by Sax Rohmer
In spirit still back in camp beside the body of my poor chief, I suddenly became conscious of queer wanderers in the corridor. One yellow face in particular I had detected peering in at me, which possessed such unusual and dreadful malignity that at some point just below Beni Suef I toured the cars from end to end determined to convince myself that those oblique squinting eyes were not a product of my imagination. Several times I had fallen into a semi-doze, for I had had no proper sleep for forty-eight hours.
I failed to find the yellow horror. This had disturbed me, because it made me distrust myself. But it served to banish my sleepiness. Reinforced with a stiff whisky-and-soda, I stayed very widely awake as the train passed station after station in the Nile Valley and drew ever nearer to Cairo.
The squinting eyes did not reappear.
Then, having hailed a taxi outside the station, I suddenly became aware, in some quite definite way, that the watcher was following again. In sight of Shepheard’s I pulled up, dismissed the taxi, and mounted the steps to the terrace.
Tables were prepared for tea, but few as yet were occupied. I could see no one I knew, but of this I was rather glad.
Standing beside one of those large ornamental vases at the head of the steps, I craned over, looking left along Sharia Kamel. I was just in time. My trick had its reward.
A limousine driven by an Arab chauffeur passed in a flash.
But the oblique squinting eyes of its occupant stared up at the balcony. It was the man of the train. I had not been dreaming.
I think he saw me, but of this I couldn’t be sure. The car did not slacken speed and I lost sight of it at the bend by Esbekiyeh Gardens.
A white-robed, red-capped waiter approached. Mentally reviewing my condition and my needs, I ordered a pot of Arab coffee. I smoked a pipe, drank my coffee, and set out on foot for the club. Here I obtained the address I wanted…
In a quiet thoroughfare a brass plate beside a courtyard entrance confirmed its correctness. In response to my ring a Nubian servant admitted me. I was led upstairs and without any ceremony shown into a large and delightfully furnished study.
The windows opened on a balcony draped with purple blossom and overhanging the courtyard where orange trees grew. There were many books and the place was full of flowers. In its arrangement, the rugs upon the floor, the ornaments, the very setting of the big writing table, I detected the hand of a woman. And I realized more keenly than ever what a bachelor misses and the price he pays for his rather overrated freedom.
My thoughts strayed for a moment to Rima, and I wondered, as I had wondered many many times, what I could have done to offend her. I was brought back sharply when I met the glance of a pair of steady eyes regarding me from beyond the big writing table.
The man I had come to see stood up with a welcoming smile. He was definitely a handsome man, gray at the temples and well set up. His atmosphere created an odd sense of security. In fact my first impression went far to explain much that I had heard of him.
“Dr. Petrie?” I asked.
He extended his hand across the table and I grasped it.
“I’m glad you have come, Mr. Greville,” he replied. They sent me your message from the club.” His smile vanished and his face became very stern. “Please try the armchair. Cigars in the wooden box, cigarettes in the other. Or here’s a very decent pipe mixture” — sliding his pouch across the table.
“Thanks,” I said; “a pipe, I think.”
“You are shaken up,” he went on— “naturally. May I prescribe?”
I smiled, perhaps a little ruefully.
“Not at the moment. I have been rather overdoing it on the train, trying to keep myself awake.”
I filled a pipe whilst trying to muster my ideas. Then, glancing up, I met the doctor’s steady gaze; and:
“Your news was a great shock to me,” he said. “Barton, I know, was one of your oldest friends. He was also one of mine. Tell me — I’m all anxiety to hear.”
At that I began,
“As you may have heard, Dr. Petrie, we are excavating what is known as Lafleur’s Tomb at the head of the Valley of the Kings. It’s a queer business and the dear old chief was always frightfully reticent about his aims. He was generous enough when a job was done and shared the credit more than fairly. But his sense of the dramatic made him a bit difficult. Therefore, I can’t tell you very much about it. But two days ago he shifted the quarters, barred all approaches to the excavation, and generally behaved in a way which I knew from experience to mean that we were on the verge of some big discovery.
“We have two huts, but nobody sleeps in them. We are a small party and under canvas. But all this you will see for yourself — at least, I hope I can count on you? We shall have to rush for it.”
“I am coming,” Dr. Petrie replied quietly. “It’s all arranged. God knows what use I can be. But since he wished it…”
“Some time last night,” I presently went on, “I heard, or thought I heard, the chief call me: ‘Greville! Greville!’ His voice seemed strange in some way. I fell out of bed (it was pitch dark), jumped into slippers, and groped along to his tent.”
I stopped. The reality and the horror of it stopped me. But at last:
“He was dead,” I said. “Dead in his bed. A pencil had dropped from his fingers and the scribbling block which he used for notes lay on the floor beside him.”
“One moment,” Dr. Petrie interrupted me. “You say he was dead. Was this impression confirmed afterwards?”
“Forester, our chemist,” I replied sadly, “is an M.R.-C.P. though he doesn’t practise. The chief was dead. Sir Lionel Barton — the greatest Orientalist our old country has ever produced, Dr. Petrie. And he was so alive, so vital, so keen and enthusiastic.”
“Good God!” Dr. Petrie murmured. “To what did Forester ascribe death?”
“Heart failure — a quite unsuspected weakness.”
“Unaccountable! I could have sworn the man had a heart like an ox. But I am becoming somewhat puzzled, Mr. Greville. If Forester certified death from syncope, who sent me this?”
He passed a telegram across the table. I read it in growing bewilderment:
Sir Lionel Barton suffering catalepsy. Please come first train and bring antidote if any remains.
I stared at Petrie, then:
“No one in our camp sent it!” I said.
“What!”
“I assure you. No member of our party sent this message.”
I saw that it had been delivered that morning and had been handed in at Luxor at Six A.M. I began to read it aloud in a dazed way. And, whilst I was reading, a subdued but particularly eerie cry came from the courtyard. I stopped. It startled me. But its effect upon Dr. Petrie was amazing. He sprang up as though a shot had been fired in the room and leaped towards the open window.
“What was it?” I exclaimed.
Whilst the cry had not resembled any of the many with which I was acquainted in the land where the vendor of dates, of lemonade, of water, of a score of commodities has each his separate song, yet, though weird, it was not in itself definitely horrible.
Petrie turned, and:
“Something I haven’t heard for ten years,” he replied — and I saw with concern that he had grown pale— “which I had hoped never to hear again.”
“What?”
“The signal used by a certain group of fanatics of Burma loosely known as Dacoits.”
“Dacoits? But Dacoity in Burma has been dead for a generation!”
Petrie laughed.
“I made that very statement twelve years ago,” he said. “It was untrue then. It is untrue now. Yet there isn’t a soul in the courtyard.”
And suddenly I realized that he was badly shaken. He was not the type of man who was readily unnerved, and I confess that the incident — trivial though otherwise it might have seemed — impressed me unpleasantly.
“Please God I am mistaken,” he went on, walking back to his chair— “I must have been mistake
n.”
But that he was not, suddenly became manifest. The door opened and a woman came in, or rather — ran in.
I had heard men at the club rave about Dr. Petrie’s wife, but the self-chosen seclusion of her life was such that up to this present moment I had never set eyes on her. I realized now that all I had heard was short of the truth. It is fortunate that modern man is unaffected by the Troy complex; for she was, I think, quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. I shall not attempt to describe her, for I could only fail. But, seeing that she had not even noticed my existence, I wondered, as men will sometimes wonder, by what mystic chains Dr. Petrie held this unreally lovely creature.
She ran to him and he threw his arms about her.
“You heard it!” she whispered. “You heard it!”
“I know what you are thinking, dear,” he said. “Yes, I heard it. But after all it isn’t possible.”
He looked across, at me, and suddenly his wife seemed to realize my presence.
“This is Mr. Shan Greville,” Petrie went on, “who brings me very sad news about our old friend, Sir Lionel Barton. I didn’t mean you to know, yet. But…”
Mrs. Petrie conquered her fears and came forward to greet me.
“You are very welcome,” she said.
She spoke English with a faint fascinating accent.
“But your news — do you mean—”
Into the beautiful eyes watching me I saw the strangest expression creeping. It was questioning, doubting; fearful, analytical. And suddenly Mrs. Petrie turned from me to her husband, and:
“How did it happen?” she asked.
As she spoke the words, I thought she seemed to be listening.
Briefly, Dr. Petrie repeated what I had told him, concluding by handing his wife the mysterious telegram.
“If I may interrupt for a moment,” I said, taking out my pocket case, “Sir Lionel must have written this at the moment of his fatal seizure. You see — it tails off. It was scribbled on the block which lay beside him. It was what brought me to Cairo.”
I handed the pencilled message to Petrie. His wife bent over him as he read aloud, slowly:
“Not dead… Get Petrie… Cairo… amber… inject…”
She was facing me as he read — her husband could not see her face. But he saw the telegram slip from her fingers to the carpet.
“Kara!” he cried. “My dear! What is it?”
Her wonderful eyes, widely opened, were staring past me through the window out into the courtyard; and:
“He is alive!” she whispered. “O God! He is alive!”
I wondered if she referred to Sir Lionel; when suddenly she turned to Petrie, clutching the lapels of his coat and speaking eagerly, fearfully.
“Surely you understand? You must understand. That cry in the garden and now — this! It is the Living Death! It is the Living Death! He knew before it claimed him. ‘Amber — inject.’” She shook Petrie with a sudden passionate violence. “Think!… The flask is in your safe.”
And, watching Petrie’s face, I realized that what had been unintelligible to me, to him had brought light.
“Merciful heavens!” he cried, and now I saw positive horror leap to his eyes. “Merciful heavens! I can’t believe it — I won’t believe it.”
He stared at me, a man distracted; and:
“Sir Lionel believed it,” his wife said. “He wrote it. This is what he means.”
And now I remembered those hideous oblique eyes which had looked in at me during my journey. I remembered the man in the car who had passed me at Shepheard’s. Dacoits! Bands of Burmese robbers! I had thought of them as scattered. Apparently they were associated — a sort of guild. Sir Lionel knew the Far East almost better than he knew the Near East. So, suddenly I spoke — or rather I cried the words aloud:
“Do you mean, Mrs. Petrie, that you think he’s been murdered?”
Dr. Petrie interrupted, and his reply silenced me.
“It’s worse than that,” he said.
If I had come to Cairo bearing a burden of sorrow, I thought, looking from the face of my host to the beautiful face of his wife, that my story had brought their happy world tumbling about them in dust.
The train to Luxor was full, but I had taken the precaution of booking accommodation before leaving the station. And, as I was later to learn, I had been watched!
I was frankly out of my depth. That Petrie was deeply concerned for his wife, who seemed now to be the victim of a mysterious terror, he was quite unable to conceal. The object locked in the safe referred to by Mrs. Petrie proved to be a glass flask sealed with wax and containing a very small quantity of what might, from its appearance, have been brandy. However, the doctor packed it up with care and placed it in his professional bag before leaving.
This, together with the feverish state of excitement into which I seemed to have thrown his household, was sufficiently mystifying. Coming on top of a tragedy and a sleepless night, it was almost the last straw.
Petrie explored the train as though he expected to find Satan in person on board.
“Are you looking for my cross-eyed man?” I asked.
“I am,” he returned grimly.
And somehow, as his steady glance met mine, it occurred to me that he was hoping, and not fearing, to see the oblique-eyed spy. It dawned upon me that his fears were for his wife, left behind in Cairo, rather than for us. What in heaven’s name was it all about?
However, I was too far gone to pursue these reflections, and long before the attendant had come to make the bed I fell fast asleep.
I was awakened by Dr. Petrie.
“I prescribe dinner,” he said.
Feeling peculiarly cheap, I managed to make myself sufficiently presentable for the dining car, and presently sat down facing my friend, of whom I had heard so much and whom the chief had evidently regarded as a safe harbour in a storm.
A cocktail got me properly awake again and enabled me to define where troubled dreams left off and reality began. Petrie was regarding me with an expression compounded of professional sympathy and personal curiosity; and:
“You have had a desperately trying time, Greville,” he said. “But you can’t have failed to see that you have exploded a bombshell in my household. Now, before I say any more on the latter point, please bring me up to date. If there’s been foul play, is there anyone you could even remotely suspect?”
“There is certainly a lot of mystery about our job,” I confessed. “I know for a fact that Sir Lionel’s rivals — I might safely call them enemies — have been watching him closely — notably Professor Zeitland.”
“Professor Zeitland died in London a fortnight ago.”
“What!”
“You hadn’t heard? We had the news in Cairo. Therefore, he can be ruled out.”
There was a short interval whilst the waiter got busy, and then:
“As I remember poor Barton,” Petrie mused, “he was always surrounded by clouds of strange servants. Are there any in your camp?”
“Not a soul,” I assured him. “We’re a very small party. Sir Lionel, myself, Ali Mahmoud, the headman, Forester, the chemist — I have mentioned him before; and the chief’s niece, Rima; who’s our official photographer.”
I suppose my voice changed when I mentioned Rima; for Petrie stared at me very hard, and:
“Niece?” he said. “Odd jobs women undertake nowadays.”
“Yes,” I answered shortly.
Petrie began to toy with his fish. Clearly his appetite was not good. It was evident that repressed excitement held him — grew greater with every mile of our journey.
“Do you know Superintendent Weymouth?” he asked suddenly.
“I’ve met him at the club,” I replied. “Now that you mention it, I believe Forester knows him well.”
“So do I,” said Petrie, smiling rather oddly. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him all day.” He paused, then:
“There must be associations,” h
e went on. “Some of you surely have friends who visit the camp?”
That question magically conjured up a picture before my mind’s eye — the picture of a figure so slender as to merit the description serpentine, tall, languorous; I saw again the brilliant jade-green eyes, voluptuous lips, and those slim ivory hands nurtured in indolence… Madame Ingomar.
“There is one,” I began — I was interrupted.
The train had begun to slow into Wasta, and high above those curious discords of an Arab station, I had clearly detected a cry:
“Dr. Petrie! A message for Dr. Petrie.”
He, too, had heard it. He dropped his knife and fork and his expression registered a sudden consternation.
As Petrie sprang to his feet, a tall figure in flying kit came rushing into the dining car, and:
“Hunter!” Petrie exclaimed. “Hunter!”
I, too, stood up in a state of utter bewilderment.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Petrie went on.
He turned to me, and:
“Captain Jameson Hunter, of Imperial Airways,” he explained— “Mr. Shan Greville.”
He turned again to the pilot.
“What’s the idea, Hunter?” he demanded.
“The idea is,” the airman replied, grinning with evident enjoyment, “that I’ve made a dash from Heliopolis to cut you off at Wasta! Jump to it! You’ve got to be clear of the train in two minutes!”
“But we’re in the middle of dinner!”
“Don’t blame me. It’s Superintendent Weymouth’s doing. He’s standing by where I landed the bus.”
“But,” I interrupted, “where are we going?”
“Same place,” said the airman, grinning delightedly. “But I can get you there in no time, save you the Nile crossing and land you, I believe, within five hundred yards of the camp. Where’s your compartment? You have to run for your things or leave them on the train. It doesn’t matter much.”
“It does,” I said. I turned to Petrie. “I’ll get your bag. Fix things with the attendant and meet me on the platform.”
I rushed out of the dining car, observed in blank astonishment by every other occupant. Our compartment gained, I nearly knocked over the night attendant who was making the bed. Dr. Petrie’s bag I grabbed at once. Coats, hats, and two light suitcases were quickly bundled out. I thrust some loose money into the hand of the badly startled attendant and made for the exit.
