by Sax Rohmer
“My God! I can’t stand it any longer!” he babbled, and threw himself upon Smith, who was foremost, clutching pitifully at him for support. “Come and see him, sir — for Heaven’s sake come in! I think he’s dying; and he’s going mad. I never disobeyed an order in my life before, but I can’t help myself — I can’t help myself!”
“Brace up!” I cried, seizing him by the shoulders as, still clutching at Nayland Smith, he turned his ghastly face to me. “Who are you, and what’s your trouble?”
“I’m Beeton, Sir Gregory Hale’s man.”
Smith started visibly, and his gaunt, tanned face seemed to me to have grown perceptively paler.
“Come on, Petrie!” he snapped. “There’s some devilry here.”
Thrusting Beeton aside he rushed in at the open door — upon which, as I followed him, I had time to note the number, 14a. It communicated with a suite of rooms almost identical with our own. The sitting-room was empty and in the utmost disorder, but from the direction of the principal bedroom came a most horrible mumbling and gurgling sound — a sound utterly indescribable. For one instant we hesitated at the threshold — hesitated to face the horror beyond; then almost side by side we came into the bedroom….
Only one of the two lamps was alight — that above the bed; and on the bed a man lay writhing. He was incredibly gaunt, so that the suit of tropical twill which he wore hung upon him in folds, showing if such evidence were necessary, how terribly he was fallen away from his constitutional habit. He wore a beard of at least ten days’ growth, which served to accentuate the cavitous hollowness of his face. His eyes seemed starting from their sockets as he lay upon his back uttering inarticulate sounds and plucking with skinny fingers at his lips.
Smith bent forward peering into the wasted face; and then started back with a suppressed cry.
“Merciful God! can it be Hale?” he muttered. “What does it mean? what does it mean?”
I ran to the opposite side of the bed, and placing my arms under the writhing man, raised him and propped a pillow at his back. He continued to babble, rolling his eyes from side to side hideously; then by degrees they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of returning sanity entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed upon Nayland Smith, who bending over the bed, was watching Sir Gregory (for Sir Gregory I concluded this pitiable wreck to be) with an expression upon his face compound of many emotions.
“A glass of water,” I said, catching the glance of the man Beeton, who stood trembling at the open doorway.
Spilling a liberal quantity upon the carpet, Beeton ultimately succeeded in conveying the glass to me. Hale, never taking his gaze from Smith, gulped a little of the water and then thrust my hand away. As I turned to place the tumbler upon a small table the resumed the wordless babbling, and now, with his index finger, pointed to his mouth.
“He has lost the power of speech!” whispered Smith.
“He was stricken dumb, gentlemen, ten minutes ago,” said Beeton in a trembling voice. “He dropped off to sleep out there on the floor, and I brought him in here and laid him on the bed. When he woke up he was like that!”
The man on the bed ceased his inchoate babbling and now, gulping noisily, began to make quick nervous movements with his hands.
“He wants to write something,” said Smith in a low voice. “Quick! hold him up!” He thrust his notebook, open at a blank page, before the man whose movement were numbered, and placed a pencil in the shaking right hand.
Faintly and unevenly Sir Gregory commenced to write — whilst I supported him. Across the bent shoulders Smith silently questioned me, and my reply was a negative shake of the head.
The lamp above the bed was swaying as if in a heavy draught; I remembered that it had been swaying as we entered. There was no fog in the room, but already from the bleak corridor outside it was entering; murky, yellow clouds steaming in at the open door. Save for the gulping of the dying man, and the sobbing breaths of Beeton, there was no sound. Six irregular lines Sir Gregory Hale scrawled upon the page; then suddenly his body became a dead weight in my arms. Gently I laid him back upon the pillows, gently his finger from the notebook, and, my head almost touching Smith’s as we both craned forward over the page, read, with great difficulty, the following: —
“Guard my diary…. Tibetan frontier … Key of India. Beware man …
with the limp. Yellow … rising. Watch Tibet … the Si-Fan….”
From somewhere outside the room, whether above or below I could not be sure, came a faint, dragging sound, accompanied by a tap — tap — tap….
CHAPTER III
“SAKYA MUNI”
The faint disturbance faded into silence again. Across the dead man’s body I met Smith’s gaze. Faint wreaths of fog floated in from the outer room. Beeton clutched the foot of the bed, and the structure shook in sympathy with his wild trembling. That was the only sound now; there was absolutely nothing physical so far as my memory serves to signalize the coming of the brown man.
Yet, stealthy as his approach had been, something must have warned us. For suddenly, with one accord, we three turned upon the bed, and stared out into the room from which the fog wreaths floated in.
Beeton stood nearest to the door, but, although he turned, he did not go out, but with a smothered cry crouched back against the bed. Smith it was who moved first, then I followed, and close upon his heels burst into the disordered sitting-room. The outer door had been closed but not bolted, and what with the tinted light, diffused through the silken Japanese shade, and the presence of fog in the room, I was almost tempted to believe myself the victim of a delusion. What I saw or thought I saw was this: —
A tall screen stood immediately inside the door, and around its end, like some materialization of the choking mist, glided a lithe, yellow figure, a slim, crouching figure, wearing a sort of loose robe. An impression I had of jet-black hair, protruding from beneath a little cap, of finely chiseled features and great, luminous eyes, then, with no sound to tell of a door opened or shut, the apparition was gone.
“You saw him, Petrie! — you saw him!” cried Smith.
In three bounds he was across the room, had tossed the screen aside and thrown open the door. Out he sprang into the yellow haze of the corridor, tripped, and, uttering a cry of pain, fell sprawling upon the marble floor. Hot with apprehension I joined him, but he looked up with a wry smile and began furiously rubbing his left shin.
“A queer trick, Petrie,” he said, rising to his feet; “but nevertheless effective.”
He pointed to the object which had occasioned his fall. It was a small metal chest, evidently of very considerable weight, and it stood immediately outside the door of Number 14a.
“That was what he came for, sir! That was what he came for! You were too quick for him!”
Beeton stood behind us, his horror-bright eyes fixed upon the box.
“Eh?” rapped Smith, turning upon him.
“That’s what Sir Gregory brought to England,” the man ran on almost hysterically; “that’s what he’s been guarding this past two weeks, night and day, crouching over it with a loaded pistol. That’s what cost him his life, sir. He’s had no peace, day or night, since he got it….”
We were inside the room again now, Smith bearing the coffer in his arms, and still the man ran on:
“He’s never slept for more than an hour at a time, that I know of, for weeks past. Since the day we came here he hasn’t spoken to another living soul, and he’s lain there on the floor at night with his head on that brass box, and sat watching over it all day.”
“‘Beeton!’ he’d cry out, perhaps in the middle of the night— ‘Beeton — do you hear that damned woman!’ But although I’d begun to think I could hear something, I believe it was the constant strain working on my nerves and nothing else at all.
“Then he was always listening out for some one he called ‘the man with the limp.’ Five and six times a night he’d have me up to listen with him. ‘There he goes
, Beeton!’ he’d whisper, crouching with his ear pressed flat to the door. ‘Do you hear him dragging himself along?’
“God knows how I’ve stood it as I have; for I’ve known no peace since we left China. Once we got here I thought it would be better, but it’s been worse.
“Gentlemen have come (from the India Office, I believe), but he would not see them. Said he would see no one but Mr. Nayland Smith. He had never lain in his bed until to-night, but what with taking no proper food nor sleep, and some secret trouble that was killing him by inches, he collapsed altogether a while ago, and I carried him in and laid him on the bed as I told you. Now he’s dead — now he’s dead.”
Beeton leant up against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his hands, whilst his shoulders shook convulsively. He had evidently been greatly attached to his master, and I found something very pathetic in this breakdown of a physically strong man. Smith laid his hands upon his shoulders.
“You have passed through a very trying ordeal,” he said, “and no man could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have proved too strong for you. I am Nayland Smith.”
The man spun around with a surprising expression of relief upon his pale face.
“So that whatever can be done,” continued my friend, “to carry out your master’s wishes, will be done now. Rely upon it. Go into your room and lie down until we call you.”
“Thank you, sir, and thank God you are here,” said Beeton dazedly, and with one hand raised to his head he went, obediently, to the smaller bedroom and disappeared within.
“Now, Petrie,” rapped Smith, glancing around the littered floor, “since I am empowered to deal with this matter as I see fit, and since you are a medical man, we can devote the next half-hour, at any rate, to a strictly confidential inquiry into this most perplexing case. I propose that you examine the body for any evidences that may assist you determining the cause of death, whilst I make a few inquiries here.”
I nodded, without speaking, and went into the bedroom. It contained not one solitary item of the dead man’s belongings, and in every way bore out Beeton’s statement that Sir Gregory had never inhabited it. I bent over Hale, as he lay fully dressed upon the bed.
Saving the singularity of the symptom which had immediately preceded death — viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation — I should have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that view. Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst the litter of the outer room, when I made a curious discovery.
Lying in a fold of the disordered bed linen were a few petals of some kind of blossom, three of them still attached to a fragment of slender stalk.
I collected the tiny petals, mechanically, and held them in the palm of my hand studying them for some moments before the mystery of their presence there became fully appreciable to me. Then I began to wonder. The petals (which I was disposed to class as belonging to some species of Curcas or Physic Nut), though bruised, were fresh, and therefore could not have been in the room for many hours. How had they been introduced, and by whom? Above all, what could their presence there at that time portend?
“Smith,” I called, and walked towards the door carrying the mysterious fragments in my palm. “Look what I have found upon the bed.”
Nayland Smith, who was bending over an open despatch case which he had placed upon a chair, turned — and his glance fell upon the petals and tiny piece of stem.
I think I have never seen so sudden a change of expression take place in the face of any man. Even in that imperfect light I saw him blanch. I saw a hard glitter come into his eyes. He spoke, evenly, but hoarsely:
“Put those things down —— there, on the table; anywhere.”
I obeyed him without demur; for something in his manner had chilled me with foreboding.
“You did not break that stalk?”
“No. I found it as you see it.”
“Have you smelled the petals?”
I shook my head. Thereupon, having his eyes fixed upon me with the strangest expression in their gray depths, Nayland Smith said a singular thing.
“Pronounce, slowly, the words Sâkya Mûni,’” he directed.
I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but ——
“I mean it!” he rapped. “Do as I tell you.”
“Sâkya Mûni,” I said, in ever increasing wonder.
Smith laughed unmirthfully.
“Go into the bathroom and thoroughly wash your hands,” was his next order. “Renew the water at least three times.” As I turned to fulfill his instructions, for I doubted no longer his deadly earnestness: “Beeton!” he called.
Beeton, very white-faced and shaky, came out from the bedroom as I entered the bathroom, and whist I proceeded carefully to cleanse my hands I heard Smith interrogating him.
“Have any flowers been brought into the room today, Beeton?”
“Flowers, sir? Certainly not. Nothing has ever been brought in here but what I have brought myself.”
“You are certain of that?”
“Positive.”
“Who brought up the meals, then?”
“If you’ll look into my room here, sir, you’ll see that I have enough tinned and bottled stuff to last us for weeks. Sir Gregory sent me out to buy it on the day we arrived. No one else had left or entered these rooms until you came to-night.”
I returned to find Nayland Smith standing tugging at the lobe of his left ear in evident perplexity. He turned to me.
“I find my hands over full,” he said. “Will you oblige me by telephoning for Inspector Weymouth? Also, I should be glad if you would ask M. Samarkan, the manager, to see me here immediately.”
As I was about to quit the room —
“Not a word of our suspicions to M. Samarkan,” he added; “not a word about the brass box.”
I was far along the corridor ere I remembered that which, remembered earlier, had saved me the journey. There was a telephone in every suite. However, I was not indisposed to avail myself of an opportunity for a few moments’ undisturbed reflection, and, avoiding the lift, I descended by the broad, marble staircase.
To what strange adventure were we committed? What did the brass coffer contain which Sir Gregory had guarded night and day? Something associated in some way with Tibet, something which he believed to be “the key of India” and which had brought in its train, presumably, the sinister “man with a limp.”
Who was the “man with the limp”? What was the Si-Fan? Lastly, by what conceivable means could the flower, which my friend evidently regarded with extreme horror, have been introduced into Hale’s room, and why had I been required to pronounce the words “Sâkya Mûni”?
So ran my reflections — at random and to no clear end; and, as is often the case in such circumstances, my steps bore them company; so that all at once I became aware that instead of having gained the lobby of the hotel, I had taken some wrong turning and was in a part of the building entirely unfamiliar to me.
A long corridor of the inevitable white marble extended far behind me. I had evidently traversed it. Before me was a heavily curtained archway. Irritably, I pulled the curtain aside, learnt that it masked a glass-paneled door, opened this door — and found myself in a small court, dimly lighted and redolent of some pungent, incense-like perfume.
One step forward I took, then pulled up abruptly. A sound had come to my ears. From a second curtained doorway, close to my right hand, it came — a sound of muffled tapping, together with that of something which dragged upon the floor.
Within my brain the words seemed audibly to form: “The man with the limp!”
I sprang to the door; I had my hand upon the drapery … when a woman stepped out, barring the way!
No impression, not even a vague one, did I form of her costume, save that she wore a green silk shawl, embroidered wi
th raised white figures of birds, thrown over her head and shoulders and draped in such fashion that part of her face was concealed. I was transfixed by the vindictive glare of her eyes, of her huge dark eyes.
They were ablaze with anger — but it was not this expression within them which struck me so forcibly as the fact that they were in some way familiar.
Motionless, we faced one another. Then —
“You go away,” said the woman — at the same time extending her arms across the doorway as barriers to my progress.
Her voice had a husky intonation; her hands and arms, which were bare and of old ivory hue, were laden with barbaric jewelry, much of it tawdry silverware of the bazaars. Clearly she was a half-caste of some kind, probably a Eurasian.
I hesitated. The sounds of dragging and tapping had ceased. But the presence of this grotesque Oriental figure only increased my anxiety to pass the doorway. I looked steadily into the black eyes; they looked into mine unflinchingly.
“You go away, please,” repeated the woman, raising her right hand and pointing to the door whereby I had entered. “These private rooms. What you doing here?”
Her words, despite her broken English, served to recall to me the fact that I was, beyond doubt, a trespasser! By what right did I presume to force my way into other people’s apartments?
“There is some one in there whom I must see,” I said, realizing, however, that my chance of doing so was poor.
“You see nobody,” she snapped back uncompromisingly. “You go away!”
She took a step towards me, continuing to point to the door. Where had I previously encountered the glance of those splendid, savage eyes?
So engaged was I with this taunting, partial memory, and so sure, if the woman would but uncover her face, of instantly recognizing her, that still I hesitated. Whereupon, glancing rapidly over her shoulder into whatever place lay beyond the curtained doorway, she suddenly stepped back and vanished, drawing the curtains to with an angry jerk.
