第32章
"I leave you here," said Flossy hurriedly, "as even I left once before-- only then I was lightly assisted by his sandaled foot," he added, rubbing himself thoughtfully. "But better luck to you."As his companion retreated swiftly, the Chevalier turned to the slave and would have passed in, but the man stopped him."Got a pass, boss?""No," said the Chevalier.
The man looked at him keenly."Oh, I see! one of de profesh."The Chevalier nodded haughtily. The man preceded him by devious, narrow ways and dark staircases, coming abruptly upon a small apartment where the Princess sat on a low divan. A single lamp inclosed in an ominous wire cage flared above her. Strange things lay about the floor and shelves, and from another door he could see hideous masks, frightful heads, and disproportionate faces. He shuddered slightly, but recovered himself and fell on his knees before her. "I lofe you," he said madly. "I have always lofed you!""For how long?" she asked, with a strange smile.
He covertly consulted his shirt cuff. "For tree tousand fife hundred and sixty-two years," he said rapidly.
She looked at him disdainfully. "The doctor has been putting you up to that! It won't wash! I don't refer to your shirt cuff," she added with deep satire.
"Adorable one!" he broke out passionately, attempting to embrace her, "I have come to take you." Without moving, she touched a knob in the wall.A trap-door beyond him sank, and out of the bowels of the earthleaped three indescribable demons. Then, rising, she took a cake of chalk from the table and, drawing a mystic half circle on the floor, returned to the divan, lit a cigarette, and leaning comfortably back, said in a low, monotonous voice, "Advance one foot within that magic line, and on that head, although it wore a crown, I launch the curse of Rome.""I--only wanted to take you--with a kodak," he said, with a light laugh to conceal his confusion, as he produced the instrument from his coat-tail pocket.
"Not with that cheap box," she said, rising with magnificent disdain. "Come again with a decent instrument--and perhaps"-- Then, lightly humming in a pure contralto, "I've been photographed like this--I've been photographed like that," she summoned the slave to conduct him back, and vanished through a canvas screen, which nevertheless seemed to the dazed Chevalier to be the stony front of the pyramids.
V
"And you saw her?" said the doctor in French.
"Yes; but the three-thousand-year gag did not work! She spotted you, cher ami, on the instant. And she wouldn't let me take her with my kodak."The doctor looked grave. "I see," he mused thoughtfully. "You must have my camera, a larger one and more bulky perhaps to carry; but she will not object to that,--she who has stood for full lengths. I will give you some private instructions.""But, cher doctor, this previous-existence idea--at what do you arrive?" "There is much to say for it," said the doctor oracularly."It has survived in the belief of all ages.Who can tell?That some men in a previous existence may have been goats or apes," continued the doctor, looking at him curiously, "does not seem improbable!From the time of Pythagoras we have known that; but that the individual as an individual ego has been remanded or projected, has harked back or anticipated himself, is, we may say, with our powers of apperception,--that is, theperception that we are perceiving,-- is"--But the Chevalier had fled. "No matter," said the doctor, "I will see McFeckless." He did. He found him gloomy, distraught, baleful. Hefelt his pulse. "The mixture as before," he said briefly, "and a little innocent diversion. There is an Aunt Sally on the esplanade--two throws for a penny. It will do you good. Think no more of this woman! Listen,--I wish you well; your family have always been good patients of mine. Marry some good Scotch girl; I know one with fifty thousand pounds. Let the Princess go!""To him--never! I will marry her! Yet," he murmured softly to himself, "feefty thousand pun' is nae small sum. Aye! Not that I care for siller--but feefty thousand pun'! Eh, sirs!"VI
Dr. Haustus knew that the Chevalier had again visited the Princess, although he had kept the visit a secret,--and indeed was himself invisible for a day or two afterwards. At last the doctor's curiosity induced him to visit the Chevalier's apartment. Entering, he was surprised--even in that Land of Mystery--to find the room profoundly dark, smelling of Eastern drugs, and the Chevalier sitting before a large plate of glass which he was examining by the aid of a lurid ruby lamp,--the only light in the weird gloom.His face was pale and distraught, his locks were disheveled.
"Voila!" he said. "Mon Dieu! It is my third attempt. Always the same--hideous, monstrous, unearthly! It is she, and yet it is not she!"The doctor, professional man as he was and inured to such spectacles, was startled! The plate before him showed the Princess's face in all its beautiful contour, but only dimly veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the whole bony structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; even the graceful, swan-like neck showed the articulated vertebral column that supported it in all its hideous reality. The beautiful shoulders were there, dimly as in a dream--but beneath was the empty clavicle, the knotty joint, the hollow sternum, and the ribs of a skeleton half length!