Atlantida, Pierre Benoît [reading fiction .TXT] 📗

It was this sort of a night when what I am going to tell you now happened. Toward five o'clock the sky clouded over and a sense of the coming storm trembled in the stifling air.

I shall always remember it. It was the fifth of January, 1897.

King Hiram and Galé lay heavily on the matting of my room. Leaning on my elbows beside Tanit-Zerga in the rock-hewn window, I spied the advance tremors of lightning.

One by one they rose, streaking the now total darkness with their bluish stripes. But no burst of thunder followed. The storm did not attain the peaks of Ahaggar. It passed without breaking, leaving us in our gloomy bath of sweat.

"I am going to bed," said Tanit-Zerga.

I have said that her room was above mine. Its bay window was some thirty feet above that before which I lay.

She took Galé in her arms. But King Hiram would have none of it. Digging his four paws into the matting, he whined in anger and uneasiness.

"Leave him," I finally said to Tanit-Zerga. "For once he may sleep here."

So it was that this little beast incurred his large share of responsibility in the events which followed.

Left alone, I became lost in my reflections. The night was black. The whole mountain was shrouded in silence.

It took the louder and louder growls of the leopard to rouse me from my meditation.

King Hiram was braced against the door, digging at it with his drawn claws. He, who had refused to follow Tanit-Zerga a while ago, now wanted to go out. He was determined to go out.

"Be still," I said to him. "Enough of that. Lie down!"

I tried to pull him away from the door.

I succeeded only in getting a staggering blow from his paw.

Then I sat down on the divan.

My quiet was short. "Be honest with yourself," I said. "Since Morhange abandoned you, since the day when you saw Antinea, you have had only one idea. What good is it to beguile yourself with the stories of Tanit-Zerga, charming as they are? This leopard is a pretext, perhaps a guide. Oh, you know that mysterious things are going to happen tonight. How have you been able to keep from doing anything as long as this?"

Immediately I made a resolve.

"If I open the door," I thought, "King Hiram will leap down the corridor and I shall have great difficulty in following him. I must find some other way."

The shade of the window was worked by means of a small cord. I pulled it down. Then I tied it into a firm leash which I fastened to the metal collar of the leopard.

I half opened the door.

"There, now you can go. But quietly, quietly."

I had all the trouble in the world to curb the ardor of King Hiram who dragged me along the shadowy labyrinth of corridors. It was shortly before nine o'clock, and the rose-colored night lights were almost burned out in the niches. Now and then, we passed one which was casting its last flickers. What a labyrinth! I realized that from here on I would not recognize the way to her room. I could only follow the leopard.

At first furious, he gradually became used to towing me. He strained ahead, belly to the ground, with snuffs of joy.

Nothing is more like one black corridor than another black corridor. Doubt seized me. Suppose I should suddenly find myself in the baccarat room! But that was unjust to King Hiram. Barred too long from the dear presence, the good beast was taking me exactly where I wanted him to take me.

Suddenly, at a turn, the darkness ahead lifted. A rose window, faintly glimmering red and green, appeared before us.

The leopard stopped with a low growl before the door in which the rose window was cut.

I recognized it as the door through which the white Targa had led me the day after my arrival, when I had been set upon by King Hiram, when I had found myself in the presence of Antinea.

"We are much better friends to-day," I said, flattering him so that he would not give a dangerously loud growl.

I tried to open the door. The light, coming through the window, fell upon the floor, green and red.

A simple latch, which I turned. I shortened the leash to have better control of King Hiram who was getting nervous.

The great room where I had seen Antinea for the first time was completely dark. But the garden on which it gave shone under a clouded moon, in a sky weighted down with the storm which did not break. Not a breath of air. The lake gleamed like a sheet of pewter.

I seated myself on a cushion, holding the leopard firmly between my knees. He was purring with impatience. I was thinking. Not about my goal. For a long time that had been fixed. But about the means.

Then, I seemed to hear a distant murmur, a faint sound of voices.

King Hiram growled louder, struggled. I gave him a little more leash. He began to rub along the dark walls on the sides whence the voices seemed to come. I followed him, stumbling as quietly as I could among the scattered cushions.

My eyes, become accustomed to the darkness, could see the pyramid of cushions on which Antinea had first appeared to me.

Suddenly I stumbled. The leopard had stopped. I realized that I had stepped on his tail. Brave beast, he did not make a sound.

Groping along the wall, I felt a second door. Quietly, very quietly, I opened it as I had opened the preceding one. The leopard whimpered feebly.

"King Hiram," I murmured, "be quiet."

And I put my arms about his powerful neck.

I felt his warm wet tongue on my hands. His flanks quivered. He shook with happiness.

In front of us, lighted in the center, another room opened up. In the middle six men were squatting on the matting, playing dice and drinking coffee from tiny copper coffee cups with long stems.

They were the white Tuareg.

A lamp, hung from the ceiling, threw a circle of light over them. Everything outside that circle was in deep shadow.

The black faces, the copper cups, the white robes, the moving light and shadow, made a strange etching.

They played with a reserved dignity, announcing the throws in raucous voices.

Then, slowly, very slowly, I slipped the leash from the collar of the impatient little beast.

"Go, boy."

He leapt with a sharp yelp.

And what I had foreseen happened.

The first bound of King Hiram carried him into the midst of the white Tuareg, sowing confusion in the bodyguard. Another leap carried him into the shadow again. I made out vaguely the shaded opening of another corridor on the side of the room opposite where I was standing.

"There!" I thought.

The confusion in the room was indescribable, but noiseless. One realized the restraint which nearness to a great presence imposed upon the exasperated guards. The stakes and the dice-boxes had rolled in one direction, the copper cups, in the other.

Two of the Tuareg, doubled up with pain, were rubbing their ribs with low oaths.

I need not say that I profited by this silent confusion to glide into the room. I was now flattened against the wall of the second corridor, down which King Hiram had just disappeared.

At that moment a clear gong echoed in the silence. The trembling which seized the Tuareg assured me that I had chosen the right way.

One of the six men got up. He passed me and I fell in behind him. I was perfectly calm. My least movement was perfectly calculated.

"All that I risk here now," I said to myself, "is being led back politely to my room."

The Targa lifted a curtain. I followed on his heels into the chamber of Antinea.

The room was huge and at once well lighted and very dark. While the right half, where Antinea was, gleamed under shaded lamps, the left was dim.

Those who have penetrated into a Mussulman home know what a guignol is, a kind of square niche in the wall, four feet from the floor, its opening covered by a curtain. One mounts to it by wooden steps. I noticed such a guignol at my left. I crept into it. My pulses beat in the shadow. But I was calm, quite calm.

There I could see and hear everything.

I was in Antinea's chamber. There was nothing singular about the room, except the great luxury of the hangings. The ceiling was in shadow, but multicolored lanterns cast a vague and gentle light over gleaming stuffs and furs.

Antinea was stretched out on a lion's skin, smoking. A little silver tray and pitcher lay beside her. King Hiram was flattened out at her feet, licking them madly.

The Targa slave stood rigid before her, one hand on his heart, the other on his forehead, saluting.

Antinea spoke in a hard voice, without looking at the man.

"Why did you let the leopard pass? I told you that I wanted to be alone."

"He knocked us over, mistress," said the Targa humbly.

"The doors were not closed, then?"

The slave did not answer.

"Shall I take him away?" he asked.

And his eyes, fastened upon King Hiram who stared at him maliciously, expressed well enough his desire for a negative reply.

"Let him stay since he is here," said Antinea.

She tapped nervously on the little silver tray.

"What is the captain doing?" she asked.

"He dined a while ago and seemed to enjoy his food," the Targa answered.

"Has he said nothing?"

"Yes, he asked to see his companion, the other officer."

Antinea tapped the little tray still more rapidly.

"Did he say nothing else?"

"No, mistress," said the man.

A pallor overspread the Atlantide's little forehead.

"Go get him," she said brusquely.

Bowing, the Targa left the room.

I listened to this dialogue with great anxiety. Was this Morhange? Had he been faithful to me, after all? Had I suspected him unjustly? He had wanted to see me and been unable to!

My eyes never left Antinea's.

She was no longer the haughty, mocking princess of our first interview. She no longer wore the golden circlet on her forehead. Not a bracelet, not a ring. She was dressed only in a full flowing tunic. Her black hair, unbound, lay in masses of ebony over her slight shoulders and her bare arms.

Her beautiful eyes were deep circled. Her divine mouth drooped. I did not know whether I was glad or sorry to see this new quivering Cleopatra.

Flattened at her feet, King Hiram gazed submissively at her.

An immense orichalch mirror with golden reflections was set into the wall at the right. Suddenly she raised herself erect before it. I saw her nude.

A splendid and bitter sight!—A woman who