Conan Pastiche - Conan Part 14

"Show us this sarcophagus," commanded Demetrio, and Promero hesitantly led the way. All followed, including Conan, who was apparently heedless of the wary eye the guardsmen kept upon him and seemed merely curious.

They pa.s.sed through the torn hangings and entered the room, which was more dimly lit than the corridor. Doors on either side gave into other chambers, and the walls were lined with fantastic images, G.o.ds of strange lands and far peoples. Promero cried out sharply.

"Look! The bowl! It's open-and empty!"

In the center stood a strange black cylinder, nearly four feet in height and perhaps three feet in diameter at its widest circ.u.mference, which was halfway between the top and the bottom. The heavy, carven lid lay on the floor, and beside it a hammer and a chisel. Demetrio looked inside, puzzled an instant over the dim hieroglyphs, and turned to Conan.

"Is this what you came to steal?"

The barbarian shook his head. "How could one man bear it away?"

"The bands were cut with this chisel," mused Demetrio, "and in haste.

There are marks where misstrokes of the hammer dinted the metal. We may a.s.sume that Kallian opened the bowl. Someone was hiding nearby-possibly in the hangings of the doorway. When Kallian had the bowl open, the murderer sprang upon him-or he might have killed Kallian and opened the bowl himself."

"This is a grisly thing," shuddered the clerk. "It is too ancient to be holy. Whoever saw metal like that? It seems harder than Aquilonian steel, yet see how it is corroded and eaten away in spots. And look-here on the lid!" Promero pointed a shaky finger. "What would you say that was?"

Demetrio bent closer to the carven design. "I should say it represented a crown of some sort," he grunted.

"No!" exclaimed Promero. "I warned Kallian, but he would not believe me! It is a scaled serpent coiled with its tail in its mouth. It is the sign of Set, the Old Serpent, the G.o.d of the Stygians! This bowl is too old for a human world-it is a relic of the time when Set walked the earth in the form of a man. Perhaps the race that sprang from his loins laid the bones of their kings away in such cases as this!"

"And you'll say that those moldering bones rose up, strangled Kallian Publico, and then walked away?"

"It was no man who was laid to rest in that bowl," whispered the clerk, his eyes wide and staring. "What man could lie in it?"

Demetrio swore. "If Conan is not the murderer, the slayer is still somewhere in this building. Dionus and Arus, remain here with me, and you three prisoners stay here, too. The rest of you, search the house!

The murderer -if he got away before Arus found the body-could only have escaped by the way Conan used in entering, and in that case the barbarian would have seen him-if he is telling the truth."

"I saw no one but this dog," growled Conan, indicating Arus.

"Of course not, because you're the murderer," said Dionus. "We're wasting time, but we'll search as a formality. And if we find no one, I promise that you shall burn! Remember the law, my black-haired savage: For slaying an artisan you go to the mines; a tradesman, you hang; a gentleman, you burn!"

Conan bared his teeth for answer. The men began their search. The listeners in the chamber heard them stamping upstairs and down, moving objects, opening doors, and bellowing to one another through the rooms.

"Conan," said Demetrio, "you know what it means if they find no one."

"I did not kill him," snarled the Cimmerian. "If he had sought to hinder me I'd have split his skull; but I did not see him until I sighted his corpse."

"Someone sent you here to steal, at least," said Demetrio, "and by your silence you incriminate yourself in this murder as well. The mere fact of your being here is enough to send you to the mines, whether you admit your guilt or not. But, if you tell the whole tale, you may save yourself from the stake."

"Well," answered the barbarian grudgingly, "I came here to steal the Zamorian diamond goblet. A man gave me a diagram of the Temple and told me where to look for it. It is kept in that room," Conan pointed, "in a niche in the floor under a copper Shemitish G.o.d."

"He speaks truth there," said Promero. "I thought not half a dozen men in the world knew the secret of that hiding place."

"And if you had secured it," Dionus sneered, "Would you really have taken it to the man who hired you?"

Again the smoldering eyes flashed resentment. "I am no dog," the barbarian muttered. "I keep my word."

"Who sent you here?" Demetrio demanded, but Conan kept a sullen silence. The guardsmen straggled back from their search.

"There's no man hiding in this house," they said. "We've ransacked the place. We found the trap door in the roof through which the barbarian entered, and the bolt he cut in half. A man escaping that way would have been seen by our guards, unless he fled before we came. Besides, he would have had to stack furniture to reach the trap door from below, and that has not been done. Why could he not have gone out the front door just before Arus came around the building?"

"Because," said Demetrio, "the door was bolted on the inside, and the only keys that will work that bolt are the one belonging to Arus and the one that still hangs on the girdle of Kallian Publico."

Another said: "I think I saw the rope used by the murderer."

"Where is it, fool?" exclaimed Dionus.

"In the chamber adjoining this one," answered the guard. "It is a thick black cable wrapped about a marble pillar. I couldn't reach it."

He led the way into a room filled with marble statuary and pointed to a tall column. Then he halted and stared.

"It's gone!" he cried.

"It was never there," snorted Dionus.

"By Mitra, it was! Coiled about the pillar just above those carven leaves. It is so shadowy up there that I could not tell much-but it was there."

"You're drunk," said Demetrio, turning away. "That's too high for a man to reach, and n.o.body could climb that smooth pillar."

"A Cimmerian could," muttered one of the men.

"Possibly. Say that Conan strangled Kallian, tied the cable around the pillar, crossed the corridor, and hid in the room where the stair is.

How, then could he have removed it after you saw it? He has been among us ever since Arus found the body. No, I tell you that Conan did not commit the murder. I believe the real slayer killed Kallian to secure whatever was in the bowl and is hiding now in some secret nook of the Temple. If we cannot find him, we shall have to blame the barbarian, to satisfy justice, but-where is Promero?"

They had straggled back to the silent body in the corridor. Dionus bellowed for Promero, who came from the room in which stood the empty bowl. He was shaking and his face was white.

"What now, man?" exclaimed Demetrio irritably.

"I found a symbol on the bottom of the bowl!" chattered Promero. "Not an ancient hieroglyphic, but a symbol freshly carved! The mark of Thoth-Amon, the Stygian sorcerer, Caranthes' deadly foe! He must have found the bowl in some grisly cavern below the haunted pyramids! The G.o.ds of old times did not die as men die-they fell into long slumbers, and their wors.h.i.+pers locked them in sarcophagi, so that no alien hand might break their sleep! Thoth-Amon sent death to Caranthes-Kallian's greed caused him to loose this horror-and it is lurking somewhere near us-even now it may be creeping upon us-"

"You gibbering fool!" roared Dionus, striking Promero heavily across the mouth. "Well, Demetrio," he said, turning to the inquisitor, "I see nought for it but to arrest this barbarian-"

The Cimmerian cried out, glaring toward the door of a chamber that adjoined the room of statues. "Look!" he exclaimed. "I saw something move in that room-I saw it through the hangings. Something that crossed the floor like a dark shadow."

"Bah!" snorted Posthumo. "We searched that room-"

"He saw something!" Promero's voice shrilled and cracked with hysterical excitement "This place is accursed! Something came out of the sarcophagus and killed Kallian Publico! It hid where no man could hide, and now it lurks in that chamber! Mitra defend us from the powers of darkness!" He caught Dionus' sleeve with claw-like fingers. "Search that room again, my lord!"

As the prefect shook off the clerk's frenzied grip, Posthumo said: "You shall search it yourself, clerk!" Grasping Promero by neck and girdle, he propelled the screaming wretch before him to the door, where he paused and hurled him into the room so violently that the clerk fell and lay half stunned.

"Enough," growled Dionus, eyeing the silent Cimmerian. The prefect lifted his hand, and tension crackled in the air, when an interruption came. A guardsman entered, dragging a slender, richly-dressed figure.

"I saw him slinking about the back of the Temple," quoth the guard, looking for commendation. Instead, he received curses that lifted his hair.

"Release that gentleman, you bungling fool!" shouted the prefect. "Know you not Aztrias Petanius, the nephew of the governor?"

The abashed guard fell away, while the foppish young n.o.bleman fastidiously brushed his embroidered sleeve.

"Save your apologies, good Dionus," he lisped. "All in line of duty, I know. I was returning from a late revel and walking to rid my brain of the fumes of the wine. What have we here? By Mitra, is it murder?"