by Sax Rohmer
“Just that. He moved on, the portfolio under his arm; and I felt a buzzing in my ears. I had one of two choices: to let him go, or to have it out ... I went after him, grabbed him, and swung him around. It had become very dark. I wasn’t just sure where we were standing. But before I knew what had happened, he led off and registered hard on my jaw. He said: ‘Take that back to Ysolde with my compliments.’ I didn’t answer — just reached out for him ... What?”
“I did not speak,” Destrée whispered.
“Oh — I thought you did. I pulled him forward and jerked his chin up: routine stuff. He went over backwards. That wouldn’t have caused any great damage; I wasn’t trying for a kill. But how could I know he was standing right in front of a stone flower box screwed down to a low parapet? He gave a sort of scream as he realised what had happened — not very loud. He tried to save himself, but it was too late. He pitched back, half sideways, onto his skull, and toppled right over ... The weight of his body did the rest: a thing that’s happened many a time, but a thing I hadn’t planned. There’s no doubt he broke his neck. Even then, although he was so still, I didn’t know he was dead. I was afraid to use a torch, and the night was black as Hell. I began to feel around for the portfolio, but he was lying on it. I couldn’t pull it out. Then, I heard someone running up ...”
The car was passing through Farnborough, and Mr. Francis had completed his notes, when Destrée said, “It will be dark going back.”
“That’s true. Thinking about your date with the new boy friend?”
There was savage irony in his words, but she gave no sign. “If Lord Marcus is interested, why should I not be interested too? He has influence, and he does important work for the Ministry of Information, so Hugo has found out. Do you want to quarrel with me again?”
“It would be no use. Major Felsenhayn is going with you, I believe?” (He stressed the name.)
“Hugo, also, is invited — yes. It is a new contact, and a welcome one. Don’t you think so?”
“What I think,” said Francis, “I prefer not to say ...”
34
At Scotland Yard
In the Assistant Commissioner’s office, Colonel O’Halloran switched off his radio on sustained applause of a wildly enthusiastic character which had crowned the final exit from a military concert “somewhere in southern England” of that popular transatlantic artiste, Francis Batt. Chief Inspector Firth stood before the blacked-out bay window; Sergeant Bluett sat at the sacred, if untidy, desk of the Commissioner, where his dexterity in shorthand had been taxed by the comedian’s rapid delivery.
“Got it all, Bluett?” asked Firth.
“I think so.”
“Try your hand, Firth,” the Assistant Commissioner directed. “You have the key there— ‘Pythagoric buds,’ and so on. Extraordinarily rambling story, that one he wound up with. Sounded phoney to me.”
Sergeant Bluett stood up, ingenuously apologetic. “I couldn’t take down the music, sir. That can’t be done in shorthand.”
“Being looked after by another department, Sergeant. Musical code, I understand, can be solved with same key if one knows music.” The Colonel knocked out his pipe in a large ashtray on a side table, then delved in that pocket in which he kept loose tobacco. “Sing out last bit to Chief Inspector. See what you make of it, Firth.”
And so, whilst the Assistant Commissioner stamped up and down, busily charging the hot bowl of his pipe, Sergeant Bluett in tones much subdued by awe of his surroundings, dictated from his notes to Chief Inspector Firth.
Firth wrote the shuffled alphabet at the top of a page, with the conventional version underneath it, and then industriously set to work. Clearly enough, he was baffled for a time, his tawny eyes narrowing as he studied the words. His lower jaw protruded and his brows were drawn down. Then, evidently, and suddenly, came enlightenment.
“Ah! it begins here!”
“What begins?” asked the Assistant Commissioner.
“List of warships, sir.”
“Good Lord!”
“It’s child’s play once ye grasp the method. Now — here is the name of an admiral.”
One of the several ‘phones rang. The Assistant Commissioner crossed and took up the instrument ... “Yes,” he snapped; “he’s here.” He leaned across, extending the receiver to Firth. “Your department.”
Firth said, “Chief Inspector Firth speaking,” and a voice replied: “Mr. Michaelis has gone to the house of Lord Marcus Amberdale. There seems to be some sort of party there. Officer in charge awaits instructions.” Firth nodded: “Do nothing until I arrive, unless Michaelis leaves — in which event bring him here.” He replaced the receiver.
“Hasn’t slipped away, has he?” asked the Colonel.
“No, sir. He is at Lord Marcus’s house.”
“What! Great Scott! what on earth can he be doing there! House covered?”
“Yes, sir; he’s safe enough.” Chief Inspector Firth returned to his studies ... “Here is Birkenhead,” he reported presently. “May be the name o’ a ship or a port. Ah! this looks like a date.”
“Date the Malta convoy sails!”
Bluett, who had stood up deferentially when the ‘phone rang, now began excitedly to walk up and down in the constrained space behind the desk.
“Take a cigarette, Sergeant,” said the Assistant Commissioner, pointing to a large box. “Relax — relax, man. Go ahead, Firth.”
There was silence for some minutes as the Chief Inspector bent over his task. Bluett sat on the extreme edge of a chair smoking a cigarette as if he expected it to explode. The Assistant Commissioner blinked and walked up and down continuously. Again a ‘phone buzzed. He crossed and took it up, listened for a few moments and then said, “Thank you. Good-bye,” and hung up.
“Usual nightly token raid on south coast,” he explained. “Nothing serious. Three or four of ’em over.”
35
The Voice in the Shrine
That miniature temple in South Audley Street, black ceiling painted to create an impression of infinite space, had undergone yet another change. The shrine was veiled, and a screen stood before it. A circular ebony table occupied much of the available floor room, seven high backed chairs being set at regular intervals around its circumference. In one corner of this otherwise unfurnished apartment, a silver incense burner sent up tenuous wavering columns of smoke from its perforated lid. Already the atmosphere was laden with fumes of kyphi.
Its insidious appeal, at once to the senses, to the brain and to the spirit, reacted strangely upon those present. If any element of levity, however suppressed, had lingered amongst them, it disappeared as they entered, led by Lord Marcus. Mrs. Vane already had taken her seat — that directly facing the hidden shrine. She sat upright, slender white hands palm downwards upon the table before her; and at sight of the enraptured face, awe entered into the minds of those who saw her. Indeed, Lady Huskin hesitated on the threshold.
“The traveller is preparing for her journey,” explained Lord Marcus. “In fact, she is already on her way. When the circle which I seek to form is completed by the arrival of Mrs. Destrée, we will take our proper places, which I shall point out, resting our hands upon the table in order that power may be concentrated amongst us. We have some time to wait, but I thought it better to acquaint you with the conditions under which the experiment must be carried out. With your permission we will retire again, leaving the door open. Air too heavily impregnated with kyphi to those unaccustomed to it is sometimes overpowering.”
He stood by the entrance, his head gravely inclined, intimating that his guests should pass into the lobby. Last of all, he came out and joined them. There were those, it is true, to whom the thing smacked of a stage illusion, but there was none who had not come under the influence of Lord Marcus’s singular personality. Lady Huskin, avid for fresh experiences, decided that she was really frightened. Mrs. Vane, an experienced woman of the world, had stood for a link with things normal and amusing, but her pr
esent condition completed Lady Huskin’s alarm.
Crossing to the Roman couch, she seated herself, and beckoned to Fay Perigal with whom she had become well acquainted since Fay had taken up her duties at Rosemary Cottage.
She liked the look of the young Air Force officer too, although this was the first occasion upon which they had met.
“Come and sit down beside me, you two.” Lady Huskin patted the cushions to right and left of her. “I must really have a serious talk with you.”
Fay hesitated, but at last: “Oh, well,” she murmured, “I suppose there is no reason why not ...” And so she and Dick Kershaw sat down right and left of Lady Huskin upon the couch which had supported the body of Sir Giles Loeder.
Mr. Michaelis and his host had returned to the study. Lord Marcus courteously placed an armchair, and himself took a seat behind the mahogany writing-desk, leaning back so that light reflected upward from its polished surface lent to his features an appearance which might have inspired a painter to attempt a head of John the Baptist.
“There are cigars beside you, Mr. Michaelis; cigarettes also. Would you care for a drink — or some coffee perhaps?”
“Thank you, no. I am deeply curious about this queer business, Lord Marcus. It is by no means clear to me what you hope to achieve, nor do I observe anything which I might describe as personal sympathy between the persons you have assembled here to-night.”
“That,” replied Lord Marcus, “is not surprising. Our bodily ages and mannerisms are no more than remotely related to our spiritual identity. No one in these rooms to-night is younger than Neb-neteru—” he pointed directly over Mr. Michaelis’s shoulder to the mummy in its sarcophagus. “All of us, yourself included, were contemporaries of Seti the First.”
“Indeed,” murmured Mr. Michaelis — and the immovable disc of his small monocle indicated that his gaze was fixed upon the face of Lord Marcus. “You speak with a conviction which I am compelled to respect, but which I am not bound to accept.”
“I ask you to accept nothing, Mr. Michaelis, except my hospitality.”
“I do not presume to dispute your knowledge; you are unmistakably a scholar possessed of deep and unusual learning; but I wonder if—”
“Much learning has made me mad?” suggested Lord Marcus smiling.
“Not at all. I beg you will not misunderstand me. My reservations go deeper than that. You maintain that the human spirit can, and does, operate away from the body which normally it occupies?”
“Certainly.”
“Then on this rock, Lord Marcus, our courses split. I have no idea what mysterious significance may attach, in your estimation, to this mummy, but I think I should make it plain that I dispute even the possibility ...”
He was interrupted. This interruption took the form of a wailing cry: —
“No, no! stop those sirens! Hold my hand ... don’t leave me!”
Mr. Michaelis came to his feet as if propelled upward by a powerful spring. A muscular spasm swept that ironic urbanity from his face. His monocle dropped, and rolled silently across the carpet.
Out in the lobby Lady Huskin exclaimed, “Oh my God! what’s that?”
As Lord Marcus stood up and moved with long strides towards the study door, from the temple came a piercing scream, the scream of a woman in dire agony, and a babble of sobbing words: “Hugo!... Hugo!... where are you?”
Michaelis grasped Lord Marcus’s arm as he was about to pass. “Lord Marcus!” — he spoke strangely, wildly, gutturally: “Listen to me. That voice was not the voice of Mrs. Vane!”
“No,” Lord Marcus replied; his tones were calm but grave, “it was the voice of another speaking through her lips.”
“It was Ysolde! it was Ysolde!”
“It was the voice of Mrs. Destrée — yes. I recognised it.”
A country road in a southern county stretched wide and empty under the moon. A German plane which had traversed some miles of its length at tree-top height might be heard droning away in the distance. At one point, this road swung eastward and was overhung by trees in such a way that a bay of shadow masked the bend. Here, at an angle of forty-five in a wide ditch, a car lay, a commodious saloon, its roof riddled with machine gun bullets.
One might have supposed it to be deserted, have assumed that its occupants were dead, or unconscious. The hawklike shape of a Spitfire streaked by, high above, on the tail of the German raider, as a sound of tearing and wrenching came from the forward part of the overturned car. Presently, a near side door was forced open, and the driver, clutching at a weed grown bank, hauled himself free of the wreckage and stood poised, one foot on the bank, the other on the upturned running board.
He was that elderly, grey-haired chauffeur who resembled an ex-coachman, the driver provided by ENSA to convey Francis Batt to a military concert and back to London again. The man stood there for awhile, inhaling deeply and evidently trying to steady himself; then, struggling back to an uptilted door of the saloon, he succeeded by sheer force in wrenching it open. He shot the ray of a torch into the interior of the car, stooped, and examined what he found there, then hauled himself out again, and climbed the bank looking up and down the deserted road. He had lost his cap, and a slight breeze disturbed his thick grey hair.
A rattle of distant machine gun fire came, and died away again. A far off shouting arose, and almost immediately subsided. High puff-like clouds seemed to powder the face of the moon. He could detect no sound of traffic. Removing that earpiece which, habitually, he wore, he began to run back in the direction from which he had come. He was making for a Police call-box which he remembered to have passed.
As this was two miles off, some little time elapsed before Colonel O’Halloran, still walking up and down his office in Scotland Yard, rolling and lighting cigarettes, smoking and re-loading his pipe, blinking, snapping his fingers, and generally exhibiting every evidence of suppressed nervous energy, received the call, which was intended for him.
Chief Inspector Firth was busy with further transcriptions of Sergeant Bluett’s shorthand notes, and had become involved in a mass of names and figures to which no clue could be found. Sergeant Bluett, who realised that he was listening to a condensed but detailed account of the constitution, personnel, times of sailing and ports of call of a huge convoy bound for Malta — and that this information had that night been placed in enemy possession — sat on the extreme edge of his chair wearing the look of a bewildered schoolboy. Having forgotten his evening paper, he tapped his knee with a notebook.
The telephone buzzed, and in two strides the Assistant Commissioner had reached the instrument ... “Yes, at once. Put him through.” He turned and spoke two words: “Gaston Max!”
“Is that you, Colonel O’Halloran, my old?” came the voice of the Frenchman. “Heaven be praised that I live.”
“Where are you? What has happened?”
“I am in a Police box on a country road, six miles from Farnborough. Always, Fate snatches my prisoners out of my hands. Wake was the only one I have safely delivered. But I am alive. Yes — I have much to be thankful for. You understand, I was driving Destrée and Francis.”
“Don’t understand at all,” rapped the Commissioner. “You were driving them?”
“But certainly. I have driven them several times, now. I arranged this with ENSA, who provide the troop entertainments as you know. The car is wired, and I wear an earpiece. I learn much in this way, and to-night — I learned all.”
“What did you learn?”
“The man we have known as Julian Francis, and also as Francis Batt, murdered Sir Giles Loeder. I was bringing him back to you, with Madame Destrée. She was the leader of the gang and the brains which guided it!”
“Well! where are they? what happened?”
“A German raider swooped down on us in the moonlight. I heard him coming and ran the car into a ditch where there was shadow. Alas, too late! He plastered us with machine gun bullets. My friend, it was terrible! Francis threw himself on the
woman, to try to shield her body. One bullet killed them both. She was shot in the throat — screaming for Hugo.”
“Good God! who is Hugo?”
“Major Hugo Felsenhayn, of the German Intelligence. We know him as Mr. Michaelis. He was her lover, I think; or at least, her favorite lover. Is it not Fate, Colonel O’Halloran, my old, that never can I make an arrest after so much work? Fate steps in and fools me. You have the worthy Michaelis covered, I trust?”
“Certainly. Know where he is at present moment.”
“Send my old friend the Chief Inspector at once to arrest him. Seize him as accessory to the murder, before Military Intelligence can act. Let your fellows at least have one worthwhile prisoner to show; a mere thieving butler is not good enough ...”
In the lobby of Lord Marcus’s house an atmosphere of nervous tension prevailed. Mrs. Vane, whose condition for a time had caused some anxiety, was now resting upstairs in the guest room: she retained no memory of what had occurred. Lady Huskin had requested permission to sit with her; so that only Dick Kershaw, Fay, Lord Marcus and Mr. Michaelis remained.
Mr. Michaelis was strangely disturbed. He had recovered his monocle and had returned it to its place, but he had not succeeded in recovering his characteristic composure. Frequently, he consulted a wrist-watch. Fay was lying in a deep armchair brought from the study, and Dick perched beside her, one arm thrown across the back of the chair. “Do you feel better, Fay?” he asked in a low voice.
She looked up and nodded. “There is nothing the matter with me, Dick, except that I always hated these occult experiments. They frighten me ... Somehow, I don’t think they — are right.”
“I don’t quite know what I think,” said Kershaw; “but I know the voice we heard wasn’t the voice of Mrs. Vane. There’s something else, too: — a sort of foreboding, as though—”
“You were expecting something else to happen? I know. I have it, too. Oh, listen!”
Muffled, for the house with the scarlet door possessed a quality of peculiar silence, the wailing of sirens became audible. One of the coastal raiders was approaching the London area. Mr. Michaelis glanced at his watch, and then turned to Lord Marcus, who stood, seemingly lost in thought, before the silver plated door of the temple, now closed.
