The Greatest Adventures of Robert E. Howard (80+ Titles in One Edition). Robert E. Howard
Читать онлайн книгу.
did you do then?'
'I returned to the slave quarters where I remained until it was time to return to Promero's house. I drove straight there, and your men seized me as I talked with Promero in his door.'
'You have no idea why Kallian went to Promero's house?'
'He didn't speak of his business to his slaves.'
Demetrio turned to Promero. 'What do you know about this?'
'Nothing.' The clerk's teeth chattered as he spoke.
'Did Kallian Publico come to your house as the charioteer says?'
'Yes.' 'How long did he stay?'
'Only a few minutes. Then he left.'
'Did he come from your house to the Temple?'
'I don't know!' The clerk's voice was shrill with taut nerves.
'Why did he come to your house?'
'To—to talk matters of business with me.'
'You're lying,' snapped Demetrio. Why did he come to your house?'
'I don't know! I don't know anything!' Promero was growing hysterical. 'I had nothing to do with it—'
'Make him talk, Dionus,' snapped Demetrio, and Dionus grunted and nodded to one of his men who, grinning savagely, moved toward the two captives.
'Do you know who I am?' he growled, thrusting his head forward and staring domineeringly at his shrinking prey.
'You're Posthumo,' answered the charioteer sullenly. 'You gouged out a girl's eye in the Court of Justice because she wouldn't give you information incriminating her lover.'
'I always get what I go after!' bellowed the guardsman, the veins in his thick neck swelling, and his face growing purple, as he seized the wretched clerk by the collar of his tunic, twisting it so the man was half strangled.
'Speak up, you rat!' he growled. 'Answer the Inquisitor.' 'Oh Mitra, mercy!' screamed the wretch. 'I swear that—'
Posthumo slapped him terrifically first on one side of the face and then on the other, and continued the interrogation by flinging him to the floor and kicking him with vicious accuracy.
'Mercy!' moaned the victim. 'I'll tell—I'll tell anything—'
'Then get up, you cur!' roared Posthumo, swelling with self-importance. 'Don't lie there whining.'
Dionus cast a quick glance at Conan to see if he were properly impressed.
'You see what happens to those who cross the police,' he said.
The Cimmerian spat with a sneer of cruel contempt for the moaning clerk.
'He's a weakling and a fool,' he growled. 'Let one of you touch me and I'll spill his guts on the floor.'
'Are you ready to talk?' asked Demetrio tiredly. He found these scenes wearingly monotonous.
'All I know,' sobbed the clerk, dragging himself to his feet and whimpering like a beaten dog in his pain, 'is that Kallian came to my house shortly after I arrived—I left the Temple at the same time he did—and sent his chariot away. He threatened me with discharge if I ever spoke of it. I am a poor man, without friends or favor. Without my position with him, I would starve.'
'What's that to me?' snapped Demetrio. 'How long did he remain at your house?'
'Until perhaps half an hour before midnight. Then he left, saying that he was going to the Temple, and would return after he had done what he wished to do there.'
'What was he going to do there?'
Promero hesitated at revealing the secrets of his dreaded employer, then a shuddering glance at Posthumo, who was grinning evilly as he doubled his huge fist, opened his lips quickly.
'There was something in the Temple he wished to examine.'
'But why should he come here alone in so much secrecy?'
'Because it was not his property. It arrived in a caravan from the south, at dawn. The men of the caravan knew nothing of it, except that it had been placed with them by the men of a caravan from Stygia, and was meant for Kalanthes of Hanumar, priest of Ibis. The master of the caravan had been paid by these other men to deliver it directly to Kalanthes, but he's a rascal by nature, and wished to proceed directly to Aquilonia, on the road to which Hanumar does not lie. So he asked if he might leave it in the Temple until Kalanthes could send for it.
'Kallian agreed, and told him he himself would send a runner to inform Kalanthes. But after the men had gone, and I spoke of the runner, Kallian forbade me to send him. He sat brooding over what the men had left.'
'And what was that?'
'A sort of sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs, but this one was round, like a covered metal bowl. Its composition was something like copper, but much harder, and it was carved with hieroglyphics, like those found on the more ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid was made fast to the body by carven copper-like bands.'
'What was in it?'
'The men of the caravan did not know. They only said that the men who gave it to them told them that it was a priceless relic, found among the tombs far beneath the pyramids and sent to Kalanthes "because of the love the sender bore the priest of Ibis". Kallian Publico believed that it contained the diadem of the giant- kings, of the people who dwelt in that dark land before the ancestors of the Stygians came there. He showed me a design carved on the lid, which he swore was the shape of the diadem which legend tells us the monster-kings wore.
'He determined to open the Bowl and see what it contained.
He was like a madman when he thought of the fabled diadem, which myths say was set with the strange jewels known only to that ancient race, a single one of which is worth more than all the jewels of the modern world.
'I warned him against it. But he stayed at my house as I have said, and a short time before midnight, he came along to the Temple, hiding in the shadows until the watchman had passed to the other side of the building, then letting himself in with his belt key. I watched him from the shadows of the silk shop, saw him enter the Temple, and then returned to my own house. If the diadem was in the Bowl, or anything else of great value, he intended hiding it somewhere in the Temple and slipping out again. Then on the morrow he would raise a great hue and cry, saying that thieves had broken into his house and stolen Kalanthes's property. None would know of his prowlings but the charioteer and I, and neither of us would betray him.'
'But the watchman?' objected Demetrio.
'Kallian did not intend being seen by him; he planned to have him crucified as an accomplice of the thieves,' answered Promero. Arus gulped and turned pale as this duplicity of his employer came home to him.
'Where is this sarcophagus?' asked Demetrio. Promero pointed, and the Inquisitor grunted. 'So! The very room in which Kallian must have been attacked.'
Promero turned pale and twisted his thin hands.
'Why should a man in Stygia send Kalanthes a gift? Ancient gods and queer mummies have come up the caravan roads before, but who loves the priest of Ibis so well in Stygia, where they still worship the arch-demon Set who coils among the tombs in the darkness? The god Ibis has fought Set since the first dawn of the earth, and Kalanthes has fought Set's priests all his life. There is something dark and hidden here.'
'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 on him, and seemed merely curious. They passed through the torn hangings and entered the room, which was rather more dimly lighted than the corridor. Doors on each side gave into other chambers, and the walls were lined with fantastic images, gods of strange lands and far peoples. And Promero cried out sharply.
'Look! The Bowl! It's open—and empty!'
In the center of the room stood a strange black cylinder, nearly