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The Golden Scorpion
Sax Rohmer
PART I THE COWLED MAN
I The Shadow of a Cowl
II The Pibroch of the M'Gregors
III The Scorpion's Tail
IV Mademoiselle Dorian
V The Sealed Envelope
VI The Assistant Commissioner
VII Contents of the Sealed Envelope
VIII The Assistant Commissioner's Theory
IX The Chinese Coin
X "Close Your Shutters at Night"
XI The Blue Ray
PART II STATEMENT OF GASTON MAX
I. THE DANCER OF MONTMARTRE
I ZRA EL-KHAL
II Concerning the Grand Duke
III A Strange Question
IV The Fight in the Café
II. "LE BALAFRÉ"
I. I Become Charles Malet
II Baiting the Trap
III Disappearance of Charles Malet
IV I Meet an Old Acquaintance
V Conclusion of Statement
PART III AT THE HOUSE OF AH-FANG-FU
I The Brain Thieves
II The Red Circle
III Miska's Story
IV Miska's Story (concluded)
V The Heart of Chunda Lal
VI The Man with the Scar
VII In the Opium Den
VIII The Green-Eyed Joss
PART IV THE LAIR OF THE SCORPION
I The Sublime Order
II The Living Death
III The Fifth Secret of Râche Churân
IV The Guile of the East
V What Happened to Stuart
VI "JeyBhôwanî!"
VII The Way of a Scorpion This page copyright © 1999 Blackmask Online. PART I
The Cowled Man
CHAPTER I. THE SHADOW OF A COWL
KEPPEL STUART, M.D., F.R.S., awoke with a start and discovered himself to be bathed in cold perspiration. The moonlight shone in at his window, but did not touch the bed, therefore his awakening could not be due to this cause. He lay for some time listening for any unfamiliar noise which might account for the sudden disturbance of his usually sound slumbers. In the house below nothing stirred. His windows were widely open and he could detect that vague drumming which is characteristic of midnight London; sometimes, too, the clashing of buffers upon some siding of the Brighton railway where shunting was in progress and occasional siren notes from the Thames. Otherwise--nothing.
He glanced at the luminous disk of his watch. The hour was half-past two. Dawn was not far off. The night seemed to have become almost intolerably hot, and to this heat Stuart felt disposed to ascribe both his awakening and also a feeling of uncomfortable tension of which he now became aware. He continued to listen, and, listening and hearing nothing, recognised with anger that he was frightened. A sense of some presence oppressed him. Someone or something evil was near him--perhaps in the room, veiled by the shadows. This uncanny sensation grew more and more marked.
Stuart sat up in bed, slowly and cautiously, looking all about him. He remembered to have awakened once thus in India--and to have found a great cobra coiled at his feet. His inspection revealed the presence of nothing unfamiliar, and he stepped out on to the floor.
A faint clicking sound reached his ears. He stood quite still. The clicking was repeated.
"There is someone downstairs in my study!" muttered Stuart.
He became aware that the fear which held him was such that unless he acted and acted swiftly he should become incapable of action, but he remembered that whereas the moonlight poured into the bedroom, the staircase would be in complete darkness. He walked barefooted across to the dressing-table and took up an electric torch which lay there. He had not used it for some time, and he pressed the button to learn if the torch was charged. A beam of white light shone out across the room, and at the same instant came another sound.
If it came from below or above, from the adjoining room or from outside in the road, Stuart knew not. But following hard upon the mysterious disturbance which had aroused him it seemed to pour ice into his veins, it added the complementary touch to his panic. For it was a kind of low wail--a ghostly minor wail in falling cadences--unlike any sound he had heard. It was so excessively horrible that it produced a curious effect.
Discovering from the dancing of the torch-ray that his hand was trembling, Stuart concluded that he had awakened from a nightmare and that this fiendish wailing was no more than an unusually delayed aftermath of the imaginary horrors which had bathed him in cold perspiration.
He walked resolutely to the door, threw it open, and cast the beam of light on to the staircase. Softly he began to descend. Before the study door he paused. There was no sound. He threw open the door, directing the torch-ray into the room.
Cutting a white lane through the blackness, it shone fully upon his writing-table, which was a rather fine Jacobean piece having a sort of quaint bureau superstructure containing cabinets and drawers. He could detect nothing unusual in the appearance of the littered table. A tobacco jar stood there, a pipe resting in the lid. Papers and books were scattered untidily as he had left them, surrounding a tray full of pipe and cigarette ash. Then, suddenly, he saw something else.
One of the bureau drawers was half opened.
Stuart stood quite still, staring at the table. There was no sound in the room. He crossed slowly, moving the light from right to left. His papers had been overhauled methodically. The drawers had been replaced, but he felt assured that all had been examined. The light switch was immediately beside the outer door, and Stuart walked over to it and switched on both lamps. Turning, he surveyed the brilliantly illuminated room. Save for himself, it was empty. He looked out into the hallway again. There was no one there. No sound broke the stillness. But that consciousness of some near presence asserted itself persistently and uncannily.
"My nerves are out of order!" he muttered. "No one has touched my papers. I must have left the drawer open myself."
He switched off the light and walked across to the door. He had actually passed out, intending to return to his room, when he became aware of a slight draught. He stopped.
Someone or something, evil and watchful, seemed to be very near again. Stuart turned and found himself gazing fearfully in the direction of the open study door. He became persuaded anew that someone was hiding there, and snatching up an ash stick which lay upon a chair in the hall he returned to the door. One step into the room he took and paused--palsied with a sudden fear which exceeded anything he had known.
A white casement curtain was drawn across the French windows . . . and outlined upon this moon-bright screen he saw a tall figure. It was that of a cowled man!
Such an apparition would have been sufficiently alarming had the cowl been that of a monk, but the outline of this phantom being suggested that of one of the Misericordia brethren or the costume worn of old by the familiars of the Inquisition!
His heart leapt wildly, and seemed to grow still. He sought to cry out in his terror, but only emitted a dry gasping sound.
The psychology of panic is obscure and has been but imperfectly explored. The presence of the terrible cowled figure afforded confirmation of Stuart's theory that he was the victim of a species of waking nightmare.
Even as he looked, the shadow of the cowled man moved--and was gone.
Stuart ran across the room, jerked open the curtains and stared out across the moon-bathed lawn, its prospect terminated by high privet hedges. One of the French windows was wide open. There was no one on the lawn; there was no sound.
"Mrs. M'Gregor swears that I always forget to shut these windows at night!" he muttered.
He closed and bolted the window, stood for a
moment looking out across the empty lawn, then turned and went out of the room.
CHAPTER II. THE PIBROCH OF THE M'GREGORS
DR. STUART awoke in the morning and tried to recall what had occurred during the night. He consulted his watch and found the hour to be six a.m. No one was stirring in the house, and he rose and put on a bath robe. He felt perfectly well and could detect no symptoms of nervous disorder. Bright sunlight was streaming into the room, and he went out on to the landing, fastening the cord of his gown as he descended the stairs.
His study door was locked, with the key outside. He remembered having locked it. Opening it, he entered and looked about him. He was vaguely disappointed. Save for the untidy litter of papers upon the table, the study was as he had left it on retiring. If he could believe the evidence of his senses, nothing had been disturbed.
Not content with a casual inspection, he particularly examined those papers which, in his dream adventure, he had believed to have been submitted to mysterious inspection. They showed no signs of having been touched. The casement curtains were drawn across the recess formed by the French windows, and sunlight streamed in where, silhouetted against the pallid illumination of the moon, he had seen the man in the cowl. Drawing back the curtains, he examined the window fastenings. They were secure. If the window had really been open in the night, he must have left it so himself.
"Well," muttered Stuart--" of all the amazing nightmares!"
He determined, immediately he had bathed and completed his toilet, to write an account of the dream for the Psychical Research Society, in whose work he was interested. Half an hour later, as the movements of an awakened household began to proclaim themselves, he sat down at his writing-table and commenced to write.
Keppel Stuart was a dark, good-looking man of about thirty-two, an easy-going bachelor who, whilst not over ambitious, was nevertheless a brilliant physician. He had worked for the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and had spent several years in India studying snake poisons. His purchase of this humdrum suburban practice had been dictated by a desire to make a home for a girl who at the eleventh hour had declined to share it. Two years had elapsed since then, but the shadow still lay upon Stuart's life, its influence being revealed in a certain apathy, almost indifference, which characterised his professional conduct.
His account of the dream completed, he put the paper into a pigeon-hole and forgot all about the matter. That day seemed to be more than usually dull and the hours to drag wearily on. He was conscious of a sort of suspense. He was waiting for something, or for someone. He did not choose to analyse this mental condition. Had he done so, the explanation was simple--and one that he dared not face.
At about ten o'clock that night, having been called out to a case, he returned to his house, walking straight into the study as was his custom and casting a light Burberry with a soft hat upon the sofa beside his stick and bag. The lamps were lighted, and the book-lined room, indicative of a studious and not over-wealthy bachelor, looked cheerful enough with the firelight dancing upon the furniture.
Mrs. M'Gregor, a grey-haired Scotch lady, attired with scrupulous neatness, was tending the fire at the moment, and hearing Stuart come in she turned and glanced at him.
"A fire is rather superfluous to-night, Mrs. M'Gregor," he said. "I found it unpleasantly warm walking."
"May is a fearsome treacherous month, Mr. Keppel," replied the old housekeeper, who from long association with the struggling practitioner had come to regard him as a son. "An' a wheen o' dry logs is worth a barrel o' pheesic. To which I would add that if ye're hintin' it's time ye shed ye're woolsies for ye're summer wear, all I have to reply is that I hope sincerely ye're patients are more prudent than yoursel'."
She placed his slippers in the fender and took up the hat, stick and coat from the sofa. Stuart laughed.
"Most of the neighbours exhibit their wisdom by refraining from becoming patients of mine, Mrs. M'Gregor."
"That's no weesdom; it's just prejudice."
"Prejudice!" cried Stuart, dropping down upon the sofa.
"Aye," replied Mrs. M'Gregor firmly--"prejudice! They're no' that daft but they're well aware o' who's the cleverest physician in the deestrict, an' they come to nane other than Dr. Keppel Stuart when they're sair sick and think they're dying; but ye'll never establish the practice you desairve, Mr. Keppel--never--until----"
"Until when, Mrs. M'Gregor?"
"Until ye take heed of an auld wife's advice and find a new housekeeper."
"Mrs. M'Gregor!" exclaimed Stuart with concern. "You don't mean that you want to desert me? After--let me see--how many years is it, Mrs. M'Gregor?"
"Thirty years come last Shrove Tuesday; I dandled ye on my knee, and eh! but ye were bonny! God forbid, but I'd like to see ye thriving as ye desairve, and that ye'll never do whilst ye're a bachelor."
"Oh!" cried Stuart, laughing again--"oh, that's it, is it? So you would like me to find some poor inoffensive girl to share my struggles?"
Mrs. M'Gregor nodded wisely. "She have nane so many to share. I know ye think I'm old-fashioned, Mr. Keppel, and it may be I am; but I do assure you I would be sair harassed, if stricken to my bed--which, please God, I won't be--to receive the veesits of a pairsonable young bachelor----"
"Er--Mrs. M'Gregor!" interrupted Stuart, coughing in mock rebuke--"quite so! I fancy we have discussed this point before, and as you say your ideas are a wee big, just a wee bit, behind the times. On this particular point I mean. But I am very grateful to you, very sincerely grateful, for your disinterested kindness; and if ever I should follow your advice----"
Mrs. M'Gregor interrupted him, pointing to his boots. "Ye're no' that daft as to sit in wet boots?"
"Really they are perfectly dry. Except for a light shower this evening, there has been no rain for several days. However, I may as well, since I shall not be going out again."
He began to unlace his boots as Mrs. M'Gregor pulled the white casement curtains across the windows and then prepared to retire. Her hand upon the door knob, she turned again to Stuart.
"The foreign lady called half an hour since, Mr. Keppel."
Stuart desisted from unlacing his boots and looked up with lively interest. "Mlle. Dorian! Did she leave any message?"
"She obsairved that she might repeat her veesit later," replied Mrs. M'Gregor, and, after a moment's hesitation: "she awaited ye're return with exemplary patience."
"Really, I am sorry I was detained," declared Stuart, relacing his boot. "How long has she been gone, then?"
"Just the now. No more than two or three minutes. I trust she is no worse."
"Worse!"
"The lass seemed o'er anxious to see you."
"Well, you know, Mrs. M'Gregor, she comes a considerable distance."
"So I am given to understand, Mr. Keppel," replied the old lady dryly; "and in a grand luxurious car."
Stuart assumed an expression of perplexity to hide his embarrassment. "Mrs. M'Gregor," he said rather ruefully, "you watch over me as tenderly as my own mother would have done. I have observed a certain restraint in your manner whenever you have had occasion to refer to Mlle. Dorian. In what way does she differ from my other lady patients?" And even as he spoke the words he knew in his heart that she differed from every other woman in the world.
Mrs. M'Gregor sniffed. "Do your other lady patients wear furs that your airnings for six months could never pay for, Mr. Keppel?" she inquired.
"No, unfortunately they pin their faith, for the most part to gaily coloured shawls. All the more reason why I should bless the accident which led Mlle. Dorian to my door."
Mrs. M'Gregor, betraying, in her interest, real suspicion, murmured sotto voce, "Then she is a patient?"
"What's that?" asked Stuart, regarding her surprisedly. "A patient? Certainly. She suffers from insomnia."
"I'm no' surprised to hear it."
"What do you mean, Mrs. M'Gregor?"
"Now, Mr. Keppel, laddie, ye're angry with me, and like enough
I am a meddlesome old woman. But I know what a man will do for shining een and a winsome face--nane better to my sorrow--and twa times have I heard the Warning."
Stuart stood up in real perplexity. "Pardon my density, Mrs. M'Gregor, but--er--the Warning? To what 'warning' do you refer?"
Seating herself in the chair before the writing-table, Mrs. M'Gregor shook her head pensively. "What would it be," she said softly, "but the Pibroch o' the M'Gregors?"
Stuart came across and leaned upon a corner of the table. "The Pibroch of the M'Gregors?" he repeated.
"None other. 'Tis said to be Rob Roy's ain piper that gives warning when danger threatens ane o' the M'Gregors or any they love."
Stuart restrained a smile, and, "A well-meaning but melancholy retainer!" he commented.
"As well as I hear you now, laddie, I heard the pibroch on the day a certain woman first crossed my threshold, nigh thirty years ago, in Inverary. And as plainly as I heard it wailing then, I heard it the first evening that Miss Dorian came to this house!"
Torn between good-humoured amusement and real interest, "If I remember rightly," said Stuart, "Mlle. Dorian first called here just a week ago, and immediately before I returned from an Infirmary case?"
"Your memory is guid, Mr. Keppel."
"And when, exactly, did you hear this Warning?"
"Twa minutes before you entered the house; and I heard it again the now."
"What! you heard it to-night?"
"I heard it again just the now and I lookit out the window."
"Did you obtain a glimpse of Rob Roy's piper?"
"Ye're laughing at an auld wife, laddie. No, but I saw Miss Dorian away in her car and twa minutes later I saw yoursel' coming round the corner."
"If she had only waited another two minutes," murmured Stuart. "No matter; she may return. And are these the only occasions upon which you have heard this mysterious sound, Mrs. M'Gregor?"
"No, Master Keppel, they are not. I assure ye something threatens. It wakened me up in the wee sma' hours last night--the piping--an' I lay awake shaking for long eno'."
"How extraordinary. Are you sure your imagination is not playing you tricks?"
"Ah, ye're no' takin' me seriously, laddie."
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