by Sax Rohmer
“What the devil’s this?” he muttered.
He opened the box, which was lined with sandal-wood, and thereupon started back with a great cry, recoiling from the casket as though it had contained an adder. My former sentiments forgotten, I stepped forward and peered into the interior. Then I, in turn, recoiled.
In the box lay a shrivelled yellow hand — with long tapering and well-manicured nails — neatly severed at the wrist!
The nail of the index finger was enclosed in a tiny, delicately fashioned case of gold, upon which were engraved a number of Chinese characters.
Adderley sank down again upon the settee.
“My God!” he whispered, “his hand! His hand! He has sent me his hand!”
He began laughing. Whereupon, since I could see that the man was practically hysterical because of his mysterious fears:
“Stop that,” I said sharply. “Pull yourself together, Adderley. What the deuce is the matter with you?”
“Take it away!” he moaned, “take it away. Take the accursed thing away!”
“I admit it is an unpleasant gift to send to anybody,” I said, “but probably you know more about it than I do.”
“Take it away,” he repeated. “Take it away, for God’s sake, take it away, Knox!”
He was quite beyond reason, and therefore:
“Very well,” I said, and wrapped the casket in the brown paper in which it had come. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Throw it in the river,” he answered. “Burn it. Do anything you like with it, but take it out of my sight!”
III
THE GOLD-CASED NAIL
As I descended to the street the liftman regarded me in a curious and rather significant way. Finally, just as I was about to step out into the hall:
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, having evidently decided that I was a fit person to converse with, “but are you a friend of Mr. Adderley’s?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, sir, I hope you will excuse me, but at times I have thought the gentleman was just a little bit queer, like.”
“You mean insane?” I asked sharply.
“Well, sir, I don’t know, but he is always asking me if I can see shadows and things in the lift, and sometimes when he comes in late of a night he absolutely gives me the cold shivers, he does.”
I lingered, the box under my arm, reluctant to obtain confidences from a servant, but at the same time keenly interested. Thus encouraged:
“Then there’s that lady friend of his who is always coming here,” the man continued. “She’s haunted by shadows, too.” He paused, watching me narrowly.
“There’s nothing better in this world than a clean conscience, sir,” he concluded.
Having returned to my room at the hotel, I set down the mysterious parcel, surveying it with much disfavour. That it contained the hand of the Mandarin Quong I could not doubt, the hand which had been amputated by Dr. Matheson. Its appearance in that dramatic fashion confirmed Matheson’s idea that the mandarin’s injury had been received at the hands of Adderley. What did all this portend, unless that the Mandarin Quong was dead? And if he were dead why was Adderley more afraid of him dead than he had been of him living?
I thought of the haunting shadow, I thought of the night at Katong, and I thought of Dr. Matheson’s words when he had told us of his discovery of the Chinaman lying in the road that night outside Singapore.
I felt strangely disinclined to touch the relic, and it was only after some moments’ hesitation that I undid the wrappings and raised the lid of the casket. Dusk was very near and I had not yet lighted the lamps; therefore at first I doubted the evidence of my senses. But having lighted up and peered long and anxiously into the sandal-wood lining of the casket I could doubt no longer.
The casket was empty!
It was like a conjuring trick. That the hand had been in the box when I had taken it up from Adderley’s table I could have sworn before any jury. When and by whom it had been removed was a puzzle beyond my powers of unravelling. I stepped toward the telephone — and then remembered that Paul Harley was out of London. Vaguely wondering if Adderley had played me a particularly gruesome practical joke, I put the box on a sideboard and again contemplated the telephone doubtfully far a moment. It was in my mind to ring him up. Finally, taking all things into consideration, I determined that I would have nothing further to do with the man’s unsavoury and mysterious affairs.
It was in vain, however, that I endeavoured to dismiss the matter from my mind; and throughout the evening, which I spent at a theatre with some American friends, I found myself constantly thinking of Adderley and the ivory casket, of the mandarin of Johore Bahru, and of the mystery of the shrivelled yellow hand.
I had been back in my room about half an hour, I suppose, and it was long past midnight, when I was startled by a ringing of my telephone bell. I took up the receiver, and:
“Knox! Knox!” came a choking cry.
“Yes, who is speaking?”
“It is I, Adderley. For God’s sake come round to my place at once!”
His words were scarcely intelligible. Undoubtedly he was in the grip of intense emotion.
“What do you mean? What is the matter?”
“It is here, Knox, it is here! It is knocking on the door! Knocking! Knocking!”
“You have been drinking,” I said sternly. “Where is your man?”
“The cur has bolted. He bolted the moment he heard that damned knocking. I am all alone; I have no one else to appeal to.” There came a choking sound, then: “My God, Knox, it is getting in! I can see... the shadow on the blind...”
Convinced that Adderley’s secret fears had driven him mad, I nevertheless felt called upon to attend to his urgent call, and without a moment’s delay I hurried around to St. James’s Street. The liftman was not on duty, the lower hall was in darkness, but I raced up the stairs and found to my astonishment that Adderley’s door was wide open.
“Adderley!” I cried. “Adderley!”
There was no reply, and without further ceremony I entered and searched the chambers. They were empty. Deeply mystified, I was about to go out again when there came a ring at the door-bell. I walked to the door and a policeman was standing upon the landing.
“Good evening, sir,” he said, and then paused, staring at me curiously.
“Good evening, constable,” I replied.
“You are not the gentleman who ran out awhile ago,” he said, a note of suspicion coming into his voice.
I handed him my card and explained what had occurred, then:
“It must have been Mr. Adderley I saw,” muttered the constable.
“You saw — when?”
“Just before you arrived, sir. He came racing out into St. James’s Street and dashed off like a madman.”
“In which direction was he going?”
“Toward Pall Mall.”
The neighbourhood was practically deserted at that hour. But from the guard on duty before the palace we obtained our first evidence of Adderley’s movements. He had raced by some five minutes before, frantically looking back over his shoulder and behaving like a man flying for his life. No one else had seen him. No one else ever did see him alive. At two o’clock there was no news, but I had informed Scotland Yard and official inquiries had been set afoot.
Nothing further came to light that night, but as all readers of the daily press will remember, Adderley’s body was taken out of the pond in St. James’s Park on the following day. Death was due to drowning, but his throat was greatly discoloured as though it had been clutched in a fierce grip.
It was I who identified the body, and as many people will know, in spite of the closest inquiries, the mystery of Adderley’s death has not been properly cleared up to this day. The identity of the lady who visited him at his chambers was never discovered. She completely disappeared.
The ebony and ivory casket lies on my table at this present moment, visible evidence of a
n invisible menace from which Adderley had fled around the world.
Doubtless the truth will never be known now. A significant discovery, however, was made some days after the recovery of Adderley’s body.
From the bottom of the pond in St. James’s Park a patient Scotland Yard official brought up the gold nail-case with its mysterious engravings — and it contained, torn at the root, the incredibly long finger-nail of the Mandarin Quong!
THE KEY OF THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN
I
THE KEEPER OF THE KEY
The note of a silver bell quivered musically through the scented air of the ante-room. Madame de Medici stirred slightly upon the divan with its many silken cushions, turning her head toward the closed door with the languorous, almost insolent, indifference which one perceives in the movements of a tigress. Below, in the lobby, where the pillars of Mokattam alabaster upheld the painted roof, the little yellow man from Pekin shivered slightly, although the air was warm for Limehouse, and always turned his mysterious eyes toward a corner of the great staircase which was visible from where he sat, coiled up, a lonely figure in the mushrabiyeh chair. Madame blew a wreath of smoke from her lips, and, through half-closed eyes, watched it ascend, unbroken, toward the canopy of cloth-of-gold which masked the ceiling. A Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci faced her across the apartment, the painted figure seeming to watch the living one upon the divan. Madame smiled into the eyes of the Madonna. Surely even the great Leonardo must have failed to reproduce that smile — the great Leonardo whose supreme art has captured the smile of Mona Lisa. Madame had the smile of Cleopatra, which, it is said, made Caesar mad, though in repose the beauty of Egypt’s queen left him cold. A robe of Kashmiri silk, fine with a phantom fineness, draped her exquisite shape as the art of Cellini draped the classic figures which he wrought in gold and silver; it seemed incorporate with her beauty.
A second wreath of smoke curled upward to the canopy, and Madame watched this one also through the veil of her curved black lashes, as the Eastern woman watches the world through her veil. Those eyes were notable even in so lovely a setting, for they were of a hue rarely seen in human eyes, being like the eyes of a tigress; yet they could seem voluptuously soft, twin pools of liquid amber, in whose depths a man might lose his soul.
Again the silver bell sounded in the ante-room, and, below, the little yellow man shivered sympathetically. Again Madame stirred with that high disdain that so became her, who had the eyes of a tigress. Her carmine lips possessed the antique curve which we are told distinguished the lips of the Comtesse de Cagliostro; her cheeks had the freshness of flowers, and her hair the blackness of ebony, enhancing the miracle of her skin, which had the whiteness of ivory — not of African ivory, but of that fossil ivory which has lain for untold ages beneath the snows of Siberia.
She dropped the cigarette from her tapered fingers into a little silver bowl upon a table at her side, then lightly touched the bell which stood there also. Its soft note answered to the bell in the ante-room; a white-robed Chinese servant silently descended the great staircase, his soft red slippers sinking into the rich pile of the carpet; and the little yellow man from the great temple in Pekin followed him back up the stairway and was ushered into the presence of Madame de Medici.
The servant closed the door silently and the little yellow man, fixing his eyes upon the beautiful woman before him, fell upon his knees and bowed his forehead to the carpet.
Madame’s lovely lips curved again in the disdainful smile, and she extended one bare ivory arm toward the visitor who knelt as a suppliant at her feet.
“Rise, my friend!” she said, in purest Chinese, which fell from her lips with the music of a crystal spring. “How may I serve you?”
The yellow man rose and advanced a step nearer to the divan, but the strange beauty of Madame had spoken straight to his Eastern heart, had awakened his soul to a new life. His glance travelled over the vision before him, from the little Persian slipper that peeped below the drapery of Kashmir silk to the small classic head with its crown of ebon locks; yet he dared not meet the glance of the amber eyes.
“Sit here beside me,” directed Madame, and she slightly changed her position with that languorous and lithe grace suggestive of a creature of the jungle.
Breathing rapidly betwixt the importance of his mission and a new, intoxicating emotion which had come upon him at the moment of entering the perfumed room, the yellow man obeyed, but always with glance averted from the taunting face of Madame. A golden incense-burner stood upon the floor, over between the high, draped windows, and a faint pencil from its dying fires stole grayly upward. Upon the scented smoke the Buddhist priest fixed his eyes, and began, with a rapidity that grew as he proceeded, to pour out his tale. Seated beside him, one round arm resting upon the cushions so as almost to touch him, Madame listened, watching the averted yellow face, and always smiling — smiling.
The tale was done at last; the incense-burner was cold, and breathlessly the Buddhist clutched his knees with lean, clawish fingers and swayed to and fro, striving to conquer the emotions that whirled and fought within him. Selecting another cigarette from the box beside her, and lighting it deliberately, Madame de Medici spoke.
“My friend of old,” she said, and of the language of China she made strange music, “you come to me from your home in the secret city, because you know that I can serve you. It is enough.”
She touched the bell upon the table, and the white-robed servant reentered, and, bowing low, held open the door. The little yellow man, first kneeling upon the carpet before the divan as before an altar, hurried from the apartment. As the door was reclosed, and Madame found herself alone again, she laughed lightly, as Calypso laughed when Ulysses’ ship appeared off the shores of her isle.
God fashions few such women. It is well.
II
THE TIGER LADY
“By heavens, Annesley!” whispered Rene Deacon, “what eyes that woman has!” His companion, following the direction of Deacon’s glance, nodded rather grimly.
“The eyes of a Circe, or at times the eyes of a tigress.”
“She is magnificent!” murmured Deacon rapturously. “I have never seen so beautiful a woman.”
His glance followed the tall figure as it passed into a smaller salon on the left; nor was he alone in his regard. Fashionable society was well represented in the gallery — where a collection of pictures by a celebrated artist was being shown; and prior to the entrance of the lady in the strangely fashioned tiger-skin cloak, the somewhat extraordinary works of art had engaged the interest even of the most fickle, but, from the moment the tiger-lady made her appearance, even the most daring canvases were forgotten.
“She wears tiger-skin shoes!” whispered one.
“She is like a design for a poster!” laughed another.
“I have never seen anything so flashy in my life,” was the acrid comment of a third.
“What a dazzlingly beautiful woman!” remarked another — this one a man. While:
“Who is she?” arose upon all sides.
Judging from the isolation of the barbaric figure, it would seem that society did not know the tiger-lady, but Deacon, seizing his companion by the arm and almost dragging him into the small salon which the lady had entered, turned in the doorway and looked into Annesley’s eyes. Annesley palpably sought to evade the glance.
“You know everybody,” whispered Deacon. “You must be acquainted with her.”
A great number of people were now thronging into the room, not so much because of the pictures it contained, but rather out of curiosity respecting the beautiful unknown. Annesley tried to withdraw; his uneasiness grew momentarily greater.
“I scarcely know her well enough,” he protested, “to present you. Moreover —— —”
“But she’s smiling at you!” interrupted Deacon eagerly.
His handsome but rather weak face was flushed; he was, as an old clubman had recently said of him, “so very young.” He lacked the res
traint usual in cultured Englishmen, and had the frankly passionate manner which one associates with the South. His uncle, Colonel Deacon, a mordant wit, would say apologetically:
“Reggie” (Deacon’s father) “married a Gascon woman. She was delightfully pretty. Poor Reggie!”
Certainly Rene was impetuous to an embarrassing degree, nor lightly to be thwarted. Boldly meeting the glance of the woman of the amber eyes, he pushed Annesley forward, not troubling to disguise his anxiety to be presented to the tiger-lady. She turned her head languidly, with that wild-animal grace of hers, and unsmiling now, regarded Annesley.
“So you forget me so soon, Mr. Annesley,” she murmured, “or is it that you play the good shepherd?”
“My dear Madame,” said Annesley, recovering with an effort his wonted sang-froid, “I was merely endeavouring to calm the rhapsodies of my friend, who seemed disposed to throw himself at your feet in knight-errant fashion.”
“He is a very handsome boy,” murmured Madame; and as the great eyes were turned upon Deacon the carmine lips curved again in the Cleopatrian smile.
She was indeed wonderful, for while she spoke as the woman of the world to the boy, there was nothing maternal in her patronage, and her eyes were twin flambeaux, luring — luring, and her sweet voice was a siren’s song.
“May I beg leave to present my friend, Mr. Rene Deacon, Madame de Medici?” said Annesley; and as the two exchanged glances — the boy’s a glance of undisguised passionate admiration, the woman’s a glance unfathomable — he slightly shrugged his shoulders and stood aside.
There were others in the salon, who, perceiving that the unknown beauty was acquainted with Annesley, began to move from canvas to canvas toward that end of the room where the trio stood. But Madame did not appear anxious to make new acquaintances.
“I have seen quite enough of this very entertaining exhibition,” she said languidly, toying with a great unset emerald which swung by a thin gold chain about her neck. “Might I entreat you to take pity upon a very lonely woman and return with me to tea?”
