by Sax Rohmer
Abel Slattin shrugged his shoulders, racially, and returned to the armchair which he had just quitted. He reseated himself, placing his hat and cane upon my writing-table.
“A little agreement in black and white?” he suggested smoothly.
Smith raised himself up out of the white cane chair, and, bending forward over a corner of the table, scribbled busily upon a sheet of notepaper with my fountain-pen.
The while he did so, I covertly studied our visitor. He lay back in the armchair, his heavy eyelids lowered deceptively. He was a thought overdressed — a big man, dark-haired and well-groomed, who toyed with a monocle most unsuitable to his type. During the preceding conversation, I had been vaguely surprised to note Mr. Abel Slattin’s marked American accent.
Sometimes, when Slattin moved, a big diamond which he wore upon the third finger of his right hand glittered magnificently. There was a sort of bluish tint underlying the dusky skin, noticeable even in his hands but proclaiming itself significantly in his puffy face and especially under the eyes. I diagnosed a labouring valve somewhere in the heart system.
Nayland Smith’s pen scratched on. My glance strayed from our Semitic caller to his cane, lying upon the red leather before me. It was of most unusual workmanship, apparently Indian, being made of some kind of dark brown, mottled wood, bearing a marked resemblance to a snake’s skin; and the top of the cane was carved in conformity, to represent the head of what I took to be a puff-adder, fragments of stone, or beads, being inserted to represent the eyes, and the whole thing being finished with an artistic realism almost startling.
When Smith had tossed the written page to Slattin, and he, having read it with an appearance of carelessness, had folded it neatly and placed it in his pocket, I said:
“You have a curio here?”
Our visitor, whose dark eyes revealed all the satisfaction which, by his manner, he sought to conceal, nodded and took up the cane in his hand.
“It comes from Australia, doctor,” he replied; “it’s aboriginal work, and was given to me by a client. You thought it was Indian? Everybody does. It’s my mascot.”
“Really?”
“It is indeed. Its former owner ascribed magical powers to it! In fact, I believe he thought that it was one of those staffs mentioned in biblical history—”
“Aaron’s rod?” suggested Smith, glancing at the cane.
“Something of the sort,” said Slattin, standing up and again preparing to depart.
“You will ‘phone us, then?” asked my friend.
“You will hear from me to-morrow,” was the reply.
Smith returned to the cane armchair, and Slattin, bowing to both of us, made his way to the door as I rang for the girl to show him out.
“Considering the importance of his proposal,” I began, as the door closed, “you hardly received our visitor with cordiality.”
“I hate to have any relations with him,” answered my friend; “but we must not be squeamish respecting our instruments in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu. Slattin has a rotten reputation — even for a private inquiry agent. He is little better than a blackmailer—”
“How do you know?”
“Because I called on our friend Weymouth at the Yard yesterday and looked up the man’s record.”
“Whatever for?”
“I knew that he was concerning himself, for some reason, in the case. Beyond doubt he has established some sort of communication with the Chinese group; I am only wondering—”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes — I do, Petrie! I tell you he is unscrupulous enough to stoop even to that.”
No doubt Slattin knew that this gaunt, eager-eyed Burmese commissioner was vested with ultimate authority in his quest of the mighty Chinaman who represented things unutterable, whose potentialities for evil were boundless as his genius, who personified a secret danger, the extent and nature of which none of us truly understood. And, learning of these things, with unerring Semitic instinct he had sought an opening in this glittering Rialto. But there were two bidders!
“You think he may have sunk so low as to become a creature of Fu-Manchu?” I asked, aghast.
“Exactly! If it paid him well I do not doubt that he would serve that master as readily as any other. His record is about as black as it well could be. Slattin is, of course, an assumed name; he was known as Lieutenant Pepley when he belonged to the New York Police, and he was kicked out of the service for complicity in an unsavoury Chinatown case.”
“Chinatown!”
“Yes, Petrie, it made me wonder, too; and we must not forget that he is undeniably a clever scoundrel.”
“Shall you keep any appointment which he may suggest?”
“Undoubtedly. But I shall not wait until to-morrow.”
“What!”
“I propose to pay a little informal visit to Mr. Abel Slattin to-night.”
“At his office?”
“No; at his private residence. If, as I more than suspect, his object is to draw us into some trap, he will probably report his favourable progress to his employer to-night!”
“Then we should have followed him!”
Nayland Smith stood up and divested himself of the old shooting-jacket.
“He has been followed, Petrie,” he replied, with one of his rare smiles. “Two C.I.D. men have been watching the house all night!”
This was entirely characteristic of my friend’s farseeing methods.
“By the way,” I said, “you saw Eltham this morning. He will soon be convalescent. Where, in Heaven’s name, can he—”
“Don’t be alarmed on his behalf, Petrie,” interrupted Smith. “His life is no longer in danger.”
I stared, stupidly.
“No longer in danger!”
“He received, some time yesterday, a letter, written in Chinese, upon Chinese paper, and enclosed in an ordinary business envelope, having a typewritten address and bearing a London postmark.”
“Well?”
“As nearly as I can render the message in English it reads: ‘Although, because you are a brave man, you would not betray your correspondent in China, he has been discovered. He was a mandarin, and as I cannot write the name of a traitor, I may not name him. He was executed four days ago. I salute you and pray for your speedy recovery. — Fu-Manchu.’”
“Fu-Manchu! But it is almost certainly a trap.”
“On the contrary, Petrie, Fu-Manchu would not have written in Chinese unless he were sincere; and, to clear all doubt, I received a cable this morning reporting that the Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat was assassinated in his own garden, in Nan-Yang, one day last week.”
CHAPTER VIII
DR. FU-MANCHU STRIKES
Together we marched down the slope of the quiet, suburban avenue; to take pause before a small, detached house displaying the hatchet boards of the estate agent. Here we found unkempt laurel bushes, and acacias run riot, from which arboreal tangle protruded the notice: “To be Let or Sold.”
Smith, with an alert glance to right and left, pushed open the wooden gate and drew me in upon the gravel path. Darkness mantled all; for the nearest street lamp was fully twenty yards beyond.
From the miniature jungle bordering the path, a soft whistle sounded.
“Is that Carter?” called Smith sharply.
A shadowy figure uprose, and vaguely I made it out for that of a man in the unobtrusive blue serge which is the undress uniform of the Force.
“Well?” rapped my companion.
“Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir,” reported the constable. “He came in a cab which he dismissed—”
“He has not left again?”
“A few minutes after his return,” the man continued, “another cab came up, and a lady alighted.”
“A lady!”
“The same, sir, that has called upon him before.”
“Smith!” I whispered, plucking at his arm— “is it — ?”
He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb fool
ishly. For now the manner of Slattin’s campaign suddenly was revealed to me. In our operations against the Chinese murder-group two years before, we had had an ally in the enemy’s camp — Kâramanèh, the beautiful slave, whose presence in those happenings of the past had coloured the sometimes sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia; who had seemed a fitting figure for the romances of Bagdad during the Caliphate — Kâramanèh, whom I had thought sincere, whose inscrutable Eastern soul I had presumed, fatuously, to have laid bare and analysed.
Now once again she was plying her old trade of go-between; professing to reveal the secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu, and all the time — I could not doubt it — inveigling men into the net of this awful fisher.
Yesterday, I had been her dupe; yesterday, I had rejoiced in my captivity. To-day, I was not the favoured one; to-day I had not been selected recipient of her confidences — confidences sweet, seductive, deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was about to betray her master, to resign herself a prize to the victor!
Companioned by these bitter reflections, I had lost the remainder of the conversation between Nayland Smith and the police officer; now, casting off the succubus memory which threatened to obsess me, I put forth a giant mental effort to purge my mind of this uncleanness, and became again an active participant in the campaign against the Master — the director of all things noxious.
Our plans being evidently complete, Smith seized my arm, and I found myself again out upon the avenue. He led me across the road and into the gate of a house almost opposite. From the fact that two upper windows were illuminated, I adduced that the servants were retiring; the other windows were in darkness, except for one on the ground floor to the extreme left of the building, through the lowered venetian blinds whereof streaks of light shone out.
“Slattin’s study!” whispered Smith. “He does not anticipate surveillance, and you will note that the window is wide open!”
With that my friend crossed the strip of lawn, and, careless of the fact that his silhouette must have been visible to any one passing the gate, climbed carefully up the artificial rockery intervening, and crouched upon the window-ledge peering into the room.
A moment I hesitated, fearful that if I followed I should stumble or dislodge some of the lava blocks of which the rockery was composed.
Then I heard that which summoned me to the attempt, whatever the cost.
Through the open window came the sound of a musical voice — a voice possessing a haunting accent, possessing a quality which struck upon my heart and set it quivering as though it were a gong hung in my bosom.
Kâramanèh was speaking.
Upon hands and knees, heedless of damage to my garments, I crawled up beside Smith. One of the laths was slightly displaced and over this my friend was peering in. Crouching close beside him, I peered in also.
I saw the study of a business man, with its files, neatly arranged works of reference, roll-top desk, and Milner safe. Before the desk, in a revolving chair, sat Slattin. He sat half-turned towards the window, leaning back and smiling; so that I could note the gold crown which preserved the lower left molar. In an armchair by the window, close, very close, and sitting with her back to me, was Kâramanèh!
She, who, in my dreams, I always saw, was ever seeing, in an Eastern dress, with gold bands about her white ankles, with jewel-laden fingers, with jewels in her hair, wore now a fashionable costume and a hat that could only have been produced in Paris. Kâramanèh was the one Oriental woman I had ever known who could wear European clothes; and as I watched that exquisite profile, I thought that Delilah must have been just such another as this; that, excepting the Empress Poppæ, history has record of no woman who, looking so innocent, was yet so utterly vile.
“Yes, my dear,” Slattin was saying, and through his monocle ogling his beautiful visitor, “I shall be ready for you to-morrow night.”
I felt Smith start at the words.
“There will be a sufficient number of men?”
Kâramanèh put the question in a strangely listless way.
“My dear little girl,” replied Slattin, rising and standing looking down at her, with his gold tooth twinkling in the lamplight, “there will be a whole division, if a whole division is necessary.”
He sought to take her white gloved hand, which rested upon the chair arm; but she evaded the attempt with seeming artlessness, and stood up. Slattin fixed his bold gaze upon her.
“So now, give me my orders,” he said.
“I am not prepared to do so, yet,” replied the girl composedly; “but now that I know you are ready, I can make my plans.”
She glided past him to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim of all these wiles.
“But—” began Slattin.
“I will ring you up in less than half an hour,” said Kâramanèh; and without further ceremony, she opened the door.
I still had my eyes glued to the aperture in the blind, when Smith began tugging at my arm.
“Down! you fool!” he hissed sharply; “if she sees us, all is lost!”
Realizing this, and none too soon, I turned, and rather clumsily followed my friend. I dislodged a piece of granite in my descent; but, fortunately Slattin had gone out into the hall and could not well have heard it.
We were crouching around an angle of the house, when a flood of light poured down the steps, and Kâramanèh rapidly descended. I had a glimpse of a dark-faced man who evidently had opened the door for her; then all my thoughts were centred upon that graceful figure receding from me in the direction of the avenue. She wore a loose cloak, and I saw this fluttering for a moment against the white gate-posts; then she was gone.
Yet Smith did not move. Detaining me with his hand he crouched there against a quick-set hedge; until, from a spot lower down the hill, we heard the start of the cab, which had been waiting. Twenty seconds elapsed, and from some other distant spot a second cab started.
“That’s Weymouth!” snapped Smith. “With decent luck, we should know Fu-Manchu’s hiding-place before Slattin tells us!”
“But—”
“Oh! as it happens he’s apparently playing the game.” In the half-light, Smith stared at me significantly. “Which makes it all the more important,” he concluded, “that we should not rely upon his aid!”
Those grim words were prophetic.
My companion made no attempt to communicate with the detective (or detectives) who shared our vigil; we took up a position close under the lighted study window and waited — waited.
Once, a taxi-cab laboured hideously up the steep gradient of the avenue.... It was gone. The lights at the upper windows above us became extinguished. A policeman tramped past the gateway, casually flashing his lamp in at the opening. One by one the illuminated windows in other houses visible to us became dull; then lived again as mirrors for the pallid moon. In the silence, words spoken within the study were clearly audible; and we heard some one — presumably the man who had opened the door — inquire if his services would be wanted again that night.
Smith inclined his head and hung over me in a tense attitude, in order to catch Slattin’s reply.
“Yes, Burke,” it came, “I want you to sit up until I return; I shall be going out shortly.”
Evidently the man withdrew at that; for a complete silence followed which prevailed for fully half an hour. I sought cautiously to move my cramped limbs, unlike Smith, who seeming to have sinews of piano-wire, crouched beside me immovable, untiringly. Then loud upon the stillness, broke the strident note of the telephone bell.
I started, nervously, clutching at Smith’s arm. It felt hard as iron to my grip.
“Hu
llo!” I heard Slattin call, “who is speaking?... Yes, yes! This is Mr. A. S.... I am to come at once?... I know where — yes!... You will meet me there?... Good! — I shall be with you in half an hour.... Good-bye!”
Distinctly I heard the creak of the revolving office-chair as Slattin rose; then Smith had me by the arm, and we were flying swiftly away from the door to take up our former post around the angle of the building. This gained —
“He’s going to his death!” rapped Smith beside me; “but Carter has a cab from the Yard waiting in the nearest rank. We shall follow to see where he goes — for it is possible that Weymouth may have been thrown off the scent; then, when we are sure of his destination, we can take a hand in the game! We—”
The end of the sentence was lost to me — drowned in such a frightful wave of sound as I despair to describe. It began with a high, thin scream, which was choked off staccato fashion; upon it followed a loud and dreadful cry uttered with all the strength of Slattin’s lungs.
“Oh, God!” he cried, and again— “Oh, God!”
This in turn merged into a sort of hysterical sobbing.
I was on my feet now, and automatically making for the door. I had a vague impression of Nayland Smith’s face beside me, the eyes glassy with a fearful apprehension. Then the door was flung open, and, in the bright light of the hall-way, I saw Slattin standing — swaying and seemingly fighting with the empty air.
“What is it? For God’s sake, what has happened?” reached my ears dimly — and the man Burke showed behind his master. White-faced I saw him to be; for now Smith and I were racing up the steps.
Ere we could reach him, Slattin, uttering another choking cry, pitched forward and lay half across the threshold.
We burst into the hall, where Burke stood with both his hands raised dazedly to his head. I could hear the sound of running feet upon the gravel, and knew that Carter was coming to join us.
Burke, a heavy man with a lowering, bull-dog type of face, collapsed on to his knees beside Slattin, and began softly to laugh in little rising peals.
“Drop that!” snapped Smith, and grasping him by the shoulders, he sent him spinning along the hall-way, where he sank upon the bottom step of the stairs, to sit with his outstretched fingers extended before his face, and peering at us grotesquely through the crevices.
