by Sax Rohmer
“It is twenty dollars,” he said; “which is a stupid price.”
“But”—I shrank back—“I don’t want the thing!”
“The lady’s message should have concluded with these words: ‘Look for the head in the window. Buy it!’”
I stared down at him suspiciously. Was I becoming involved in a cunning web spread by Dr. Fu-Manchu? For of the fact that the Chinese Doctor, if not present in person, dominated this scene I was convinced. Yet—for now I was cool enough—I saw that I must trust Zazima. Ardatha had asked me to seek him out. Dark, sunken eyes watched me; and I thought that there was an appeal in them.
“As you say, it is a stupid price.”
I handed twenty dollars to Zazima, and he surrendered to me my strange purchase.
“Have you nothing else to tell me?”
“Nothing. I have sold you the head. A great Chinese philosopher has written: ‘When the cash is paid words cannot restore it’. The matter is concluded.”
I turned to go. Zazima had reseated himself on the high-backed chair.
“Do not open the box,” he added softly, “until you are alone.”
And he seemed to speak as one who is prompted.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FLAMMARIO THE DANCER
As I sat outside a café which Sergeant Abdy had recommended to me, I was far from easy in my mind. Having first wrapped my strange possession in a newspaper, I had bought a cheap attaché case which now stood on the table before me; it contained the shrivelled head. A halt for refreshment had proved to be imperative, and in any case I had to wait for a train. My luncheon dispatched, I lingered over an iced drink.
It was cool beneath the awning. Before me rose ranks of royal palms seeming to mount guard along the tiled paths. Coloured boys had given up pestering me to have my shoes cleaned, to buy post-cards, tickets for bull-fights, and other things which I didn’t want. Dark-eyed señoritas transported me in spirit to Spain as they moved on jutting iron balconies of ancient stone houses. Coches rattled lazily along the cobbled streets. It was pleasantly hot and the sky looked unreally blue.
But I had much to think about.
I could not fail to remember that the most delicate operation in the murders due to the Snapping Fingers was that of introducing the unknown agent of death. Suppose (I argued) I carry in the mahogany box such an agent; suppose I am being used, cunningly, to destroy my friends and myself!
It was not outside the bounds of possibility. In Zazima’s shop I had been acutely aware of a hidden presence. Against this was the indisputable fact that Ardatha had directed me to go there—that I had been expected.
Ardatha! What had my journey availed? I knew no more than I had known before I had set my eyes on the strange dwarf called Zazima. And there was something else. As I had come out into the cobbled, sloping street, carrying my purchase, an idea had been strong upon me that I was watched—not by someone inside the shop, but by someone outside, that this person was following me at a distance. So strong did this conviction become that as I turned into Sixth Street I paused for a moment and then turned back.
I almost fell over a slim, sallow-faced man who was on the point of rounding the corner!
Muttering an apology, he hurried on; but his appearance had set me a problem. Where had I seen that sallow face before? A wide-brimmed hat had somewhat obscured his features, but nevertheless I knew that this was not the first time I had seen him.
Abstractly selecting a cigarette from my case, I watched a coche which slowly approached, hood up, for the noonday sun was hot. In any more objective mood I might well have failed to note the passenger; but now his sallow features imprinted themselves upon my passive brain with medal-like accuracy. He had removed the wide-brimmed hat and lay back in the shadow of the hood; but I knew him, knew him for a spy—for the man who had followed me as I left Zazima’s shop.
More, that fugitive memory was trapped. He was the man who had been with Ardatha in the foyer of the Regal Athenian!
“The carriage clattered past at some little distance from the café, and turned into a side street just beyond an ancient church whose huge iron-studded doors probably dated back to the days when Drake met the Spaniards in Nombre de Dios Bay.
I was closely covered. What was the purpose of this espionage?
The link with Ardatha was established; its implications horrified me. My anxiety to examine the head grew so intense that for a moment I thought of hiring a room in the restaurant merely for that purpose.
Sergeant Abdy’s reappearance induced wiser councils. He dropped down on a chair facing me.
“Checked up on Zazima,” he reported. “Nothing against him. He has contacts in the Chinese quarter, and it’s suspected some of his stock is stolen and the rest smuggled. If so, he’s clever. But he’s never given any trouble…”
* * *
Both Nayland Smith and Sir Lionel were out when I returned, but Smith had left a message which read:
“Back for late dinner. Don’t go out until I join you.”
I passed through the foyer with its arcades and lighted show cases, and for all my distracted frame of mind could not fail to notice that I was an object of interest to a number of visitors lounging about in a seemingly aimless fashion. Indeed, it did not call for a newspaper training to see, as Smith had seen, that Colon was a hotbed of foreign agents, each watching the other, but all bent upon some common purpose.
What was the purpose?
I wondered if this gateway of a sea lane which joined two oceans was normally beset spies. That remark of Smith’s, “The Panama Canal has two ends,” recurred to me again and again.
One graceful brunette seemed bent on making my acquaintance: she was tall, slender, but despite her light brown skin, the colour of which might have been due to sun-bathing, she had that swaying carriage which betrays African ancestry. Her brilliant amber eyes, shaded by long curling lashes, fixed upon me, she conveyed so frank an invitation that I found it embarrassing. As I stepped into the elevator:
“Who is that dark girl?” I asked the man.
“Oh, that’s Flammario, the dancer from the Passion Fruit Tree.”
“Does she live here?”
“No, sir; and if you think she’s man-hunting—you’re wrong. Did you check up on the emeralds? That girl is a good little business woman. I guess she owns about half the town.”
This information made Flammario’s behaviour even more hard to understand. But by the time that I reached the apartment, I had dismissed her from my mind: someone else occupied it exclusively.
I set the carved wooden box on the table in the sitting-room and stared through the glass at that dreadful exhibit.
Who had he been, this old man who had met death by decapitation? What tragedy of the Peruvian woods was locked up in my strange possession, and, paramount thought, why had Zazima forced the thing upon me?
The idea that this fragment of dreadful mortality formed a link with Ardatha was one I was anxious to dispel; yet I clung to it. Lighting a cigarette, I considered the relic, and suddenly an idea occurred to me. I wondered that it had not occurred to me before.
The reason for so roundabout a method was not clear, but Zazima may have known himself to be spied upon. That someone else had been concealed at the back of his shop I had felt quite certain, some servant of Fu-Manchu—possibly the Doctor himself. I must suppose that the hidden watcher had good reason for remaining hidden. The answer to the problem must be that vital information of some sort was hidden in the box!
I anticipated no difficulty in opening it; the front was secured by a catch similar to that of a clock face. Yet, I hesitated; I loathed the idea of touching that little shrivelled head mounted upon a block of some hard black wood. I peered in through the glass, expecting to find a note there. But I could see nothing. The box was decorated with carving, some kind of native work, and I thought it possible, noting the thickness of the wood, that part of the base might conceal a secret drawer. Another possibilit
y was that the head was hollow; that if I took it out I should find something hidden inside.
Conquering revulsion, I was about to open the glass front and examine that shrivelled fragment of a long-dead man when abruptly I desisted.
I had heard a rap, short but imperative, at the outer door!
Hastily I placed the shrivelled head with its mahogany casket in a bureau. I was anxious that none of the staff should see it: I mistrusted everyone where Dr. Fu-Manchu was concerned. As I locked the bureau and slipped the key into my pocket, the rapping on the outer door was repeated, this time more insistently. I thought it might be Barton, but I could not imagine why he did not ring the bell.
Swift dusk was falling; and as I opened the door the lights in the passage outside had not yet been switched up.
A woman stood here.
Because of the darkness, because she was graceful and slender, a pang of joy stabbed me. For a moment I thought… Ardatha. Then, the visitor spoke:
“I have come because I want to help you—I must speak to you.”
It was Flammario the dancer!
* * *
Brilliant amber eyes looked into mine; they were beautiful; but their beauty was of the jungle.
“Please, no, do not turn up the light. I promise you, I declare to you, that I am here to be of help. It is that your interests are mine. I know that you—look for someone.”
She preceded me into the rapidly-darkening room, for dusk falls swiftly in the Tropics, and seated herself in an armchair, not far from the door. Her movements had a wild animal grace, which might have been a product of her profession or have been hereditary. She was very magnetic; an oddly disturbing figure. I was far from trusting her. And now (she had a velvety, caressing voice): “Will you please promise me something?” she asked.
“What is it?”
“There are two other ways out of here. Is—it true?”
“Yes.”
“If Sir Denis Nayland Smith comes, or Sir Lionel Barton, will you help me escape?”
I hesitated. My thirst for knowledge, knowledge that might lead me to Ardatha, prompted me to accept almost any terms, and Flammario had said, “I know that you look for someone.” Yet I distrusted her. I suspected her to be a servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu, an instrument, a mouthpiece; otherwise from what source had she gained her knowledge of my companions? But my longing for news of Ardatha tipped the balance.
“Yes, I will do my best. But why are you afraid of them; and how do you come to know their names?”
“I had a friend—he is now my enemy”—the huskily musical voice came to me from a shadowy figure. “He, my friend, is a member of a secret society called the Si-Fan. You know it, eh?”
“Yes. I know it.”
“He told me much about it—far more than he should have told to anyone. And because I seem to know about the Si-Fan, I think that those others might—”
“Might hold you as a suspect?” I suggested.
“Yes.” The word came in a whisper. “It would not be fair. And so”—she had the quaintest accent—“will you promise me that I am not arrested?”
A moment longer I hesitated, and then:
“Yes,” I said.
She laughed softly, a trilling, musical laugh.
“You Englishmen are so sweet to women—so are American men. It is foolish; but sometimes it pays.”
She was now a dim shape in the armchair.
“You mean until we have been tricked we expect women to play the game?”
“Yes, perhaps that is it But I have something to ask you and something to tell you, and the time is short. First you look for a girl called Ardatha?”
“Yes!”
“And you believe that she is with Dr. Fu-Manchu?”
“Of course—”
“She is not.”
“What do you say?”
“She is with—my friend. Please let me go on. The name of this dear friend of mine is Lou Cabot. He is part owner of The Passion Fruit Tree where I am hostess. He is also the chief agent of the Si-Fan in the Canal Zone. He was sent to New York to bring Ardatha here—”
“Is he a sallow-faced fellow?” I broke in savagely, for I was thinking of the man I had seen with Ardatha in the Regal Athenian—the man of Panama. “Greasy black hair and semi side-whiskers?”
“He might look so, to you; but please listen. The Society, the Si-Fan, is split into two parts; there is a conspiracy against the President, and Lou is of those who plan his ruin. A dangerous game, I told him—and so he will find it! So far so good. But now, if you please, because he is so sure of himself, he has taken her away.”
“What!”
“Please, be patient: she may not have fought so hard; Lou has a charm for women—”
“Enough of that!” I said sharply.
Flammario glided to my side, threw one arm round me and rested her head on my shoulder.
“I am a woman,” she whispered. “Perhaps I know better than you when a man is fascinating to women. I do not think, myself, that her heart has changed about you. But I know—how well I know—that mine has changed! Listen again; my friend has wounded my pride. I know him, now, for a vain fool. He will surely die when the plot is known—”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes, but I wish to see him die!” She laughed; it was musical but demoniacal laughter. “And if I can show you these two together I am sure that you will kill him…”
Flammario was undeniably beautiful in an exotic way; but as she pronounced those last words I thought of a puma, a sleek, satiny, lithe, dangerous beast.
“I assure you I shall do my best! But where is she? Where is she?”
“I think I know. Later tonight I shall be sure.”
“Then—quickly: what am I to do?”
She drew away from me. It was now nearly quite dark, and she appeared as a phantom.
“I will tell you—for someone must be here soon. You will make your friends promise—about me; and then, be at the Passion Fruit tonight before twelve o’clock. You must be prepared to act—”
“How? Tell me!”
I heard the elevator stop at our floor, heard the gate clang. I saw the phantom figure of Flammario drawn swiftly upright. “Quick! Which is the better way?”
I hesitated.
“You promised—I trusted you. You can say I was here, but first let me go!”
“This way.”
I led her through to Barton’s room and opened the outer door.
“Tonight, before twelve—I shall expect you…
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE SHRIVELLED HEAD
As I closed the door after Flammario, footsteps passed by outside. Whoever had come up in the elevator was not bound for our apartment. In a few more precious moments I might have learned so much; but now it was too late. Ardatha in the hands of the sleek, sallow scoundrel I had seen in Panama! The mere idea made my blood boil. In some way I regarded the Chinese doctor as one might have regarded a disembodied spirit, although a spirit of evil; a sexless supermortal. But Lou Cabot! Could it be true?
Switching up the light, I turned and looked at a large cage which stood on a side-table. Its occupant lay in the sleeping-box, only a tiny, grey-whiskered head drooping disconsolately out. I saw a bowl of food, untouched, upon the sanded floor. Peko the marmoset was near his end.
I approached the bars, staring in anxiously. Wicked little eyes regarded me, teeth were bared; and there was a faint whistling chatter. Peko might be moribund, but he could still hate all humanity. I returned to the sitting-room, lighted up, and took out the head in its mahogany box.
Shrivelled, hideous thing it was; and upon it (as again overcoming my revulsion, I studied it more closely) there still rested the shadow of a distant agony. Was this no more than a trap? Why should I trust Zazima? Yet, because the fate of Ardatha meant more to me—nor do I deny it—than the success or failure of the expedition upon which I was engaged, I knew that I was prepared to believe in his sincerity, prepared to b
elieve Flammario. I was mad with apprehension.
Opening the case, I peered inside eagerly. I could see nothing concealed there. Perhaps I must remove the head; perhaps some message was hidden in the shrivelled skull itself. But as I held the box by its carved and crudely-coloured base, I made a discovery which induced an even greater excitement. One of the painted knobs moved slightly.
I was about to attempt to pull it from its place when the head began to speak!
When I say that it began to speak, I do not mean that any movement of those wasted features became perceptible; I mean that a low, obscene whispering proceeded from it.
I all but dropped the box. I was appalled. I think that any man must have been appalled. But I set it on the table. Then, as that high sibilance continued, I clenched my fists and forced myself to listen.
“So it befell—so it befell…” The whispering was in English! “I was called—Ica… Chief was I of all the Quechua of Callao. But the Jibaros came; my women were taken; my house was fired, my head struck off. We were peaceful folk. But the head-hunters swept down upon us. Thought still lived in my skull, even when it was packed with burning sand. My brain boiled, yet I knew that I was Ica, chief of the Quechua of Callao…”
The uncanny whisper died away. I stood there rigidly, staring at the head, when again a voice spoke from the box;
“Such is the brief obituary of Ica, chief of the Callao Quechuas.”
And this was the voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu!
“If I address Mr. Bart Kerrigan,” it continued, “be good enough to press the red indicator on the right of the box, once.”
A sort of icy coolness which, in my case, sometimes takes the place of panic, came now to my aid. Bending forward I pressed the red knob which I had already discovered.
“The grotesque character of the receiving-set before you,” that high distant voice resumed, “was designed for a special purpose. It is otherwise similar to the example which Sir Denis deposited in Scotland Yard Museum rather more than a year ago, but which is no longer of any use. Listen attentively. If Sir Denis or anyone else join you, press the blue indicator on the left of the box. The safety of Ardatha depends upon your obedience.”
