by Sax Rohmer
“There it is again, Petrie!” he whispered. “Look, look!”
His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful and uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon the ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, then began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose, higher, higher, higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or more from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away again as it had come!
“For God’s sake, Smith, what was it?”
“Don’t ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We—”
He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith’s shoulder I saw Forsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out across the common.
Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.
“We must stop him!” he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to my mouth as I was about to call out— “Not a sound, Petrie!”
He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the dark, crying:
“Out through the garden — the side entrance!”
I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room. Through he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed him out, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants in a neighbouring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze stirred; and in the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of me, tugging at the bolt of the gate.
Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and left the door ajar.
“We must not appear to have come from your house,” explained Smith rapidly. “I will go along to the high-road and cross to the common a hundred yards up, where there is a pathway, as though homeward bound to the north side. Give me half a minute’s start, then you proceed in an opposite direction and cross from the corner of the next road. Directly you are out of the light of the street lamps, get over the rails and run for the elms!”
He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.
While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive impetuous way of his, his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel, I had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stood alone in that staid and respectable by-way, holding a loaded pistol in my hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.
It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner, as directed, for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and evil man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule, not of Nayland Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the realization of his monstrous schemes, not even of Kâramanèh, the slave girl, whose glorious beauty was a weapon of might in Fu-Manchu’s hand, but of what impression I must have made upon a patient had I encountered one then.
Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common and vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward the elms I found myself wondering what it was all about, and for what we were come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me that if Smith had counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late, for it appeared to me that he must already be in the coppice.
I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms, came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air — the eerie hoot of a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached little significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful scream — a scream in which fear and loathing and anger were hideously blended — thrilled me with horror.
After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myself standing by the southernmost elm.
“Smith!” I cried breathlessly. “Smith! my God! where are you?”
As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly figure — that of a man whose face appeared to be streaked. His eyes glared at me madly, and he moved the air with his hands like one blind and insane with fear.
I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled, and the man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.
Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment — and was still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.
“I let him walk to his death, Petrie,” I heard dimly. “God forgive me — God forgive me!”
The words aroused me.
“Smith” — my voice came as a whisper— “for one awful moment I thought—”
“So did some one else,” he rapped. “Our poor sailor has met the end designed for me, Petrie!”
At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth’s face had struck me as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now lay dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight moustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!
CHAPTER V
THE NET
We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but, screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match touched that other face.
“Oh, God!” whispered Smith.
A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.
In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so horrible. Forsyth’s livid face was streaked with tiny streams of blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye, and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.
Smith’s piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path and made my examination — an examination which that first glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless — a mere matter of form.
“He’s quite dead, Smith,” I said huskily. “It’s — unnatural — it—”
Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little, short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a car skirling along the high-road, but I remained there on my knees staring dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a matter of minutes since had been that of a clean-looking British seaman. I found myself contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed moustache with the bloated face above it, and counting the little drops of blood which trembled upon its edge. There were footsteps approaching. I arose. The footsteps quickened, and I turned as a constable ran up.
“What’s this?” he demanded gruffly, and stood with his fists clenched, looking from Smith to me and down at that which lay between us. Then his hand flew to his breast; there was a silvern gleam and —
“Drop that whistle!” snapped Smith, and struck it from the man’s hand. “Where’s your lantern? Don’t ask questions!”
The constable started back and was evidently debating upon his chances with the two of us, when my friend pulled a letter from his pocket and thrust it under the man’s nose.
“Read that!” he directed harshly, “and then listen to my orders.”
There was something in his voice which changed the officer’s opinion of the situation. He directed the light of his lantern upon the open letter, and seemed to be stricken with wonder.
“If you have any doubt,” continued Smith— “you may not be familiar with the Commissioner’s signature — you have only to ring up Scotland Yard from Dr. Petrie’s house, to which we shall now return to disperse it.” He pointed to Forsyth. “Help us to carry him there. We must not be seen; this must be hushed up. You understand? It must not get into the Press—”
The man saluted respectfully, and the
three of us addressed ourselves to the mournful task. By slow stages we bore the dead man to the edge of the common, carried him across the road and into my house, without exciting attention even on the part of those vagrants who nightly slept out in the neighbourhood.
We laid our burden upon the surgery table.
“You will want to make an examination, Petrie,” said Smith in his decisive way, “and the officer here might ‘phone for the ambulance. I have some investigations to make also. I must have the pocket lamp.”
He raced upstairs to his room, and an instant later came running down again. The front door banged.
“The telephone is in the hall,” I said to the constable.
“Thank you, sir.”
He went out of the surgery as I switched on the lamp over the table and began to examine the marks upon Forsyth’s skin. These, as I have said, were in groups and nearly all in the form of elongated punctures; a fairly deep incision with a pear-shaped and superficial scratch beneath it. One of the tiny wounds had penetrated the right eye.
The symptoms, or those which I had been enabled to observe as Forsyth had first staggered into view from among the elms, were most puzzling. Clearly enough the muscles of articulation and the respiratory muscles had been affected; and now the livid face, dotted over with tiny wounds (they were also on the throat), set me mentally groping for a clue to the manner of his death.
No clue presented itself; and my detailed examination of the body availed me nothing. The grey herald of dawn was come when the police arrived with the ambulance and took Forsyth away.
I was just taking my cap from the rack when Nayland Smith returned.
“Smith!” I cried, “have you found anything?”
He stood there in the grey light of the hall-way tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
The bronzed face looked very gaunt, I thought, and his eyes were bright with that febrile glitter which once I had disliked, but which I had learned from experience to be due to tremendous nervous excitement. At such times he could act with icy coolness, and his mental faculties seemed temporarily to acquire an abnormal keenness. He made no direct reply, but —
“Have you any milk?” he jerked abruptly.
So wholly unexpected was the question that for a moment I failed to grasp it. Then —
“Milk!” I began.
“Exactly, Petrie! If you can find me some milk, I shall be obliged.”
I turned to descend to the kitchen, when —
“The remains of the turbot from dinner, Petrie, would also be welcome, and I think I should like a trowel.”
I stopped at the stairhead and faced him.
“I cannot suppose that you are joking, Smith,” I said, “but—”
He laughed dryly.
“Forgive me, old man,” he replied. “I was so preoccupied with my own train of thought that it never occurred to me how absurd my request must have sounded. I will explain my singular tastes later; at the moment, hustle is the watchword.”
Evidently he was in earnest, and I ran downstairs accordingly, returning with a garden trowel, a plate of cold fish, and a glass of milk.
“Thanks, Petrie,” said Smith. “If you would put the milk in a jug—”
I was past wondering, so I simply went and fetched a jug, into which he poured the milk. Then, with the trowel in his pocket, the plate of cold turbot in one hand and the milk-jug in the other, he made for the door. He had it open, when another idea evidently occurred to him.
“I’ll trouble you for the pistol, Petrie.”
I handed him the pistol without a word.
“Don’t assume that I want to mystify you,” he added, “but the presence of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don’t expect to be long.”
The cold light of dawn flooded the hall-way momentarily; then the door closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith as he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He was making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached them.
I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise. A policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated reveller in evening clothes. That sense of unreality assailed me again. Out there in the grey mist a man who was vested with powers which rendered him a law unto himself, who had the British Government behind him in all that he might choose to do, who had been summoned from Rangoon to London on singular and dangerous business, was employing himself with a plate of cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!
Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the common, then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its lights twinkled yellowly through the greyness, but I was less concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveller who had descended from it.
As the car went rocking by below me I strained my eyes in an endeavour more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the high-road, had struck-out across the common. It was that of a woman, who seemingly carried a bulky bag or parcel.
One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers in man which man, in modern times, neglects or knows not how to develop. I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting this lonely traveller who travelled at an hour so strange. With no definite plan in mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from the rack and walked briskly out of the house and across the common in a direction which I thought would enable me to head off the woman.
I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have it, and with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I came upon her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the bundle which had attracted my attention. I stopped and watched her.
She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a common black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that the dexterous hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white, and I perceived a pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf beside her. As she threw open the wrappings and lifted out something that looked like a small shrimping-net, I stepped around the bush, crossed silently the intervening patch of grass and stood beside her.
A faint breath of perfume reached me — of a perfume which, like the secret incense of Ancient Egypt, seemed to assail my soul. The glamour of the Orient was in that subtle essence, and I only knew one woman who used it. I bent over the kneeling figure.
“Good morning,” I said; “can I assist you in any way?”
She came to her feet like a startled deer, and flung away from me with the lithe movement of some Eastern dancing-girl.
Now came the sun, and its heralding rays struck sparks from the jewels upon the white fingers of this woman who wore the garments of a mendicant. My heart gave a great leap. It was with difficulty that I controlled my voice.
“There is no cause for alarm,” I added.
She stood watching me; even through the coarse veil I could see how her eyes glittered. I stooped and picked up the net.
“Oh!” The whispered word was scarcely audible; but it was enough. I doubted no longer.
“This is a net for bird-snaring,” I said. “What strange bird are you seeking, Kâramanèh?”
With a passionate gesture Kâramanèh snatched off the veil, and with it the ugly black hat. The cloud of wonderful intractable hair came rumpling about her face, and her glorious eyes blazed out upon me. How beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an Egyptian night; how often had they looked into mine in dreams!
To labour against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one knows, upon evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be worthless — evil; is there any torture to which the soul of man is subject, more pitiless? Yet this was my lot, for what past sins assigned to me I was unable to conjecture; and this was the woman, this lovely slave of a monster, this creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
“I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!” I said harshly.
Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.
“It is v
ery convenient to forget, sometimes,” I ran on bitterly, then checked myself, for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless desire to hear her defence, by a fool’s hope that it might be an acceptable one. I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it had a strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously it was intended for snaring. “What were you about to do?” I demanded sharply; but in my heart, poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of Kâramanèh’s lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.
She spoke then.
“Dr. Petrie—”
“Well?”
“You seem to be — angry with me, not so much because — of what I do, as because I do not remember you. Yet—”
“Kindly do not revert to the matter,” I interrupted. “You have chosen, very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please yourself; but answer my question.”
She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
“Why do you treat me so?” she cried. She had the most fascinating accent imaginable. “Throw me into prison, kill me if you like for what I have done!” She stamped her foot. “For what I have done! But do not torture me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches — that I forget you! I tell you — again I tell you — that until you came one night, last week, to rescue some one from” — (there was the old trick of hesitating before the name of Fu-Manchu)— “from him, I had never, never seen you!”
The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for belief — or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were against her.
“Such a declaration is worthless,” I said, as coldly as I could. “You are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you—”
“I am no traitress!” she blazed at me. Her eyes were magnificent.
“This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your ‘slavery’ — for I take it you are posing as a slave again — is evidently not very harsh. You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their destruction, and in return he loads you with jewels, lavishes gifts—”
