Antoinette, an hour later, was entirely herself.

"Oh, it's wonderful to be out of that awful garden," she said, and curled herself up in the depth of a large, upholstered chair. "And now that Monsieur le Médicin admits that I'm as good as new, you might satisfy my curiosity on a few points. How did you ever——"

She glanced up at Farrell, who had seated himself on the arm of her chair. He was not yet through convincing himself that Satan's Garden was a thing of the past, and insisted on keeping Antoinette within arm's reach.

"Suppose you ask Pierre," he said.

D'Artois laughed.

"After all, mon vieux, you were responsible. We found two bodies floating down the Nive. One of them wore—oh, very becomingly, I assure you!—a knife in his stomach. The Sûreté informed me. I identified the knife. It was one of mine, which you had taken from my collection to wear while disguised as Ibrahim the Afghan ruffian.

"'Alors,' said I, 'Ibrahim Khan has given good account of himself. Perhaps, but God forbid, his own body will follow. I assure you that we watched with anxiety. But no further signs. At low tide, however—you know, the Nive rises and falls with the tide, since we're so close to the sea—we found another body, mainly as the result of our continued close watch for yours. This one was wedged near the central of the seven bridges. We investigated, and found an uncharted drain of considerable diameter.

"'Mordieu,' said I to Monsieur the Prefect, 'if bodies came out, bodies can also go in.' We got diving-suits. The tide in the meanwhile rose, but we had the location well marked. We advanced up the drain until we came to a dead end. Even before we left the water we heard the clash and crackle of your skirmish——"

"Massacre, you mean," interpolated Farrell, grinning as much as his bandages permitted. "Not a second too soon."

"Eh bien, we shut our exhaust air-valves and thus rose to the surface. Our grappling-irons snagged to the coping helped us unaided over the top. Then we sliced our airlines and lifelines, opened our exhausts and——"

"Scared them out of a week's growth!" added Farrell as d'Artois paused to light a cigarette. "But that damnable thing all of quivering fire—good Lord!"

"That," submitted d'Artois, "is something that I can explain but vaguely, if at all. I called it some more mummery, and decided, rather hastily, perhaps, that you and the Marquis needed help first of all. On reflection, and in view of some of your remarks since we left, I am of the opinion that it was either an elemental conjured up by those devil-mongering adepts, or else a wandering and malignant astral that was energized by the vital essence of the adepts, or perhaps by the vibration concentration of their ritual. Monsieur le Marquis, God rest his erring soul, could doubtless explain what it was, since he used his last spark of will to combat it and thwart its attempt to convert Mademoiselle Antoinette into—what did you tell me?—a courier to call Shirkuh from the hell in which he now must be roasting.

"I would very much relish," continued d'Artois, "questioning Hassan, who devised all that deviltry. But alas! he escaped. And while you, both of you, were causing the good doctor a certain amount of concern, I heard that the Sûreté and a handful of gendarmes cleaned out the entire nest. Unhappily, two were taken alive of that crew of assassins. And of course, those lovely ladies of the garden."

Farrell sighed from weariness and contentment, then grimaced from the ache of his wounds.

"The Marquis," he observed, "didn't have time to explain how that hypnotic drug enabled him to project Antoinette's self into the body of the Syrian bride of the garden—Lord, it's impossible to imagine how a brave fellow like him could have let his resentment and disappointment carry him to such lengths! Having her scourged by proxy, so to speak."

"Too much occultism and devil-mongering upset his brilliant mind," replied d'Artois. "Somber, gloomy, and drunk with his talents. And translating Antoinette into the body of a bride of the garden, whom he could flog at will, was his warped expression of denied affection. As to just how he accomplished it, we can but surmise. Strange drugs are compounded in the Orient. When I complete the analysis of the pastries they offered us that night at the château, I may further enlighten you."

"But the stripes and welts that appeared on Antoinette's body?" wondered Farrell.

"For once you ask me something simple," retorted d'Artois. "Did you know that if a hypnotic is touched with a pencil, for example, and offered the suggestion that it is a red-hot iron, he will develop a blister, and all the symptoms of a burn at the spot touched? Moll and others concede that point with very little argument. It has often been experimentally demonstrated.

"Alors, the body of the Syrian girl was scourged. Antoinette's self, though in a borrowed body, retained what we can roughly call an astral connection with her own body; otherwise she could not have returned to it at the end of each ordeal. And through this connection, the body of Antoinette developed the same welts that were raised on the skin of the Syrian girl; just as, by rough analogy, the hypnotic subject through suggestion shows all outward signs of a burn. And the marks of the heavy anklets the Syrian bride of the garden wore were similarly branded on Antoinette's ankles.

"The Marquis during his unsuccessful courtship of Antoinette had ample opportunities to administer the hypnotic drug at which he hinted, so that his influence could have been gained without her knowledge. This, together with the objective symptoms, convinces me that if it was not the conventional hypnosis we know, it was at least a quasi-hypnosis. And as you know, there are vegetable compounds which, if properly administered, will effect a partial release of the astral counterpart of a body, or its spiritual essence. To pursue it to its origin would lead you to a study of Egyptian magic, and the nine traditional elements of every living human body.

"I will leave all this to you, mon vieux, to study, this matter of stigmata resulting from suggestion and other psychic influences. Me, I am no lecturer.

"And as to Antoinette's Arabic remarks in her sleep: the bride of the garden, dispossessed of her body for the time, sought Antoinette's. And by that astral connection which she retained with her own, she felt the scourgings administered in the garden, and expressed herself, through Antoinette's lips, as you heard."

D'Artois emerged from his chair and bowed with formal precision.

"I will therefore leave you here, my blundering Afghan, to have your wounds properly nursed while I go about doing all that an old man can do under the circumstances: envy you, and write a monograph on Messieurs les Assassins, and Satan's Garden, from which you so happily emerged."

With a peremptory gesture, he cut short Antoinette's insistence upon his pausing for at least a moment. Then, halting at the door, he concluded as he glanced at Farrell, "Mordieu, and to think that you enjoyed all that fine sword-play, while I, Pierre d'Artois, had to wear a diving-suit to find a fight, and then had to use a crowbar! In several ways I envy you."

THE END