Hell's Bells
Weird Tales – July 1952
(1952)*
Eric Frank Russell
as by Duncan H. Munroe

It was the key to an invisible door; it was magic; It was dynamite!

-

	The thing was a silver sistrum wrought by hands long vanished in the dust It was a lingering relic of a deep buried and almost forgotten age when the sciences that were, known were not the sciences of today—and the sciences of today were unknown.

	In this sense, the sistrum was as much a scientific instrument as an earthquake-diviner's seismograph or a water-diviner's hazel twig. It was the key to an invisible door. It was a tuning-fork capable of subtle vibrations linking extra-vibratory worlds. It could create contact and all that contact entailed. It was dynamite.

	Bentley, of course, knew nothing of this and would not have believed it anyway. To his modern mind, the sciences of the past were as much priestly magic as the sciences of today would seem to ancient practitioners. Indeed, he doubted whether the sistrum predated last Christmas, and his interest in it was solely due to the fact that it was of genuine native manufacture. Definitely it was not one of those alleged playthings of the Pharoahs such as certain factories send Egyptwards by the shipload.

	"Nice little curio," he commented, moderating his enthusiasm to bring eighty percent off the price. "How much do you want for it?"

	"By my father and my mother, said Old Abbas, stroking his long and exceedingly dirty beard, "if is a treasure unique. The like of it rests not within the confines of Al Azhar where, as thou knowest, reposes all earthly wisdom. Neither hath, one of its kind been fingered even by the pious and mighty Abdul ben Hassan es Senussi himself." His bloodshot eyes crawled cunningly over Bentley's impeccable white ducks, noted his expensive wrist-watch and ring.

	"How much, you mummified pirate?"

	"Eternal shame be upon me and all my house that I should dispose of so precious a jewel  as if 'twere common merchandise. Indeed would I be a nitt'n kelb to mention it in the same breath with filthy money." Old Abbas spread soiled hands with long, pickpocket fingers. "I will give it to the handsome American tourist, for the sheer joy of giving." He smiled benevolently. "And a mere two hundred piastres."

	"Jeepers!" said Bentley. "I'll give you' ten."

	"Ten miserable piastres?" Abbas was astounded. "Ten poor coins representing a blind man's alms?" Abbas was incredulous. "Surely you jest with me." He gazed with pain and sorrow up the narrow way of the Souk-el-Fatouma. Somewhat incongruously, a street car rocked along the Sharia Shereef Pasha at the other end. "May I be smeared with the fat of swine did I blaspheme the holiness of this relic by taking one petty milleme less," declared Old Abbas. "One hundred eighty piastres."

	"I'll meet you halfway," countered Bentley. He gestured to emphasize the sheer generosity of his offer. "Twelve."

	"Twelve?" echoed Abbas hollowly. "Did I hear twelve? Are my aged ears accursed?" He rocked to and fro as he squatted on his heels. "I am an honest man. I ask honest prices. Ali, of the blood of the Prophet, be my witness that because I ask honest prices I have never been known to reduce them never!" He killed a louse. "One hundred fifty."

	"Fifteen," suggested Bentley, hard of heart.

	"Fifteen! Am I of imbecilic countenance that the handsome American should make mock of me? Did my venerable father beget a roufahdiah? Am I dung to be trod over by a milkless goat and be sniffed over by dogs? Think thou that I should treat a potent jewel of the centuries as if 'twere a footling Cypriot potsherd?" He spat in the dust, lavishly and with vim. "Amshi! Ere I sacrifice one further tittle or jot may the perfume of Paradise be as the stink of a camel at the setting of the sun!"

	With a resigned shrug, Bentley put down the sistrum and turned to go. He squeezed into an open doorway to permit an overloaded donkey to pass. The donkey could not be seen. All that was visible was an extremely fat and solemn Persian seated cross legged upon a tremendous mound of gaily colored bags beneath which four tiny legs staggered along.

	Abbas heaved a profound sigh. "Observe the toiling ass. Is not his load far lighter than mine? One hundred."

	"Twenty piastres," said Bentley.

	"It is of no moment." Abbas changed his tactics, lolled back with the abandoned air of one who has no urgent appointments before next Friday week. "Of what consequence is worldly wealth in the precious hereafter? Of none whatever! May my name as a bargainer be more odorous than the catacombs of Mex if I hock the power of the ages for a beggar's baksheesh!" He spat again. "Eighty piastres."

	"Twenty-five." Bentley picked up the sistrum again.

	"Seventy."

	"Twenty-five piastres and fifty millemes."

	"The Sword of Islam be my guardian and protector—now he comes down to millemes!" Abbas tore at his beard. "Sixty."

	"Thirty," said Bentley.

	Abbas squatted and rocked and muttered a cogent passage from the Book of Al Forkran. Then he stared prayerfully at the sky. After a while he muttered a lot more words which were not in the Book of Al Forkran. The mildest of them made reference to persons born in comfort stations.

-

	A native woman drifted past like a drab ghoul, her sloe eyes glowing over the edge of her yashmak. The eyes registered awe as they saw the mumbling Abbas, then ran appreciatively over Bentley's trim, white-clad figure.

	"Fifty," decided Abba's, surrendering his heart's blood.

	"Forty-five."

	"If is generous of you," said Abbas; "I accept—fifty-four."

	"You've got it bassackwards. I said forty-five."

	Abbas managed to sigh and groan at the same time. "So be it. Pay me quickly, in piastres, before they turn to millemes." His hand was an eager claw as it took the money. He said, "I have been as a father to thee. I have been as a sparkling fountain at the end of a long, long day. Let grace beget grace, as the Prophet commanded." He thrust the money somewhere in his filthy burnous. "Alaham is thine—for a while. Much good may he do you. Be warned: do not release the bells except in solitude!"

	Bentley had another look at the sistrum. It was a tiny silver cross, its bottom arm forming a handle, its top arm shaped in an oval loop. Three metal cords stretched across the loop, each with a curiously shaped midget bell dangling from its center. The bells were not free to swing: somebody had tethered them with a length; of ordinary string.

	"Why not?" he inquired.

	"I have told thee—let it suffice." Abbas lay back exhausted by the day's business. He closed his eyes, half-opened one, grunted, "Be warned!" and closed it again.

-

	For three months the sistrum lay neglected and forgotten among other small souvenirs while Bentley finished with Egypt, did a tour of Europe which eventually brought him to London. He had a small apartment there; it had long been his home from home on frequent business trips from New York. He rediscovered the sistrum when unpacking and, more as an excuse for a gabfest than anything else, took it around to show Pearson who always had been interested in Egyptian junk.

	"Bought it in Cairo," he explained. "From a louse-ridden old robber named Abbas the Ancient. He wrapped it in the usual air of mystery and soaked me forty-five."

	"A true ankh," declared Pearson, mildly enthusiastic as he studied it. "An out-of-the-ordinary one too—see?" He pointed to the end of the handle,

	"A dog's face," said Bentley. "What of it?"

	"It's a jackal's head, not a dog's. It's the head of Anubis, Lord of the Other World—if there is another." He touched the haltered bells. "Dainty little jobs, those. First one I've seen with bells." He put it down. "Have a whiskey?"

	"Thanks." Bentley shoved the sistrum into a pocket.

	He was on a street car crossing Lambeth Bridge before his mind came back to the dog-faced dingus. Taking it from his pocket he toyed with it, juggled it around, picked at its string in the aimless manner of one whose fingers just have to be occupied by something. The string came loose after a while, releasing the bells.

	Giving the sistrum a gentle experimental waggle, Bentley listened. The miniature chimes sounded faint but sweetly like camel bells in the cool of a purple dawn. They had a peculiar quality of penetration as if somehow sounding on and on and on into the faraway. From some eerie dimension equally distant there seemed to come a response like the clamor of a mighty gong.

	Then a fat woman screamed for aid from several saints and a person named Samuel and fought her way to the exit. Ten other passengers beat her to it. They emerged with, all the leisurely grace of Zoo patrons who've found a tiger on the loose, leaving Bentley alone with his sistrum and the apparition.

	The vision stood blinking at Bentley as if just awakened from the slumber of a thousand years. Bentley bleared back imitatively. The newcomer looked solid enough, substantial beyond doubt. He had black, piercing eyes set in a thin, aquiline face which bore a queer mixture of expressions, submissive and saturnine. His very tall form had the smooth lines of a bronze statue. His garments were as outlandish as they were scant His headgear was an enormous confection of crimson velvet, gold lace and seed pearls.

	"Behold," commanded this character. "I am Alaham, the son of Alaham, the son of Alaham, the son of:—"

	"Alaham," suggested Bentley brightly. "No," corrected the other. "The son of Al."

	"Ah!" said Bentley. "Al!"

	"If the holder of the singing-key does not yet wish to return it and permit me to close the door, then"—he made a resigned gesture—"I must serve him lest worse befall."

	"How?" asked Bentley, becoming interested.

	"I shall see that thy thirst is slaked, thy belly filled, thy ears soothed with sweet music, thy soul laved with the poetry of Ibrahim the Bard of Al Khali, thine every desire satisfied.'' Then he qualified it with, "So far as lies within the power of my kind."

	Bentley let his eyes drift to the window, conscious that his vehicle was now running in one spot. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, peering intently at the motionless street car, listening to the shrill complaints of the fat lady. In a minute or two it would cease to be a crowd, become a mass meeting. In front the driver was stymied by bodies on the tracks. Another street car had pulled up close behind, its bell clanging urgently, its driver not quoting the Book of Al Forkran.

	There is no law against conversing with a djinn in a Route Nine car. There is no law prohibiting djinni from following the bare midriff fashion or wearing three-foot hats. But a London bobby could soon make a case of it. Creating an obstruction upon the King's highway; behaving in a manner calculated to cause a breach of the peace. Or something like that.

	"For mercy's sake," said Bentley, "get me out of this, somewhere around the corner, out of sight of this lot."

	"Master, it is done." Very much in the grand manner, Alaham swept a potent hand.

	Swoosh! There was a rush of wind, the whole world swept around in kaleidoscopic patterns then fell back into shape. Bentley found himself on the sidewalk face to face with an overdressed woman' who was clinging to a length of plaited cord. At the other end of the cord dangled a pop-eyed, yelping Pekinese.

	"Right under my nose;" she said haughtily. "You pop up right under my nose and scare the life out of my Precious. What an uncouth person! Have you no manners?"

	"Lady," began Bentley, raising his right hand for no reason at all. The bells on the sistrum chimed obediently.

	"Master, you summoned Alaham?"

-

	Precious did a frantic half-circle dangle at the full stretch of his cord and groaned deep down in his insides. His mistress took in what there was of Alaham's ensemble, let go a couple of high yips and departed at top velocity. Precious half-ran, half-floated behind her like a rag on the tail of a kite. 

	"Master?"

	"Look here," demanded Bentley, "what does it? Is it this?" He indicated the sistrum.

	"Of course, Master. With that ankh you may call upon the powers behind the ankh." To simplify it still further, he added, "The key to a house is the key to a house."

	Another crowd was beginning to assemble, one or two of them shrewdly deducing from Bentley's accent that his companion was the first new-style zoot-suiter to be seen in England. Bentley was not overjoyed by the publicity. Best thing to do was muffle those infernal bells until he could cope with the matter in privacy.

	Shoving his hand with the sistrum into a pocket, he gripped the bells, said to Alaham, "Scram!"

	"Pardon, thy servant's gift of tongues—"

	"Beat it!" yelped Bentley, watching the mob grow.

	Making a mystic wave in the air, Alaham plucked out of nothingness a long, thin length of bamboo. He swished it, made it go whoo-whoo, stared around belligerently.

	"Beat whose?" he asked, the whose what being understood. Licking his lips, he made the bastinado go whoo-whoo again. Several spectators vainly tried to retreat against the pressure of those behind them.

	"I meant go!" swore Bentley, still clinging to the bells. "Begone!"

	Pouf! The tall, bellicose figure of Alaham snuffed out abruptly. The crowd gauped at resulting emptiness, then at the perspiring Bentley. One and all conceded it was the most convincing trick yet pulled by any street magician. They stayed put, hoping for something even better before he came round with the hat.

	With a worried frown, he pushed through them, started to walk rapidly, down the street. Most of them followed. At each corner a few more joined the procession on general principles.

	Bentley looked backward several times. It lent his progress an air of furtiveness and guilt which encouraged passers-by to join the throng. Several eyed him, about-turned, tailed the procession in anticipation of mayhem or anything equally juicy. Before long he'd have half London behind him and he was getting fed up.

-

	Rounding a corner into a quiet alleyway, he used his momentary solitude to give the bells an urgent ring. "Yes, Master?"

	"Get me home," breathed Bentley, watching the corner.

	"Home?" Alaham was sorrowful, apologetic. "Master, it could be done except that thy servant does not know the location of thine abode."

	"Oh, blazes!" snapped Bentley, feeling desperate.

	"Yes, Master." Alaham produced a leaping fire upon his hand, offered it graciously.

	"Take it away! Put it out!" Mopping his forehead, Bentley saw the advance guard of the pursuit turn into the alley. A murmur of anticipation came with them. Behind them, a long gleaming automobile slid silently down the street. It gave him an idea. "Get me a car."

	"Car?" Alaham was puzzled. The leading trio of trackers reached them, came to a full stop, noses quivering with curiosity. Alaham glanced at them in open disdain.

	"A carriage," urged Bentley. "A means of transport."

	"Of course, Master." Alaham's eyes lit up with relieved pleasure. He waved an all-powerful hand.

	Bentley moaned low down in his chest, "Oh, suffering snakes!"

	One of the onlookers said, "Cripes!"

	Another added, "Jer-u-salem!"

	The miraculously produced conveyance was a flamboyant sedan-chair. Rich purple drapes hung in heavy folds between its intricately carved corner posts which were topped by coiled cobras, gilded, with ruby eyes. A gigantic Nubian waited between the forward shafts, another between the rearward. On either side posed an armed guard in the shape of a pair of swarthy, turbaned parties with piratic eyes and large scimitars.

	"Enter, Master," invited Alaham, making an imperious sweep which removed the derby hat from a fat kibitzer.

	Licking his lips, Bentley looked at the crowd which now filled the alley. They mooned back with a mixture of respect and stupefaction. Behind them, a couple of blue-clad bobbies were trying to bull their way through.

	Making up his mind, Bentley thrust aside the purple drapes, entered the contraption, sank back on a deeply upholstered seat. Alaham shoved a brown, sinuous arm through the drapes, carefully placed upon the opposite seat a small box fronted with bamboo bars. The box contained a couple of frantically writhing serpents.

	"Suffering snakes," he reminded pride-fully.

	"Get rid of 'em, for Pete's sake," yelped Bentley.

	The obedient and literal-minded Alaham snatched them back, surveyed the crowd and inquired, "Which one of you is Pete?"

	At that point the cops arrived. The sedan-chair did not faze them any. They had seen too many weird contraptions being dragged around by visiting dignitaries from abroad. Only last week, for instance, there had been the Siwa of M'Abula and his twenty-foot umbrella. In their logic, anyone with a contraption must be a dignitary of sufficient mass and albedo to have a clear orbit. So they shooed the crowd.

	"Beat it! Ain't you got no manners? G'wan, don't argue—get a move on!" One stepped off the curb, officiously signalled the sedan-chair to proceed upon its lawful business.

	"Take me to Marylebone," whispered Bentley through the purple drapes.

	"Indeed, Master, thy servant knows it not."

	"Carry on up the street," Bentley rasped. "I'll tell you when to turn."

	He heard a gabble of instruction in some spitting language that was not Arabic. The sedan-chair lifted, moved forward, swaying rhythmically as it went along. Lifting the drapes a fraction of an inch, he saw one of the guards marching at his side, scimitar on shoulder. Stubborn remnants of the crowd were keeping pace along the sidewalk.

	"Darn 'em!" He let the drapes drop.

	Resting back, he stared at the patch of sky visible through the open roof, wondered what the regal occupant was supposed to do when it rained. A taxi whirled past, a hoarse Cockney voice bawled something about it being more usual to carry them horizontal. Taking no notice, Bentley continued to stare moodily at the sky. The sedan jolted to a stop.

	Cautiously peering out again, he found his cavalcade held up by cross-traffic at an intersection. The accompanying audience likewise had stopped. It had lined up on the sidewalk, staring like buffalo at the first railroad locomotive.

-

	As he looked, an elegantly attired individual edged through the ranks. He sported a glossy high hat, had a carnation in his buttonhole, and terminated his fetching ensemble with lavender spats. Fixing a monocle in his eye, this character surveyed the sedan chair and its colorful attendants, ejaculated, "Begad!" and dropped the monocle.

	Picking it up from the end of its black silk cord, he screwed it into his face again. The eye behind it was just as glassy and somewhat codlike. The eye wandered over the spectacle once more, suddenly met Bentley's peeping through the purple hangings.

	"Going my way?" inquired High-Hat, thumbing a lift on the spur of the moment. He had the air of one who frequently used the spur of the moment to save numbing thought.

	To Bentley's mind, this was companionship in a crisis.

	Sticking a hand through the drapes, he crooked an inviting forefinger. Trouble shared was trouble spared.

	High-Hat delightedly repeated, "Begad!" and stepped off the sidewalk. The next instant he flung himself flat in the road and thus avoided prompt decapitation. The scimitar of Right Hand Pirate fairly whistled as it clove the atmosphere above him.

	Frantically rolling to avoid a second swipe, High-Hat protested, "Dash it, I've been invited."

	"Sufty cuss!" howled Right Hand Pirate. Raising the heavy sword far above his turbaned head, he brought it down with all this might. By a remarkable feat of acrobatics, High-Hat shot off the road, through the drapes and into the sedan with no more than an inch to spare. Too late Right Hand Pirate struggled to arrest his weighty weapon. Of its own momentum it swept on, sliced cleanly through the root of the right hand forward shaft.

	That caused the front Nubian to turn and pass remarks about phoney wedding certificates, or so it sounded. Right Hand Pirate muscled up in readiness to cast back aspersions when Alaham chipped in.

	"Forward, fools!"

	The sedan tilted as the front bearer lifted his single shaft and lugged ahead. The one at the back lifted and pushed cooperatively. With the murmuring audience still in attendance, the procession moved grandly and ponderously on.

	Dusting himself with a silk handkerchief, High-Hat said, "Ultima ratio regum." He signed deeply, applied the silk to his brilliant shoes and lavender spats. "In the midst of life we are in death. By jove, sir, I rolled like a hog in the sort of stuff hogs roll in. I have brought the ancient line into bad odor." He pressed a well-manicured hand on a corner-post to hold himself against the tilt. "Somewhat of a list to starboard, isn't there?"

	"We've lost a shaft," Bentley informed.

	"Indeed? Too bad—but it was that or my pate." He polished his hat on a sleeve. "It's bally good of you to give me a lift, sir. Never been in one of these things before. What is it, if I may be so vulgar as to ask?"

	"Some sort of sedan-chair. I got it from a djinn."

	"Stap me, a djinn?" Carefully wiping his monocle, he stuck it in one eye, stared at Bentley glassily. "I thought they existed only in the movies. Well, well, one lives and learns. Did you get him out of a bottle?"

	"No." Bentley exhibited the sistrum, keeping the bells locked in his fingers. "I bought this in Cairo. He comes when I ring for him."

	"You don't say!" He gaped at the bells, added, "Ring him for me, there's a good fellah."

	"I am Alaham."

	High-Hat turned the monocle upon the lean, saturnine face which had thrust through the drapes. He said, "My word, that was swift. You'd be a sensation in a bar." He adjusted the monocle more precisely. "My name is Montmorency."

	"And," continued Alaham, pointedly ignoring Montmorency, "I am not a djinn." His stare at Bentley was one of cold reproof. "Neither am I an afreet. There are no such things. They are no more than the foolish fancies of itinerant tale-tellers. I am real."

	"Really?" put in Montmorency, unabashed. "Then what are you?" 

	"I am Alaham."

	"Ah!" said Montmorency, "that's different." He grabbed at a post as the sedan made an alarming lurch. "Yoicks! We're making more motion sidewise than forward. It does things to one's chitlings. I say, old boy, can't you give us something speedier than this?"

	Alaham looked, inquiringly at Bentley, who responded with, "Yes, if you can provide something faster, for pity's sake let's have it."

	"Master, it is done," recited Alaham, his eyes glowing at Montmorency's glass one.

-

	From the top of his tall, stone column Nelson had gazed down upon Trafalgar Square and seen many a lordly procession, many a martial parade, but never such a spectacle as this. Buses skidded automobiles scattered, taxi-drivers oathed mightily as this crazy invader charged head long across the area.

	Bentley clung for dear life to a handy side-rail while the four-horse chariot plunged hell-for-leather onward with total disregard of all traffic rules. His monocle miraculously remaining fixed in position. Montmorency reposed full length on the bottom of the bucking vehicle, his legs occasionally being tossed into the air and giving astounded onlookers a glimpse of his glossy shoes and lavender spats.

	Up in front the hairy-armed, spade-bearded charioteer roared triumphantly in an unknown language, again and again cracked his long, rawhide whip above the team of madly careening bays.. The whip made noises like pistol shots; the words, bawled in accompaniment sounded vaguely obscene. The rumble of the wooden wheels was thunder from a by-gone age.

	With the chariot jumping, bouncing and swaying behind them the four frothing horses stampeded around a corner, crashed two sets of traffic lights. A third set shot toward them, lenses glowing red. Bentley waggled his eyebrows and emitted loud yelps but failed to drown the gloating howls of the driver. Spade-beard knew nothing of traffic lights, red, green, pink, purple or any other color. Whop! went the whip and onward they thudded with grand abandon.

	Montmorency, having a sudden premonition of death, struggled to get up and face it, but was bounced flat with a horrified, "Begad, sir!" Bentley tightened his grip and shut his eyes.

	A double-decker bus rolled ponderously into their path, tried to stop, amazingly danced sidewise with all the grace of a drunken elephant. Its passengers flopped around. Behind its windshield its driver stood up and flapped impotent hands.

	With an unearthly yell of, "Footsack!" Spade-beard cracked his lash, masterfully manhandled his foaming quartet around the bonnet, scraped past by the grace of the gods and at cost of a couple of wooden spokes which parted company with a ghastly grind of timber on metal.

	His hair streaming in the wind and his eyebrows still afflicted by the leaping fantods, Bentley glanced backward, saw the double-decker's battered spotlight go rolling along the road like a newly severed head. The driver now was hanging out of his side window, roaring invectives of considerable potency. Beneath the racing chariot sounded a metallic clatter as if it were dragging a sheet of old iron.

	Around another bend they thundered, the vehicle sliding crab-fashion behind the pounding steeds. Halfway up the street, Spade-beard became smitten with a question.

	Bracketing his whip, he reined in the horses, put the question with much tongue-twisting and some distribution of sputum.

	Alaham appeared, his face bearing the smug expression of one responsible for a job well done. Seeing 'him, Bentley remembered that the sistrum had been chiming throughout the entire journey.

	"He wants to know," explained Alaham, "where you are supposed to be going."

	"Going?" echoed Montmorency, staggering upright and fumbling around his own anatomy. "Odds sooth, I am demmed near gone!"

	"Blast him!" added Bentley, giving Spade-beard a vicious look.

	"Yes, Master," agreed Alaham with bland indifference. His not to reason why; his but to do or die. Something resembling a pocket thunderbolt flashed from his extended hand, smote the unfortunate Spade-beard upon his hirsute pate. There was a big smell of burnt flesh and a little pile of ashes.

	"Murder!" yelped Montmorency, diving full tilt out of the chariot.

	"By all the—!" began Bentley in horrified protest.

	"Get 'em," bawled a hoarse voice. "String 'em up!" Other voices joined in, swelling angrily.

	Another mob, numbered in hundreds this time. It came crowding up the street, flourishing fists, filling the air with wild shouts and bloodthirsty threats. A police patrol car and a group of three police motorcyclists were trying to beat the mob to its prey. All the signs and portents smacked of impending martyrdom.

-

	Pointing to a tall building nearby, Bentley snapped, "Quick, get me up on that roof."

	"Master, thou art there."

	Swish! Bentley was on the roof. It had a flat expanse with limestone edging. Leaning over the limestone he looked down, saw a struggle of bodies over the prostrate Montmorency. Even as he watched, a burly party in dirty denims emerged from the pyramid bearing a torn lavender spat, which, for no known reason, he proceeded to wave like a flag. Then Bentley remembered that he had said 'me' and not 'us'.' Darn it, why did Alaham have to take him so literally?

	Giving the bells a wham, he commanded, "Bring him up here to me."

	"As the Master orders."

	Montmorency arrived, feet, first and still  kicking. He reposed on the roof, his clothes filthy and tattered, one spat missing, but the monocle still in position. There was a faint halo around his other eye. Standing feebly, he examined himself.

	"Old fellah, I look like garbage." He spat out a small piece of tooth, looked vaguely around for his missing carnation. "What a binge! First time I've been like this since a brewery truck got wrecked in Piccadilly." He licked his lips, one of which was thickening. "Which reminds me, how about a quiet guzzle to fortify the inner man?"

	"Bring us something to drink, Alaham." 

	"Yes, Master."

	Snatching at thin air, Alaham produced a swollen goatskin, held out the neck invitingly. It smelled ten years overdue for burial.

	"Wine!" scowled Bentley, holding his nose.

	There was an uproar below. Peering over the edge, he saw the frustrated crowd tearing the chariot to pieces. Whether they were venting their temper or merely grabbing souvenirs it was impossible to tell, but he noticed that a few individuals were standing apart from the rest and glowering upward at his roof. Police vehicles were now parked outside the entrance of this building but there were no police in sight.

	"Still after us," he commented.

	Turning, he saw that Alaham had conjured a tall, fat-bellied jar and a pair of exotically shaped goblets. Tilting the jar, Alaham deftly filled the goblets with a thick, oily, purplish liquid.

	Montmorency took an experimental sip, rolled an expectant eye heavenward, registered disappointment, had a good long swig.

	"This stuff reminds me," he said.

	"Of what?" Bentley inquired.

	"Of something pertaining to gnats." He finished the goblet, polished his monocle, looked moody. Skinny limbs showed through his rag-clothed legs. "You'd have thought that hootch at least ten thousand years old would have more yimp.. Especially when served with djinn."

	Fiery motes glowed deep in Alaham's dark eyes. "I am not a djinn, as I have told thee?" He raised his hand as if about to perform a second cremation, but changed his mind and vanished.

	"Dill-water," pronounced Montmorency contemptuously. He watched Bentley bottom the goblet. "I wouldn't serve it to my maiden aunt Matilda, she having a well-tested asbestos—" His voice cut off, his hair arose, his eyes protruded, and he yelled a piercing, "whee-e-e-e!"

	" 'Smatter?" asked Bentley, staring at him.

	"You wait and see. Begad, old fellah—whee-e-e-e—I can hardly, talk—whee-e-e-e hoo!" He doubled over, clutching his bucket. "It's got a-delayed-—youps-wha!"

	"Don't be silly," Bentley advised. "I'm standing here in brown shoes and I don't feel a—sainted cats!" He enveloped his middle and bowed repeatedly while the volcano inside him gave forth at full blast, filling him with fiery life and a poor sense of proportion.

	After a minute he straightened, studied the jar with much respect. Montmorency eyed it with owlish reverence. Deciding that the hair of the dog was the only cure, Montmorency took his goblet, grasped the neck of the jar and made ready to tilt.

	At that point an unnoticed trapdoor in the roof shot up, a beefy face surmounted by a blue cap arose majestically through the opening. The face gazed belligerently around, hardened as it discovered the coming orgy upon untaxed liquor, spoke to others waiting below.

	"Here they are. Come on—after them!"

	Reacting instinctively, Montmorency dropped his goblet, embraced the jar, heaved it above his head. It became horizontal as he got it up, and a gallon of slow-motion booze cascaded from its pouting mouth over his sorely tried rags.

	"By Jove," he said, turning a horrified face to Bentley and still holding up the jar. "I've spilled it."

	"Throw it, you idiot!" Bentley bawled. He tugged madly at a pocket to extract the sistrum. '

	His face still agonized by the deed he was about to commit, Montmorency heaved the jar with much vigor and accidentally excellent aim. It exploded bomblike upon the cranium of the law which promptly vanished from the ken of men. A loud and satisfactory thump sounded in the room beneath. Many voices arose, shouting anatomic details of the retribution soon to follow.

	Then the sistrum came unstuck.

-

	Alaham appeared, bowed to Bentley, glowered threateningly at the other; "Yes, Master?"

	"Transfer us to that roof." Stretching an arm, Bentley indicated a tall building barely visible in the dim distance.

	"Master, it is done."

	Again the mad rush of air and kaleidoscopic shift of scenes. Bentley knew that he was a poor picker the moment he landed, and the fact was emphasized by Montmorency's howl of fright. Together they went rolling down a sixty degree slope, struck the gutter with force that knocked it loose and brought a length of it twisting and twirling in company with their bodies as they began the three hundred feet drop to the street.

	All the way down the roof, and beyond, the sistrum had been ringing shrilly in Bentley's sweating hand. And all the way he had been bellowing, "A flat roof—put us on a flat roof." '

	He saw the sidewalk enlarging, growing more detailed as he shot toward it mouthing his seemingly unheard cry. He saw the lifted, appalled faces of spectators of his headlong plunge to oblivion. Two seconds before the big smear was due he shut his eyes.

	Faintly a voice whispered, "Yes, Master."

	The spectators and the sidewalk receded crazily. Bentley whirled, spun, came upright, felt solidity beneath his feet. His shocked eyes opened, immediately told him that it never rains but it pours/ It was the roof from which he had first sought escape.

	Beefy-face now stood by the trap, dripping from sundry places and smelling like a distillery. Taking in the arrivals with eyes no less shocked, he roared, "That's them!" and charged with all the cumbersome determination of an irate rhinoceros.

	"Another flat roof!" shouted Bentley, having learned by hard experience to be precise while sounding the angelus with all his might.

	Swoosh! They gained another. It was just across the road and on a higher level. Beefy-face braced himself on the opposite coping-stone, feared his teeth at them and invited them to come back and suffer under his own two hands.

	Down in the street a few splinters were all that was left of the chariot, while the erstwhile steeds were nowhere in evidence. Bentley chose another roof, doing it more carefully this time. Then another and another. The sixth choice, he thought, had carried them a safe distance from the scene of recent hostilities and brought them within easy reach of his own apartment. Then, and only then, did he rest.

	"Damme," declared Montmorency, "at this rate the line won't last much longer."

	"What line?"

	"The family line, sir. It goes back to Eve and occasionally to the pawnbroker's." He found a handkerchief, tried to wipe off a mixture of hog's beauty cream and hootch. "I am the last of my line still in a perpendicular position—now and again."

	Bentley frowned, let a few minutes go by while he recovered breath and thought things over. Then he summoned Alaham.

	"Don't you ever use some initiative?"

	"Master, thy meaning is strange to me."

	"Darn it," complained Bentley; "you've dumped us in one fix after another."

	"As the Master commands so shall it be done," retorted Alaham with much dignity and no latitude.

	"Yes, but why don't you use your imagination? Why do you insist on taking me literally?"

	"As the Master commands, so shall it be done."

	"Oh, hellfire!" cursed Bentley, giving it up.

	"Yes, Master."

	A tremendous blast of searing flame promptly leaped from the roof in obedience to Alaham's ready hand. It speared toward the zenith with a violence transcending everything. Its heat was a credit even to the nether regions whence, presumably, it came.

	"Put it out!" howled Bentley, dancing around on the farthest rim of the roof.

	The flame disappeared as eerily as it had come. Montmorency ruefully patted portions of his attire from which small wisps of smoke crept upward. Some of the portions turned to ashes under his hand, revealing parts of his ancient line. His silk handkerchief had resolved itself into its component gases, while his shoes had become a pair of seared and wrinkled abominations in the gaping fronts of which his toes showed like distorted teeth.

	"Stap me," he said, "I would be a disgrace in an ashcan."

	A curious murmur ascended from the street. Bentley had a look over the edge, growled, "Holy smoke, another mob!"

-

	Upon this roof was privacy, for a while at least. Looking at his companion, Bentley was grateful for the fact. To put it bluntly and without any false delicacy, Montmorency was one hell of a sight—and he wasn't in much better shape himself.

	Trouble was there was no flat roof near enough to his apartment to enable him to point it out to Alaham. From here to there the roofs were mostly sloped. On the other hand, he did not fancy the prospect of walking through the streets and thus inviting something to get started. Their very appearance would be sufficient to begin another chain of events. Indeed, it was a moot point whether or not Montmorency would make the clink for insufficiently hiding his shame. The day's program had sapped Bentley's optimism; he was ready to believe anything possible, especially if unpleasant.

	He pondered his position for some time before he hit upon a surprisingly simple solution. He rang the bells.

	"Master?"

	"Clothe us afresh."

	Alaham's disdainful wave suggested that this sort of miracle was milk, mere milk. The results came and at once Bentley took an intense dislike to them. He didn't like his huge, baggy britches of sky-blue silk, nor the curly-toed, red leather slippers which appeared upon his feet. He didn't like his lace trimmed velvet jacket. He didn't like the mighty yellow turban which squatted on his tired head.

	"As for the unfortunate Montmorency, it seemed that Alaham had at least enough, imagination to be malicious. From his sequin-embroidered trousers to his great, crimson ice-cream cone of a hat, Montmorency looked like nothing so much as a weedy, dirty and disreputable djinn.

	"Is this the best you can do?" demanded Bentley, surveying what he could see of himself.

	"Verily, Master, if mayhap thou desirest even greater glory, I can—"

	"For the love of heaven, old fellah, protested Montmorency, staring glassily at his exotic bloomers, "let sleeping dogs lie. Don't encourage him to greater efforts. Enough is as good as a feast." He expelled a long breath redolent of purple rotgut. "Ods willikins, I don't know whether I'm something out of a circus or the sartorial sensation of the season."

	"You're a sensation," Bentley told him, having no doubts whatsoever.

	"List, fool," interjected Alaham, glaring at Montmorency, "art thou not satisfied?"

	"Begad, yes," Montmorency was vaguely alarmed. "I could wish for nothing better."

	"It is well!" said Alaham darkly and with a note of menace. Bestowing, another glare, he disappeared.

	That decided them to try reach a haven of peace without further aid from a mystic source. It might be best to give the overworked and unpraised Alaham a little time in which to sweeten.

-

	Searching around, they found the inevitable trapdoor. It was fastened on the underside with bolts, aged and rusty, and defied all their efforts to raise it. Together they heaved upon it, pried it, cursed it. Finally Montmorency jumped upon it and immediately plunged through the roof amid a shower of rotten wood. His pained yelp straggled up through the hole down which his idiotic headgear had just gone.

	Carefully wrapping the sistrum in a handkerchief, Bentley stuffed it into a pocket, swung himself down into semi-darkness. He groped around, found a door, a landing and part of Montmorency's face.

	Stairs dropped away from the landing; they raced down, taking flights and landings with reckless abandon and reached the front entrance without encountering anyone.

	Composing themselves, they ventured into the street, strolled along the sidewalk with exaggerated nonchalance. A passing motorist took in their zoot, followed them with his eyes, side-swiped a parked car and came back to the world of reality. Four urchins trailed them, making highly personal comments. Two women joined the urchins. The trackers numbered ten at the corner, twenty halfway up the street, fifty at the next corner.

	It was another uncountable mob by the time the apartment came into sight. Mutually motivated by they knew not what, the pair broke into a run. Bentley's turban fell off but somehow his companion's crimson cone stayed put, though it leaned at a rakish angle. The monocle likewise held its place, the last remaining relic of an ensemble long since gone.

	Fidgeting by the front door, Bentley oathed while he sought his always elusive key. The crowd caught up, made a semicircle around the front steps, stared and muttered. Montmorency adjusted his cone, bleared back at them with an eye like that of an antique cod. Then, while Bentley tugged and fumbled, Mrs. Kelly opened the door. Her Irish face went warlike as she surveyed the cluster littering her sidewalk.

	"Well, an' phwat might you folks be nozin' into?" Her single-minded glare became aware of someone attired in neon signs, she shifted her gaze, discovered the objects of the crowd's attention. Her eyes stuck out, her bosom heaved with emotion.

	"It's all right, Mrs. Kelly," assured Bentley quickly. "We're doing this for a bet."

	Before she could frame a suitable reply he was past her and up the stairs. He gained his rooms with Montmorency dose upon his heels. Closing the door, they flopped into chairs, looked dumbly at each other.

	After a while, Montmorency said, "Begad, sir, I am fated to be stuffed and exhibited." A little later he added, "Some more of that purple peril is in order, I think."

	Pulling out the sistrum, Bentley said bitterly, "Brother, are you a glutton for punishment!"

	"So far, it's the only thing we've had worth getting," Montmorency pointed out. "Make him bring us another jar, there's a good fellah."

	Much against his better judgment, Bentley rang the bells. He flourished the sistrum with an air of deepest gloom. Forty-five piastres! Old Abbas should have paid him to take it away.

	"Yes, Master?"

	"More of that wine."'

-

	After finishing the third successive goblet Bentley viewed the world in rosier light. It had to be admitted that the purple stuff was good. He had a fire in his belly and the smoke thereof was curling pleasurably around his brain. He waved the sistrum in manner of an emperor summoning the court.

	"Alaham," he articulated, "my friend needs a bath." Getting the friend into focus, he volunteered, "He stinketh."

	"Verily," agreed Alaham. "As a goat." 

	"Isha ninshuk!" said Montmorency, speaking the language of the purple wine.

	"Or a very stale camel," suggested Alaham, with some degree of accuracy "Alaham, create us the bath." A lordly wave of the hand. The walls of the room shifted, grew shadowy, then somehow solidified into a pattern of turquoise tiles. A large sunken bath of purest turquoise appeared in the middle of the floor.

	Surveying this phenomenon with drink-sodden eyes, it didn't occur to either that a bath of that depth ought to stick a good distance through the ceiling of the room beneath. Neither did their ears detect a strange buzz underfoot. There had been a strange buzz in their ears this last half hour, anyway.

	Warm water sweetly scented with Samarian rose filled the bath. Stringed instruments sent soft, soothing sounds from behind a curtained alcove. The subtle fragrance of the bath permeated the air along with the music, and all was peace and eternal bliss.

	Montmorency exclaimed, "By Jove, sir!" and took off two-thirds of his clothing. His breath competed with the bath, and for reasons best known to himself he retained his underpants and monocle.

	Delightedly he stepped to the edge of the bath, tested it with a toe, said, "Ah!" picked up a partly filled goblet and prepared to take it with him as he jumped in.

	Two sinuous, brown-skinned slave girls darted from the alcove to assist him. At the same time a lithe, half-nude nautch dancer appeared at the head of the bath and started snaking around in time with the music. Montmorency promptly swigged his goblet, dropped his monocle, snatched a hanging drape to cover what he apparently thought uncovered. The slave girls dutifully tugged at the drape.

	Bentley was lying back making encouraging remarks to both sides when eventually the uproar from below penetrated his ears and he reached for the sistrum. Simultaneously, the door opened and Mrs. Kelly's broad, furious face was framed in the gap.

	Taking in the scene, especially the nautch dancer now wrestling with a yard of muslin, she said, "Whoi, ye indacent divvils, I'd have the perlace up here in double quick toime, an'—"

	Waggling the sistrum, Bentley ordered, "Remove this and make it exactly as before."

	"Yes, Master."

	He glanced to the door. "Drunk again, Mrs. Kelly?"

	Her face was a picture of dumbfoundment as she saw the room suddenly restored to its old appearance. She left in a rush.

	Bentley's grin faded out as he heard sounds of heated argument downstairs. Mrs. Kelly, of course, was not the only one who had witnessed strange, inexplicable events. The occupants of the room below had seen enough to keep their tongues wagging for weeks. Neighbors, too, had watched his gaudy arrival.

	Supposing the witnesses read the evening papers, their eyes bugging over colorful tales of what had happened elsewhere, and supposing they correctly put two and two together? Looked like he'd better move before he was moved to the jug.

	Making up his mind, he offered the fateful sistrum to the half-dressed Montmorency now struggling into his glorious britches, and said, "Here, you can have this danged contraption."

	"Me?" Montmorency sought his monocle, found it, screwed it into an eye and viewed the sistrum with open disfavor. "Not me, sir. Stap me, I'd as soon accept my death warrant."

	Watching him complete his dressing, Bentley mulled the problem again. Then a notion struck him. He sounded the bells.

	"Alaham, can you restore all things, making them exactly as they were at, say, nine o'clock this morning?"

	"Indeed, Master, thy commands may make alteration within the limits of the powers of my kind, but there can be no restoration except that—" He hesitated, both doubtful and eager.

	"Except what?" Bentley encouraged.

	"Except that thou on thy part do restore the ankh to me, willingly and of thine own free will."

	"Then," said Bentley, firmly and decisively, "I do restore the ankh, not only willingly, but gladly."

	The long, thin fingers, of Alaham caressed the relic as they received it. His eyes glittered with a pleasure that has awaited culmination through eons of time. He crooned over it in a low, loving voice.

	"Freedom! Freedom from command! At last! At last!"

	"Action, djinn," suggested Montmorency, struggling to fasten the cord of his britches.

	Alaham's eyes sparked. Fondling the sistrum, he pronounced, "As at the Hour of the Dog, so shall this abode be, and so shall the Master be." He paused; turned to Montmorency, finished, "And thou also!" For the last time he vanished.

	Reposing in his clean, well-cut tweeds, Bentley regarded the stark naked Montmorency and asked, "Where the heck were you at zero hour?"

	"In the steam-room giving the pores a treat." He felt over himself, shivered. "I ought to have told him."

	"Hah!" said Bentley. He mused and went on, "I've no spare clothes. I'm traveling light. Best I can do is dig you up some bathing trunks and phone for a taxi."

	"In a taxi, like that?" Montmorency went weak. "Hell's bells!"

The End