by Sax Rohmer
“Tie something around my mouth!” directed Kâramanèh with nervous rapidity. As I began to look about me: “Tear a strip from my dress,” she said; “do not hesitate — be quick! be quick!”
I seized the flimsy muslin and tore off half a yard or so from the hem of the skirt. The voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu became audible. He was speaking rapidly, sibilantly, and evidently was approaching — would be upon me in a matter of moments. I fastened the strip of fabric over the girl’s mouth and tied it behind, experiencing a pang half pleasurable and half fearful as I found my hands in contact with the foamy luxuriance of her hair.
Dr. Fu-Manchu was entering the room immediately beyond.
Snatching up the bunch of keys, I turned and ran, for in another instant my retreat would be cut off. As I burst once more into the darkened room I became aware that a door on the farther side of it was open; and framed in the opening was the tall high-shouldered figure of the Chinaman, still enveloped in his fur coat and wearing the grotesque cap. As I saw him, so he perceived me; and as I sprang to the window, he advanced.
I turned desperately and hurled the bunch of keys with all my force into the dimly seen face....
Either because they possessed a chatoyant quality of their own (as I had often suspected), or by reason of the light reflected through the open window, the green eyes gleamed upon me vividly like those of a giant cat. One short guttural exclamation paid tribute to the accuracy of my aim; then I had the crossbar in my hand.
I threw one leg across the sill, and dire as was my extremity, hesitated for an instant ere trusting myself to the flight....
A vice-like grip fastened upon my left ankle.
Hazily I became aware that the dark room was become flooded with figures. The whole yellow gang were upon me — the entire murder-group composed of units recruited from the darkest places of the East!
I have never counted myself a man of resource, and have always envied Nayland Smith his possession of that quality, in him extraordinarily developed; but on this occasion the gods were kind to me, and I resorted to the only device, perhaps, which could have saved me. Without releasing my hold upon the crossbar, I clutched at the ledge with the fingers of both hands and swung back, into the room, my right leg, which was already across the sill. With all my strength I kicked out. My heel came in contact, in sickening contact, with a human head; beyond doubt I had split the skull of the man who held me.
The grip upon my ankle was released automatically; and now consigning all my weight to the rope, I slipped forward, as a diver, across the broad ledge and found myself sweeping through the night like a winged thing....
The line, as Kâramanèh had assured me, was of well-judged length. Down I swept to within six or seven feet of the street level, then up, up, at ever-decreasing speed, toward the vague oblong of the open window beyond.
I hope I have been successful, in some measure, in portraying the varied emotions which it was my lot to experience that night, and it may well seem that nothing more exquisite could remain for me. Yet it was written otherwise; for as I swept up to my goal, describing the inevitable arc which I had no power to check, I saw that one awaited me.
Crouching forward half out of the open window was a Burmese dacoit, a cross-eyed, leering being whom I well remembered to have encountered two years before in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu. One bare, sinewy arm held rigidly at right angles before his breast, he clutched a long curved knife and waited — waited — for the critical moment when my throat should be at his mercy!
I have said that a strange coolness had come to my aid; even now it did not fail me, and so incalculably rapid are the workings of the human mind that I remembered complimenting myself upon an achievement which Smith himself could not have bettered, and this in the immeasurable interval which intervened between the commencement of my upward swing and my arrival on a level with the window.
I threw my body back and thrust my feet forward. As my legs went through the opening, an acute pain in one calf told me that I was not to escape scathless from the night’s mêlée. But the dacoit went rolling over in the darkness of the room, as helpless in face of that ramrod stroke as the veriest infant....
Back I swept upon my trapeze, a sight to have induced any passing citizen to question his sanity. With might and main I sought to check the swing of the pendulum, for if I should come within reach of the window behind I doubted not that other knives awaited me. It was no difficult feat, and I succeeded in checking my flight. Swinging there above Museum Street I could even appreciate, so lucid was my mind, the ludicrous element of the situation.
I dropped. My wounded leg almost failed me; and greatly shaken, but with no other serious damage, I picked myself up from the dust of the roadway — to see the bar vanishing into the darkness above. It was a mockery of Fate that the problem which Nayland Smith had set me to solve should have been solved thus: for I could not doubt that by means of the branch of a tall tree or some other suitable object situated opposite to Smith’s house in Rangoon, Kâramanèh had made her escape as to-night I had made mine.
Apart from the acute pain in my calf I knew that the dacoit’s knife had bitten deeply by reason of the fact that a warm liquid was trickling down into my boot. Like any drunkard I stood there in the middle of the road looking up at the vacant window where the dacoit had been, and up at the window above the shop of J. Salaman where I knew Fu-Manchu to be. But for some reason the latter window had been closed or almost closed, and as I stood there this reason became apparent to me.
The sound of running footsteps came from the direction of New Oxford Street. I turned — to see two policemen bearing down upon me!
This was a time for quick decisions and prompt action. I weighed all the circumstances in the balance, and made the last vital choice of the night; I turned and ran toward the British Museum as though the worst of Fu-Manchu’s creatures, and not my allies the police, were at my heels!
No one else was in sight, but, as I whirled into the Square, the red lamp of a slowly retreating taxi became visible some hundred yards to the left. My leg was paining me greatly, but the nature of the wound did not interfere with my progress; therefore I continued my headlong career, and ere the police had reached the end of Museum Street I had my hand upon the door handle of the cab — for, the Fates being persistently kind to me, the vehicle was for hire.
“Dr. Cleeve’s, Harley Street!” I shouted at the man. “Drive like hell! It’s an urgent case.”
I leapt into the cab.
Within five seconds from the time that I slammed the door and dropped back panting upon the cushions, we were speeding westward toward the house of the famous pathologist, thereby throwing the police hopelessly off the track.
Faintly to my ears came the purr of a police whistle. The taxi-man evidently did not hear the significant sound. Merciful Providence had rung down the curtain; for to-night my rôle in the yellow drama was finished.
CHAPTER XXI
CRAGMIRE TOWER
Less than two hours later, Inspector Weymouth and a party from New Scotland Yard raided the house in Museum Street. They found the stock of J. Salaman practically intact, and, in the strangely appointed rooms above, every evidence of a hasty outgoing. But of the instruments, drugs and other laboratory paraphernalia not one item remained. I would gladly have given my income for a year, to have gained possession of the books, alone; for beyond all shadow of doubt, I knew them to contain formulæ calculated to revolutionize the science of medicine.
Exhausted, physically and mentally, and with my mind a whispering-gallery of conjectures (it were needless for me to mention whom respecting), I turned in, gratefully, having patched up the slight wound in my calf.
I seemed scarcely to have closed my eyes, when Nayland Smith was shaking me into wakefulness.
“You are probably tired out,” he said; “but your crazy expedition of last night entitles you to no sympathy. Read this. There is a train in an hour. We will reserve a compartment and you can r
esume your interrupted slumbers in a corner seat.”
As I struggled upright in bed, rubbing my eyes sleepily, Smith handed me the Daily Telegraph, pointing to the following paragraph upon the literary page:
“Messrs. M —— announce that they will publish shortly the long-delayed work of Kegan Van Roon, the celebrated American traveller, Orientalist and psychic investigator, dealing with his recent inquiries in China. It will be remembered that Mr. Van Roon undertook to motor from Canton to Siberia last winter, but met with unforeseen difficulties in the province of Ho-Nan. He fell into the hands of a body of fanatics and was fortunate to escape with his life. His book will deal in particular with his experiences in Ho-Nan, and some sensational revelations regarding the awakening of that most mysterious race, the Chinese, are promised. For reasons of his own he has decided to remain in England until the completion of his book (which will be published simultaneously in New York and London), and has leased Cragmire Tower, Somersetshire, in which romantic and historical residence he will collate his notes and prepare for the world a work ear-marked as a classic even before it is published.”
I glanced up from the paper, to find Smith’s eyes fixed upon me inquiringly.
“From what I have been able to learn,” he said evenly, “we should reach Saul, with decent luck, just before dusk.”
As he turned and quitted the room without another word, I realized, in a flash, the purport of our mission; I understood my friend’s ominous calm, betokening suppressed excitement.
Fortune was with us (or so it seemed); and whereas we had not hoped to gain Saul before sunset, as a matter of fact the autumn afternoon was in its most glorious phase as we left the little village with its old-time hostelry behind us and set out in an easterly direction, with the Bristol Channel far away on our left and a gently sloping upland on our right.
The crooked high-street practically constituted the entire hamlet of Saul, and the inn, The Wagoners, was the last house in the street. Now, as we followed the ribbon of moor-path to the top of the rise, we could stand and look back upon the way we had come; and although we had covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the sunlight gleaming now and then upon the gilt lettering of the inn sign as it swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm, but relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had in it the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us, then, the footpath sloped down to Saul, unpeopled by any living thing; east and north-east swelled the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy distance where the sky began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west fell the gentle gradient from the top of the slope which we had mounted, and here, as far as the eye could reach, the country had an appearance suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird’s-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun coloured smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor would begin once more.
“That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose,” said Smith, suddenly peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction; “and yonder, unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire Tower.”
Shading my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead, and saw the place for which we were bound; one of those round towers, more common in Ireland, which some authorities have declared to be of Phœnician origin. Ramshackle buildings clustered untidily about its base, and to it a sort of tongue of that oddly venomous green which patched the lowlands shot out and seemed almost to reach the tower-base. The land for miles around was as flat as the palm of my hand, saving certain hummocks, lesser tors, and irregular piles of boulders which dotted its expanse. Hills and uplands there were in the hazy distance, forming a sort of mighty inland bay which I doubted not in some past age had been covered by the sea. Even in the brilliant sunlight the place had something of a mournful aspect, looking like a great dried-up pool into which the children of giants had carelessly cast stones.
We met no living soul upon the moor. With Cragmire Tower but a quarter of a mile off, Smith paused again, and raising his powerful glasses swept the visible landscape.
“Not a sign, Petrie,” he said softly; “yet....”
Dropping the glasses back into their case, my companion began to tug at his left ear.
“Have we been over-confident?” he said, narrowing his eyes in speculative fashion. “No less than three times I have had the idea that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind us, as I focussed....”
“What do you mean, Smith?”
“Are we” — he glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled with listening Chinamen— “followed?”
Silently we looked into one another’s eyes, each seeking for the dread which neither had named. Then:
“Come on, Petrie!” said Smith, grasping my arm: and at quick march we were off again.
Cragmire Tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had looked like a green tongue, from the moorland slopes above, was in fact a creek, flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the sea. The house which we were come to visit consisted in a low, two-storey building, joining the ancient tower on the east, with two smaller out-buildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden, and a few stunted fruit trees in the north-west corner; the whole being surrounded by a grey stone wall.
The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path, which ran up almost alongside of it. We were both extremely warm by reason of our long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have been grateful to us. In short, I find it difficult to account for the unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found myself at the foot of the time-worn monument. I know that we both pulled up sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by some mutual disturbance.
But not a sound broke the stillness save the remote murmuring, until a solitary sea-gull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower, uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically to my mind sprang the lines of the poem:
Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen, With God’s creatures I bide, ‘mid the birds that I ken; Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.
Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows of the house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above. Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not the slightest evidence of tenancy.
We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring and tugged it.
From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clangour, a cracked and toneless jangle, which, seeming to echo through empty apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of the openings in the round tower; for it was from above our heads that the noise came to us.
It died away, that eerie ringing — that clanging so dismal that it could chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming down out of the blue; it awoke no other response than the mournful cry of the sea-gull circling over our heads. Silence fell. We looked at one another, and we were both about to express a mutual doubt, when, unheralded by any unfastening of bolts or bars, the door was opened, and a huge mulatto, dressed in white, stood there regarding us.
I started nervously, for the apparition was so unexpected, but Nayland Smith, without evidence of surprise, thrust a card into the man’s hand.
“Take my card to Mr. Van Roon, and say that I wish to
see him on important business,” he directed authoritatively.
The mulatto bowed and retired. His white figure seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness within, for beyond the patch of uncarpeted floor revealed by the peeping sunlight, was a barn-like place of densest shadow. I was about to speak, but Smith laid his hand upon my arm warningly, as, out from the shadows, the mulatto returned. He stood on the right of the door and bowed again.
“Be pleased to enter,” he said, in his harsh, negro voice. “Mr. Van Roon will see you.”
The gladness of the sun could no longer stir me; a chill and sense of foreboding bore me company as beside Nayland Smith I entered Cragmire Tower.
CHAPTER XXII
THE MULATTO
The room in which Van Roon received us was roughly of the shape of an old-fashioned key-hole; one end if it occupied the base of the tower, upon which the remainder had evidently been built. In many respects it was a singular room, but the feature which caused me the greatest amazement was this — it had no windows!
In the deep alcove formed by the tower sat Van Roon at a littered table, upon which stood an oil reading-lamp, green-shaded, of the “Victoria” pattern, to furnish the entire illumination of the apartment. That book-shelves lined the rectangular portion of this strange study I divined, although that end of the place was dark as a catacomb. The walls were wood-panelled, and the ceiling was oaken-beamed. A small book shelf and tumble-down cabinet stood upon either side of the table, and the celebrated American author and traveller lay propped up in a long split-cane chair. He wore smoke glasses, and had a clean-shaven, olive face, with a profusion of jet-black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar smoke hung in the room. He did not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand, between two fingers whereof he held Smith’s card.
“You will excuse the seeming discourtesy of an invalid, gentlemen?” he said; “but I am suffering from undue temerity in the interior of China!”
