, the smell of lime-tree flowers. Is it her perfume, the essence of lime-tree flowers?
“With the whole hand, Fanjoy,” she said in a gently pleading voice.
He could feel the rhythm of her pleasure and he toyed with it, steering it with his fingers and his slow deep thrusts. He was in control; one learns certain things only after the hair on one’s balls has turned grey; he was happy to steer her, concentrating completely on her pleasure. Her breasts were small, the left one extremely sensitive; the blasting powder made the candle flame dance again, and she moved her hips faster, as if the explosions were indeed taking place inside her.