“Skull-Face” chapters 7 and 8 by Robert E. Howard (in English)

Chapter 7. The Man of the Skull

"What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?"

   Blake

A while after my beautiful and mysterious visitor had left, I sat in meditation. I believed that I had at last stumbled onto an explanation of a part of the enigma, at any rate. This was the conclusion I had reached: Yun Shatu, the opium lord, was simply the agent or servant of some organization or individual whose work was on a far larger scale than merely supplying dope addicts in the Temple of Dreams. This man or these men needed co-workers among all classes of people; in other words, I was being let in with a group of opium smugglers on a gigantic scale. Gordon no doubt had been investigating the case, and his presence alone showed that it was no ordinary one, for I knew that he held a high position with the English government, though just what, I did not know.

            Opium or not, I determined to carry out my obligation to the Master. My moral sense had been blunted by the dark ways I had traveled, and the thought of despicable crime did not enter my head. I was indeed hardened. More, the mere debt of gratitude was increased a thousand-fold by the thought of the girl. To the Master I owed it that I was able to stand up on my feet and look into her clear eyes as a man should. So if he wished my services as a smuggler of dope, he should have them. No doubt I was to impersonate some man so high in

governmental esteem that the usual actions of the customs officers would be deemed unnecessary; was I to bring some rare dream-producer into England?

            These thoughts were in my mind as I went downstairs, but ever back of them hovered other and more alluring suppositions - what was the reason for the girl, here in this vile dive - a rose in a garbage-heap - and who was she?

            As I entered the outer bar, Hassim came in, his brows set in a dark scowl of anger, and, I believed, fear. He carried a newspaper in his hand, folded.

            "I told you to wait in opium room," he snarled.

            "You were gone so long that I went up to my room. Have you the ticket?"

            He merely grunted and pushed on past me into the opium room, and standing at the door I saw him cross the floor and disappear into the rear room. I stood there, my bewilderment increasing. For as Hassim had brushed past me, I had noted an item on the face of the paper, against which his black thumb was tightly pressed as if to mark that special column of news.

            And with the unnatural celerity of action and judgment which seemed to be mine those days, I had in that fleeting instant read:

           

 *African Special Commissioner Found Murdered!*

            *The body of Major Fairlan Morley was yesterday discovered in a rotting ship's hold at Bordeaux...*

No more I saw of the details, but that alone was enough to make me think! The affair seemed to be taking on an ugly aspect. Yet -

            Another day passed. To my inquiries, Hassim snarled that the plans had been changed and I was not to go to France. Then, late in the evening, he came to bid me once more to the room of mystery.

            I stood before the lacquer screen, the yellow smoke acrid in my nostrils, the woven dragons writhing along the tapestries, the palm trees rearing thick and oppressive.

            "A change has come in our plans," said the hidden voice. "You will not sail as was decided before. But I have other work that you may do. Mayhap this will be more to your type of usefulness, for I admit you have somewhat disappointed me in regard to subtlety. You interfered the other day in such manner as will no doubt cause me great inconvenience in the future."

            I said nothing, but a feeling of resentment began to stir in me.

            "Even after the assurance of one of my most trusted servants," the toneless voice continued, with no mark of any emotion save a slightly rising note, "you insisted on releasing my most deadly enemy. Be more circumspect in the future."

            "I saved your life!" I said angrily.

            "And for that reason alone I overlook your mistake--this time!"

            A slow fury suddenly surged up in me.

            "This time! Make the best of it this time, for I assure you there will be no next time. I owe you a greater debt than I can ever hope to pay, but that does not make me your slave. I have saved your life – the debt is as near paid as a man can pay it. Go your way and I go mine!"

            A low, hideous laugh answered me, like a reptilian hiss.

            "You fool! You will pay with your whole life's toil! You say you are not my slave? I say you are - just as black Hassim there beside you is my slave - just as the girl Zuleika is my slave, who has bewitched you with her beauty."

            These words sent a wave of hot blood to my brain and I was conscious of a flood of fury which completely engulfed my reason for a second. Just as all my moods and senses seemed sharpened and exaggerated those days, so now this burst of rage transcended every moment of anger I had ever had before.

            "Hell's fiends!" I shrieked. "You devil - who are you and what is your hold on me? I'll see you or die!"

            Hassim sprang at me, but I hurled him backward and with one stride reached the screen and flung it aside with an incredible effort of strength. Then I shrank back, hands outflung, shrieking. A tall, gaunt figure stood before me, a figure arrayed grotesquely in a silk

brocaded gown which fell to the floor.

            From the sleeves of this gown protruded hands which filled me with crawling horror - long, predatory hands, with thin bony fingers and curved talons - withered skin of a parchment brownish-yellow, like the hands of a man long dead.

            The hands--but, oh God, the face! A skull to which no vestige of flesh seemed to remain but on which taut brownish-yellow skin grew fast, etching out every detail of that terrible death's-head. The forehead was high and in a way magnificent, but the head was curiously narrow through the temples, and from under penthouse brows great eyes glimmered like pools of yellow fire. The nose was high-bridged and very thin; the mouth was a mere colorless gash between thin, cruel lips. A long, bony neck supported this frightful vision and completed the effect of a reptilian demon from some medieval hell.

            I was face to face with the skull-faced man of my dreams!

Chapter 8. Black Wisdom

_"By thought a crawling ruin,_

By life a leaping mire.

By a broken heart in the breast of the world

_And the end of the world's desire."_

Chesterton

The terrible spectacle drove for the instant all thought of rebellion from my mind. My very blood froze in my veins and I stood motionless. I heard Hassim laugh grimly behind me. The eyes in the cadaverous face blazed fiendishly at me and I blanched from the concentrated satanic fury in them.

            Then the horror laughed sibilantly.

            "I do you a great honor, Mr. Costigan; among a very few, even of my own servants, you may say that you saw my face and lived. I think you will be more useful to me living than dead."

            I was silent, completely unnerved. It was difficult to believe that this man lived, for his appearance certainly belied the thought. He seemed horribly like a mummy. Yet his lips moved when he spoke and his eyes flamed with hideous life.

            "You will do as I say," he said abruptly, and his voice had taken on a note of command. "You doubtless know, or know of, Sir Haldred Frenton?"

            "Yes."

            Every man of culture in Europe and America was familiar with the travel books of Sir Haldred Frenton, author and soldier of fortune.

            "You will go to Sir Haldred's estate tonight -"

            "Yes?"

            _"And kill him!"_

            I staggered, literally. This order was incredible - unspeakable! I had sunk low, low enough to smuggle opium, but to deliberately murder a man I had never seen, a man noted for his kindly deeds! That was too monstrous even to contemplate.

            "You do not refuse?"

            The tone was as loathly and as mocking as the hiss of a serpent.

            "Refuse?" I screamed, finding my voice at last. "Refuse? You incarnate devil! Of course I refuse! You -"

            Something in the cold assurance of his manner halted me - froze me into apprehensive silence.

            "You fool!" he said calmly. "I broke the hashish chains - do you know how? Four minutes from now you will know and curse the day you were born! Have you not thought it strange, the swiftness of brain, the resilience of body - the brain that should be rusty and slow, the body that should be weak and sluggish from years of abuse? That blow that felled John Gordon - have you not wondered at its might? The ease with which you mastered Major Morley's records - have you not wondered at that? You fool, you are bound to me by chains of steel and blood and fire! I have kept you alive and sane - I alone. Each day the life-saving elixir has been given you in your wine. You could not live and keep your reason without it. And I and only I know its secret!"

            He glanced at a queer timepiece which stood on a table at his elbow.

            "This time I had Yun Shatu leave the elixir out - I anticipated rebellion. The time is near - ha, it strikes!"

            Something else he said, but I did not hear. I did not see, nor did I feel in the human sense of the word. I was writhing at his feet, screaming and gibbering in the flames of such hells as men have never dreamed of.

            Aye, I knew now! He had simply given me a dope so much stronger that it drowned the hashish. My unnatural ability was explainable now - I had simply been acting under the stimulus of something which combined all the hells in its makeup, which stimulated, something like heroin, but whose effect was unnoticed by the victim. What it was, I had no idea, nor did I believe anyone knew save that hellish being who stood watching me with grim amusement. But it had held my brain together, instilling into my system a need for it, and now my frightful craving tore my soul asunder.

            Never, in my moments of worst shell-shock or my moments of hashish-craving, have I ever experienced anything like that. I burned with the heat of a thousand hells and froze with an iciness that was colder than any ice, a hundred times. I swept down to the deepest pits

of torture and up to the highest crags of torment - a million yelling devils hemmed me in, shrieking and stabbing. Bone by bone, vein by vein, cell by cell I felt my body disintegrate and fly in bloody atoms all over the universe - and each separate cell was an entire system of

quivering, screaming nerves. And they gathered from far voids and reunited with a greater torment.

            Through the fiery bloody mists I heard my own voice screaming, a monotonous yammering. Then with distended eyes I saw a golden goblet, held by a claw-like hand, swim into view - a goblet filled with an amber liquid.

            With a bestial screech, I seized it with both hands, being dimly aware that the metal stem gave beneath my fingers, and brought the brim to my lips. I drank in frenzied haste, the liquid slopping down onto my breast.