by Sax Rohmer
“Yes!” she said.
The deep-toned, slightly hoarse voice was clearly audible above the throb of the music, and into that one word Flammario had injected triumph—and a barbaric hatred. As she continued her dance, proceeding now towards the entrance through which she had made her appearance, Smith bent to my ear.
“She has found him! The woman wins. There is not a moment to waste if we are to get there ahead of Fu-Manchu’s thugs. Now to establish contact.”
To a frenzied crescendo the dancer finished. She stood for a moment arms upraised and then stepped back into the shadow behind the limelight. Smith and I were up, tense, ready for action. But the almost complete darkness remained unbroken, and as we waited Flammario reappeared, wearing a silk wrap. She acknowledged the applause of her audience. Again she retired, and as the lights sprang up, instinctively I stared in the direction of the end supper table.
The two yellow men had gone.
“Good God!” snapped Smith, “it’s going to be touch and go. Somehow, Kerrigan, they have got hold of the information!”
He had started back towards the bar when he was intercepted by a strange figure entering. It was that of a hunchback negro, emaciated as with long illness, his small, cunning eyes so deeply set in his skull as to be almost invisible.
“Mr. Kerrigan, please?”
He looked from face to face.
“Yes,” snapped Smith, “this is Mr. Kerrigan. What do you want?”
“Follow, if you please. Hurry.”
We required no stimulus, but followed the stooping figure. As we came into the bar I saw that the attendant had the flap raised at the further end. We hurried through a doorway beyond: the door was closed behind us. Down a flight of stairs we ran and along a corridor not too well lighted. At the end I saw Flammario. She wore a long sable cloak and as we hurried forward I realized that she stood at the door of a small but luxuriously furnished dressing-room.
“Quick!” she cried. Her eyes were gleaming madly. “You are ready to start?”
“Yes. This is Sir Denis Nayland Smith. You have found Cabot?”
“I told you I had found him. I tell you now we must hurry.”
“Two agents of the Si-Fan were here a few moments ago,” said Smith rapidly. “Did you see them?”
She shrugged impatiently and the fur fell away from one bare shoulder. She snatched it back into place.
“I have to dance again in half an hour,” she explained simply. “Of course I saw them.” She stepped forward, forcing a way between Smith and myself. “Paulo!” she cried.
I turned and looked along the empty passage. The hunchback negro had disappeared.
“Do you think they have got the information?” jerked Smith.
“There is no time to think,” cried Flammario. “I tell you we must act. My car is outside. I know the way.”
“A police car would be faster,” said Smith on an even note. “One is waiting.”
Flammario was already running along the passage.
“Any damn car you like!” she shouted, “but hurry! I have only half an hour and I want to see him killed. Hurry! I show you where he is—and the girl is with him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE CLUE OF THE RING
Police Captain Jacob Beecher was waiting beside a Police Department car not three paces from the side entrance to The Passion Fruit Tree.
“All set,” he said, as we ran out. “Where to?”
“Listen, Big Jake,” cried Flammario hoarsely, “this is my night and I give the orders.”
Even in this side-turning to which moonlight did not penetrate I could see the flash of her eyes.
“I am listening,” growled Beecher.
“This is a gentleman’s agreement and I have two gentlemen with me. You and your boys just cover us. Leave the rest to me and my friends.”
“But where in hell are we going?” growled Beecher. “Tell me and I’ll make arrangements.”
“We are going right to Santurce, and we are moving fast. Do you know the home that used to belong to Weisman, the engineer they fired from the Canal service—eh?”
“Sure I know it.”
“That is where we go.”
“It was hired to somebody else.”
“Somebody else we are looking for.”
Then, Nayland Smith and a police driver in front and I and Flammario at the back, we set out through a velvety tropical darkness sharply cut off where a brilliant moon splashed it into silver patches. Santurce, as a residential suburb, I had deliberately overlooked in my recent quest for the shop of Zazima, so that soon, leaving more familiar parts of Colon behind, I found myself upon strange ground Flammario clutched my arm, pressed her head against my shoulder and poured out a torrent of words.
“It is Paulo who finds him. Paulo can find anyone or any thing in the Canal Zone. But Paulo is of the Si-Fan. You understand—eh?”
“Yes. I expected it.”
“Although he would do anything for me, he is terrified of them. Why does he run away tonight? Where do those two thugs go? What do you think?”
“I think he gave them the information.”
“It seems that way to me.” She nestled closer. I was aware of a musky perfume. “You are right about your girl friend. He has her locked up. But give Lou time and he sets an iceberg on fire. No, please, do not be angry. I tell you. I can overlook so much—why not? But all the town knows he leave me flat—me, Flammario. Queer, eh, how a woman feels about a thing like this? Just as hard as I used to love him—I hate him now.” She slipped a bare arm about my shoulder. “You will kill him, won’t you?”
With a sincerity which was not assumed, I replied: “Given half a chance, I absolutely undertake to do so.”
Flammario’s heavily painted lips were pressed to my left ear. On the corner of a street in which there were detached villas, each surrounded by its own garden, a big black saloon car was drawn up with no lights on. We passed it and swung into a street beyond,
A moment later we too pulled up. I had now quite lost my bearings. White-fronted houses with their shuttered windows, young palms shooting slender masts out of banks of foliage, made a restful picture in the tropical moonlight, a picture bearing no relation to the facts which had brought us there. As we scrambled out, Flammario ahead of all, a police officer detached himself from the shadows of a high wall.
“Squad all ready,” he reported. “What orders?”
“Do nothing until we are in,” Smith replied rapidly, “and keep well out of sight. The signal will be a blast on my police whistle—or shooting. The men are standing by?”
“In the big saloon, back there. Captain Beecher worked fast. Making for their posts right now.”
Flammario already was running ahead.
“One thing is important,” said Smith insistently. “Grab anyone that comes out.”
We overtook Flammario racing up a tree-shaded path towards a green-shuttered house from which no lights shone.
“How do we get in?” she panted. “Have you figured that out?”
“I have figured it out,” Smith replied, and I observed for the first time that he was carrying a handbag.
The front of the house was bathed in moonlight, but dense shrubbery grew up to it on the left and here I saw a porched door. We pulled up, watching and listening.
“Listen,” said Flammario. “This house is planned by an architect with a one-track mind. He does most of the building around here. Can you count on the police? Because when we break in, if I know Lou he will run for it.”
“The place will be surrounded in another minute,” snapped Smith irritably. “This door here in the shadow; does it lead to the kitchen?”
“Yes. And that is our way in. It is half glass. Smash it, and if the key is inside, we are through.”
“We could try,” muttered Smith.
We advanced, always in shadow, to the porch.
“Show a light, Kerrigan,” said Smith.
I shone the
ray of a torch upon the door—then caught my breath. The glass panel was shattered to fragments, the door half open.
“My God!” groaned Smith, “We’re too late!”
* * *
The kitchen quarters showed no evidence of disturbance. If utensils recently had been in use, someone had cleaned and put everything away. There was a spotless, white-tiled larder. In that immaculate domestic atmosphere the barbaric figure of Flammario, wrapped in her sables, those jungle eyes flashing from point to point, struck a note truly bizarre.
“They are here ahead of us,” she began, in a hoarse whisper. “That mongrel Paulo—”
“Quiet!” Smith said, imperatively yet in a low voice. “I want to listen.”
All the three of us stood there, listening.
Very remotely, sounds from the Canal reached me; shipping sounds which transported my thoughts to the early stages of this ghastly business which had led me to Colon. But immediately about us and inside the house was complete silence. I was about to speak when:
“Ssh!” whispered Smith.
Tensely I listened—and presently I heard the sound which had arrested his attention. It was a very faint creaking, and it came from somewhere upstairs.
“They are still here!” exploded Flammario. “Have your guns ready!”
With that she raced out of the kitchen into a passage beyond, switching up the lights as she went—a feat which surprised me at first, until I recollected her words about the architect with a one-track mind. I found myself in a dining-room very simply furnished. The curtains were drawn along the whole of one side and to these Flammario darted, wrenching them apart. I saw a garden dappled with molten silver where the moon poured down upon it. There was a terrace outside with cane chairs and tables; but there was no one there.
The atmosphere smelled stale as that of a room unused; and for some reason, in an automatic way, I unfastened the catch of one of the French windows and pulled it open. The perfume of some night-scented flower was borne in upon a light breeze. Even as I did so, I recognized that I was acting irrationally, that the place would be filled with nocturnal insects, and so reclosed the window.
“There it is again!” said Smith.
We fell silent, listening. Unmistakably, there was a sound of movement upstairs.
Smith was already dashing for a door at the other end of the room. Flammario overtook him and switched up a light in a square lobby. He started up a short flight of carpeted stairs so rapidly that I made a bad third. On the landing, the light of which was subdued, three doors offered—and they were all locked.
“This is where we want the copper!” said Flammario, huskily. “Blow that whistle of yours.”
“Quiet!”
I could hear her rapid breathing as she stood beside me in semi-darkness; for the only light was a sort of shaded lantern. One, two, five, ten seconds we waited; but the silence remained unbroken. I pictured Ardatha gagged and bound—I pictured her dead. I think in all my quest of her since she had revealed to me the truth of her slavery to Dr. Fu-Manchu, I had experienced no keen sense of longing to hear her voice, of terror that I should never hear it again.
“Blowing a lock out is not so easy, in fact as in fiction,” said Smith. “But these are not the good old-fashioned kind of doors—just matchwood and three-ply. See what a hundred and seventy pounds can do with that one, Kerrigan. I’ll tackle this.”
Pushing Flammario aside, I stood back from the door to within a stride of the staircase and then, shoulder down, hurled myself upon it.
A metallic rattle and a faint creak rewarded my first charge. Smith had attacked that immediately facing the staircase. He had had no greater success.
“Kick a panel out, Kerrigan!” he cried. “There may be a key inside.”
I tried, whilst the strange woman from The Passion Fruit Tree urged us on.
“Go to it, boys!” she screamed huskily. “Never weaken! We are here to kill!”
I did some damage to the door, which, although stout, was of unseasoned wood. Failing to break through I cursed under my breath, clenched my teeth and once more standing back hurled my weight upon it. So successful was the second attack that the door crashed open I pitched head first into darkness.
Staggering to my feet, breathing heavily, I groped my way back to the doorway to find the switch. As I turned up the light, a sound of banging and splintering came from the landing outside.
I was in an untidy office. The drawers of a roll-top desk had been broken open and the place showed other evidences of a hasty search. However, it was empty, and it seemed to possess no other door. I ran back on to the lading just as Smith had kicked his right heel through a panel.
Reaching in, he evidently found a key, for a moment later the door was thrown open. I followed him into what proved to be a small suite, sitting-room, bedroom and bathroom, fitted up in an effeminate and luxurious manner.
There were framed pictures of women, mostly cabaret artistes, upon the walls; a deep-cushioned divan; a shaded lamp held aloft by an ivory nymph in a niche behind it. Fine Persian carpets covered the floor: I saw leopard skins and exotic furniture. There was a faint perfume in the place.
“This is Lou’s new nest,” said Flammario breathlessly; “I know his tracks.” She ran into the bedroom. “Not a trace. No one has been here.”
“Where is Ardatha?” muttered Smith. “Come on; the third door.” But outside we pulled up at a hissed injunction, and stood a while silent.
“Do you hear it?” cried Flammario. “That rat, Lou, is hiding in the loft!”
“How do we get to the loft?” snapped Smith.
“Through this door. There are two other rooms beyond, and a back stair to the loft”
Turn and turn about, Smith and I hurled ourselves against the third door until at last with a splintering crash it gave. We crowded into a short passage, rooms right and left: both doors were wide open. In one which had shuttered windows we found the evidence for which we sought.
It was a bedroom with a bathroom attached. The lock of the door had been smashed in. The bed was disordered but the coverlet had not been turned down: in other words, no one had slept in the bed. Smith ran eagerly from point to point like a hound keen on the scent.
“This is where he had her locked up!” he cried.
“Sure!” snarled Flammario. “These cigarettes in the tray were smoked by a woman.”
“You are right! And after the door was crashed in, the woman was dragged out. It is easy enough to reconstruct the scene. And, hello, what have we here?”
I saw something glittering at his feet as, stooping, he picked up a ring—a beautifully-cut scarab of lapis lazuli set in a dull gold band. At sight of it I knew—and what I knew chilled me. No further possibility of doubt remained.
It was Ardatha’s ring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FLAMMARIO’S CLOAK SLIPS
“She was conscious when they carried her off,” said Smith. “This ring was left as a clue. A consolation to know that they did not drug her.”
But Flammario was already out in the passage which, as I saw now, terminated on a landing leading up to a back staircase. The stair ended before a small door.
We ran up. The landing before the door was so narrow as to give little purchase for an attack, but:
“There’s no metal surround to this keyhole,” said Smith. “The door is fast. I shall try to shoot the lock out… Ssh! Listen!”
He and I stood still for a moment, listening again. A subdued scrambling sound which might almost have been made by a rat came to my ears.
“Here goes!” snapped Smith.
It was as he fired once, twice, and muffled detonations echoed weirdly about the place that I thought of Flammario—turned and found she was not there!
“Smith!” I cried, “Flammario has gone!”
“Can’t help that!” he cried. “Those shots will have brought up the raid squad.”
I followed him into a store-room lighted by a si
ngle lamp suspended from rafters. It contained nothing more than the usual lumber of suburban households, representing, I suspected some of the effects of the former occupant. Then I saw something else.
There was one window, a low gable window. That part of it made to open was not wide enough to permit the passage of a man’s body, but the frame of the larger part beneath had been forced out of place; fragments of glass lay on the floor, suggesting that, leaning through the opening above, someone who had been in the attic had knocked the glass in from the outside and then forced the sash. As Smith craned out:
“A balcony just below,” he reported, “running outside those rooms we have already seen. And, hello!—a stair up to it from the garden!”
He turned and ran to the door.
“You understand, Kerrigan?” he cried. “Fu-Manchu’s thugs got here before us! The man Cabot, who had Ardatha locked in that room below, bolted up here to save himself. What he had planned to do he has done: forced a way through this window, dropped on to the balcony below and, unless the police catch him—made a clean get-away!”
We were running along the lower passage now, making for the staircase.
A theory to account for the remarkable behaviour of Flammario at the moment that Smith and I had entered the loft had just begun to form in my mind as we ran down the stairs, across, and out through the kitchen to the back porch. The balcony from which the fugitive had made his escape ran along this side of the house. As we came into the darkness there, Smith, a pace ahead of me, pulled suddenly and grasped my wrist with a grip that hurt.
A high, piercing shriek, followed by gurgling, sobbing sounds split the silence frightfully.
As that dreadful cry died away I heard a shout, a sound of running footsteps. The police were closing in. Two paces forward we moved hesitantly, and there, half in shadow and half silhouetted against a silver curtain of moonlight, I saw Flammario. She stood at the foot of the steps leading down from the balcony. Her cloak had slipped: she looked like a sculptured Fury.
Hearing us, she turned in our direction. I could see the glitter of her amber eyes. Then, stepping into the shadows at her feet she retrieved the sable cloak, and threw it about her shoulders.
