by Sax Rohmer
I suppose I must have known all along; but for some reason at this moment the identity of “a representative of that older organization” and “a prominent official of our ancient society” suddenly burst upon me with all the shock of novelty; and, meeting the glance of those inscrutable eyes which watched me so intently:
“You are speaking of Dr. Fu-Manchu!” I said.
Li King Su permitted himself a slight deprecatory gesture.
“It is desirable,” he replied, “that those of whom I speak should remain anonymous!”
But I continued to stare at him with a sort of horror. “By arrangement with that distinguished Egyptologist,” he had said smoothly —
(Good God! What kind of “arrangement”!)” — it was the intention of the hider,” he went on, “that these potent secrets should remain concealed for ever. The activities of Professor Zeitland and Sir Lionel Barton created an unforeseen situation. It was complicated by the action of the Lady Fah Lo Suee. She had recently learned what was hidden there, but she was ignorant of how to recover it… Professor Zeitland imparted his knowledge to her — then came Sir Lionel Barton…”
He paused again, significantly.
“We moved too late, Mr. Greville. An old schism in our ranks had made an enemy of one of the most brilliant and dangerous men in China — the exalted Mandarin Ki Ming. He gave the Lady Fah Lo Suee his aid. But we wasted no more time. I succeeded in gaining admittance to their councils. It was by means of their organization that I intercepted Dr. Petrie’s telegram to Sir Brian Hawkins. You know the use which I made of my knowledge.
“Your present English Government is blind. You will lose Egypt; you have lost India. A great federation of Eastern States affiliated with Russia — a new Russia — is destined to take the place once held by the British Empire. You have one chance to recover…”
The man’s personality was beginning to get me. I had forgotten that I sat inert, listening to a self-confessed servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu: I only knew that he was raising veils beyond which I longed to peer.
“What is it?” I asked.
And, as I spoke, a chill — not figurative but literal — turned me cold. I had detected Li King Su in the act of glancing toward a partially opened door which led to the bedroom…
Definitely, someone was listening!
As if conscious of the fact that he had betrayed himself, “Dr. Amber” went on immediately:
“A counter alliance! But we are getting out of our depth, Mr. Greville. To return to more personal matters: The schemes of the Lady Fah Lo Suee were not approved by us. The authority she has stolen must be restored to those who know how to wield it. In other words, Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s aims and our own are identical — at the moment. But he is marked down!”
“He knows it!”
“He may know it — but tonight he is walking into a trap! Since he left Norfolk — where he failed to arrest the prime mover — you have lost touch with him. He is following up a clue discovered by Inspector Yale. It is a false clue… a snare. He stands in the way: she is afraid to move until he is silenced.
“Here” — he handed me a slip of paper— “is the address to which he is going tonight. Death waits for him.”
I glanced at the writing.
“The garden of this house adjoins the Regent Canal,” Li King Su went on. “And it is intended that Sir Denis’s body shall be found in the Canal in the morning! Here” — he passed a second slip— “is the address at which Sir Denis is hiding.”
The second address was that of a Dr. Murray in a southwest suburb.
“Dr. Murray bought Dr. Petrie’s practice,” the even voice continued, “when the latter went to Egypt. I must warn you against any attempt to communicate by telephone. The Lady Fah Lo Suee has a spy in the house! Take what steps you please, Mr. Greville, but move quickly! For my own part, I leave London in an hour. I can do no more. It is unnecessary to remind you of our bargain.”
At the very moment that I entered the lift, that occult knowledge of being watched left me. It was the same — but intensified — as that which had warned me in Cairo, and later on the road to el-Khârga. Li King Su, on acquaintance, was a remarkable man. But some vastly greater personality had been concealed in that inner room. I could not forget that Dr. Fu-Manchu had been seen a stone’s throw from Babylon House!
Could I trust Li King Su?
Simple enough to test his statements. I had only to take a taxi to Dr. Murray’s address.
But, I thought, as I walked out into Piccadilly, a mistake now might carry unimaginable consequences; better to consult Weymouth or Yale before I committed an irreparable blunder.
Dusk was falling. I saw that the lamps in Burlington Arcade had been lighted as well as those in the Piccadilly Arcade which forms a sort of abbreviated continuation of the older bazaar and breaks through to Jermyn Street. Deep in thought I passed the entrance to the latter. A French sedan was drawn up beside the pavement.
I was level with it when an exclamation of annoyance checked me sharply — and just prevented my collision with a woman who, crossing before me, had evidently been making for the car.
She was a fashionable figure, wearing a fur-trimmed coat, and a short veil attached to her close-fitting hat quite obscured her features. She carried several parcels, one of which she had dropped almost at my feet.
Stooping, I picked it up — a paper-wrapped package fastened with green tape and apparently containing very light purchases. The chauffeur sprang down and opened the door of the car, as:
“Thank you very much,” said the laden lady. “Will you be so kind as to hand it in to me?”
She entered the car. I followed with the dropped package and bent forward into the dark interior. Through the opposite windows I saw the sign above a popular restaurant suddenly become illuminated. I detected a damnably familiar perfume…
I was enveloped. I felt a sudden paralyzing pressure in my spine — a muscular arm levered me into the car… and I realized that I had been garroted in Piccadilly, amid hundreds of passers-by and in sight of my hotel!
I shot up from green depths in which I had been submerged for an immeasurable time. I had dived into a deep lake, I thought, and had become entangled in clinging weeds which sprang from its bed. I could not free my limbs; I knew that I was drowning — that never again should I see the sun and the blue sky above…
Then, the clasp of those octopus tentacles was relaxed. And I shot to the surface like a cork…
Green!… Everything about me was green!
What had happened? Where was I?
Great heavens! I was back in Limehouse!… But, no — this place was green and gold, but smaller — much smaller than the room of my long captivity.
It was a miniature room — something was radically wrong about it. There were two windows, draped in those heavy gold curtains which I remembered; a tracing of green figures was brushed across the gold. There was a tall lacquer cabinet and upon it stood a jade image of Kâli… tiny, minute. There were flat green doors and a green carpet; golden rugs. An amber lamp gave light. Upon a black divan was a second, larger figure of Kâli… as large as a carnival doll.
But, no! This figure resembled Kâli only in her features: she wore a green robe and high-heeled black shoes. In one slender hand, a soft hand nurtured in luxury, was a long cigarette holder. I could see the smoke from the burning cigarette… A doll — but a living doll!
The picture grew smaller yet. The doll became so tiny that I could no longer discern her features. I was a giant in a microscopic room!
And then — the colours became audible!
“I am green,” said the carpet. “We are gold,” the miniature curtains replied…
Raising both hands I clutched my head!
I was mad! I knew it — because I wanted to laugh!
The room began to increase in size! From the dimensions of a doll’s house fashioned by gnomes it swelled to those of a gigantic palace!… I was a mere fly in an apartment whic
h could scarcely have found ground space in Trafalgar Square!
But, now — I recognized that green-draped figure on the black divan. It was Fah Lo Suee!
The mighty roof, higher than that of any mosque, of any cathedral in the world, began to descend: the walls closed in… huge pieces of furniture were pushed towards me. Fah Lo Suee towered above my shrinking body, her monstrous cigarette sending up a column of smoke like that of a sacrifice…
I cried out… and saw the cry!
“God help me!”
It issued from my lips in squat green letters! I closed my eyes, and:
“So you are awake, Shan?” said a bell-like voice.
But I was afraid to raise my eyelids.
“Look at me. You are all right now…”
I looked.
My head was swimming and every muscle in my body ached — but the room had taken on normal proportions. It was a large room, filled with modern furniture, except that its scheme was severely green and gold and that there were Oriental pieces placed about.
Fah Lo Suee watched me… but the jade-green eyes were hard.
“You are better,” she continued. “Cannabis indica produces strange delusions — but, as we use it, there is no drug so swift to serve our purpose.”
I considered the situation. I was seated in a big armchair facing the divan upon which Fah Lo Suee reclined indolently watching me. The damnable fumes of the drug began to leave my brain. Fah Lo Suee, slender, sinuous, insolent, was a woman — but a deadly enemy. I knew what Nayland Smith would have done!
Preparatory to a spring, I drew my feet together… a certain distance. Then —
My ankles were fastened to the chair!
Fah Lo Suee dropped ash from her yellow cigarette into a copper bowl upon the low table beside her. I watched the elegant, voluptuous movements of that feline hand with a queer sense of novelty. What a tigress she was!
“The chief purpose of my visit to England,” she said, speaking as though nothing unusual existed between hostess and visitor, “was defeated by Sir Denis Nayland Smith. My further plans are in abeyance — pending his removal.”
My head ached as though my brain were on fire, but:
“He is by way of being rather a nuisance?” I suggested viciously.
Fah Lo Suee smiled, a smile of contempt.
“I could have dealt with him — alone. But one of my own people proved treacherous. In your pocket, Shan, you had two addresses. One was that of Dr. Murray — in whose home your brilliant friend is hiding; the other was that of this house.”
She continued to smile — and she continued to watch me. I tried to conquer my wandering ideas. I tried to hate her. But her eyes caressed me, and I was afraid — horribly afraid of this witch-woman who had the uncanny power which Homer gave to Circe, of stealing men’s souls.
If I could trust Li King Su, Nayland Smith was coming here — to this house — where death awaited!
And now I was powerless to stop him!
“Li King Su was a traitor.” Through the beats of a sort of drumming which had started in my brain I heard the bell-like voice. “No doubt he counted on a great reward.”
She ceased speaking and clapped her hands sharply.
That gigantic Negro who had been the doorkeeper in el-Khârga, and who had overpowered me at the meeting of the Seven, came in!
Fah Lo Suee addressed him rapidly. She spoke in a sort of bastard Arabic — the Nubian dialect; and I found time for wonder. I knew North Africa from the inside; but I had never learned that queer lingo of the Nubians. Yet this woman — who was Chinese — used it familiarly!
The Nubian went out. Fah Lo Suee removed the stump of a yellow cigarette from her long holder, selected a fresh one from a cloisonne box, and fitted it into place. She ignited it with an enameled lighter.
A dragging sound came.
I saw the Nubian pulling a heavy trunk through the door and across the carpet. This trunk was vaguely familiar. Then, on the top, I saw white painted initials: L.K.S.
The Negro removed the straps and threw the lid back.
“Look,” said Fah Lo Suee. “He was a traitor.”
Li King Su lay in his own trunk — dead!
Not until I found myself alone could I think my own thoughts, uninfluenced by the promptings of those jade-green eyes. But when the door closed behind Fah Lo Suee, I began desperately to weigh my chances.
Nayland Smith was doomed!
This was the thought which came uppermost in my mind. The clue upon which he was working, and which would lead him that night to this house, was a false clue — a bait!
And that our enemies did not spare those who crossed their path I had learned.
The trunk had been dragged from the room… But I could still see; in imagination, that strangled grin on the dead man’s face.
I tried to reconstruct the details of our interview in Babylon House. Had I detected, or only deluded myself that I had detected, a swift exchange of signs between Li King Su and someone concealed in an inner room? Had I merely imagined the presence of this other?… Or had I been right in supposing someone to be there but wrong in my natural deduction that he was a friend of the Chinese doctor?
Had the hidden man murdered Li King Su and caused his body to be removed in the big trunk?…
“The garden of this house adjoins the Regent Canal,” he had said.
The Regent Canal! A gloomy whispering waterway, now little used, and entering a long tunnel somewhere near this very spot where I found myself a prisoner!
I bent forward to inspect the fastenings which confined my ankles… I was checked.
In the mad fantasies attendant upon my recovering from the effects of hashîsh, and afterwards under the evil thrall of Fah Lo Suee, I had failed to note a significant fact.
A rope was around my waist, binding me to the heavy chair!
True, my hands were free, but I could neither reach my ankles nor the knots fastening the line about my body, which were somewhere under the back of the chair.
A coffee table on which were whiskey and soda and cigarettes stood conveniently near. I was about to take a cigarette… when I hesitated. Reaching to my pocket I took out my own case and with a lighter which lay on the table started a cigarette.
At all costs I must keep my head. Upon me, alone, rested the fate of Nayland Smith — perhaps the fate of a million more!
I smoked awhile, sitting deliberately relaxed, and thinking… thinking. My bonds occasioned me no inconvenience provided I remained inactive. Short of a painful, tortoise-like progress across the room, dragging the heavy chair with me, it became increasingly clear that to move was a physical impossibility.
The house was silent — very silent. Those heavy gold draperies seemed to exclude all sound.
For a long time I sat there, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Then I heard something.
One of the two doors opened.
The huge Nubian came in, carrying a tray upon which were sandwiches and fruit. He set the tray on the table beside me. His girth of shoulder was amazing; and as he stooped he gave me a wicked glance of his small, sunken, bloodshot eyes.
Without a word, he went out again, quietly closing the door.
Was I being watched? Having avoided the cigarettes and the whisky, was this a further attempt to dope me? I considered the facts…
What had they to gain? I was utterly at their mercy. Secret poisoning was unnecessary.
I ate a sandwich and drank a glass of whiskey and soda.
Silence…
The figure of Kâli on the lacquer cabinet engaged my attention. I found myself studying it closely — so closely that I began to imagine it was moving…
Kâli — symbol of this hellish organization, the Si-Fan into whose power I had fallen…
The door opened, and Fah Lo Suee came in.
“I am glad to see that you have called on your philosophy,” she said. “You will need it. Unless you are prepared to face another injection of F. Katale
psis, you must give me your parole for half an hour…”
She stood in the open doorway, one slender hand, its polished nails gleaming like gems, resting on her hip. Her eyes were mercilessly hard.
I can’t say what it was in her bearing that told me; but I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all was not going smoothly with Madame Ingomar.
“Naturally, I must decline.”
“You mean it?”
“Definitely.”
She smiled. Her passionate lips betrayed a weakness which was not to be read in those jade-green, eyes. She clapped her hands. The big emerald which she wore on an index finger glittered evilly.
The huge Nubian entered. Fah Lo Suee spoke rapidly, and he crossed to me.
“Don’t resist,” she said softly. “It would be merely melodrama. He could strangle you with one hand. Do as I ask. I am being merciful.”
My wrists were firmly knotted behind me. Those lashings which held me to the heavy chair were cast off. Then the black picked me up as one might raise a child and carried me out of the room!
“In half an hour,” said Fah Lo Suee, “I will free you again — and we will talk.”
Clenching my teeth grimly — for curses, execrations, torrents of poisonous, futile words, bubbled up in me — I was borne across an elegantly furnished lobby. Everywhere I detected an ultra-modern note, in spite of the presence of old Oriental pieces.
Upstairs I was carried, and into a dark little room opening off the first floor landing. I was laid down, prone, on a narrow settee. The Nubian went out and locked the door…
Trussed as I found myself, it was no easy matter to regain my feet. But I managed it, and stood staring around me in semi-darkness. The only light, I saw, came through a window which, on the outside, was reinforced with iron bars. And this light was the light of the moon.
