by Sax Rohmer
He waved his hand vaguely, and I saw that two rough deal chairs stood near the table. Smith and I seated ourselves, and my friend, leaning his elbow upon the table, looked fixedly at the face of the man whom we were come from London to visit. Although comparatively unfamiliar to the British public, the name of Van Roon was well known in American literary circles; for he enjoyed in the United States a reputation somewhat similar to that which had rendered the name of our mutual friend, Sir Lionel Barton, a household word in England. It was Van Roon who, following in the footsteps of Madame Blavatsky, had sought out the haunts of the fabled mahatmas in the Himalayas, and Van Roon who had essayed to explore the fever swamps of Yucatan in quest of the secret of lost Atlantis; lastly, it was Van Roon, who, with an overland car specially built for him by a celebrated American firm, had undertaken the journey across China.
I studied the olive face with curiosity. Its natural impassivity was so greatly increased by the presence of the coloured spectacles that my study was as profitless as if I had scrutinized the face of a carven Buddha. The mulatto had withdrawn, and in an atmosphere of gloom and tobacco smoke Smith and I sat staring, perhaps rather rudely, at the object of our visit to the West Country.
“Mr. Van Roon,” began my friend abruptly, “you will no doubt have seen this paragraph. It appeared in this morning’s Daily Telegraph.”
He stood up, and taking out the cutting from his notebook, placed it on the table.
“I have seen this — yes,” said Van Roon, revealing a row of even white teeth in a rapid smile. “Is it to this paragraph that I owe the pleasure of seeing you here?”
“The paragraph appeared in this morning’s issue,” replied Smith. “An hour from the time of seeing it, my friend, Dr. Petrie, and I were entrained for Bridgwater.”
“Your visit delights me, gentlemen, and I should be ungrateful to question its cause; but frankly I am at a loss to understand why you should have honoured me thus. I am a poor host, God knows; for what with my tortured limb, a legacy from the Chinese devils whose secrets I surprised, and my semi-blindness, due to the same cause, I am but sorry company.”
Nayland Smith held up his right hand deprecatingly. Van Roon tendered a box of cigars and clapped his hands, whereupon the mulatto entered.
“I see that you have a story to tell me, Mr. Smith,” he said; “therefore I suggest whisky-and-soda — or you might prefer tea, as it is nearly tea-time?”
Smith and I chose the former refreshment, and the soft-footed half-breed having departed upon his errand, my companion, leaning forward earnestly across the littered table, outlined for Van Roon the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and malign being whose mission in England at that moment was none other than the stoppage of just such information as our host was preparing to give to the world.
“There is a giant conspiracy, Mr. Van Roon,” he said, “which had its birth in this very province of Ho-Nan, from which you were so fortunate to escape alive; whatever its scope or limitations, a great secret society is established among the yellow races. It means that China, which has slumbered for so many generations, now stirs in that age-long sleep. I need not tell you how much more it means, this seething in the pot....”
“In a word,” interrupted Van Roon, pushing Smith’s glass across the table, “you would say—”
“That your life is not worth that!” replied Smith, snapping his fingers before the other’s face.
A very impressive silence fell. I watched Van Roon curiously as he sat propped up among his cushions, his smooth face ghastly in the green light from the lamp-shade. He held the stump of a cigar between his teeth, but, apparently unnoticed by him, it had long since gone out. Smith, out of the shadows, was watching him, too. Then —
“Your information is very disturbing,” said the American. “I am the more disposed to credit your statement because I am all too painfully aware of the existence of such a group as you mention, in China, but that they had an agent here in England is something I had never conjectured. In seeking out this solitary residence I have unwittingly done much to assist their designs.... But — my dear Mr. Smith, I am very remiss! Of course you will remain to-night, and I trust for some days to come?”
Smith glanced rapidly across at me, then turned again to our host.
“It seems like forcing our company upon you,” he said, “but in your own interests I think it will be best to do as you are good enough to suggest. I hope and believe that our arrival here has not been noticed by the enemy; therefore it will be well if we remain concealed as much as possible for the present, until we have settled upon some plan.”
“Hagar shall go to the station for your baggage,” said the American rapidly, and clapped his hands, his usual signal to the mulatto.
Whilst the latter was receiving his orders I noticed Nayland Smith watching him closely; and when he had departed:
“How long has that man been in your service?” snapped my friend.
Van Roon peered blindly through his smoked glasses.
“For some years,” he replied; “he was with me in India — and in China.”
“Where did you engage him?”
“Actually, in St. Kitts.”
“H’m,” muttered Smith, and automatically he took out and began to fill his pipe.
“I can offer you no company but my own, gentlemen,” continued Van Roon, “but unless it interfere, with your plans, you may find the surrounding district of interest and worthy of inspection, between now and dinner-time. By the way, I think I can promise you quite a satisfactory meal, for Hagar is a model chef.”
“A walk would be enjoyable,” said Smith, “but dangerous.”
“Ah! perhaps you are right. Evidently you apprehend some attempt upon me?”
“At any moment!”
“To one in my crippled condition, an alarming outlook! However, I place myself unreservedly in your hands. But really, you must not leave this interesting district before you have made the acquaintance of some of its historical spots. To me, steeped as I am in what I may term the lore of the odd, it is a veritable wonderland, almost as interesting, in its way, as the caves and jungles of Hindustan depicted by Madame Blavatsky.”
His high-pitched voice, with a certain laboured intonation, not quite so characteristically American as was his accent, rose even higher; he spoke with the fire of the enthusiast.
“When I learnt that Cragmire Tower was vacant,” he continued, “I leapt at the chance (excuse the metaphor, from a lame man!). This is a ghost-hunter’s paradise. The tower itself is of unknown origin, though probably Phœnician, and the house traditionally sheltered Dr. Macleod, the necromancer, after his flight from the persecution of James of Scotland. Then, to add to its interest, it borders on Sedgemoor, the scene of the bloody battle during the Monmouth rising, whereat a thousand were slain on the field. It is a local legend that the unhappy Duke and his staff may be seen, on stormy nights, crossing the path which skirts the mire, after which this building is named, with flaming torches held aloft.”
“Merely marsh-lights, I take it?” interjected Smith, gripping his pipe hard between his teeth.
“Your practical mind naturally seeks a practical explanation,” smiled Van Roon, “but I myself have other theories. Then in addition to the charms of Sedgemoor — haunted Sedgemoor — on a fine day it is quite possible to see the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey from here; and Glastonbury Abbey, as you may know, is closely bound up with the history of Alchemy. It was in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey that the adept Kelly, companion of Dr. Dee, discovered, in the reign of Elizabeth, the famous caskets of St. Dunstan, containing the two tinctures....”
So he ran on, enumerating the odd charms of his residence, charms which for my part I did not find appealing. Finally —
“We cannot presume further upon your kindness,” said Nayland Smith, standing up. “No doubt we can amuse ourselves in the neighbourhood of the house until the return of your servant.”
“Look upon Cragmire Tower as yo
ur own, gentlemen!” cried Van Roon. “Most of the rooms are unfurnished, and the garden is a wilderness, but the structure of the brickwork in the tower may interest you archæologically, and the view across the moor is at least as fine as any in the neighbourhood.”
So, with his brilliant smile and a gesture of one thin yellow hand, the crippled traveller made us free of his odd dwelling. As I passed out from the room close at Smith’s heels, I glanced back, I cannot say why. Van Roon already was bending over his papers, in his green-shadowed sanctuary, and the light shining down upon his smoked glasses created the odd illusion that he was looking over the tops of the lenses and not down at the table as his attitude suggested. However, it was probably ascribable to the weird chiaroscuro of the scene, although it gave the seated figure an oddly malignant appearance, and I passed through the utter darkness of the outer room to the front door. Smith opening it, I was conscious of surprise to find dusk come — to meet darkness where I had looked for sunlight.
The silver wisps which had raced along the horizon, as we came to Cragmire Tower, had been harbingers of other and heavier banks. A stormy sunset smeared crimson streaks across the skyline, where a great range of clouds, like the oily smoke of a city burning, was banked, mountain topping mountain, and lighted from below by this angry red. As we came down the steps and out by the gate, I turned and looked across the moor behind us. A sort of reflection from this distant blaze encrimsoned the whole landscape. The inland bay glowed sullenly, as if internal fires and not reflected light were at work; a scene both wild and majestic.
Nayland Smith was staring up at the cone-like top of the ancient tower in a curious, speculative fashion. Under the influence of our host’s conversation I had forgotten the reasonless dread which had touched me at the moment of our arrival, but now, with the red light blazing over Sedgemoor, as if in memory of the blood which had been shed there, and with the tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very uncomfortable again, nor did I envy Van Roon his eerie residence. The proximity of a tower of any kind, at night, makes in some inexplicable way for awe, and to-night there were other agents, too.
“What’s that?” snapped Smith suddenly, grasping my arm.
He was peering southward, toward the distant hamlet, and, starting violently at his words and the sudden grasp of his hand, I, too, stared in that direction.
“We were followed, Petrie,” he almost whispered. “I never got a sight of our follower, but I’ll swear we were followed. Look! there’s something moving over yonder!”
Together we stood staring into the dusk; then Smith burst abruptly into one of his rare laughs, and clapped me upon the shoulder.
“It’s Hagar, the mulatto!” he cried, “and our grips. That extraordinary American with his tales of witch-lights and haunted abbeys has been playing the devil with our nerves.” He glanced up at the tower. “What a place to live in! Frankly, I don’t think I could stand it.”
Together we waited by the gate until the half-caste appeared on the bend of the path with a grip in either hand. He was a great, muscular fellow with a stoic face, and, for the purpose of visiting Saul, presumably, he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of livery, with a peaked cap.
Smith watched him enter the house. Then —
“I wonder where Van Roon obtains his provisions and so forth,” he muttered. “It’s odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Cragmire Tower at ‘The Wagoners.’”
There came a sort of sudden expectancy into his manner for which I found myself at a loss to account. He turned his gaze inland and stood there tugging at his left ear and clicking his teeth together. He stared at me, and his eyes looked very bright in the dusk, for a sort of red glow from the sunset touched them; but he spoke no word, merely taking my arm and leading me off on a rambling walk around and about the house. Neither of us spoke a word until we stood at the gate of Cragmire Tower again; then —
“I’ll swear, now, that we were followed here to-day!” muttered Smith.
The lofty place immediately within the doorway proved, in the light of a lamp now fixed in an iron bracket, to be a square entrance hall meagrely furnished. The closed study door faced the entrance, and on the left of it ascended an open staircase up which the mulatto led the way. We found ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing the house from back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was indicated by the mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of fair size, furnished quite simply but boasting a wardrobe cupboard, and Smith’s grip stood beside the white-enamelled bed. I glanced around, and then prepared to follow the man, who had awaited me in the doorway.
He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the lithe yet brawny figure along the corridor, I found myself considering critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of his neck.
I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding, an elusive stirring in the depths of my being, of which I became conscious at certain times in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his murderous servants. This sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now, unaccountably, as I stood looking into the neat bedroom, on the same side of the corridor but at the extreme end, wherein I was to sleep. A voiceless warning urged me to return; a kind of childish panic came fluttering about my heart, a dread of entering the room, of allowing the mulatto to come behind me.
Doubtless this was no more than a subconscious product of my observations respecting his abnormal breadth of shoulder. But whatever the origin of the impulse, I found myself unable to disobey it. Therefore, I merely nodded, turned on my heel and went back to Smith’s room.
I closed the door, then turned to face Smith, who stood regarding me.
“Smith,” I said, “that man sends cold water trickling down my spine!”
Still regarding me fixedly, my friend nodded his head.
“You are curiously sensitive to this sort of thing,” he replied slowly; “I have noticed it before as a useful capacity. I don’t like the look of the man myself. The fact that he has been in Van Roon’s employ for some years goes for nothing. We are neither of us likely to forget Kwee, the Chinese servant of Sir Lionel Barton, and it is quite possible that Fu-Manchu has corrupted this man as he corrupted the other. It is quite possible....”
His voice trailed off into silence, and he stood looking across the room with unseeing eyes, meditating deeply. It was quite dark, now, outside, as I could see through the uncurtained window, which opened upon the dreary expanse stretching out to haunted Sedgemoor. Two candles were burning upon the dressing-table; they were but recently lighted, and so intense was the stillness that I could distinctly hear the spluttering of one of the wicks, which was damp. Without giving the slightest warning of his intention, Smith suddenly made two strides forward, stretched out his long arms, and snuffed the pair of candles in a twinkling!
The room became plunged in impenetrable darkness.
“Not a word, Petrie!” whispered my companion.
I moved cautiously to join him, but as I did so, perceived that he was moving, too. Vaguely, against the window I perceived him silhouetted. He was looking out across the moor, and —
“See! see!” he hissed.
My heart thumping furiously in my breast, I bent over him; and for the second time since our coming to Cragmire Tower, my thoughts flew to “The Fenman.”
There are shades in the fen; ghosts of women and men Who have sinned and have died, but are living again. O’er the waters they tread, with their lanterns of dread, And they peer in the pools — in the pools of the dead....
A light was dancing out upon the moor, a witch-light that came and went unaccountably, up and down, in and out, now clearly visible, now masked in the darkness!
“Lock the door!” snapped my companion— “if there’s a key.”
I crept across the room and fumbled for a moment; then —
“There is no key,” I reported.
“Then wedge the chair under the knob and let no one ent
er until I return!” he said amazingly.
With that he opened the window to its fullest extent, threw his leg over the sill, and went creeping along a wide concrete ledge, in which ran a leaded gutter, in the direction of the tower on the right!
Not pausing to follow his instructions respecting the chair, I craned out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on the moor moved the will-o’-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it was possible for an agile climber to step from it to the edge of the unglazed window some four feet below, and to scramble from that point to the stone fence and thence on to the path by which we had come from Saul.
This difficult operation Nayland Smith successfully performed, and, to my unbounded amazement, went racing into the darkness toward the dancing light, headlong, like a madman! The night swallowed him up, and between my wonder and my fear my hands trembled so violently that I could scarce support myself where I rested, with my full weight upon the sill.
I seemed now to be moving through the fevered phases of a nightmare. Around and below me Cragmire Tower was profoundly silent, but a faint odour of cookery was now perceptible. Outside, from the night, came a faint whispering as of the distant sea, but no moon and no stars relieved the impenetrable blackness. Only out over the moor the mysterious light still danced and moved.
One — two — three — four — five minutes passed. The light vanished and did not appear again. Five more age-long minutes elapsed in absolute silence, whilst I peered into the darkness of the night and listened, muscles tensed, for the return of Nayland Smith. Yet two more minutes, which embraced an agony of suspense, passed in the same fashion; then a shadowy form grew, phantomesque, out of the gloom; a moment more, and I distinctly heard the heavy breathing of a man nearly spent, and saw my friend scrambling up toward the black embrasure in the tower. His voice came huskily, pantingly:
