by Sax Rohmer
“That’s putting it pretty strongly, Sir Denis,” I said, for I recalled other experiences which I had shared with him.
“Not too strongly,” he replied. “I rarely say what I don’t mean, Greville. But apart from Rima — I sincerely wish she were a thousand miles from Ispahan — there’s a further and a graver consideration. Sir Lionel here — inadvertently, I admit — has stirred up a thing which at this particular stage of world politics is calculated to sway the balance in the wrong direction.
“I know all the facts, Greville” — he threw a quick glance in my direction— “and I assure you that what I say is true. The blowing up of the tomb of El Mokanna revived the tradition of that minor prophet and brought into unexpected prominence certain living believers of his doctrine, of which accident they were not slow to take advantage. I have the names of several men in Afghanistan, Khorassan, and Persia whom I know to be associated with this movement, whether as legitimate fanatics or seekers after power remains to be seen. But the spread of the thing is phenomenal.”
The chief had begun to walk up and down the room in that caged-bear fashion of his; and since Nayland Smith was also addicted to promenading in moments of intense thought, the latter checked his own restless movements at the first stride and dropped into an armchair which Sir Lionel had vacated, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
His words had chilled me. All my fears, which throughout had centred around Rima, came to a head now. I had known for more than a week past that our little party was the focus of malignant forces. Now, chance, or divine Providence, had sent us the man best equipped to deal with such a situation. But his words held no comfort.
“The way in which this cry of ‘El Mokanna’ has swept through the East,” he continued, speaking in his rapid staccato fashion, “points to organisation. Someone has seized this mighty opportunity. Don’t glare at me, Barton. You, and you alone, are responsible for the position in which we find ourselves. Captain Woodville has already told you so, I believe.”
I don’t think the chief would have remained silent under such treatment from any but Sir Denis. He was certainly glaring, and he continued to glare. But the steely gray eyes met his unfalteringly; and Sir Lionel merely grunted and continued his promenade.
“Our chief enemy,” Nayland Smith went on, “recognises the importance of possessing the New Creed, the Sword of God, and the gold mask. This was why poor Van Berg died.”
I heard Sir Lionel groan. He halted, and stood with his back to us for some moments.
“The first attempt failed,” that cool, even voice went on. “It was attended by very peculiar features; they were not insignificant. But—” he paused for a moment, impressively— “the attempt will be repeated. Our enemy knows that the method by which be obtained access to Van Berg’s room has so far defied all investigation. He knows that the green box is no longer in that room — but is here.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because Barton has advertised the fact,” Nayland Smith returned savagely. “Two Persian officials were present at the inquiry, here, in this house. And they know that the box now rests in Sir Lionel’s room. Don’t answer, Barton — just listen. And you, too, Greville.”
It was hard going for Sir Lionel to swallow his words, but he succeeded in doing so. And with the brief clarity which was one of his peculiar gifts Nayland Smith outlined his plan of defence.
That he seemed to take it for granted that there would be an attack positively terrified me, since Rima was in the house. But what I did not understand at the time was an underlying anger which appeared to be directed against the chief...
“I hope that my presence may be unknown to the enemy,” he concluded. “But, frankly, in spite of all the precautions I have taken, I doubt this. I am almost certain that I was covered. The man Amir Khan, originally your guide, has deserted to the other side. This, to me, is particularly, in fact dreadfully, significant. My object, Greville—” evidently he detected bewilderment in my expression— “is this: I mean to bring things to a head.”
“What d’you mean?” Sir Lionel demanded, with a sudden angry outburst— “Bring things to a head! Haven’t they come to a head already?”
“Listen, Barton,” Nayland Smith spoke unusually slowly. “You have taken some risks in your time. But this time you have stirred up something too big for you. Forget that I’m here, but go to work without delay and instruct Ali Mahmoud accordingly, to prepare for departure in the morning. Do everything that occurs to you to make it known that tonight is the last night you will spend under this roof. Upon your success. Barton — I include you, Greville — my plan for discovering the murderer of poor Van Berg will depend…”
CHAPTER NINE. THE FLYING DEATH
The extraordinary events of that night brought me nearer to a belief in supernatural agencies than I could have believed myself capable of approaching.
Nayland Smith’s programme was perfectly definite. Clearly enough he had formed a theory covering the singular facts of the death of Dr. Van Berg. This theory he bluntly declined to reveal to the chief.
“I’m going to handle this thing, Barton, in my own way,” he said firmly. “For once in your life you’ll take orders, or stand aside, whichever you please.”
In consequence we were disposed in what seemed to me a very strange manner. My own post was in the chief’s room, in which our long conference had taken place. I was seated upon a pile of pillows and other odds and ends, screened from the observation of anyone in the room by a large upstanding trunk, the property of Rima.
Through an opening between the wall and the side of this trunk I could see practically the whole of the room, which, as I have already said, was a large one. The shutters of the window above and to my right were closed; only a glimmer of moonlight showed through the slats. In consequence, the place was in semi-darkness, to which, however, after a time, my eyes grew accustomed.
I could see all the objects there very clearly. The window at the further end, that overlooking the street and the side of the mosque, had the shutters closed but not latched. Through the slit between them I could see reflected light on the ancient wall beyond.
The bed, which jutted out along to my left, showed the outline of a heavy body under its sheet. A gray army blanket was rolled across the foot in accordance with Sir Lionel’s custom — a provision against the chill of early morning; and the sheet was pulled up right over the pillow so as entirely to conceal the head of the sleeper — another characteristic trick of the chief’s in insect-infested countries.
That mound of odds and ends still remained upon the big table, and garments were littered about the floor. On a low stool at the foot of the bed, an object now associated in my mind with murder, stood the long green box. A pistol lay beside me, and I had an electric torch in my pocket.
I anticipated a dreary vigil, nor was I by any means satisfied that the enemy would fall into the trap laid for him by Nayland Smith. Our preparations for departure in the early morning had been almost too ostentatious, in my opinion.
The room was silent as a tomb.
Ali Mahmoud, in the lobby below, would be watching the street intently through the iron-barred grill of the house door. Rima was in one of the rooms above, from which she also commanded a view of the street. Of Sir Denis’s position I remained in ignorance, except that definitely he was not in the house…
Time wore on. I grew very restless and cramped. Smoking was prohibited, as well as the making of the slightest sound.
I watched the shutters of the window above the cupboard so long and so intently that my sight became blurred. This, I felt assured, would be the point of attack. I formed dreadful mental pictures of the creature heard many nights ago by poor Van Berg — the thing which had alighted with a sound resembling that caused by the alighting of a heavy bird — in his own words.
What could it be — this flying thing? I conceived horrors transcending the imagination of the most morbid story-tellers.
For the keen weapon which had pierced through Van Berg’s back and reached his heart, I substituted a dreadful kind of beak — the beak of a thing not of this world; a flying horror, such as the Arab romancers have conjured up — a ghoulish creature haunting the ancient cemetery just beyond the city walls...
It was the cry of this creature, I told myself, that moaning, wailing cry, which had given rise to the legend of the Ghost Mosque, which had led to this little street becoming deserted, and had made the house in which we lived uninhabitable for so many years.
At which point in my grisly reflections a sound caused me to draw a sharp breath. I crouched, listening intently.
Footsteps!
Someone was walking along the street below. The regular, measured steps paused at a point which I estimated to be somewhere just in front of the door of the house. I anticipated a challenge from Ali Mahmoud, but recalled that Sir Denis’s instructions on this point had been implicit.
There was no challenge. The footsteps sounded again, echoing hollowly now, so that I knew the walker to be passing that out-jutting wall of the mosque and approaching the dark, tunnel-like archway and the three steps leading to the narrow lane which skirted the base of the minaret.
I heard him mount the three steps; then again he paused…
What would I not have given for a glimpse of him! A passer-by was a phenomenon in that street at night. I dared not move, however. The footsteps continued — and presently died away altogether.
Silence descended again upon this uncanny quarter.
How long elapsed I had no means of judging; probably only a few minutes. But I had begun to induce a sort of hypnosis by my concentrated staring at the slit between the shutters, when — from high up and a long way off, I heard the sound...
It brought my mind back in a flash to those horrible imaginings which had absorbed me at the moment that footsteps had broken the stillness. It was coming!… The flying death!
A sort of horrible expectancy claimed me, as, pistol in hand, I watched the opening between the shutters.
Silence fell again. I could detect no sound either within the house or outside.
Whereupon it happened — the thing I had been waiting for; a thing seemingly beyond human explanation.
There came a faint pattering sound on the narrow ledge outside and below the shutters. A dull impact and a faint creaking of woodwork told of a weight imposed upon the projecting window. Something began to move upward — a dim shadow behind the slats — upward and inward — towards the opening...
The tension of watching and waiting grew almost too keen to tolerate. But my orders were definite, and wait I must.
Beyond that faint straining of woodwork, no sound whatever was occasioned by the intruder. No sign came from below to indicate that Ali Mahmoud had seen anything of this apparition, which indeed, since it had apparently flown through the air, was not remarkable.
Then — the shutters began very silently to open...
CHAPTER TEN. I SEE THE SLAYER
The shutter opened so silently and so slowly that only by the closest watching could I detect the movement. There was absolutely no creaking.
A window of the Ghost Mosque on the opposite side of the street, looking like a black smudge on a dirty yellow canvas, came just in line with the edge of the left-hand shutter. And only by the ever increasing gap of yellow between the woodwork and the smudge of shadow, could I tell what was happening.
The effect was slowly to add to the light in the room. So accustomed had I become to the dimness that I felt myself shrinking back farther into my hiding place; although in actual fact the access of light was less, I suppose, than would have been gained by the introduction of a solitary candle.
My ghoulish imaginings came to a head.
Some vampire creature from the ancient cemetery was about to spring in. More than once since the relics of El Mokanna had come into our possession I had laughed at Rima’s superstitious terrors, but at this moment I admit frankly that I shared them.
Ispahan lay around me, silent as a city of the past. I might have been alone in Persia. And always the fear was with me that Nayland Smith, for all his peculiar genius, had misjudged the circumstances which had led to the death of Van Berg; that I was about to be subjected to a test greater perhaps than my spiritual strength could cope with.
What I should have done at this moment had I been a free agent, I cannot even guess. But I doubt it I could have remained there silent and watching.
Fortunately, I was under orders. I meant to carry those orders out to the letter. But in honesty I must record that during the interminable moments which elapsed from the time that some incredible creature had alighted outside the window, to the moment that the shutters became fully opened, I doubted the wisdom of Nayland Smith...
A vague mass rose inch by inch over the window ledge; grew higher — denser, as it seemed to me; and, with a wriggling movement indescribably horrible, reached the top of that low cupboard which extended below the window — and crouched or lay there.
I had formed absolutely no conception of outline. The entrance of the nocturnal creature had been effected in such a manner that definition was impossible. This was the point, I think, at which my courage almost touched vanishing point.
What was the thing on top of the cupboard? Something which could fly — something which had no determinate shape…
I knew that the visitor was inspecting the room keenly. To me, as I have said, it seemed to have become brightly illuminated. Colt in hand, I shrank farther and farther away from the narrow opening through which I was peering, until my back was flat against the wall.
That vague outline which disturbed the square of the open window disappeared. A very soft thud which must have been inaudible to ears less keenly attuned than mine told me that the visitant, almost certainly the slayer of Van Berg, had dropped onto the floor and was now in the room with me!
I peered into the darkness left of the big, littered table. Something was approaching the bed… going, I thought, on all fours.
Definitely, the approaching was oblique — that is, not in my direction. I was conscious of a shock of relief. I had not been seen.
Something glittered dully in the reflected light, and I heard a faint swishing sound, almost the first, expecting the thud, which had betrayed the presence of this nocturnal assassin.
At first it puzzled me, and then, suddenly, to my mind an explanation sprang.
The creature was spraying the bed...
Ideas quickly associated themselves; for at this same moment there was swept to my nostrils an almost overpowering perfume of mimosa — the same that had haunted poor Van Berg’s room.
It was some unfamiliar but tremendously potent anaesthetic.
In the instant that realisation came to me, I knew also that the horrible visitor was not a supernatural creature but human. True, his agility was far above the ordinary, and his powers of silent movement were uncanny.
He was evidently armed with some kind of spray; and during the time that its curiously soothing sound continued, I found, so oddly does the mind react to indefinable fear, that my thoughts had wandered. I was thinking about an account I had once read of a mysterious creature known as Spring-heeled Jack, who terrorised outlying parts of London many years ago.
For the fact remained that this man, now endeavouring to reduce the occupant of the bed to unconsciousness, could apparently spring to high windows, quite beyond the reach of any human jumper, and indeed, beyond the reach of any member of the animal kingdom!
The swishing sound ceased. Absolute silence followed...
Peer intensely as I would, I could detect no trace of another presence in the room. But I knew exactly what was happening. The unimaginable man who had come through the window was crouching somewhere and listening. Probably he was counting, silently, knowing how many seconds must elapse before the unknown drug which smelled like mimosa could reduce the sleeper to unconsciousness — or, pe
rhaps, bring about death...
Distant though I was from the bed, that sickly sweet odour was making me dizzy.
Fully a minute elapsed. No sound could I hear; nor could I detect a movement. But during that age-long minute I observed a vague white patch in the darkness, and presently I identified it. It was made by the initials painted on the green iron box.
And as I watched, this white patch became obscured.
A sound disturbed that all-but-insufferable silence — a sound of heavy breathing. Then, silhouetted against the window… I saw the intruder.
I saw a small, lithe body, muscular arms uplifted, the green box born upon the right shoulder.
My hand trembled upon the trigger, but Nayland Smith’s instructions had been definite. The man bore the box to the end of the room. Here, shadow from the cupboard swallowed him up. Preceded by very little noise the square outline of the box now appeared upon the top of the cupboard.
He had raised it above his head and placed it there, by which circumstances, since he appeared to be a small man, I was able to judge of his extraordinary strength.
My heart was beating very fast and I realised that I was holding my breath. I inhaled deeply, watching, now, the square of the opened window. A silhouetted arm appeared above the box, then a shoulder, and finally the whole of a lean body.
The midnight visitor was a Negro, or a member of some very dark race, wearing only a black loincloth: his features I could not see.
His movements interested me intensely. Stooping, he bent over the box. Certain metallic sounds told me that the iron handles at either end were being moved.
Then, as I watched... the box disappeared!
The black man alone, a crouching silhouette, remained outlined in the open window. The box had gone; incredible fact — but the box had gone! Silently, save for a distant thud that heavy iron chest had been “vanished” from the room as a conjurer vanishes a coin!
