HASHEESH WISDOM

Originally appeared in Spicy Mystery Stories, Sept. 1936, under the pseudonym “Hamlin Daly.”

Three sots had just been jailed in Cairo:

“Let us break out!” stormed the drunkard, kicking the bars.

“Better sleep here till they let us out,” said the opium eater.

But the hasheesh smoker smiled craftily and said,

“Follow me, Brethren—we will crawl through the keyhole.”

—Wisdom of Ashraf Ali.

There might have been a fouler dive than Zorayda’s Garden, down in the Muski Quarter of Cairo, but thus far Burton had not found it. His pupils were dilated to great black discs, and his face was an aquiline, deeply lined mask, the color of seasoned leather, but his beard was curled and oiled, his turban was clean, and his white robe was spotless.

He drew again at the long-stemmed pipe whose bowl contained a little tobacco and a great deal of hasheesh. The acrid fumes made him cough, but they gave him uncommon wisdom. They made him master of time and space, made him see the point of jests far too subtle for ordinary comprehension.

They left him above fearing the hawk-nosed, white-bearded little man with eyes like black fires who said in a low, grim voice: “The Grand Master sent me from Bagdad to get the five thousand Egyptian pounds you have collected for the revolt against the King of Iraq.”

Long silence. Haste is of Satan. Burton had not the least idea what had happened to the money he had collected in behalf of the Ismailian Society.

Finally he spoke.

“The Peace upon you, uncle. I will have it for you after the sunrise prayer.”

The sour-faced little man stalked out to the narrow street, frowning and stroking his beard. He seemed to suspect.

Egypt was a hotbed of revolt. Collecting money from radical scholars eager to see the British-owned King of Iraq die of insomnia had been easy, until work began to interfere with hasheesh smoking.

Burton’s position was deadly. The Brotherhood of Ismailians, which he had joined in Bagdad, had a long arm that reached across the Moslem world, with dagger and strangler’s noose. What was just as bad, old Abbas had but to denounce Burton to the British rulers of Cairo.

Five thousand pounds, Egyptian, or else. Yet Burton had the answer: simple as crawling through a keyhole…

He rose, disdainfully stepped over the snoring sots, and with stately paces stalked down the narrow alley whose gloom even the blistering Egyptian sun could not dispel. When he reached Khan el Khalili, his dignified deliberation clove a path through the confused tangle of tourists and peddlers and donkey boys that thronged the bazaar.

They did not know that that hawk-faced, handsome man with the strangely glittering eyes was an Englishman whose business was overturning a throne.

Who else would have had the cunning to lounge around Zorayda’s place, masking his true quality by drinking smoke from sunrise to sunset? A lesser man would have acted the spy, furtive and cautious—but not Burton, the renegade.

A dozen courses were possible, but two seemed brilliant. Sell the house, and the costly trinkets he had bought for Salima, the exquisite Syrian girl whose sultry kisses and smoldering, heavy-lidded eyes had convinced him of the folly of squandering hard-earned money to overthrow a king. Thrones crumble from top heaviness anyway…

Better yet, denounce old Abbas to the secret police, collect a reward for his head, and carry the proceeds directly to the Grand Master as proof of the cunning that had outwitted the invisible network that enveloped Cairo.

That would be crawling through the keyhole!

At the coppersmith’s bazaar Burton turned into an alley. He wanted Salima to enjoy the laugh with him.

He wanted to surprise her. He moved with leopard stealth as the door silently closed behind him. She was not in the orange-clustered courtyard, nor was she singing to the somnolent strumming of her eight-stringed oudh.

Nevertheless, he heard enough to know that he had indeed surprised Salima…though not as he had intended.

Crouched in the angle of a pilaster, he peered between the bars and into the shadowed room.

Salima was a length of golden bronze loveliness in the shifting shadows. Her legs were amber-tinted modulations that tapered from the smoke-wisp gauze about her hips to the gazelle ankles encircled by ruby-clustered golden bands.

Her anklets were no longer joined by the slender golden chains that permitted her no more than an eight inch pace. Her legs were free, and luxuriously extended against the wine-colored Boukhara rug that covered the lounge.

The slender curve of her waist was not enclosed by the massive girdle whose trailing pendants should be caressing her sleek hips…and her haughty young breasts were poorly confined in their cupped silver guards. Her wanton lips were like pomegranate blossoms.

If Salima had anticipated Burton’s return, the gray-haired British major whose saber and spurs were carelessly scattered at the foot of the mastaba would not be so deliberate about extricating himself from her serpentine arms.

The insidious smoke distorts all sense of time. Burton did not know whether he had watched for seconds or months…nor even whom he saw…

Years ago, he recollected, he himself had worn a khaki uniform and a saber. That was before regimental funds, and a woman he did not know was a colonel’s wife had combined permanently to relieve him of military honors.

But that man with Salima could not be Burton. His hair was too gray.

No, Burton was not at the moment standing apart from his body and regarding it as another person would. Though that was very easy to do when you faithfully smoke hasheesh…

He drew a long, curved knife. But first, listen for a moment.

“Don’t be silly, darling,” Salima was murmuring. “He won’t be back for hours…”

The British officer, however, snapped his saber to his belt, and spoke of returning later that night.

He did not know that a robed man was following him toward the Ezbekiyah quarter. The sun had set, and gloom was invading the narrower alleys.

Burton ducked down a cross passage, looped around. Presently he was waiting in an archway near the gate through which the officer must pass.

The muezzin was calling true believers to prayer. The street was deserted. Moslems were in the mosque, or in their houses, kneeling as they bowed to holy Mecca. No one would see.

It was cunningly done, as prescribed by the Ismailian Brotherhood of Assassins. There was no outcry. Just a silvery flash that ended in a ruddy, red throat; a gurgling smothered by Burton’s free hand, a sodden chunk and a tinkle of scabbard and saber chains as the officer toppled into the dusky lurking place.

Presently he ceased shuddering. The red froth bubbling from his mouth subsided. Burton deliberately probed his tunic. It was easy, when you timed it right. It made no difference, but he wanted to know the major’s name.

He learned that, and more. He found a list of trouble-makers the secret police of Cairo were watching. Burton’s own was on the document.

As he thrust wallet and papers into his belt, he smiled at Salima’s futile treachery. He was entirely above wrath. The red testimony of his superiority lay at his feet.

Burton circled back toward his own quarter. There was scarcely any blood on his hands. He washed them at a shadowed fountain.

At the nearest mosque he paused to pray. It was the polite thing to do. Maybe it would help. Cairo was now doubly perilous. It would be dangerous to try to betray old Abbas. Better just take Salima’s jewels and steal from the city.

The major would not be missing until morning. Neither would Abbas strike before then. He did not want to kill the old fellow.

Somehow, Salima’s sweetness outweighed her treachery. He would slay no more. There were better uses for his last hours in Cairo.

Salima’s loveliness aroused a consuming hunger. He had left her that morning to go to Zorayda’s den, but it was now as if he had spent years in the lonely desert.

Salima had done him no wrong. She really could not. Burton was omniscient. The major’s body proved that.

When Salima ran across the court to meet Burton, she moved with mincing steps and sensuously swaying hips. Her ankles were again locked together with short golden chains, and her breasts in their small silver hemispheres were like the halves of oranges.

She was dizzyingly fragrant, and her body against him was like a silken serpent. Her lips were a consuming fire, and the entire supple length of her was a multitude of questing tongues of flame. When her breath sighed tremulously in his ear, all the mighty wisdom and subtle hasheesh knowledge that burned in Burton’s brain shifted, centering in a single desire.

Peril made her kisses sweeter, and hasheesh infinitely prolonged each exquisite moment into hours…that was one of the marvels of that potent herb which can be smoked, or eaten in confection, or infused into wine.

The last night in Cairo. Sorrow finally invaded the ecstasy of the moon-dappled room that faced the courtyard. Old Abbas would be disagreeable. And someone else from the rear major’s office would carry on.

But a caravan would clear the eastern gate of Cairo at dawn. It would go down the Red Sea coast. There would be pilgrims bound for Mecca, and traders for the Soudan. That was the next step: the great desert, or holy Mecca. The last would be especially appealing. Making the pilgrimage as his namesake had done, three quarters of a century ago…

Leaving Salima was intolerable. Tears dimmed Burton’s eyes as he drank in the exquisite beauty of that silk-veiled Syrian girl. Her dark eyes widened in wonder, not contempt. To express grief is not unmanly in Moslem lands.

“You are distracted, beloved,” she murmured. “What is wrong?”

“I am looking into the future,” said Burton. “I see everything. I know everything. Even that you and I part at dawn. That there will be no more love beneath the orange tree by moon, no more kisses when the moonbeams seek the fountain mist. That is over, and I go out on the roads of Allah.”

She was silent. Her eyes shifted. She stared at his sandals.

An inner voice warned Burton. A thin whisper spoke to his mind’s ear: “She sees the blood stains. She knows you have slain someone.”

When her eyes rose, they alarmed him.

“Let me go with you,” she finally said.

Burton knew that she was dissimulating. She was too cunning to accuse him. She was waiting for him to fall asleep from drinking wine mingled with hasheesh. Then she expected to tell the major.

He laughed immoderately.

“By Allah, we two will go!” he said.

“That is good.” Salima’s eyes were bright again. “I saw an old man in the bazaar. Twice these past two days. An evil-faced old man with a long beard and cruel eyes. He looked at me. I am afraid.”

“Perhaps I should slay the old man first,” pondered Burton.

He peeled an orange, then cast it aside. Its acid juice would cut the hasheesh fumes. It would rob him of the wisdom he needed.

Salima was wearing only a few of her jewels. None of them were the costly gifts he had brought her with money won by betraying his trust. For a moment his blood was a bitterness. For years now he had been betraying trusts for the sake of some woman…

Regimental funds…corporation funds…and now the money of a society of Ismailian assassins who planned to overthrow a king. For the first time, the wisdom of hasheesh let Burton see how evil his life had been.

“But it was unintentional,” he said to the shrilly fluting voice that piped in his ear. He sharply looked up, but saw that Salima’s expression had not changed. She could not have heard.

Yet she might listen to the debate that Burton was now carrying on as his lips planned with her for the flight in the morning. This was a new gift, being able to converse with two persons at once. He decided that it would be safer if he answered the unseen speaker in…well, Tamil—a language Salima could not understand.

“She is hiding those pearls,” said the presence that he could now feel beside him. Soon he would also be able to see. “Better get them…you can trick her…she will not know…”

So Burton listened as he planned with Salima, who still believed he would take her with him to holy Mecca.

She poured more wine, but sipped very daintily. The great wisdom told him she was waiting for him to become dead drunk. But she underestimated him. He could drain the Nile if it flowed with wine, and still keep his head.

“Sing for me, Salima,” he commanded.

Her chattering was becoming intolerable. It was blocking out the voice of wisdom, but music would not.

She set aside the wine flagon, picked up her eight-stringed oudh, and plucked it with a turkey-quill plectrum.

Zabiyat il unsi ilaya

Badri qabl al fawat

Wunsheri tibun zakiyn

Mun ’ashah fi el hayat…

Her song was an ecstasy that stabbed him like many knifes: “Come to me, O Gazelle, before I die…” .”

Burton steeled himself against that heart-searing beauty, fumbled in his girdle, and found a large packet of bank notes. He had forgotten them, that afternoon. The faithful in Cairo had given him a heavy payment. Then the great wisdom spoke, and he slumped back against the cushions, mouth agape and snoring…

Presently Salima ceased singing. That made it easier. Burton was not unconscious. Hasheesh was making him unnaturally wakeful.

Through barely parted lashes he saw her eye the money, stealthily pluck it from the folds of his robe, glance warily over her shoulder, then bar the door.

That done, she tiptoed across the room and drew aside an embroidered hanging. Her fingers caressed the masonry. They lingered on a spot that had been polished by many finger tips. A panel of the wall yielded. She thrust the bank notes into the secret cavity, then closed the niche.

Burton now knew where she stored the jewels he had bought her while drunk with her loveliness and treacherous love.

Salima resumed her song, then ceased singing, and for a long time sat staring past him and into the moon-drenched patio.

“See, she is waiting for him,” whispered the hasheesh voice from the fourth dimension. “But do not laugh aloud…she does not suspect you have slain him… Burton, she is insulting you by that lack of suspicion. She does not think you are shrewd enough to sense treason. Now do as I say…”

He listened, until at last another voice cut in. This was one that rang sonorously from far above the housetops: the muezzin calling true believers to the midnight prayer.

“A-a-a-a-alahuakbar! Al-l-l-l-abu-u-u-a-a-a-akbar!” The cadence rose and fell like a mighty organ note. “God is most great! Come to prayer! Prayer is better than sleep…”

That was the signal. Burton bestirred himself, yawned, and said to Salima, “I go to pray. Then to rout out Saoud, the caravan master.”

She kissed him, and for a moment Burton relented. She was luxurious and supple and she clung like a caressing flame. Her eyes were great black opals, splendid with passion, shadowed with concern at his peril.

Peril that she had created, something reminded Burton as he broke away from that shapely form that pressed against him and shuddered with ecstasy.

Then in the cool of the Cairene night the hasheesh presence whispered anew: “Do not weaken, Burton. Treachery always wears a lovely mask. You are a man among men, but a fool among women…verily, this is your night of power when you shall plumb the depths and reach the heights of your destiny, its lord and master…yea, do this thing and redeem yourself from the folly that oppressed you these many years since that first woman with gilded hair persuaded you to borrow what you could not repay…”

So he presently found Saoud the red-bearded Afghan, squatting beside a charcoal fire in a serai near the mosque of el Hakim.

“Hakim” means wise and learned. It seemed appropriate, now. Wisdom is bitter, but Burton was smiling as he bargained for a position as camel driver in the caravan. He was too subtle to speak of the money he would have.

Beyond the Gate of Victory-by-the-Aid-of-God he saw the domes and tombs in the moonlight. He shuddered slightly as he thought of what would follow. But they were gracious and inviting, those ancient forgotten tombs. Still, God might give him victory.

A surge of devotion for a moment choked him, and he silently gave thanks for wisdom.

“Yet we may not march in the morning,” muttered Saoud the Afghan, spitting and stroking his red beard. “There was murder tonight. A dog of an infidel officer was neatly knifed. By God, who did that killing is my brother. It was well done, but the British will make the King’s police find the slayer, else they will bombard the city.”

He grinned hopefully for a moment, then added, “Wallah! Maybe there will be rioting and excellent looting!”

“It is with Allah,” said Burton, betraying not a sign of the alarm that burned into his hasheesh wisdom. “I go to attend to certain business. But I will be ready at dawn.”

“Allah give you strength,” wished the Afghan.

Burton needed it. He fingered the haft of his knife as he walked through what had become a whispering darkness. The shadows gossiped of a red-faced major lying in a pool of red. God curse the dog, why could his carcass not have lain concealed a few more hours?

As a special agent of the Ismailians he had thus far handled only cash, not knives. The novelty oppressed him. Then he smiled contentedly at the recollection of his skillful first slaying.

Soon he was again at his house. The hasheesh voice warned him to be stealthy.

“Maybe Salima is asleep…it will be easier…”

But she was neither asleep nor alone. She was talking to a man with an unpleasant voice: old Abbas, and a glimpse through the window confirmed it.

“He will be here soon,” she said. “It will be easy…”

Abbas, the crafty dog, had guessed! He had prepared a trap!

Burton consulted with the hasheesh presence. It answered: “You can not slay them both without raising an alarm. But there is a way…”

He withdrew from the court, creeping toward a narrow alley to await the impatience of Abbas. The traitors could not anticipate his cunning. Abbas would finally leave. But he would not go far.

“Unless the red flames of Jahannum are distant,” amended Burton, feeling the edge of his blade.

Before he reached cover, the darkness was alive with uniformed Egyptian police. He was surrounded by tall men whose harsh voices called his name, accused him of murder, leveled pistols and demanded surrender.

A knife was a vain thing, and they did not fire as he drew the weapon. They wanted him alive, to try him, convict him, avert the martial law that the British overlords would proclaim if vengeance were not exacted.

Yet Burton’s wits were more subtle than any policeman’s.

He reeled, chanting a bawdy song as the flashlights blazed into his face. The wildness of his voice shocked them for an instant. Their pistols wavered, and they muttered.

Burton leaped straight up, moving with incredible agility. Only hasheesh gave him the power. He seized the ledge of a low mashrabtyah window, and like an ape swung himself to its ornate, out-thrust molding.

The police gaped as he crouched on his perch, one backward reaching hand lacing fingers into the lattice work.

“Come down, Haroun,” they said, calling him by his assumed name, “else we fire.”

“Haste is of Satan,” he amiably agreed. “Beware—I drop—”

But he did not drop. His muscles, exquisitely timed in their surge of power, shot him out and to the fringe of the squad. His feet landed on brawny shoulders. Two policemen were bowled over. Pistols crackled. They belabored each other with feet and truncheons as they tried to seize the elusive creature that had attacked them like a leopard.

There was a roaring and a shouting, then a futile blasting of fire and lead as Burton broke clear and dashed down alleys that no detail of special police could ever thread.

The pursuit was deflected, abruptly, unaccountably. Then Burton laughed as he understood. Abbas, alarmed by the raid, had burst out into the street, and they were pursuing him!

Just a glimpse of white robes and white beard, just one yell of terror that was swallowed by thundering pistols. Then a flash of Abbas pitching headlong, probing flashlights in an instant finding him.

Before the police could realize that they had killed Abbas by mistake, Burton was lost in an impenetrable tangle of passageways. He paused to take counsel of the companion who had not deserted him.

“This is wisdom,” said the voice. “They know you dare not return to your house. They are hunting you in the old city, at Zorayda’s place, at Selim’s. Therefore, get the jewels from the niche, and the rest will be easy. Do not go to holy Mecca. Go to Bagdad, and be the new king of Iraq. This night’s cunning proves you a king without a crown.”

That was wisdom. He boldly circled, doubled back, threading those narrow ways which no police from the Ezbekiyah could fathom. And in an hour or so he was back to his house, entering this time by a secret door opening from the rear.

Salima was alone.

“For a change,” a soft, bitter voice whispered. “She smiles in her sleep, knowing you can not escape the net. Maybe she does not even know that Abbas was killed. But that would make no difference. She has no heart.”

He deftly caressed the panel behind the drapery. The niche opened. There was no jewelry. He froze. Then he saw there were many packets of bank notes. She had sold his gifts.

His smile warped. All the better. He swept the packets and heavy envelopes into a bundle which he tied up with the drape. Before he left, he paused to look at the loveliness curled up on the mastaba.

Salima’s beauty was like a knife-thrust between his ribs. This was the last of the women who had led him to folly. He did not hate her, even though she had betrayed him to the police.

He might have known she had seen that blood-splash on his sandal. He carefully wiped it off. Then he knelt beside her. The half smile faded, and she stirred uneasily. Her conscience?

He bent to kiss her. The undulant, sweet curves that gleamed through the silken gauze were a memory to take to Iraq. That sense-stirring beauty made treachery a trifle.

But as she sensed his presence, stirred sleepily, blinked unfocused eyes, the hasheesh companion was whispering in soft venom:

“Oh fool and descended of fools, you forgive this? Until the end of your days, some woman will trick you of your senses, and you will be king of beggars, not a king in Iraq. The Ismailian master will mock you.

“And you will mock yourself, for the sake of all these who have kissed you to your doom…prove yourself, do not weaken—”

But Salima’s awakening brought recognition to her eyes. Her arms arose, closed about him.

“Oh—I thought—I feared—”

“Clever,” said the prodding voice from the side, as her lips fused to his. “Very clever. She feared. Feared you would escape—”

One arm drew Salima very close, until her young breasts rebelled against the pressure. Burton’s other hand found his knife. It was easy…but her shudder was not of passion… The blood that frothed to her lips was hot and salty on Burton’s tongue as that last kiss choked her outcry…

He finally let her slip from his arms. He wiped the blood from her mouth. He sheathed the dagger. Then he bowed very low, picked up his parcel of plunder, and stalked boldly into the night.

He was free. He knew that never again would any woman trick him. He had redeemed himself for all those follies.

The false dawn was graying. He knew better than to try to slip out through the Gate of Victory. He made a long loop into the citadel Saladin had built. He climbed the steep ascent, picked his way through the deserted gloom, then perilously climbed down, crevices in the ruined masonry giving him a hold. Soon he was at the foot of the Mokattam Hills, and on the way to the tomb-dotted wastes beyond.

He headed northward to intercept the caravan. If Saoud really was right, then he could lurk in the cemetery until the blockade was lifted.

But presently he heard the tinkle of bells, the grunt of camels, the cursing of the drivers. All was clear. He sat down in the doorway of a tomb and in the first light of the true dawn he scrutinized his plunder.

Money, of course. Thousands of reclaimed pounds. But more than that. Papers—not English, but Arabic. The script was large, formal. Straining his eyes, he read as he waited.

But he knew before he read. That was the great seal of the Ismailian grand master, on a letter addressing Salima, his “beloved sister.”

“This Haroun, the English renegade, is a persuasive talker, but an ass. Perhaps you can keep him from other women. Make him spend his collections on you, lest others dupe him…”

“Do not trust Haroun to blackmail that British major in the intelligence service. You and Abbas will handle that. That red-faced pig can not endure scandal—let Abbas trap him with you, and—”

He read no more, nor looked at any other papers. He knew now that Salima did not betray him. He remembered her words, “He will soon be back…”

She had meant the major, not Burton.

The camel bells were closer. Burton, known as Haroun the hasheesheen, sat erect in the door of the tomb. A red-bearded man mounted on a Barbary horse was reeling drunkenly in the saddle as he headed the caravan: Saoud, the Afghan.

The path was close to the tomb. His voice was thick but loud.

“By God,” he chuckled, “and again, by God! I have the price of Haroun’s head, yet Haroun escaped, may Allah prosper him! Blood on his shoes, wits in his head, he escaped. By Allah, there is no God but Allah!”

“Yea, brother,” hiccupped the Arab riding boot to boot with the Afghan, “He is wise. He is generous! Praised be his name!”

That was mockery and bitterness and frost; but what came from the voice beside Burton was infinitely worse: “Hear, and know that Fate freed you better than you could free yourself. This was the last of the women who beguiled you. You know now that you can not face the Grand Master, whose sister you slew in error.

“But those many thousand Egyptian pounds, and your cunning—”

Saoud the Afghan had other things to say; but they were not spoken. A squared rock that had fallen from the tomb fitted Burton’s hand and purpose. He hurled it, and it soared into the dawn.

Bone crunched. The Afghan toppled from his horse. There was an outcry, a stampeding, and a screech that rippled down the lines as the leaders of the caravan saw a tall form ducking out of a tomb and losing itself among other tombs.

If a lurking demon wants to brain a drunken Afghan, it is not sensible to interfere. The Holy Prophet doubtless sent the devil to punish the blasphemer. They praised Allah, and rode on.

Burton walked to Cairo.

“Fool,” whispered that vibrant voice, “go the other way. Catch up with the caravan. They will think you are a madman—one whose wits are with Allah. That you punished a blasphemer. They will think you a saint. It is better to be a saint than a king.”

But Burton, thinking of the girl whose blood had stained his lips, mocked the voice of wisdom, and stalked toward the Gate of Victory-by-the-Aid-of-God. His face was no longer drawn. His eyes were no longer uncanny. He seemed much younger in the morning glow, and there was contentment for the first time in years.

He bore a straight course. He passed his house without a glance to the side. He entered the Ezbekiyah, where the British had their headquarters.

Presently he answered the challenge of sentries. The strange gleam in his eyes gave him entrance to a house where no native could enter at that or any other hour.

“Sir,” he reported, “Captain Harvey Burton, of His Majesty’s Own Seventh Bengal Fusileers reports after twelve years, five months, eleven days absence without leave to face charges of desertion, embezzlement, and—Sir, you might as well add murder to that. Major Harris, and there’s a girl—”

The colonel gaped, choked, blinked, and called the guard.

“The blighter’s balmy! Blast it, if this happens again—who—”

He eyed Burton for a long moment. He began to remember and understand. Then he said, “It’s better this way, captain. You couldn’t have escaped, you know.”

But Burton’s smile mocked hasheesh wisdom, not the colonel’s ignorance.