by Sax Rohmer
How I cursed every moment of that stolen happiness! No contempt I had ever known for a fellow being could approach that which I had for myself. I conjured up a picture of Nayland Smith; almost in my state of distraction I seemed to hear his voice. He was trying to tell me something, trying to direct me, to awaken in my dull brain some spark of enlightenment.
Had our cases been reversed what would he have done?
This idea seemed to give me a new coolness. Yes! What would he have done? I sat there, head buried in my hands, striving to think calmly.
That the dark woman had entered and left that ruined palace was a fact. Whoever or whatever she might be, of her presence there we had unassailable evidence. Our search had revealed no explanation of the mystery. But there were doors we had failed to open—”
This would not have been in Nayland Smith’s way!
He would never have been satisfied to leave the Palazzo Mori until those lower rooms had been examined. Nor would he have been content with the assertion of the chief of police that the ancient passage under the canal was blocked…
I sprang up.
This was the line of inquiry which Smith would have followed! I was sure of it. This should be my objective. A dishevelled figure (I had not been undressed for thirty-six hours), once more I set out.
* * * *
The ancient house of the gondoliers was easy to locate. It was solidly built of stone with three windows on the land side and a heavy, padlocked door at the end. The narrow lane by which one approached it was dark and deserted. I had brought an electric torch, and I shot a beam through one of the broken windows. It showed a quantity of litter: fragments of wall paper, mortar boards and numerous empty paint cans. I inspected the padlock.
This bore evidence of use: it had recently been oiled!
But it was fast.
Greatly excited, I returned to the broken window and looked in again. The litter had not been disturbed, I could have sworn, for a considerable time — yet the door, had recently been used.
My excitement grew. I thought that from some place, in this world or beyond, Nayland Smith had succeeded in inspiring me with something of his old genius for investigation. A great task lay to my hand. I determined to do it well.
I studied the padlock. I had no means of picking it, nor indeed any knowledge of that art. To crash a pane in one of the windows would have been useless, for they were of a kind not made to open, and the panes were too narrow to allow entrance had the glass been entirely removed. I walked around to the other side. Here was evidence of a landing stage long demolished. There were three windows and a walled-up door. Inspection was carried out from a narrow ledge which overhung the canal.
Baffled again, I was about to return — when I heard footsteps coming down the lane!
I stayed where I was. Directly opposite, the narrow canal glittering between, rose a wall of the deserted Palazzo Mori. I could see that stone balustrade up which I had scrambled, the iron balcony to which I had clung. Nearer and nearer the footsteps approached, and now I heard a woman’s voice:
“Wait, just a moment!… I have the key.”
It was a soothing, caressing voice, and I longed for a glimpse of the speaker, but dared not move.
I heard the rattling of the padlock, opening of the door.
“Please wait! Not yet! We may be seen!”
Light suddenly illuminated the interior of the building. I crouched low, my heart beating fast, and cautiously from one corner of a window, peered in.
What I saw made my heart beat faster. It strengthened my resolution to do what Nayland Smith would have done…
Rudolf Adlon, wearing a half mask, and a cloak over his evening dress, stood hands clasped behind him, watching a woman who knelt in a corner of the floor!
His eyes were ardent; he tore the mask off — and I saw a man enslaved. The woman wore a loose fur wrap; her arms resembled dull ivory. She was slender, almost serpentine; jet-black hair lay close to her shapely head. And as I looked and recognised her, she stood upright.
A trap had been opened, a section of floor with its impedimenta of pots and litter had been slid aside! She turned — and for the first time I saw her eyes…
Her eyes — long, narrow, dark-lashed eyes — were emerald green! I had thought that there were no eyes in the world like these except the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
She made a gesture of triumph. She smiled as perhaps long ago Calypso smiled.
“Be patient! This is the only way — come!”
The words reached me clearly through the broken window. Pulling her wrap over her bare shoulders, she beckoned and began to descend steps below the trap, I saw that she carried a flashlamp.
Rudolf Adlon obeyed. The light below shone up into his dark, eager face as he stooped to follow.
And then came darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO. THE ZOMBIE
Rudolf Adlon, dictator of a great European nation, was going to his death!
I thought rapidly, trying to envisage the situation from what I believed would have been Nayland Smith’s point of view.
Probably I could reach police headquarters in ten minutes. A call box was of no avail, owing to my ignorance of the language, so that this meant ten minutes wasted. Before the police arrived, Adlon might have disappeared as Nayland Smith had disappeared. That the passage led to the Palazzo Mori I had good reason to suppose. But unless it had been planned to assassinate the chancellor in that deserted building and hide his body, where were they going?
My experience of the methods of the Si-Fan inclined me to believe that Adlon would be given a final opportunity to accept the Council’s orders. My decision was soon made. I would follow; and when I had found out where the woman was leading the dictator, return and bring a party large enough to surround the place.
The door I knew to be unfastened. I groped my way to where a dim oblong light indicated the position of the trap. I saw stone steps. I descended cautiously. The place in which I found myself had a foul reek; the filthy water of the Rio Mori dripped through its roof in places. It was an ancient stone passage, slimy and repellent. A vague moving light at the further end was that of the flashlamp carried by the woman.
Adlon’s infatuation had blinded him to his danger. But putting myself in his place and substituting Ardatha for the woman of death, I knew that I, too, would have followed to the very gates of hell.
Fixing my eyes on that guiding light, I proceeded. The light disappeared, but I discovered ascending steps. A spear in the darkness led me up to a door ajar. I heard a voice and recognised it. It was the voice of Adlon.
“Where are you leading me, Mona Lisa?”
In the exquisite face of this ghoul who hunted human souls for Dr. Fu-Manchu he had discovered a resemblance to that famous painting. The resemblance was not perceptible to me…
Along an arched cellar, silhouettes against the light of the moving lamp which cast grotesque shadows, I saw the pair ahead: the slender figure of the woman, the cloaked form of the doomed man. There was a great squat pillar in this forgotten crypt and I crept behind it until they had come to the top of the open stair and vanished into a Gothic archway.
Complete darkness had come when I crept forward and followed, feeling my way to the foot of the stair.
The sound of footsteps ceased. I stood stockstill. I heard the woman’s laughter, low-pitched, haunting. It ended abruptly. There came thickly muttered words in a man’s voice. He had her in his arms… Then the footsteps continued.
A key was placed in a lock and I heard the creaking of a door. It echoed, phantomesque, as though in a cavern; it warned me of what I should find. I waited until those sounds, mockingly repeated by the ghosts of the place, grew faint. Advancing, I found myself in the tomblike entrance hall of the Palazzo Mori.
The light carried by the woman was now a mere speck. However, using extreme caution, I followed it. As I crossed that haunted place, the shades of men trapped, poisoned, murdered there, seemed to move around m
e in a satanic dance. Tortured spirits of medieval Venice formed up at my back, barring the road to safety. Yet I pressed on, for I knew that the great outer door was open, that even if my way through the foul tunnel be cut off, here was another sally port although it meant a plunge into the Grand Canal.
The light faded out entirely, but a hollow ringing of footsteps assured me that I had further to go. One of those doors which the police party had found closed, was open! (The ancient lock had been wedged. It was fitted with a new, hidden lock.) And beyond that door Rudolf Adlon went to destruction.
Down five steps I groped, and knew that I was below water level again.
Far along a tunnel similar to that which led under the Rio Mori, I saw the two figures. The man’s arm was around the woman; his head was close to hers. I knew that I could never be detected in the darkness of this ancient catacomb unless my own movements betrayed me; and when the silhouettes became blurred and then disappeared altogether I divined the presence of ascending steps at the end of the passage.
One fact of importance I noted: this damp and noisome burrow ran parallel to the Grand Canal. I must be a long way from my starting point.
And now it had grown so black that I had no alternative but to use my torch. I used it cautiously, shining its ray directly before my feet. The floor was clammily repulsive, but I proceeded until I reached the steps. I switched off the torch.
A streak of light told me that a door had been left ajar at the top.
Gently I pushed it open and found myself in an empty wine cellar. One unshaded electric light swung from the vaulted roof. An open stone stair of four steps led up to an arch.
I questioned the wisdom of further advance. But I fear the spirit of Nayland Smith deserted me, that hereditary madness ruled my next move, for I crept up, found a massive, nail-studded door open, and peered out into a carpeted passage!
Emerging from that subterranean chill, the change of atmosphere was remarkable. Rudolf Adlon’s voice reached me. He spoke happily, passionately. Then the speaker’s tone rose to a high note — a cry… and ceased abruptly!
They had him — it was all over! Inspired by a furious indignation, I stole forward and peered around the edge of a half-opened door into a room beyond. It was a small room having parquet flooring of a peculiar pattern: a plain border of black wood some three feet wide, the center designed to represent a lotus in bloom. Its walls were panelled, and the place appeared to be empty until, venturing unwisely to protrude my head, I saw watching me with a cold smile the woman of death!
* * * *
I suppose she was exceptionally beautiful, this creature who, according to Nayland Smith, should long since have been dust; but the aura surrounding her, my knowledge, now definite, of her murderous work, combined to make her a thing of horror.
She had discarded her wrap; it was draped over her arm. I saw a slenderly perfect figure, small delicately chiselled features. Hers was a beauty so imperious that it awakened a memory which presently came fully to life. She might have posed for that portrait of Queen Nefertiti found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. An Arab necklace of crudely stamped gold heightened the resemblance. I was to learn later of others who had detected this.
But it was her eyes, fixed immovably upon me, which awakened ancient superstitions. The strange word zombie throbbed in my brain; for those eyes, green as emeralds, were long and narrow; their gaze was hard to sustain… and they were like the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu!
“Well” — she spoke calmly— “who are you, and why have you followed me?”
Conscious of my dishevelled condition, of the fact that I had no backing, I hesitated.
“I followed you,” I said at last, “because it was my duty to follow you.”
“Your duty — why?”
She stood there, removed from me by the length of the room, and the regard of those strange, narrowed eyes never left my face.
“Because you had someone with you.”
“You are wrong; I am alone.”
I watched her, this suave, evil beauty. And for the first time I became aware of a heavy perfume resembling that of hawthorn.
“Where has he gone?”
“To whom do you refer?”
“To Rudolf Adlon.”
She laughed. I saw her teeth gleam and thought of a vampire. It was the laugh I had heard down there in the cellars, deep, taunting.
“You dream, my friend — whoever you are — you dream.”
“You know quite well who I am.”
“Oh!” she raised delicate eyebrows mockingly. “You are famous then?”
What should I do? My instinct was to turn and run for it. Something told me that if I did so, I should be trapped.
“If you were advised by me you would go back. You trespass in someone’s house — I do not advise you to be found here.”
“You advise me to go back?”
“Yes. It is kind of me.”
And now although common sense whispered that to go would mean ambush in that echoing tomb which was the Palazzo Mori, I was sorely tempted to chance it. There was something wildly disturbing in this woman’s presence, in the steady glance of her luminous eyes. In short, I was afraid of her — afraid of the silent house about me, of the noisome passages below — of all the bloodthirsty pageant of medieval Venice to which her sheath frock, her ivory shoulders, seemed inevitably to belong.
But I wondered why she temporised, why she stood there watching me with that mocking smile. Although I could hear no sound surely it must be a matter of merely raising her voice to summon assistance.
Forcing down this insidious fear which threatened to betray me, I rapidly calculated my chances.
The room was no more than twelve feet long. I could be upon her in three bounds. Better still — why had I forgotten it? I suppose because she was a woman…
In a flash I had her covered with my automatic.
She did not stir. There was something uncanny in her coolness, something which again reminded me of the dreadful Dr. Fu-Manchu. Her lips alone quivered in that slight, contemptuous smile.
“Don’t move your hands!” I said, and the urgency of my case put real menace into the words. “I know this is a desperate game — you know it too. Step forward. I will return as you suggest, but you will go ahead of me.”
“And suppose I refuse to step forward?”
“I shall come and fetch you!”
Still there was no sound save that of our low-pitched voices, nothing to indicate the presence of another human being.
“You would be mad to attempt such a thing. My advice was sincere. You dare not shoot me unless also you propose to commit suicide, and I warn you that one step in my direction will mean your death.”
I watched her intently — although now an attack from the rear was what I feared, having good reason to remember the efficiency of Fu-Manchu’s Thugs. Perhaps one of them was creeping up behind me. Yet I dared not glance aside.
“Go back! I shall not warn you again.”
Whereupon, realising that now or never I must force the issue, I leapt forward… That heavy odour of hawthorn became suddenly acute — overpowering — and stifling a scream, I knew too late what had happened.
The woman stood upon the black border, where I, too, had been standing. The whole of the center of the floor was simply an inverted “star trap.”
It opened silently as I stepped upon it, and I fell from life into a sickly void of hawthorn blossom and oblivion…
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. ANCIENT TORTURES
“Glad to see that you are feeling yourself again, Kerrigan.”
I stared about me in stupefaction. This of course was a grotesque dream induced by the drug which had made me unconscious — the drug which smelled like hawthorn blossom. For (a curious fact which even at this moment I appreciated) my memories were sharp-cut, up to the very instant of my fall through that trap in the lotus floor. I knew that I had dropped into some place impregnated with poison gas of an unfamiliar kind. No
w came this singularly vivid dream…
A dungeon with a low, arched roof: the only light came through a barred window in one of the stone walls; and in this place I sat upon a massive chair attached to the paved floor. My hands and arms were free, but my ankles were chained to the front legs of the chair by means of gyves evidently of great age and also of great strength. On my left was a squat pillar some four feet in diameter, and in the shadows behind it I discerned a number of strange and terrifying implements: braziers, tongs and other equipment of a torture chamber.
Almost directly facing me and close beside the barred window, attached to a similar chair, sat Nayland Smith!
This dream my conscious mind told me must be due to thoughts I had been thinking at the moment that unconsciousness came. I had imagined Smith in the power of the Chinese doctor; I had seemed to feel all about me uneasy spirits of men who had suffered and had died in those old palaces which lie along the Grand Canal.
There came a low moaning sound, which rose and fell — rose and fell — and faded away…
“I know you think you are dreaming, Kerrigan!” Smith’s voice had lost none of its snap. “I thought so myself, until I found it impossible to wake up. But I assure you we are both here and both awake.”
Tentatively I tried to move the chair. Stooping, I touched the iron bands about my ankles. Then I stared wanly across at my fellow captive… I knew I was awake.
“Thank God you’re alive, Smith!”
“Alive, as you say, but not, I fear, for long!”
He laughed. It was not a mirthful laugh. The sound of our voices in that horrible musty place was muted, toneless, as the voices of those who speak in a crypt. I had never seen Smith otherwise than well groomed, but now, growing accustomed to the gloom, I saw that there was stubble on his chin. His hair was of that crisp, wavy sort which never seems to be disordered. But this growth of beard deepened the shadows beneath his cheekbones, and the quick gleam of his small even teeth as he laughed seemed to accentuate the haggardness of his appearance.
