Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/54

704 black-haired figure rippling past us with the grace of softly flowing water was a daughter of the gods, a temple deva-dasi, the mystery and allure and unfathomable riddle of the East incarnate. Her bodice was of saffron silk, sheer as net. Cut with short shoulder-sleeves and rounded neck it terminated just below her small, firm breasts and was edged with imitation emeralds and small opals which kindled into witch-fires in the lamplight's glow. From breast to waist her slim, firm form was bare, slender as an adolescent boy's, yet full enough to keep her ribs from showing in white lines against the creamy skin. A smalt-blue cincture had been tightly bound about her slender waist, emphasizing gently swelling hips and supporting a full, many-pleated skirt of cinnabar-red silken gauze. Across her smoothly parted blue-black hair was thrown a sari of deep blue with silver edging, falling down across one shoulder and caught coquettishly within the curve of a bent elbow. Silver bracelets hung with little hawk-bells bound her wrists; heavy bands of hammered silver with a fringe of silver tassels that flowed rippling to the floor and almost hid her feet were ringed about each ankle. Between her startlingly black brows there burned the bright vermilion of a caste mark.

pressed the lever of the gramophone and a flood of liquid music flowed into the room. Deep, plaintive chords came from the guitar, the viols wept and crooned by turns, and the drums beat out an amatory rhythm. She paused a moment in the swing-lamp's golden disk of light, feet close together, knees straight, arms raised above her head, wrists interlaced, the right hand facing left, the left turned to the right, and each pressed to the other, palm to palm and finger against finger. The music quickened and she moved her feet in a swift, shuffling step, setting ankle bells a-chime, swaying like a palm tree in the rising breeze. She took the folds of her full skirt between joined thumbs and forefingers, daintily, as one might take a pinch of snuff, spread the gleaming, many-pleated tissue out fanwise, and advanced with a slow, gliding step. Her head bent sidewise, now toward this sleek shoulder, now toward that; then slowly it sank back, her long eyes almost closed, like those of one who falls into a swoon of unsupportable delight; her red lips parted, fell apart as though they had gone flaccid with satiety after ecstasy. Then she dropped forward in a deep salaam, head bent submissively, both hands upraised with thumbs and forefingers together.

I was about to beat my hands together in applause when de Grandin's grip upon my elbow halted me. "Les flammes, mon ami, regardez-vous—les flammes!" he whispered.

Across the vitric umber tiles that made the floor, a line of flame was rising, flickering and dancing, wavering, flaunting, advancing steadily, and I could smell the spicy-sweet aroma of burnt sandalwood. "It is the flame from that old, cheated funeral pyre," he breathed. "The vengeance-flame that burned the old one to a crisp while he lay in a fireproof room; the flame that set this house afire eight times; the flame of evil genius that pursues this family. See how easily I conquer it!"

With an agile leap he crossed the room, raised the bottle he had brought and spilled a splash of water on the crackling, leaping fire-tongues. It was as if a picture drawn in chalks were wiped away, or an image on a motion- picture screen obliterated as the light behind the film dies; for everywhere the drops of water fell, the flames died into blackness with a sullen, scolding hiss.