Page:Weird Tales Volume 29 Number 1 (1937-01).djvu/22

waked to life and circle round the room in the frenzy of an orgiastic dance.

At the far end of the room a table of dark wood was laid with cotton napery and a wonderful old silver service which must at one time have graced the banquet hall of some old grandee in the days of Spanish dominance. Four chairs were drawn up to the board facing the end where a couch of carven wood heaped high with silken cushions stood beneath the fitful luminance cast by a hanging silver lamp.

"This must have been the priestess' hall," the Commandant informed us in a whisper. "This temple is supposed to have contained a college of priests and priestesses, something like a convent and monastery."

"Parbleu, if that is so, I think those old ones did not mortify the flesh to any great extent," the Frenchman answered with a grin. "But while we wait in this old mausoleum of the ancient ones, where is our charming hostess?"

As though his words had been a cue, a staff of bells chimed musically outside the door, and the guard of bat-men ranged about the walls sank to their knees.

The chime grew higher, shriller, sweeter, and a double file of women dressed in filmy cotton robes, each with a bat-mask on her face, came through the low-arched entrance, paused a mo¬ ment, then, as though obeying an in¬ audible command, dropped prostrate to the floor, head to head, hand clasping hand, so that they made a living carpet on the pavement.

Framed in the arching entrance, La Murciélaga stood like some lovely life-sized portrait. A robe of finely woven cotton, dyed brilliant red with cochineal and almost sheer as veiling, flowed from a jeweled belt clasped below her bosoms to the insteps of her narrow, high-arched feet. On throat and arms, on her thumbs and little-fingers, flashed great emeralds, any one of which was worth a princely ransom. Long golden pend¬ ants throbbing with the flash of blood- bright rubies reached from the tiny lobes of little ears almost to naked, cream¬ white shoulders. Each move she made was musical, for bands of pure gold were clasped in tiers about her wrists and on her slender ankles, and clashed tune¬ fully together with each step she took. Upon the great and little-toe of each slim foot there gleamed a giant emerald so that as her feet advanced beneath the swirling hem of her red robe it seemed that green-eyed serpents darted forth their heads.

"Madre de Dios!" I heard the Commandant exclaim, and his voice seemed choked with sobs. "Que hermosa—how beautiful!"

"So is the tiger or the cobra," murmured Jules de Grandin as La Murciélaga trod upon the prostrate women as unconcernedly as though they had been figures woven in a carpet.

She greeted us with a bright smile. "Good morning, gentlemen. I hope you did not suffer too much inconvenience from your ride last night?"

None of us made reply, but she seemed in nowise feazed. "Breakfast is prepared," she announced, sinking down upon the heaped-up cushions of the couch and motioning us to the chairs which stood about the table. "I regret I cannot offer you such food as you are used to, but I do my poor best."

Oranges and cherimoya, grapes, sweet limes, guavas and plates of flat, crisp native bread composed the meal, with coffee, chocolate and lemonade for beverages. Finally came long, thick cigars of rich lowland-grown tobacco and a sweet, strong wine which tasted like angelica.