" O Thou low moan of fainting maids, that art caught up in the strong sobs of Love I I adore Thee, Evoe ! I adore Thee, I A O ! "
That was it-her engine and my engine for the first time working together! All the accidents had disappeared. There was nothing but the unison of two rich racing rhythms.
You know how it is when you are flying-vou see a speck in the air. You can't tell by your eyes if it is your Brother Boche coming to pot you, or one of our own or one of the allied 'planes. But you can tell them apart, foe from friend, by the different beat of their engines. So one comes to apprehend a particular rhythm as sympathetic-another as hostile.
So here were Lou and I flying together beyond the bounds of eternity, side by side; her low, persistent throb in perfect second to my great galloping boom.
Things of this sort take place outside time and space. It is quite wrong to say that what happened in the taxi ever began or ended. What happened was that our attention was distracted from the eternal truth of this essential marriage of our souls by the chauffeur, who had stopped the taxi and opened the door.
" Here we are, sir," he said, with a grin.
Sir Peter Pendragon and Lou Lalcham automatically reappeared. Before all things, decorum!
The shock bit the incident deeply into my mind. I remember with the utmost distinctness paying the man off, and then being lost in absolute blank wonder as to how it happened that we were where we were. Who had given the address to the man, and where were we ?
I can only suppose that, consciously or subconsciously, Lou had done it, for she showed no embarrassment in pressing the electric bell. The door opened immediately. I was snowed under by an avalanche of crimson light that poured from a vast studio.
Lou's voice soared high and clear:
"O Thou scarlet dragon of flame, enmeshed in the web of a spider ! I adore Thee, Evoe ! I adore Thee, I A O ! "
A revulsion of feeling rushed over me like a storm for in the doorway, with Lou's arms round his neck, was the tall, black, sinister figure of King Lamus.
" I knew you wouldn't mind our dropping in, although it is so late," she was saying.
It would have been perfectly simple for him to acquiesce with a few conventional words. Instead, he was pontifical.
There are four gates to one palace ; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold ; lapis-lazuli and jasper are there ; and all rare scents ; jasmine and rose, and the emblems of death. Let him enter in turn or at once the four gates ; let him stand on the floor of the palace."
I was unfathornably angry. Why must the man always act like a cad or a clown ? But there was nothing to do but to accept the situation and walk in politely.
He shook hands with me formally, yet with greater intensity than is customary between well-bred strangers in England. And as he did so, he looked me straight in the face. His deadly inscrutable eyes burned their way clean through to the back of my brain and beyond. Yet his words were entirely out of keeping with his actions.
" What does the poet say ? " he said loftily-" Ratker a joke to fill tip on coke-or words to that effect, Sir Peter."
How in the devil's name did he know what I had been taking ?
" Men who know things have no right to go about the world," something said irritably inside myself. But something else obscurely answered it.
" That accounts for what the world has always done
-made martyrs of its pioneers."
I felt a little ashamed, to tell the truth ; but Lamus put me at my ease. He waved his hand towards a huge arm-chair covered with Persian tapestries. He gave me a cigarette and lighted it for me. He poured out a drink of Benedictine into a huge curved glass, and put it on a little table by my side. I disliked his easy hospitality as much as anything else. I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was a puppet in his hands.
There was only one other person in the room. On a settee covered with leopard skins lay one of the strangest women I had ever seen. She wore a white evening dress with pale yellow roses, and the same flowers were in her hair. She was a half-blood negress from North Africa.
" Miss Fatma Hallaj," said Lamus.
I rose and bowed. But the girl took no notice. She seemed in utter oblivion of sublunary matters. Her skin was of that deep, rich night-sky blue which only very vulgar eyes imagine to be black. The face was gross and sensual, but the brows wide and commanding.
There is no type of intellect so essentially aristocratic as the Egyptian when it happens to be of the rare right strain.
" Don't be offended," said Lamus, in a soft voice, " she includes us all in her sublime disdain."
Lou was sitting on the arm of the couch; her ivorywhite, long crooked fingers groping the dark girl's hair. Somehow or other I felt nauseated; I was uneasy, embarrassed. For the first time in my life I didn't know how to behave.
A thought popped into my mind: it was simply fatigue-I needn't bother about that.
As if in answer to my thought, Lou took a small cut-glass bottle with a gold-chased top from her pocket, unscrewed it and shook out some cocaine on the back of her hand. She flashed a provocative glance in my direction.
The studio suddenly filled with the reverberation of her chant :
" O Thou naked virgin of love, that art caught in a net of wild roses ! I adore Thee, Evoe ! I adore Thee, I A O! "
"Quite so," agreed King Lamus cheerfully. " You'll excuse me, I know, if I ask whether you have any great experience of the effects of cocaine."
Lou glowered at him. I preferred to meet him frankly. I deliberately put a large dose on the back of my hand and sniffed it up. Before I had finished, the effect had occurred. I felt myself any man's master.
" Well, as a matter of fact," I said superciliously, to-night's the first time I ever took it, and it strikes me as pretty good stuff."
Lamus smiled enigmatically.
" Ah, yes, what does the old poet say ? Milton, is it ?"
"Stab your demoniac smile to my brain, Soak me in cognac, love, and cocaine."
"How silly you are," cried Lou. " Cocaine wasn't invented in the time of Milton."
" Was that Milton's fault ? " retorted King Lamus. The inaptitude, the disconnectedness, of his thought was somehow disconcerting.
He turned his back on her and looked me straight in the face.
" It strikes you as pretty good stuff, Sir Peter," he said, " and so it is. I'll have a dose myself to show there's no ill-feeling."
He suited the action to the words.
I had to admit that the man began to intrigue me. What was his game ?
" I hear you're one of our best flying men, Sir Peter," he went on.
" I have flown a bit now and then," I admitted.
" Well, an aeroplane's a pretty good means of travel, but unless you're an expert, you're likely to make a pretty sticky finish."
"Thank you very much," I said, nettled at his tone. " As it happens, I'm a medical student."
" Oh, that's all right, then, of course."
He agreed with a courtesy which somehow cut deeper into my self-esteem than if lie had openly challenged my competence.
" In that case," he continued, " I hope to arouse your professional interest in a case of what I think you will agree is something approaching indiscretion. My little friend here arrived to-night, or rather last night, full up to the neck with morphia. Dissatisfied with results, she swallowed a large dose of Anbalonium Lewinii,