by Sax Rohmer
“Snapping fingers?” Sergeant Rorke stared hard and chewed hard. “Why, no. I don’t reckon so. Why does anybody snap his fingers?”
“I don’t know,” I answered wearily. “But you saw nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
I went back to my room. Smith had not been awakened, and I was inclined to believe that Rorke had dreamed the episode. The vicious little marmoset (which, nevertheless, meant so much to me) occupied a commodious cage in Barton’s adjoining room and there was nothing to indicate that the animal had been aroused.
My notes engaged my attention for the next few minutes. I was about to take a cigarette, when I paused, my hand suspended over the box.
“What was that?” I muttered.
I thought I had detected a faint movement in the sitting-room, indefinable, but inexplicable. It translated me magically to an apartment at the Prado. I seemed to hear again the ghostly snapping sound, to see the bloodless body of James Longton. Smith had told me often that in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu I must control my imagination.
But I opened a drawer, took out my Colt, and slipped it in my pocket.
There was something reassuring in its cool touch, and now I lighted a cigarette. As I dropped the lighter on the desk, I caught my breath and listened intently.
I had heard the sound again…
* * *
Dismissing the idea that anyone could have been hiding in the rooms since Smith and I had returned, only one other theory seemed to remain—assuming that my overtired senses were not deluding me. I remembered that Rorke had recently opened the front door and had gone out into the corridor. It was possible, just possible, that during that interval someone had crept in.
Certain secret maps and plans, indispensable to our project, according to Barton, were locked in a steel box in Sir Lionel’s bedroom.
I stepped quickly into the darkened sitting-room and stood there for a while. I could detect no sound. I switched on the lights. The room was empty. Nevertheless, I examined it methodically, but found nothing. I believe I missed no possible hiding-place; and accepting the fact that there was no one in the room but myself, I experienced a swift reaction of contempt. I returned, and once more seated myself at the desk.
“These creatures move like shadows…” Almost I seemed to hear the crisp voice of Nayland Smith. “Anywhere an ape can climb a Negrito can climb.”
Had one of Fu-Manchu’s devilish little brown allies crept into the place in some way?
These devil men were the bearers of the Snapping Fingers, of the loathsome thing that battened on blood. Yet, for all my tremors—and I confess I was fighting down panic—I remained unwilling to disturb Smith unless more concrete evidence presented itself. No sound came from Sergeant Rorke.
I dropped my cigarette in a tray and sat upright, listening.
There it was again…
Footsteps, I was prepared to swear—padding footsteps. Pad, pad, pad—halting, furtive, but unmistakable.
I sprang up and ran to the door. I had left the lights on in the sitting-room.
It was empty.
Yet, as I stood there, my ears convinced me that soft, padding footsteps were actually receding at the further side!
I took myself firmly in hand. Was my imagination indeed playing ghostly tricks? I walked in the direction of the sound, and came to the door which led into the lobby. It was shut, and I paused there for a moment, listening. What I heard determined my next move. Quietly, I opened the door and stepped out.
Sergeant Rorke was fast asleep in his chair.
A short passage led to Smith’s quarters; I could see his door from where I stood; and I hesitated. I knew that he must be even more weary than Rorke. What I might have decided to do does not matter now. A decision was forced upon me.
From somewhere behind me came a weird whistling and thrumming—not loud enough to waken the sleeping police officer, but clearly audible to myself. I started wildly, twisted about, my heart leaping, and then recognized the sound. It was the marmoset in its cage! This recognition brought a momentary relief, to be followed by a doubt. What had awakened the animal? I turned back into the sitting-room. Here, the queer, sibilant language of the tiny monkey sounded much louder. The creature was excited.
Crossing to my own apartment, right on the threshold I pulled up sharply.
The communicating door, the door which led to Barton’s quarters, was wide open. When I had gone out it had been closed!
Determined, now, that the menace was real, that some clandestine thing, kin of the shadows but a thing physical, which could open doors, which I could shoot, was in the suite, I ran to the dark opening, reached for the switch and turned up the lights.
Perhaps I stood there for as long as thirty seconds, staring, staring into an empty room!
The steel box, with its three locks, remained in its place, untouched. Set on a chest of drawers, opposite, was the big cage which Sir Lionel had bought to accommodate Peko, the Doctor’s marmoset. And Peko’s behaviour was most remarkable.
Wrinkled forehead twitching, wicked teeth exposed, he tore at the wire bars with tiny, eager fingers, pouring out a torrent of angry whistling chatter.
Why?
A door from Barton’s room opened directly on to the main corridor: but it was closed. I began to distrust my own judgement. I listened almost eagerly to sounds rising from the city below, sounds of motor horns, of a moving train; sounds which spoke of human activity of a normal kind, of people who did not explore the dark and sometimes evil secrets of nature but were just ordinary human beings.
Resolutely I turned my back on these phenomena which had no visible cause, returned to my room, and mixed myself a stiff drink.
I had left the door open, and even as I set my glass down on the desk, I heard again, but very softly—pad, pad, pad. The marmoset whistled furiously and tore at the bars.
And then I grew terribly afraid—afraid not of this invisible menace, but afraid of myself. I could see again the thoughtful eyes of the Harley Street doctor who had assured me that I must not think of active service for at least six months. I wondered what he had feared; perhaps that the poison in my system might in some way reach my brain.
It was a horrible thought; worse than any physical danger. But even as that dread crossed my mind, and as I raced across and stared into Barton’s room, it was dispelled by an unassailable, a physical fact.
I saw that the outer door was wide open. It closed, and I heard the snap of the lock!
Almost hurling myself forward, I re-opened it and sprang out. So precipitate was my action that Sergeant Rorke, who had evidently awakened and had come along the outside corridor, was nearly bowled over!
“Go easy, Mr. Kerrigan,” he spluttered. “Gee! What’s doing?”
“Quick! it’s important, sergeant! Did someone come out just ahead of me?”
“Come out? No, sir. I’ll say someone goes in! I wake up—oh. I’m asleep all right—and I get a hunch there’s another door to these apartments. Seems to be kind of something doing along here. I move right away. I see the door shut just as I step up to it. Then it opens again and you come out like the Gestapo’s after you.”
“But you are sure”—I grasped his arm—”that the door opened before I opened it?”
He resumed chewing, regarding me stolidly.
“That goes in my report Mr. Kerrigan.”
“Thank God!” I whispered. “Because, you see, Sergeant Rorke, no one came in. I was just behind the door. And you know that no one came out!”
“Someone is coming out!” a snappy voice announced. “It’s impossible to sleep through all this chatter!”
Turning, I saw Nayland Smith.
“Smith!” I exclaimed, “I did not want to wake you; but something very strange is going on,”
“So I gather.”
Rapidly, in a very gabble of words, I told him of the incident of the padding footsteps, of the remarkable behaviour of the marmoset, and of the opening door.
“And I’ll say,” Rorke interpolated, “that nobody comes out.”
“As you say,” Smith murmured thoughtfully, “no one comes out.”
He stared at me very hard, and in the sudden silence I knew that he was listening.
“I shall be glad,” he added, “when the conference is over, Kerrigan. In New York we are besieged by enemies who fight with strange weapons.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHRISTOPHE’S CHART
“I shall be obliged, Sir Lionel,” said Mr. Hannessy, “if you will tell us now in your own way the circumstances which have led you to believe that you hold a clue to what may prove to be a secret submarine base in the Caribbean. We are told by our Navy—represented here by Commander Ingles—that allowing for underwater craft belonging to belligerent nations, there is still a big surplus around those waters belonging to no nation which so far we have been able to identify. Valuable lives have been lost in trying to plumb the mystery. One”—he glanced at Kennard Wood—“right here in New York, only last night. The credentials borne by Sir Denis Nayland Smith”—he nodded in Smith’s direction—“are sufficient proof that your theory has a concrete basis. We are all anxious to hear the facts.”
We sat around a long table in our sitting-room. On my right, at one end of the table was Nayland Smith; facing me, Commander Ingles and Kennard Wood; on my left the celebrated Mr. Wilber Ord, expert adviser to the White House on international relations. Facing Wilber Ord, John Hannessy, the speaker, white-haired, fresh-coloured, vigorous, stood for that monument which is sometimes called Republican and sometimes Democratic but which always stands for freedom. From the other end of the table Sir Lionel Barton dominated everybody. The steel box lay before him.
He was in his element. Those dancing blue eyes under shaggy brows told how much he was enjoying himself. He glanced around at everybody, and then:
“I might remark, sir,” he said, addressing Mr. Hannessy, “that the credentials borne by myself are a sufficient proof that my theory has a concrete basis. But I will not stress the point. To be brief. There had been for many years an heirloom in a branch of the Stewart family known as The Stewart Luck. It consisted of a silver-mounted pistol to which a small object was attached by a piece of catgut.”
He paused, looking about again from face to face.
“The family met with misfortune. I had great difficulty in tracing the survivor—last of the Stewarts of that branch. From her—she is a very old woman—I acquired the Stewart Luck.” Opening the steel box, Barton took out an old duelling pistol.
“This,” he said, “with the object attached, is the Stewart Luck. Now, this pistol was almost certainly manufactured in Edinburgh about 1810–14. The fact is significant. It is fitted with a Forsyth percussion lock, an early example. It was designed, of course, to fire a ball. How it came into the possession of that remarkable character to whom I am about to introduce you, I leave to you, gentlemen, to decide. Myself, I think I know. But this crest was added by a later hand.”
He pointed to a crest engraved upon the mouting.
“The ‘attached object’—a piece of silver resembling a small pencil case—called for my special skill. For a long time it defeated me. Only by identifying the monogram on the pistol was I enabled to grasp the real character of this mysterious object. After many failures, I deciphered the monogram. The monogram mystery solved, my next conclusion was obvious. The small silver object was almost certainly the first conical bullet ever used in the history of arms!”
Sir Lionel was warming to his subject. His great voice boomed around the room: he no longer looked at us in stressing his points; he glared.
“My discovery was revolutionary. I had satisfied myself that the device, monogram, or crest, embodied a date in Roman numerals. That date was A.D. 1811. Together with the monogram and the silver bullet it was sufficient. This pistol had been the property of Christophe—that great Negro who built the Citadel, perhaps the most majestic fortress in the world; who expelled Napoleon’s troops; who made of cowering slaves from the interior of Africa prosperous and useful citizens. Yes, gentlemen—Henry Christophe, crowned in 1811 King of Haiti!”
No one interrupted. Barton had his audience enthralled.
“King Christophe, that noble Negro, at the height of his power was betrayed, deserted; and it is common knowledge that he fired a silver bullet into his own brain!”
John Hannessy stared around, nodding in confirmation to the others present.
“The first conical bullet in history was fired into the brain of King Christophe by his own hand. He was a negro genius; possibly the bullet was of his own invention, made for him by some skilled workmen brought to Haiti for the purpose. This point of my inquiry reached—what did I ask myself?”
“I cannot imagine, sir,” said John Hannessy in a hushed voice.
“The question I asked myself was this:—Why should so many persons—myself included—incur great risk and expense to recover the pistol and the bullet with which King Christophe possibly committed suicide? I replied: A great treasure—jewels, bullion, variously estimated at five to seven million pounds sterling—was hidden by the Negro king during his lifetime, searched for after his death—but never found!”
By now I was keyed up as tensely as the others. This strange story was not wholly new to me; but I understood at last the importance of the steel box which Sir Lionel had guarded so jealously from the outset. I was not prepared, however, for what was to follow.
Barton continued: “I found myself to be much intrigued by the fragment of catgut which formerly had attached the bullet to the pistol. Catgut is uncommon stuff. It suggested (a) a fiddler; (b) a surgeon—”
“I don’t believe, sir,” John Hannessy burst in, “re catgut, that catgut ligatures were in use circa 1811.”
“And I don’t care a damn, sir! Some later owner may have tied the bullet to the pistol. But I had my clue! You see, I knew that King Christophe had a resident medical attendant—Duncan Stewart, Scots physician.”
“Good heavens!” Smith murmured. “You certainly know your own game, Barton.”
“I knew that he, Dr. Stewart, was probably the last man to see the black king alive. Later, the body was thrown into a pit in the courtyard of Christophe’s great fortress, the Citadel, on the crest of the mountain. But”—he spoke slowly and emphatically, punctuating periods with a bang of his fist on the table—“before that event took place, Dr. Stewart had extracted the bullet and had seized the pistol, which I suspect to have been his own present to the black king.
“We must assume that Dr. Stewart was ignorant of the secret, assume that he retained these gruesome relics for purely sentimental reasons. It remained for me to discover that the historical silver bullet was hollow. I submitted it to a microscopical examination. It was one of the most beautifully made things I have handled—the work of an expert gunsmith. There was a pin in the base. This being removed, it became possible to unscrew the shell—for a shell it was. I extracted a roll of some tough vegetable fibre, no larger than a wooden match.”
Nayland Smith was staring hard at Sir Lionel, who had now taken from the steel box a tiny piece of papyrus set under glass. The expression upon Barton’s sun-wrinkled, truculent face was ironical.
“I should be glad, Mr. Hannessy,” he said, “if you would examine this and then pass it on.”
He handed the fragment to John Hannessy.
“A glance was enough. Christophe had had a chart—a minute chart—made of his treasure cave and had hidden it in his own skull at the instant of death!”
There was a momentary silence, an awed silence, as Mr. Hannessy passed the chart to Commander Ingles.
“It can be read only by aid of a powerful lens,” Barton went on; “but it shows an enormous cavern, in which the cache is marked by a red cross. Further inquiry—you know something about it, Smith—led to the discovery that this cavern, which has an underwater outlet to the sea, was big enough to hide a battle fleet.�
�
“I am prepared to hear, Sir Lionel,” said Commander Ingles, studying the chart through a magnifying glass, “that you have identified the location of this cave. You know its exact bearings?”
“Commander Ingles—I know my way there as well as I know my way from my town house (now sold) to my club. And listen, Smith. The passage from da Cunha’s manuscript in the British Museum was copied by Dr. Fu-Manchu, in person, so long as a year ago. I have evidence to prove that. But I have beaten him to it this time. Wilton of Drury Lane, the best manuscript faker in Europe, made me a duplicate of Christophe’s chart. Wilton’s duplicate was exact in every particular—except that the treasure cache and the precise bearings of the entrances to the cave from land and sea were slightly altered. It was Wilton’s chart that was stolen by Dr. Fu-Manchu. This is the original!”
Nayland Smith was tugging at one ear.
“There’s your secret submarine base, gentlemen. It will be my privilege to—”
“Who’s there?” cried Commander Ingles and glanced back over his shoulder.
He had been absorbed in study of the chart. Now, his lens clattered on to the table.
“I heard nothing,” snapped Nayland Smith.
“Nor did I. But, nevertheless, something touched me!”
“Touched you?” Barton began to chuckle. “Perhaps it was my story!”
“I insist that someone bent over my shoulder whilst I was examining the chart.”
We all sat perfectly still, listening. Commander Ingles was not a man whose self-possession is easily ruffled, but it was plain to see that he was disturbed.
The ceaseless voice of the city came up to us from the streets far below, dazzling sunshine shone in at the windows. Yet I, my brain working feverishly, became possessed of an uncanny sense that something, some supernormal thing, had joined our council. Then:
“Who opened that door?” Nayland Smith demanded sharply. Those with their backs to the door indicated turned in a flash. We all looked in that direction.
The door leading to my room was half-open—and, now, the marmoset, in Barton’s quarters beyond began to whistle shrilly!
