THE LURE OF STRANGE GODS

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 5, 1 November 1924, Page 19

THE LURE OF STRANGE GODS

By EDGAR WALLACE

A Fine Story by a Prince of Story Tellers

FROM CAMDEN TOWN TO CAIRO, AND EVEN TO JERUSALEM, MRS. SOPHIA BAFFLESTON JOURNEYED TO FOUND A NEW RELIGION. SHE WOULD SIT FOR HOURS CURSING HER ONE ENEMY, A CHEATING BUTCHER, AND HOW THESE CURSES CAME HOME TO ROOST IS RELATED IN THESE PAGES

TWEEN- Camden Town and the Gate of Damascus is a gulf which may not be stated in terms of geographical miles. The East and the West are largely incompatibles. The commonplace of either cannot meet and produce by their admixture a third commonplace, as this story proves, if proof is needed. El Durr, the carpenter, said his prayers hurriedly, and finished as soon as was decent, glancing, as was the custom, to right and to left with quick jerks of his head, a reverence due to the two invisible angels who stand at a man’s side, marking off his pious performances. El Durr, some men said, was of the heretical Melawitch, who live up against Beth-Labon —others that he was an Ismailian. This much all knew, that he was a pock-marked young man, who was master of a carpenter’s shop in El Kuds (Jerusalem), that he was a traveller, and that he invariably bolted his prayers at an enormous rate. Now he came out of the Mosque of Sidna Omar, looking across the Murista a little fearfully, as though he were apprehensive of meeting someone, shuffled hastily across the broad space and went quickly down the street of Dabbaghin as one pursued. In course of time, and by a circuitous route, lie came to the Gate of Sion, and, halting irresolutely before the forbidding door of a large house by the gate, he passed through, crossed a courtyard, and, coming to another door, he knocked. “Who?” asked a voice sharply. “It is I, Durr,” lie answered, and was bidden to enter. He waited the conventional minute to allow the women to withdraw, if so be they were in the reception room, then he went in. The great reception room, divaned on three sides, was empty save for the tall man who rose and came to meet him. “Peace on this house,” said El Durr. “And upon you peace,” responded the tall man. He was young, clean-shaven, and unusually fair. His face had all the quality of the ascetic, his eyes were grey, and under the plain red tarboosh the hair, close-clipped, was brown. This was he who was called Yisma Effendi— be vulgarly translated “Sir Listener” British by birth and thought, of Arab appearance, and most certainly

the confidential spy of the six nations in the days before war made mudheads of some, gold sacks of others, and of one in particular a dunghill where a foolish cock crowed a victory which was not entirely his own. “Take it,” said the carpenter, and with his two hands laid on the waiting palm of the other a fold of thin paper. Yisma read quickly and nodded. “Who saw you take this at the mosque?” he asked. “None, Yisma,” said the man eagerly, “for I knelt close to the young man praying, and presently, as I prostrated at The merciful/ he pushed this along the floor.” Yisma paced the apartment in thought. “Tewfik Effendi — he within the city?” he asked. Durr spat on the ground. “May he roast in hell for a policeman,” he said, “but he is not. This morning I saw him go out .of the Jaffa Gate and take the road to Bethlehem. Now I say to you, Effendi, that here in Jerusalem there is no man more fit to die than he, for he is an oppressor of the poor and a taker of bribes. I know a certain place near by the tomb of Rachael ” “Where he buries his money, El Durr,” said the other drily. “All men know this in Jerusalem. Yet none has seen him bury it or take' it up again. Now I think you are from Hebron, and they who dwell near Hebron are, by all accounts, great thieves; tell . me, brother, why you have not found this treasure?” The face of Durr twisted in a grin. “Ashallah!” he said piously. “I am an honest man. Yisma looked at the note again, a few scrawled words in Arabic, and, despite the mysteriousness of their passage from writer to reader, and for all the furtive

passing from hand to hand, wholly unimportant. For it dealt with a certain sordid business at the Armenian Monastery which was remote from the realms of high politics in which Yisma moved. Yet he must speak significantly of Tewfik Effendi, that the dramatic instinct of his servants should he whetted, for his agents worked best under the illusion that, through their activities, the freedom and lives of their fellows were endangered. Durr lingered on, though he had been dismissed, and his employer did not hurry him. Momentous news came at the tail of such interviews as this. That is the way of the Orient. “Yisma, you are as a father to those who serve you, and your wisdom is greater than Suliman’s. You know that I am a great traveller, and that I was educated in the English fashion by the blessed fathers of St. Francis, and can speak your language and pray correctly in your churches.” Yisma smiled faintly. “I know that you neglect many religions, Durr, also that you speak my tongue.” Durr twiddled his bare toes uncomfortably. “I go by Joppa in three days,” he said a little incoherently. “I have a friend who lives in a beautiful house in London it is in a pretty place called Camden Town, and he makes magic and sees the future and is growing very rich. He has written to me asking that I go to him, for he needs a priest of Osiris.” “Osiris?” said the startled Yisma. “0 man, is this a new religion?” “It is a magic of Egypt,” said Durr smugly, “in which I am proficient. And Yisma, El Kuds has nothing for me —it is full of fleas and piastres, and what is a Turkish piastre? I work from sun up to sun-down, hewing wood with the sweat of my body, and at the end I have two silver coins to jingle. Let me go, Yisma Effendi.” “Go in peace,” said Yisma, “but this remember. It is written that he who serves new gods must first He immortal. I have a feeling that this will end badly for you, Durr the Carpenter. Go!” Durr grinned and made his salaam , for he saw nothing that was deadly in Camden Town. He had smelt the cold cities of the north and found them good, and

when a man of the hot lands is so perverted that he prefers the drab grubbiness of Camden Town to a cool, flat stone in the shadow of Sidna Omar, his perversion is beyond remedy. So Durr went northward, travelling cheaply—it is possible to go from Jerusalem to the East India Docks for thirty-nine shillings if you know the ropes. Bayham Street, Camden Town, is not exactly beautiful, nor was the stuccoed house in which dwelt Ahmed Hafiz, 8.A., the finest example of Bayham Street architecture. Ahmed Hafiz, 8.A., was both a teacher and a student. He was a teacher of Oriental languages and a student of the occult. That branch of occultism which he most earnestly studied was the mysterious workings of the feminine mind. He had sent urgently for Durr

(they had been acquainted in his early student days, when Durr, a donkey-boy of Egypt, had been brought to England by an eccentric philanthropist who had ideas of educating the native) because Durr represented a new source of income. The reason for the urgency of his call to Jerusalem was Mrs. Sophia Baffleston. Mrs. Baffleston was the widow of a builder, and she lived in Allentyre Square, and had servants and cats and canaries, window-boxes and the other appurtenances and appendages of the well-to-do. She was rich but cautious. She outraged Ahmed’s holiest emotions by beating him down in the matter of fees, and even for the private seances she arranged in her own Victorian drawing-room she deducted five shillings from the agreed honorarium, because the seance had lasted half an hour less than the stipulated period. He had gazed into crystals and had seen dark men and fair men; he had warned her of a fair woman who was plotting against her (thereby securing the instant dismissal of a perfectly innocent cook), and had emphasised the tender influences of a dark but educated man who secretly adored her; and the net result of his soul’s perspiring was (so his books said) the sum of £l2 7s. 6d., which covered the activities of eighteen months. It was a chance word, spoken at the end of a long and, to Ahmed, boring seance, that put him on the track of easy money. For the first time since their acquaintance, Mrs. Sophia Baffleston betrayed her romantic secret, and Ahmed was instantly alert. “Osiris, lady? Yes, the great cult still lives. But it is a mystery into which I could not lead you. The priests are few and moneys must be paid.” He eyed her speculatively, but she did not seem pained. Rather her large face was shining, and in her faded eyes was a

light which Ahmed had hoped to see when he had talked of adoring, dark men. “Much money,” he said. “I have a friend who is a priest of the Son of Seb, and it may be possible to initiate you even to make you a priestess.” That was it! She was exalted, trembling, bade him stay whilst she brought books that she had read. Rider Haggard’s “Cleopatra” was one; she was word perfect, could quote grisly incantations and describe dark and terrible ceremonies. Ahmed went home thinking in thousands, and after considerable cogitation wrote a letter which he addressed to “Mahmut El Durr, a carpenter who lives in a small house near the Gate of Damascus, opposite the School of the Jews in El Kuds.” It was a long letter, mainly about Osiris, the Son of Seb and of Nut, the Giver of Justice in Hell. Mrs. Baffleston had an admirer, who, like her late husband, was in the building trade, but, unlike her late husband, lived everlastingly on the verge of bankruptcy. He was a large, red-faced man with a leer, and his name was Harry Borker. Osiris was a name outside his knowledge. If he had been told Osiris was a giver of judgment in the nether regions, he would have thought it was a fancy name for the Official Receiver. On the day of Ahmed’s discovery he called upon the lady of his choice, and she tolerated him, her mind being so occupied with ecstatic possibilities that he was one with the wall-paper, “Sophia, don’t you think it’s about time you gave up this fortune-telling business?” he pleaded. “It makes me jealous to see that skinny nigger popping in and out as if he owned the place. You’re young; in a manner of speaking, you’re attractive. I always say there’s many a good tune plaved on an old fiddle.” “0 Set, slayer of my spouse! I am Isis, his beloved, and Horus my son shall slay thee murmured Mrs. Baffleston. “Good Heavens!” said the alarmed Mr. Borker. “What are you talking about, Sophia? I never laid my hands on your old man. And you ain’t got a son called Horace!” Mrs. Baffleston, dimly aware of his

presence, pointed a. fat and glittering finger to the door. “To thy hell!” she said dreamily. .Mr. Borker went. In the months that followed, the handsome bank balance of Mrs. Bafflestone seemed more and more remote. She was no longer accessible. Every afternoon at two o’clock she left the house, entered her small Runhard (in those days a very classy car) and drove to Bayham Street, where she was invariably met at the door

of Ahmed’s house by a young man of Eastern origin, whose pock-marked face was one the watchful Mr. Borker grew to know and hate. Then one day he learnt that his ladylove had given her servants notice, and had placed her house and furniture, her Runhard, broughams and high-stepping horses in the hands of an auctioneer. The discovery coincided with the arrival of a writ in bankruptcy, which determined Mr. Borker in his plans for the future. Ahmed Hafiz learnt the news with no less of a shock. “What is this, Durr?” he asked one day when the novice had departed. “What does this old woman intend?” “I know nothing,” said Durr dreamily, “I am a mere slave of Osiris, and She is the Lord’s Priestess.”

“Stuff and rubbish!” When Ahmed was annoyed he expressed himself in English. “For three months you have, on your word of honour as a gentleman, promised to get me five hundred pounds from this old she-ox. By Jove! I have only had twenty-two pounds!” , “Have no fear, Ahmed, she will give you riches beyond the dreams of Suliman,” soothed El Durr, and would have changed the subject if Ahmed had permitted. “This jiggery-pokery will not do for me!” he said violently. “I have brought you here and given you food and expensive clothes, and now you are going to do dirty work against me! Why is this unprintable woman selling her house? Where does she skip? Ah! That brings chagrin to your face, donkey-boy! You are going to take her away! By gad! That’s disgusting! After all the trouble I’ve had with the fat one, and a donkeyboy comes and kidnaps her under my very nostrils! Who made you Osiris? Who gave you special speeches and bought incense at nine-and-six a packet?” It cost El Durr eighty-five pounds to appease the just wrath of his patron. He could well afford that sum, for he had hidden in his shirt the greater part of the five hundred pounds which an infatuated priestess of Osiris had given him. Mrs. Baffleston came East as plain Mrs. Baffleston in a P. and 0. steamer. None of her fellow-passengers guessed the tremendous mystery behind that plain, stout and stumpy lady who went ashore at Alexandria. She saw the Nile under the most favourable conditions; the sun was setting and the river was alive with craft. Mrs. Baffleston regarded her domain majestically, and thought she would go on to Thebes by a Cook’s excursion that was leaving the following morning, particulars of which she had studied in the quiet of her room at the hotel.

“Priestess,” pleaded El Durr almost pathetically, “you must not go to Thebes. I have had word from the high priest that you must take your place in El Kuds, where I have a fine house for you.” Durr was thinking of the expense. Contrary to his general expectations, the priestess of Osiris had not handed to him the money she had received from the sale of her house and furniture, even though he had come to her in a state of agitation and ecstasy, and had told her of a vision which he had had, wherein the great god himself, supported by his divine relatives,

had instructed her to place her confidence and her bank-roll in the hands of her faithful disciple. What was more annoying, he did not even know where she kept the money, and, although he had conducted a patient and thorough investigation of her haggage, his labours had been profitless. In Jerusalem, populated with his thieving relatives, it would be a fairly simple matter to make the transfer. , Mrs. Baffleston was not mad—madder than any other enthusiastic sectarian. The dream of her life was realised; she was saturated in the mysticism of a cult which she imperfectly understood; she was swayed by emotions which were both pleasant and comforting; but although her faith in herself had been considerably augmented, her trust in humanity had undergone no perceptible change. Durr was in a dilemma. The advent of a priest of Osiris into the chaotic welter of religions which distinguish the life of Jerusalem, would attract very little notice. The arrival of an English woman, and her appearance in an Eastern household, would reach the ears of the authorities. More undesirable, Yisma Effendi, who heard all things, would require an explanation. One afternoon there arrived by the train from Joppa a veiled woman, to all appearances very much like a score of other veiled women, except that she was unusually stout and short, and wore jewels on her bare hands, which induced daydreams in many a Mussulman’s heart. Durr had already taken a house which had the advantage of being fairly remote from the - establishment over , which Yisma Effendi presided; a coat of blue-wash and a few mystic designs transferred a big sitting-room into a temple. And here, for at least a month, she practised mystic rites, burnt incense and joss-sticks, invoked Osiris and Isis and, extending her fat palms, solemnly blasted and withered her enemies. She had no enemy but a Camden Town butcher, with whom she had once engaged in a law action. Him she blasted three times a week with great

ruthlessness. Durr, pursuing his own mystic studies, discovered that she kept her money in her boots. One night there was some slight trouble on the Jaffa Road over a question of lamps. As you should know, the Greeks might hang five lamps in the Angels’ Chapel of the Church of the Sepulchre, four might be burnt by the Armenians and one by the Copts. This question of burning lamps in sacred places is a very strenuous one—did not the Greeks pay 10,000 piastres for the right of burning so much as a single candle over a certain holy stone? —and it became a frenzied casu< belli on a night in May when the rumour spread that the Copts had received a faculty for adding another lamp to the one authorised. And there was a free fight which brought out a company of infantry and all Tewfik Effendi’s available police. When order was restored the police discovered a man lying in the middle of the road, stabbed to the heart. He was evidently a tourist and English, which made the matter more scandalous, for he could not possibly have been interested in the question of lamps. Tewfik Effendi, a trifle too stout for his office, came to the house near the Gate and had an audience of Yisma Effendi. “By the prophet, I know nothing of —nor did I see the Englishman until after we had driven the Copts to their quarters,” spluttered the Chief of Police. “Now, remember this, 0 Yisma Effendi, that none of my men drew steel, for we are used to such troubles in Jerusalem.” (He called the city “El Kuds,” which is the Arabic name, and means the Sanctuary.) i Yisma, in his long silk dressing-gown, sat by his desk examining the bloodstained papers which the Chief of Police had brought. They were business letters, mainly, and a Cook’s tourist ticket. “Did none see this man before the fight?” asked Yisma. “I saw him,” said Tewfik impressively, “He was in the streetthis I saw before the light went and before I summoned my police. He was making strange signs to someone at the window of a, house.” Yisma. saw the body later, a stout, florid Englishman, evidently of the middle classes, not an unusual type. Strangely enough, his clothes had not been searched for money, for in his hip pocket was some £BO in English bank notes. He had been killed instantaneously by a quick knife-thrust through the heart, and there was still on his face that look of half-amused, half-distressed surprise which is to be found in such cases. There was nothing to do save to summon the British Consul and the English doctorand that had already been done. Yisma went back to his house before

daybreak, with no other thought than that a very unfortunate accident had occurred to a too adventurous Englishman, who, from curiosity, had sought to investigate a religious riot at first hand. That night came a wire from London: “Dead man’s full name, Harry Borker, fugitive bankrupt. Remit any assets for benefit of creditors.” “Poor devil,” said Yisma. “I wonder what brought him to Jerusalem?” Yisma Effendihe had almost forgotten what his name looked like in Eng—had a network of spies throughout

Palestine and .even beyond. In Damascus and Cairo, to name extremes of the geographic pole, were men who looked and listened and told all that they saw and heard into his private ear. Being, as he was, the faithful servant of several governments, who employed him to watch the beginnings of creeds and maintain a vigilant supervision of all miracles, his time was too fully occupied to worry overmuch about this regrettable incident, which was rather within the province of the British Consul and Tewfik’s ragamuffins than his. Although he had given the greater part of a night to his investigations, the matter was put. out of his mind when Yosef, his table-man, brought him his breakfast in the morning. “God give you a happy day/’ said Yosef conventionally. “And give you fortune,” retorted the polite Yisma. Yosef set the coffee, fussed around putting plates and knives and fruit in position, breathed on an apple and polished it on his sleeve (Yisma noted the apple carefully— could never get Yosef out of this habit) and waited, knowing that there was news. “In the bazaars they say that the Englishman who was killed sought to ravish the harem of Bayhum Effendi.” “Who is this Bayhum Effendi?” asked Yisma, to whom the name was new. “He is a rich merchant who lives here. Some say that he is one man and some another. There is a talk that he is Durr the Carpenter, grown rich.” Yisma smiled. “Durr is in England serving new gods,” he said. “The bazaar talks, to drown talk. In what cafe does this story run?” “In all,” was the prompt reply. “Bayhum Effendi has a wife who is fairer than snow upon the great hills of Judea. This man came to take her away, and by Bayhum’s order he was killed by a man from Gaza named El Khauwan, the deceitful. He has now gone out of the city to his own home, having been well paid. Yisma, he has a twisted nose.” Yisma, who accounted no gossip too light for study, sent a party of horsemen (Continued on page 39)