by Sax Rohmer
Now, furnished by Weymouth with particulars of those goods sent overland from Cherbourg, Yale secretly inspected some of the crates and packing cases stored in the yard of the suspected premises. As a result of what he found, I was rescued from the green and gold room, and restored to health by Dr. Petrie. But a shadow lay upon all of us — one indeed, which had retarded my convalescence.
“Our last battle against Fu-Manchu,” said Weymouth sadly, “has opened with a big score for the enemy. We’ve lost our field-marshal.”
Detective-Inspector Yale nodded gloomily. I had met him several times before, and I knew that with Fletcher he had been put in charge of this case, which, in his eyes, had neither beginning nor end.
“It’s a blank mystery to me,” he confessed. “Excepting one badly murdered dwarf, there wasn’t a thing of any use to us in the Limehouse raid.”
“You’re rather overlooking me!”
Detective-Inspector Yale smiled; Weymouth laughed aloud.
“Sorry, sir,” said Yale. “But the fact remains — we drew blank. The house was undoubtedly used by these Si-Fan people. But where are they? I knew when Sir Denis took personal control there was something serious in the wind. He was overdue leave, it’s true, but he was a demon for work; and I saw when he started for Egypt with Fletcher he’d gone for business, not pleasure. Besides, there was a big dossier accumulating.”
He smiled again, turning slightly in my direction.
“The death of Professor Zeitland was a bad show for the Yard,” he admitted. “It was long after the event that we realized his death wasn’t due to natural causes. This in strict confidence, Mr. Greville. There’s been no publicity about the absence of Sir Denis, because we’ve kept on hoping from day to day, and his instructions on that point were explicit. But personally…”
He turned aside and stared out of the window.
“I’m afraid so,” Weymouth whispered.
“It’s a job,” Yale went on, “which I admit is above my weight. Most extraordinary reports are accumulating and the Foreign Office has nearly driven me crazy. I never knew very much about this Dr. Fu-Manchu, outside the department records. I was just a plain detective officer in those days. But it looks to me — and this is where I am badly out of my depth, Superintendent — as though this delayed visit of Swâzi Pasha comes into the case!”
“I’m sure it does!” I replied. “The woman you knew as Madame Ingomar regards the present rulers of Turkey as her enemies. Swâzi Pasha is probably the biggest man in Stamboul today. She told me with her own lips that he was marked!”
“Amazing!” said Yale. “He is to occupy Suite Number 5 in this hotel, and apart from routine measures, I’m going to satisfy myself about the staff.”
I accompanied Weymouth and Yale on their tour of inspection. The suite was on the floor below, and we went down the stairs. Yale had the key and we entered. Everything had been prepared for the comfort of the distinguished visitor and his confidential private secretary.
Suite Number 5 consisted of a reception room entered from a lobby, a dining room, and two bedrooms with bathrooms adjoining. Swâzi Pasha had been detained by illness in Paris, so the press informed us, but would arrive at Victoria that evening.
Detective-Inspector Yale seemed to suspect everything in the place. The principal bedroom he explored as though he anticipated discovering there trap doors, sliding panels, or other mediæval devices. He even turned on the electric heater, an excellent imitation of a coal fire, and considered it carefully; until:
“Once he gets here,” said Weymouth. “He’s safe enough. It’s outside that he’s in danger.”
Yale turned to him, one eyebrow raised interrogatively, and:
“Queer you should say that,” he replied. “I’ve been going carefully through the records — and you ought to know better than I do that if we’re really up against this Asiatic group the best hotel in London isn’t safe!”
I glanced at Weymouth, and saw his expression change.
“True enough,” he admitted. “Dr. Fu-Manchu got a man in the New Louvre once, under our very eyes. Yes, you’re right.”
With enthusiasm he also began to sound walls and to examine fittings, until:
“I have had painful personal evidence of what these people can do,” I said, “but I rather agree with Inspector Yale that the danger to Swâzi Pasha is greater outside than here.”
Yale turned and:
“Outside,” he assured me stolidly, “short of a fanatic who is prepared to pay the price with his life, Swâzi Pasha is as safe as any man in Europe. But in the absence of Sir Denis, I’m responsible for him and, knowing what I know now, I’m prepared for anything.”
When presently I left Weymouth and Yale, I became selfishly absorbed in my own affairs again. The chief had engaged rooms by radio for himself and Rima here at the Park Avenue, and as I wandered back to my own apartment I found myself wondering which rooms they were. Indeed, a perfectly childish impulse prompted me to go down and inquire of the office.
As I entered the corridor in which my own quarters were located as well as those of Dr. Petrie and his wife, I saw a figure hurrying ahead of me. Reaching the door next to my own, he inserted and turned the key in the lock. As he did so, I had a view of his face in profile…
Then he went in, and I heard the door shut.
Entering my own room, I sat down on the bed, lighted a cigarette, and wondered why this chance encounter seemed so important. It was striking discords of memory which I couldn’t solve. I smoked one cigarette and lighted a second, thinking hard all the time, before the solution came, then:
“I’ve got it!” I cried.
This man in the next room was the Turk who had attended the Council of Seven!
I glanced at the telephone. This was a mystery completely beyond my powers — something which Weymouth and Yale should know about at once. I hesitated, realizing that in all probability they were on their way to Victoria. A tremendous unrest seized me. What did it mean? That it meant mischief — and bloody mischief — I felt certain. But what should I do?
I lighted a pipe and stared down into Piccadilly. Inaction was intolerable. What could I do? I couldn’t give this man in charge of the police. Apart from the possibility of a mistake, what evidence had I against him? Finally I grabbed my hat and went out into tine corridor. I had detected no sound of movement in the neighboring room.
Walking over to the lift, I rang the bell. The cage had just arrived and I was on the point of stepping in, when I thought someone passed swiftly behind me.
I turned. My nerves were badly overtuned. The figure had gone, but:
“Who was that?” I said to the lift-boy.
“Who do you mean, sir,” he asked. “I didn’t see anyone.”
I thought that he was looking at me rather oddly, and:
“Ground floor,” I said.
Had this thing got me more deeply than I realized? Small wonder if it were so, considering my own experience. But was I beginning to imagine creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu, shadows, menaces, where really there was no physical presence? It was a dreadful thought, one to be repelled at all costs by a man who had passed through the nightmare of that month which I had survived.
For I had been dead and I lived again.
Sometimes the horror of it wakened me in the middle of the night. A drug, unknown to Western science, had been pumped into my veins. The skill of an Asiatic physician had brought me back to life. Petrie’s experience — aided by the mysterious “Dr. Amber” — had done the rest. But there might be an aftermath, beyond the control even of this dreadful Chinaman whose shadow again was creeping over Europe.
My present intention was to walk across to Cook’s and learn at what time the S.S. Andaman, in which Sir Lionel and Rima were travelling, docked, and when the boattrain arrived. I was in that state of anxiety in which one ceases to trust that high authority, the hotel hall porter.
This purpose was frustrated by the sudden appearance, as I came
down the steps, of Dr. Petrie and his wife. I was instantly struck by the fact that something had terrified Mrs. Petrie. The doctor was almost supporting her…
“Hello, Greville,” he said. “My wife has had rather a shock. Come back with us for a minute.”
The fact was obvious enough. Filled with a sudden new concern, I realized, as I took Mrs. Petrie’s arm and walked back up the hotel steps, that she was in a condition bordering on collapse. Well enough I knew that this could mean only one thing. As I had suspected, as Weymouth had suspected — the enemy was near us!
In the lobby she sat down and her husband regarded her anxiously. Normally, she had the most wonderful flower-like complexion — I mean naturally, without artificial aid — of any woman I had ever met. Now she was pale, and her wonderful eyes mirrored a sort of mysterious horror.
“Are you sure, Kara? Are you sure?” Petrie asked with deep concern.
“Could I ever be wrong about him?”
“When you are safely upstairs, dear,” he replied, “I am going back to confirm your suspicion — or disprove it.”
“But,” I exclaimed, “whatever is wrong?”
“He is here.”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Petrie? Who is here?”
She looked up at me, and for all her pallor I knew how beautiful she was. I thought that if those strange, wonderful eyes had beckoned to me before I had known Rima, I should have followed wherever they led. She was, indeed, very lovely, and very terrified; and:
“It seems like madness,” she whispered; “but about this I can never be mistaken. If I had not seen, I should have felt. But I saw.”
“Do you understand, Greville,” Petrie interrupted tersely, “my wife saw — I can’t doubt her; she has never been wrong on this point — someone looking out from a window above a shop in Burlington Arcade.”
“I know it is madness, but I know it is true,” she said.
“When?” I demanded.
“A moment ago.”
“But do you mean—”
Mrs. Petrie nodded.
Her eyes were tragic. She stood up.
“I am going upstairs,” she said. “No, truly, I’m quite all right again. Go back, or it may be too late. But take Mr. Greville with you.”
She walked towards the lift, whilst Petrie and I watched her. As she entered and the lift went up:
“It seems simply incredible to me,” I declared. “But do you mean that in a room over a shop in Burlington Arcade—”
“A dealer in Oriental jewellery, yes!” Petrie took me up quickly. “I could see nothing — the room above was in darkness — but Karamanèh saw Dr. Fu-Manchu looking down!”
I wondered if Nayland Smith would have approved of Petrie’s method of inquiry. Personally, I thought it admirable, for as we entered the establishment, oddly reminiscent, as many are in the Arcade, of a shop in an Eastern bazaar:
“My wife came along this afternoon,” said Petrie, “and noticed a large Chinese figure in the room above. She asked me to call and learn the price.”
The salesman, who would not have been out of place in any jewel market of the Orient, except for the fact that he wore a well-cut morning coat, raised his eyebrows in surprise. He was leaning upon a case containing typical Levantine exhibits, and all sorts of beaded necklaces framed him about. I thought that, saving the presence of civilized London around us, he might, considered alone, have been termed a sinister figure.
“The room above, sir,” he replied, “is not my property. It is used as a storeroom by another firm. See” — he turned— “the stair is there, but the door is locked. I have a case upon it as you may observe for yourself. That door is very rarely opened. And I assure you it contains no Chinese figure.”
He made no attempt to sell us anything.
But outside, in the Arcade, we both stared up at the window above the shop. The room to which it belonged appeared to be empty. Petrie shrugged.
“She has never been wrong before,” he said significantly. “And the gentleman with whom we have been chatting gives one the shudders.”
“I agree, but what can we do!”
“Nothing,” he replied.
Turning, we walked back to the Park Avenue Hotel. The journey was a short one, but long enough for me to tell Petrie of my encounter in the corridor. He stopped as we reached the corner of Berkeley Street, and:
“There’s some very black business underlying all this, Greville,” he said. “We’ve lost the best man of the lot already. Now it looks as though the arch-devil had taken personal charge. Where’s Weymouth?”
“Gone to Victoria, I expect. Yale was with him.”
Petrie nodded.
“If you weren’t mistaken, Greville, it looks as though the danger to Swâzi Pasha is here, in London. If my wife isn’t mistaken — it’s a certainty! We can at least learn the name of the man you saw; because in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his Burmans I don’t believe in coincidences!”
We consulted the reception clerk and learned without difficulty that the room, of which I naturally remembered the number, was occupied by a Mr. Solkel, of Smyrna.
“Has he stayed here before?” Petrie asked.
No. It was Mr. Solkel’s first visit.
“Thank you,” said Petrie, and as we walked towards the lift:
“Mr. Solkel, of Smyrna,” he mused. “I don’t like the sound of him.”
“I don’t like the look of him!”
“Yet it is just possible you were wrong; and so — what can we do?”
We, went up to Petrie’s sitting room where his wife, apparently recovered, was waiting to receive us.
She smiled, her gaze set on Petrie’s face; and I wondered if Rima would greet me with a smile like that. He simply shook his head and ran his fingers through her beautiful hair.
“I knew,” she whispered; and although she continued bravely to smile, there was horror in her eyes. “He is so clever! But I was right!”
A nameless but chill foreboding possessed my mind. I believe the others shared it. I was thinking of the man who had gone out to meet this menace, and had come to his end, alone against many, in that damnable house in Khârga. But, Petrie now ringing for cocktails, we all tried to show a bold front to our troubles. Yet even as I raised my glass I seemed to detect, like a sort of patrol, the approach of something; not as a memory, but as words spoken eerily, to hear a bell-like voice:
“I am so lonely, Shan…”
For days and nights, for weeks, I had lain in her power… the witch-woman; daughter of this fiend incarnate, Dr. Fu-Manchu. “She is evil, evil…” Rima had said. And I knew it for truth. Much as we had all suffered, I felt that worse was to come. I could hear the cheery, familiar roar of London’s traffic beneath me; sometimes, dimly, I could catch snatches of conversation in the adjoining apartment, occupied by an enthusiastic American traveler and his wife.
Everything was so safe, so normal. Yet I knew, I could not venture to doubt, that some climax in the incredible business which had blotted out a month of my life and had brought Sir Lionel Barton to the edge of eternity, was creeping upon us.
“Thank goodness that part of the business is over,” said Weymouth. “There were no official formalities, as the Pasha is still indisposed. He was all silk mufflers and fur collar. He has only one secretary with him. The other members of his suite are staying at the Platz over the way. He’s safe indoors, anyway.”
“Safe?” Mrs. Petrie echoed and laughed unhappily. “After what I have told you, Superintendent?”
Weymouth’s kindly face looked very grim, and he exchanged a troubled glance with Petrie; then:
“She never used to be wrong, Doctor,” he confessed. “Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it. I sent a man around directly I got the news. But of course the shop was closed and locked. I don’t know what to make of it,” he repeated. “The woman was rapidly becoming a nightmare to me, but if the Doctor in person has appeared on the scene…”
He spread his h
ands in a helpless gesture; and we were all silent for some time. Then Weymouth stood up:
“It’s very nice of you, Mrs. Petrie,” he said, “to ask me to dine with you. I have one or two little jobs to do downstairs, first — and I’m going to have another shot to get a look at Mr. Solkel. It isn’t really my case.” He smiled in the awkwardly boyish manner which made the man so lovable. “But I’ve been retained as a sort of specialist, and Yale is good enough to be glad.”
“I suppose,” said Petrie, as Weymouth made for the door, “there are detectives on duty in the hotel?”
“Five, with Fletcher in charge. That should be enough. But I’m worried about Solkel. His official description doesn’t correspond with yours, Greville. For one tiling, they tell me he wears glasses, is in delicate health, and keeps to his room constantly. However…”
He went out.
Petrie stared hard in my direction.
“There’s absolutely no doubt,” he said slowly, “that Madame Ingomar’s campaign has opened well, for her. Her astonishing indiscretion, I can only ascribe to” — he paused, smiling, and glanced at his wife— “a sudden and characteristically Oriental infatuation.”
She flushed, glancing at him, and:
“Nayland Smith once said that about me!” she replied.
“I’m glad he did!” Petrie returned. “But if the daughter is anything like the father, I confess even now I don’t envy Swâzi Pasha’s chances. Just check up on madame’s record, and you will see what I mean. Apart from certain mysterious movements last year, in such widely divided places as Pekin, Turkestan, Siberia, and the northern provinces of India, we may take it for a fact that Professor Zeitland fell a victim to this Chinese she-devil. He stood in her way. He knew something about Lafleur’s Tomb which she wanted to know. Having learned it, it became necessary that he should be blotted out. This duly occurred, according to schedule. Barton was the next in her path. He served her purpose and escaped by a miracle. She got what she wanted — the contents of the tomb. If we could even guess the importance of these, we might begin to understand why she stuck at nothing to achieve her end.”
