Works of Sax Rohmer

by Sax Rohmer

  Taking the roll of paper from me, he moved the dead fly further forward upon the polished table-top where direct light fell upon it; then:

  “Hullo!” he exclaimed.

  He snatched up a lens which lay near by and bent over the insect, peering down absorbedly.

  I turned and looked towards the couch were Petrie lay, and I studied his haggard features. I could detect no evidence of life. The purple shadow showed like a bruise on his forehead; but I thought that it had not increased.

  Yet I believed he was doomed, already dying, and my thoughts jumped feverishly to that strange plant upon the table — and from the plant to the yellow face which so recently had leered at me out of the darkness.

  Was it conceivable — could it be — that some human agency directed this pestilence?

  I turned, looking beyond the bent, motionless figure of Nayland Smith, out into the dusk — and a desire to close the steel shutters suddenly possessed me.

  This operation I completed without drawing a single comment from Sir Denis. But, as that menacing dusk was shut out, he stood upright and confronted me.

  “Sterling,” he said — and there was something in his steady gaze which definitely startled me— “have you, as a botanist, ever come across a true genus-hybrid?”

  “You mean a thing between a lily and a rose — or an oak growing apples?”

  “Exactly.”

  “In the natural state, never — although some curious hybrids have been reported from time to time. But many freaks of this kind can be cultivated, of course. The Japanese are experts.”

  “Cultivated? I agree. But nature, in my experience, sticks to the common law. Now here, Sterling” — he indicated the table— “lies an insect which, from the sound it made when flying, I took to be a tsetse fly—”

  “A tsetse? Good heavens! Here?”

  He smiled grimly.

  “Well outside its supposed area,” he admitted, “and above its usual elevation. I thought you might have recognized its note, as you have travelled in the flybelt. However, I was right — up to a point. It definitely possesses certain characteristics of glossina, the tsetse fly; notably the wings, which are typical. You see, I have been taking an intensive course on this subject! But can you imagine, Sterling, that it has the legs and head of an incredibly large sandfly? The thing is a nightmare, an anachronism; it’s a sort of giant flying flea!”

  His words awakened a memory. What had Petrie said to me, earlier in the day?... that “even if Nature is turning topsy-turvy, I think I can puzzle her!...”

  “Sir Denis,” I broke in, “I think you should know that Petrie found, in the blood of a patient, some similar freak — a sort of hybrid germ, which I lack the knowledge to describe to you. He found sleeping sickness and plague combined—”

  “Good God!”

  I thought that the lean, sun-baked face momentarily grew yet more angular.

  “You know,” he interrupted, “that tsetse carries sleeping sickness? Sandfly is suspect in several directions. But the rat-flea (and this is more like a flea than a sandfly) is the proved cause of plague infection... Am I going mad?”

  He suddenly crossed and bent over Petrie. He examined him carefully and in detail. The fact dawned upon me that Sir Denis Nayland Smith had more than a smattering of the medical art. I watched in silence while finally he took the temperature of the unconscious man.

  “There’s no change,” he reported. “‘654’ seems already to have checked its progress. But this coma... Dare we hope?”

  “I don’t know what to hope, or what to believe, Sir Denis!”

  He nodded.

  “Nor do I. The nature of my job has forced me to pick up some elements of medicine; but this is a specialist’s case. However, tell me about these leaves — the leaves which seemed to attract the fly...”

  I told him briefly all that I knew of the insect-catching plant.

  “The specimen which Petrie has preserved,” I concluded, “bears traces of human blood.”

  Sir Denis suddenly grabbed the lens again and bent over the purple leaves on the table-top. A moment he looked, then turned.

  “So does this!” he declared. “Fresh blood.”

  I was dumb for a matter of seconds; then:

  “The insect which I partly crushed?” I suggested.

  He shook his head irritably.

  “Quantity too great. These leaves have been sprayed with blood!”

  “How, in heaven’s name, did they get here? And how did that damnable fly get here?”

  He suddenly clapped his hands upon my shoulders and stared at me fixedly.

  “You’re a man of strong nerve, Sterling,” he said, “and so I can tell you. They were brought here. And” — he pointed to the still body on the couch— “for that purpose.”

  “But—”

  “There are no ‘buts.’ I left the car in which I had been driven over from Cannes some distance back on the road tonight, and walked ahead to look for this villa, the exact location of which my driver didn’t know. I had nearly reached the way in when I heard a sound.”

  “I heard it too.”

  “I know you did. But to you it meant nothing — except that it was horrible; to me, it meant a lot. You see, I had heard it before.”

  “What was it? I shall never forget it!”

  “It was the signal used by certain Burmans, loosely known as Dacoits, to give warning to one another. If poor old Petrie had come across this new species of tsetse fly — he would have begun to think. If he had heard that cry... he would have known!”

  “He would have known what?” I asked, aware of a growing excitement communicated to me by the speaker.

  “He would have known what he was up against.” He raised his fists in a gesture almost of despair. “We are children!” he said vehemently, momentarily taken out of himself. “What do you know of botany, and what does Petrie know of medicine beside Dr. Fu-Manchu?”

  “Dr. Fu-Manchu?” I echoed.

  “A synonym for Satan — evil immutable; apparently eternal.”

  “Sir Denis—” I began.

  But he turned aside abruptly, bending again over the motionless body of his old friend.

  “Poor Karâmanèh!” he murmured.

  He was silent a while, then, without looking around:

  “Do you know his wife, Sterling?” he asked.

  “No, Sir Denis; we have never met.”

  “She is still young, as we count years today. She was a child when Petrie married her — and she is the most beautiful woman I have ever known...”

  As he spoke I seemed to hear a soft voice saying, “Think of me as Derceto”... Fleurette! Fleurette was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen...

  “She was chosen by a master — who rarely makes mistakes.”

  His manner and his words were so strange that I may be forgiven for misunderstanding.

  “A master? Do you mean a painter?”

  At that, he turned and smiled. His smile was the most boyish and disarming I had ever met with in a grown man.

  “Yes, Sterling, a painter! His canvas, the world; his colours, the human races...”

  This was mystery capping mystery, and certainly I should never have left the matter there; but at this moment we were interrupted by a series of short staccato shrieks.

  I ran to the door. I had recognized the voice.

  “Who is it?” Sir Denis snapped.

  “Mme Dubonnet.”

  “Housekeeper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep her out.”

  I threw the door open and the terrified woman tottered into my arms.

  “M. Sterling,” she panted, hysterically, “something terrible has happened! I know — I know — something terrible has happened!”

  “Don’t worry, Mme Dubonnet,” I said, and endeavoured to lead her away. “Dr. Petrie—”

  “But I must tell the doctor — it concerns him. As I look up from my casserole dish I see at the window just abo
ve me — a face — a dreadful yellow face with cross eyes...”

  “Rather a quandary, Sterling,” Sir Denis cut in, standing squarely between the excited woman and the insensible man on the couch. “One of those murderous devils is hanging about the place...”

  Dimly I heard the sound of an insistent motor horn on the Corniche road above, nearing the head of that narrow byway which debouched from the Corniche and led down to the Villa Jasmin.

  “The ambulance from the hospital!” Sir Denis exclaimed in relief.

  CHAPTER SIX. “654”

  Mme Dubonnet, still shaking nervously, was escorted back to her quarters. Petrie, we told her, was down with a severe attack of influenza and must be moved immediately. The appearance of the yellow face at the window, mendacity had failed to explain; and the old lady announced that she would lock herself in the kitchen until such time as someone could take her home.

  She was left lamenting, “Oh, the poor, dear kind doctor!...”

  Cartier had come in person, with two orderlies and a driver. The bearded, round-faced little man exhibited such perfect consternation on beholding Dr. Petrie that it must have been funny had it not been tragic. He dropped to his knees, bending over the insensible man.

  “The black stigmata!” he muttered, touching the purple-shadowed brow. “I am too late! The coma. Soon — in an hour, or less, the final convulsions... the end! God! It is terrible. He is a dead man!”

  “I’m not so sure,” Sir Denis interrupted. “Forgive me, doctor; my name is Nayland Smith. I have ventured to give an injection—”

  Dr. Cartier stood up excitedly.

  “What injection?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Sir Denis replied calmly.

  “What is this?”

  “I don’t know. I used a preparation of Petrie’s which he called ‘654.’”

  “‘654!’”

  Dr. Cartier dropped upon his knees again beside the insensible man.

  “How long,” he demanded, “since the shadow appeared?”

  “Difficult to say, doctor,” I replied. “He was alone here. But it hasn’t increased.”

  “How long since the injection?”

  Nayland Smith shot out a lean brown wrist and glanced at a gun-metal watch in a leather strap.

  “Forty-three minutes,” he reported.

  Cartier sprang to his feet again.

  “Dr. Smith!” he cried excitedly — and I saw Sir Denis suppress a smile— “this is triumph! From the time that the ecchymosis appears, it never ceases to creep down to the eyes! It has remained static for forty-three minutes, you tell me? This is triumph!”

  “Let us dare to hope so,” said Sir Denis gravely.

  When all arrangements had been completed and the good Dr. Cartier had grasped the astounding fact that Nayland Smith was not a confrere but a super-policeman:

  “It’s very important,” Sir Denis whispered to me, “that this place should be watched tonight. We have to take into consideration” — he gripped my arm— “the possibility that they fail to save Petrie. The formula for ‘654’ must be somewhere here!”

  But we had searched for it in vain; nor was it on his person.

  The driver of the car in which Sir Denis had come, agreed, on terms, to mount guard over the laboratory. He remained in ignorance of the nature of Petrie’s illness; but Dr. Cartier assured us there was no danger of direct infection at this stage.

  And so, poor Petrie having been rushed to the isolation ward, Nayland Smith going with the ambulance, I drove Mme Dubonnet home, leaving the chauffeur from Cannes on guard. Returning, I gave the man freedom of the dinner which Fate had decreed that Petrie and I were not to eat, lent him a repeater, and set out in turn for the hospital.

  This secret war against the strange plague, which threatened to strip the Blue Coast of visitors and prosperity, had aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of that small hospital staff.

  Petrie, with other sufferers from the new pestilence, was lodged in an outbuilding separated from the hospital proper by a stretch of waste land. A porter, after some delay, led me through this miniature wilderness to the door of the isolation ward. The low building was dominated by a clump of pines.

  A nursing sister admitted me, conducting me in silence along a narrow passage to Petrie’s room.

  As I entered, and the sister withdrew, I saw at a glance the cause of the suppressed feverish excitement which I had detected even in the bearing of the lodge porter.

  Dr. Cartier was in tears. He was taking the pulse of the unconscious man. Nayland Smith, standing beside him, nodded to me reassuringly as I came in.

  The purple shadow on Petrie’s brow had encroached no further — indeed, as I thought, was already dispersing!

  Dr. Cartier replaced his watch and raised clasped hands.

  “He is doing well,” said Sir Denis. “‘654’ is the remedy... but what, exactly, is ‘654’?”

  “We must know!” cried Dr. Cartier emotionally. “Thanks to the good God, he will revive from the coma and tell us. We must know! There is no more that I or any man can do now. But Sister Therese is a treasure among nurses, and if there should be a development, she will call me immediately. I shall be here in three minutes. But tomorrow? What can we do? We must know!”

  “I agree,” said Sir Denis quietly. “Don’t worry any more about it. I think you are about to win a great victory. I hope, as I have told you, to recover a copy of the formula for ‘654’ — and as Dr. Petrie’s safety is of such vital importance, you have no objections to offer to my plan?”

  “But none!” Cartier replied. “Except that this seems unnecessary.”

  “I never take needless risks,” said Sir Denis drily. But when Cartier was gone:

  “I am going into Nice,” Sir Denis said, “now, to put a phone call through to London.”

  “What!”

  “There’s a definite connection, Sterling, between the appearance in Petrie’s laboratory of a new species of tropical fly at the same time as an unfamiliar tropical plant — the latter bloodstained!”

  “So much is obvious.”

  “The connecting link is the Burmese Dacoit whom I heard, and you and Mme Dubonnet saw. He was the servant of a dreadful master.”

  A question burned on my tongue, but:

  “Sister Therese is all that Cartier claims for her — I have interviewed the sister. She will attend to the patient from time to time. But I’m going to ask you to do something, Sterling, for me and for Petrie.”

  “Anything you like. Just say the word.”

  “You see, Sterling, since Petrie left London and came here, he had kept in close touch with Sir Manston Rorke, of the School of Tropical Medicine — one of the three big names, although I doubt if he knows more than Petrie. Some days ago, Sir Manston called me up. He had formed a remarkable opinion.”

  “What about?”

  “About the French epidemic. Two cases, showing identical symptoms, occurred in the London dock area, and he had had news of several in New York and of one in Sydney, Australia. Having personally examined the London cases (both of which terminated fatally) he had come to the conclusion that this disease was not an ordinary plague. Briefly, he believed that it was being induced artificially!”

  “Good heavens, Sir Denis! I begin to believe he was right.”

  Nayland Smith nodded.

  “I invited him to suggest a motive, and he wavered between a mad scientist and a Red plot to decimate unfriendly nations! In my opinion, he wasn’t far short of the truth; but here’s the big point: I have reason to believe that Petrie submitted to Sir Manston the formula for ‘654’ — and I’m going to Nice to call him up.”

  “God grant he has it,” I said, glancing at the bed where the sick man lay.

  “Amen to that. But in the meantime, Sterling — I may be away two hours or more — it’s vitally important that Petrie should not be alone for one moment.”

  “I quite follow.”

  “So I want you to s
tand by here until I get back. What I mean is this — I want you to sit tight beside his bed.”

  “I understand. You may count on me.”

  He stared at me fixedly. There was something almost hypnotic in that penetrating look.

  “Sterling,” he said, “you are dealing with an enemy more cunning and more brilliant than any man you have ever met East or West. Until I return you are not to allow a soul to touch Petrie — except Sister Therese or Cartier.”

  I was startled by his vehemence.

  “It may be difficult,” I suggested.

  “I agree that it may be difficult; but it has to be done. Can I rely upon you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m going to dash away now, to put a call through to Manston Rorke. I only pray that he is in London and that I can locate him.”

  He raised his hand in a sort of salute to the insensible man, turned, and went out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN. IVORY FINGERS

  I thought of many things during the long vigil that followed. The isolation ward harboured six patients, but Petrie had been given accommodation in a tiny private room at one end. The corresponding room at the other end was the sanctum of Sister Therese.

  It was a lonely spot, and very silent. I heard the sister moving about in the adjoining ward, and presently she entered quietly, a fragile little woman, her pale face looking childishly small framed in the stiff white headdress of her order. Deftly and all but noiselessly she went about her duties; and, watching her, I wondered, as I had often wondered before, from whence came the unquestioning faith which upheld such as Sister Therese and in which they found adequate reward for a life of service.

  “You are not afraid of infection, M. Sterling?” she asked, her voice very low and gentle.

  “Not at all, Sister. In my job I have to risk it.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Hunt for new species of plants for the Botanical Society — and orchids for the market.”

  “But how fascinating! As a matter of fact, there is no danger of infection at this stage.”

  “So I am told by Dr. Cartier.”

  “It is new to us, this disease. But it is tragic that Dr. Petrie should fall a victim. However, as you see—”