SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN. Abraham Merritt
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not tell.
It was precisely 11:20 when the car came to a stop. After a short pause it went on again. I heard from behind us the clang of heavy metal gates. For perhaps ten minutes more we rolled on swiftly and then halted again. Consardine awoke from his reverie and snapped up the curtains. The chauffeur opened the door. Eve dropped out, and after her Walter.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Kirkham,” said Consardine, affably. He might have been a pleased host bringing home a thrice-welcome guest instead of a man he had abducted by outrageous wiles and falsehoods.
I jumped out. Under the moon, grown storm-promising and watery as a drunkard’s eye, I saw an immense building that was like some chateau transplanted from the Loire. Lights gleamed brilliantly here and there in wings and turrets. Through its doors were passing the girl and Walter. I glanced around me. There were no lights visible anywhere except those of the chateau. I had the impression of remoteness and of wide, tree-filled spaces hemming the place in and guarding its isolation.
Consardine took my arm and we passed over the threshold. On each side stood two tall footmen and as I went by them I perceived that they were Arabs, extraordinarily powerful. But when I had gotten within the great hall I stopped short with an involuntary exclamation of admiration.
It was as though the choicest treasures of medieval France had been skimmed of their best and that best concentrated here. The long galleries, a third of the way up to the high vaulted ceiling, were exquisite Gothic; arrases and tapestries whose equals few museums could show hung from them and the shields and arms were those of conquering kings.
Consardine gave me no time to study them. He touched my arm and I saw beside me an impeccably correct English valet.
“Thomas will look after you now,” said Consardine. “See you later, Kirkham.”
“This way, sir, if you please,” bowed the valet, and led me into a miniature chapel at the side of the hall. He pressed against its fretted back. It slid away and we entered a small elevator. When it stopped, another panel slipped aside. I stepped into a bedroom furnished, in its own fashion, with the same astonishing richness as the great hall. Behind heavy curtains was a bathroom.
Upon the bed lay dress trousers, shirt, cravat, and so on. In a few minutes I was washed, freshly shaved and in evening clothes. They fitted me perfectly. As the valet opened a closet door a coat hanging there drew my sharp attention. I peered in.
Hanging within that closet was the exact duplicate of every garment that made up my wardrobe at the Club. Yes, there they were, and as I looked into the pockets for the tailor’s labels I saw written on them my own name.
I had an idea that the valet, watching me covertly, was waiting for some expression of surprise. If so he was disappointed. My capacity for surprise was getting a bit numb.
“And now where do I go?” I asked.
For answer he slid the panel aside and stood waiting for me to enter the lift. When it stopped I expected of course to step out into the great hall. Instead of that the opening panel revealed a small anteroom, oak paneled, bare and with a door of darker oak set in its side. Here was another tall Arab, evidently awaiting me, for the valet bowed me out of the elevator and, re-entering, disappeared.
The Arab salaamed. Opening the door, he salaamed again. I walked over its threshold. A clock began to chime midnight.
“Welcome, James Kirkham! You are punctual to the minute,” said some one.
The voice was strangely resonant and musical, with a curious organ quality. The speaker sat at the head of a long table where places were laid for three. That much I saw before I looked into his eyes, and then for a time could see nothing else. For those eyes were of the deepest sapphire blue and they were the alivest eyes I had ever beheld. They were large, slightly oblique, and they sparkled as though the very spring of life was bubbling up behind them. Gem-like they were in color, and gem-like were they in their hardness. They were lashless, and as unwinking as a bird’s—or a snake’s.
It was with distinct effort that I tore my gaze from them and took note of the face in which they were set. The head above them was inordinately large, high and broad and totally bald. It was an astonishing hemisphere whose capacity must have been almost double that of the average. The ears were long and narrow and distinctly pointed at the tips. The nose was heavy and beaked, the chin round but massive. The lips were full, and as classically cut and immobile as of some antique Greek statue. The whole huge, round face was of a marble pallor, and it was unwrinkled, unlined and expressionless. The only thing alive about it were the eyes, and alive indeed they were— uncannily, terrifyingly so.
His body, what I could see of it, was unusually large, the enormous barrel of the chest indicating tremendous vitality.
Even at first contact one sensed the abnormal, and the radiation of inhuman power.
“Be seated, James Kirkham,” the sonorous voice rolled out again. A butler emerged from the shadows at his back and drew out for me the chair at the left.
I bowed to this amazing host of mine and seated myself silently.
“You must be hungry after your long ride,” he said. “It was good of you, James Kirkham, thus to honor this whim of mine.”
I looked at him sharply but could detect no sign of mockery.
“I am indebted to you, sir,” I answered, as urbanely, “for an unusually entertaining journey. And as for humoring what you are pleased to call your whim, how, sir, could I have done otherwise when you sent messengers so —ah—eloquent?”
“Ah, yes,” he nodded. “Dr. Consardine is indeed a singularly persuasive person. He will join us presently. But drink—eat.”
The butler poured champagne. I lifted my glass and paused, staring at it with delight. It was a goblet of rock crystal, exquisitely cut, extremely ancient I judged—a jewel and priceless.
“Yes,” said my host, as though I had spoken. “Truly one of a rare set. They were the drinking glasses of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. When I drink from them I seem to see him surrounded by his beloved cup-companions amid the glories of his court in old Baghdad. All the gorgeous panorama of the Arabian Nights spreads out before me. They were preserved for me,” he went on, thoughtfully, “by the late Sultan Abdul Hamid. At least they were his until I felt the desire to possess them.”
“You must have exercised great—ah—persuasion, sir, to have made the Sultan part from them,” I murmured.
“As you have remarked, James Kirkham, my messengers are—eloquent,” he replied, suavely.
I took a sip of the wine and could not for the life of me hide my pleasure.
“Yes,” intoned my strange host, “a rare vintage. It was intended for the exclusive use of King Alfonso of Spain. But again my messengers were— eloquent. When I drink it my admiration for its excellences is shadowed only by my sympathy for Alfonso in his deprivation.”
I drank that wine, worshipfully. I attacked with relish a delicious cold bird. My eye was caught by the lines of a golden compote set with precious stones. So exquisite was it that I half arose to examine it more closely.
“Benvenuto Cellini made it,” observed my host. “It is one of his masterpieces. Italy kept it for me through the centuries.”
“But Italy would never voluntarily have let a thing like that go from her!” I exclaimed.
“No, quite involuntarily, oh quite, I assure you,” he answered, blandly.
I began to glance about the dimly lighted room and realized that here, like the great hall, was another amazing treasure chamber. If half of what my eyes took in was genuine, the contents of that room alone were worth millions. But they could not be—not even an American billionaire could have gathered such things.
“But they are genuine,” again he read my thoughts. “I am a connoisseur indeed—the greatest in the world. Not alone of paintings, and of gems and wines and other masterpieces of