The Golden Scorpion

by Golden Scorpion [lit]

  She paused, overcome with the horror of her memories.

  "What is the name of this other man?" asked Stuart eagerly. Miska glanced at him rapidly.

  "Oh, do not ask me questions, please!" she pleaded. "I will tell you all I can, all I dare; what I do not tell you I cannot tell you--and this is one of the things I dare not tell. He is a Chinese scientist and, I have heard, the greatest genius in the whole world, but I can say no more--yet."

  "Is he still alive--this man?"

  "I do not know that. If he is alive, he is in China--at some secret palace in the province of Ho-Nan, which is the headquarters of what is called the 'Sublime Order.' I have never been there, but there are European men and women there, as well as Orientals."

  "What! in the employ of these fiends!"

  "It is useless to ask me--oh! Indeed, I would tell you if I could, but I cannot! Let me go on from the time when I saw Fo-Hi in Cairo. He told me that I was a member of an organization dating back to remote antiquity which was destined to rule all the races of mankind--the Celestial Age he called their coming triumph. Something which they had lacked in order to achieve success had been supplied by the dreadful man who had entered the room and expressed his approval of me.

  "For many years they had been at work in Europe, secretly, as well as in the East. I understood that they had acquired a quantity of valuable information of some kind by means of a system of opium-houses situated in the principal capitals of the world and directed by Fo-Hi and a number of Chinese assistants. Fo-Hi had remained in China most of the time, but had paid occasional visits to Europe. The other man--the monster with the black skull cap--had been responsible for the conduct of the European enterprises."

  "Throughout this interview," interrupted Stuart, forgetful of the fact that Miska had warned him of the futility of asking questions, "and during others which you must have had with Fo-Hi, did you never obtain a glimpse of his face?"

  "Never! No one has ever seen his face! I know that his eyes are a brilliant and unnatural yellow colour, but otherwise I should not know him if I saw him unveiled, to-morrow. Except," she added, "by a sense of loathing which his presence inspires in me. But I must hurry. If you interrupt me, I shall not have time.

  "From that day in Cairo--oh! how can I tell you! I began the life of an adventuress! I do not deny it. I came here to confess it to you. I went to New York, to London, to Paris, to Petrograd; I went all over the world. I had beautiful dresses, jewels, admiration--all that women live for! And in the midst of it all mine was the life of the cloister; no nun could be more secluded!

  "I see the question in your eyes--why did I do it? Why did I lure men into the clutches of Fo-Hi? For this is what I did; and when I have failed, I have been punished."

  Stuart shrank from her.

  "You confess," he said hoarsely, "that you knowingly lured men to death?"

  "Ah, no!" she whispered, looking about her fearfully--"never! never! I swear it--never!"

  "Then"--he stared at her blankly--"I do not understand you!"

  "I dare not make it clearer--now: I dare not--dare not! But believe me! Oh, please, please," she pleaded, her soft voice dropping to a whisper--"believe me! If you know what I risked to tell you so much, you would be more merciful. A horror which cannot be described"--again she shuddered--"will fall upon me if he ever suspects! You think me young and full of life, with all the world before me. You do not know. I am, literally, already dead! Oh! I have followed a strange career. I have danced in a Paris theatre and I have sold flowers in Rome; I have had my box at the Opera and I have filled opium pipes in a den at San Francisco! But never, never have I lured a man to his death. And through it all, from first to last, no man as so much as kissed the tips of my fingers!

  "At a word, at a sign, I have been compelled to go from Monte Carlo to Buenos Ayres; at another sign from there to Tokio! Chunda Lal has guarded me as only the women of the East are guarded. Yet, in his fierce way, he has always tried to befriend me, he has always been faithful. But ah! I shrink from him many times, in horror, because I know what he is! But I may not tell you. Look! Chunda Lal has never been out of sound of this whistle"--she drew a little silver whistle from her dress--"for a moment since that day when he came into the house of the slave-dealer in Mecca, except----"

  And now, suddenly, a wave of glorious colour flooded her beautiful face and swiftly she lowered her eyes, replacing the little whistle. Stuart's rebellious heart leapt madly, for whatever he might think of her almost incredible story, that sweet blush was no subterfuge, no product of acting.

  "You almost drive me mad," he said in a low voice, resembling the tones of repressed savagery. "You tell me so much, but withhold so much, that I am more bewildered than ever. I can understand your helplessness in an Eastern household, but why should you obey the behests of this veiled monster in London, in New York, in Paris?"

  She did not raise her eyes.

  "I dare not tell you. But I dare not disobey him."

  "Who is he?"

  "No one knows, because no one has ever seen his face! Ah! you are laughing! But I swear before heaven I speak the truth! Indoors he wears a Chinese dress and a green veil. In passing from place to place, which he always does at night, he is attired in a kind of cowl which only exposes his eyes----"

  "But how can such a fantastic being travel?"

  "By road, on land, and in a steam yacht, at sea. Why should you doubt my honesty?" She suddenly raised her glance to Stuart's face and he saw that she had grown pale. "I have risked what I cannot tell you, and more than once--for you! I tried to call you on the telephone on the night that he set out from the house near Hampton Court to kill you, but I could get no reply, and----"

  "Stop!" said Stuart, almost too excited to note at the time that she had betrayed a secret. "It was you who rang up that night?"

  "Yes. Why did you not answer?"

  "Never mind. Your call saved my life. I shall not forget." He looked into her eyes. "But can you not tell me what it all means? What or whom is 'The Scorpion'?"

  She flinched.

  "The Scorpion is--a passport. See." From a little pocket in the coat of her costume she drew out a golden scorpion! "I have one." She replaced it hurriedly. "I dare not, dare not tell you more. But this much I had to tell you, because . . . I shall never see you again."

  "What!"

  "A French detective, a very clever man, learned a lot about 'The Scorpion' and he followed one of the members to England. This man killed him. Oh, I know I belong to a horrible organization!" she cried bitterly. "But I tell you I am helpless and I have never aided in such a thing. You should know that! But all he found out he left with you--and I do not know if I succeeded in destroying it. I do not ask you. I do not care. But I leave England to-night. Good-bye."

  She suddenly stood up. Stuart rose also. He was about to speak when Miska's expression changed. A look of terror crept over her face, and hastily lowering her veil she walked rapidly away from the table and out of the room!

  Many curious glances followed the elegant figure to the door. Then those glances were directed upon Stuart.

  Flushing with embarrassment, he quickly settled the bill and hurried out of the hotel. Gaining the street, he looked eagerly right and left.

  But Miska had disappeared!

  CHAPTER V. THE HEART OF CHUNDA LAL

  DUSK had drawn a grey mantle over the East-End streets when Miska, discharging the cab in which she had come from Victoria, hurried furtively along a narrow alley tending Thamesward. Unconsciously she crossed a certain line--a line invisible except upon a map of London which lay upon the table of the Assistant Commissioner in New Scotland Yard--the line forming the "red circle" of M. Gaston Max. And, crossing this line, she became the focus upon which four pairs of watchful eyes were directed.

  Arriving at the door of a mean house some little distance removed from that of Ah-Fang-Fu, Miska entered, for the door was open, and disappeared from the view of the four detectives who were watchin
g the street. Her heart was beating rapidly. For she had thought, as she had stood up to leave the restaurant, that the fierce eyes of Chunda Lal had looked in through the glass panel of one of the doors.

  This gloomy house seemed to swallow her up, and the men who watched wondered more and more what had become of the elegant figure, grotesque in such a setting, which had vanished into the narrow doorway--and which did not reappear. Even Inspector Kelly, who knew so much about Chinatown, did not know that the cellars of the three houses left and right of Ah-Fang-Fu's were connected by a series of doors planned and masked with Chinese cunning.

  Half an hour after Miska had disappeared into the little house near the corner, the hidden door in the damp cellar below "The Pidgin House" opened and a bent old woman, a ragged, grey-haired and dirty figure, walked slowly up the rickety wooden stair and entered a bare room behind and below the shop and to the immediate left of the den of the opium-smokers. This room, which was windowless, was lighted by a tin paraffin lamp hung upon a nail in the dirty plaster wall. The floor presented a litter of straw, paper and broken packing-cases. Two steps led up to a second door, a square heavy door of great strength. The old woman, by means of a key which she carried, was about to open this door when it was opened from the other side.

  Lowering his head as he came through, Chunda Lal descended. He wore European clothes and a white turban. Save for his ardent eyes and the handsome fanatical face of the man, he might have passed for a lascar. He turned and half closed the door. The woman shrank from him, but extending a lean brown hand he gripped her arm. His eyes glittered feverishly.

  "So!" he said, "we are all leaving England? Five of the Chinese sail with the P. and O. boat to-night. Ali Khan goes tomorrow, and Rama Dass, with Miguel, on the Andaman. I meet them at Singapore. But you?"

  The woman raised her finger to her lips, glancing fearfully towards the open door. But the Hindu, drawing her nearer, repeated with subdued fierceness:

  "I ask it again--but you?"

  "I do not know," muttered the woman, keeping her head lowered and moving in the direction of the steps.

  But Chunda Lal intgercepted her.

  "Stop!" he said--"not yet are you going. There is something I have to speak to you."

  "Ssh!" she whispered, half turning and pointing up toward the door.

  "Those!" said the Hindu contemptuously--"the poor slaves of the black smoke! Ah! they floating in their dream paradise; they have no ears to hear, no eyes to see!" He grasped her wrist again. "They content for shadow smiles and dream kisses, but Chunda Lal have eyes to see and ears to hear. He dream, too, but of lips more sweet than honey, of a voice like the Song of the Daood! Inshalla!"

  Suddenly he clutched the grey hair of the bent old woman and with one angry jerk snatched it from her head--for it was a cunning wig. Disorderred hair gleaming like bronze waves in the dim lamplight was revealed and the great dark eyes of Miska looked out from the artificially haggard face--eyes wide open and fearful.

  "Bend not that beautiful body so," whispered Chunda Lal, "that is straight and supple as the willow branch. O, Miska"--his voice trembled emotionally and he that had been but a moment since so fierce stood abashed before her--"for you I become as the meanest and the lowest; for you I die!"

  Miska started back from him as a muffled outcry sounded in the room beyond the half-open door. Chunda Lal started also, but almost immediately smiled--and his smile was tender as a woman's.

  "It is the voice of the black smoke that speaks, Miska. We are alone. Those are dead men speaking from their tombs."

  "Ah-Fang-Fu is in the shop," whispered Miska.

  "And there he remain."

  "But what of . . . him?"

  Miska pointed toward the eastern wall of the room in which they stood.

  Chunda Lal clenched his hands convulsively and turned his eyes in the same direction.

  "It is of him," he replied in a voice of suppressed vehemence, "it is of I would speak." He bent close to Miska's ear. "In the creek, below the house, is lying the motor-boat. I go to-day to bring it down for him. He goes to-night to the other house up the river. To-morrow I am gone. Only you remaining."

  "Yes, yes. He also leave England to-morrow."

  "And you?"

  "I go with him," she whispered.

  Chunda Lal glanced apprehensively toward the door. Then:

  "Do not go with him!" he said, and sought to draw Miska into his arms. "O, light of my eyes, do not go with him!"

  Miska repulsed him, but not harshly.

  "No, no, it is no good, Chunda Lal. I cannot hear you."

  "You think,"--the Hindu's voice was hoarse with emotion--"that he will trace you--and kill you?"

  "Trace me!" exclaimed Miska with sudden scorn. "Is it necessary for him to trace me? Am I not already dead except for him! Would I be his servant, his lure, his slave for one little hour, for one short minute, if my life was my own!"

  Beads of perspiration gleamed upon the brown forehead of the Hindu, and his eyes turned from the door to the eastern wall and back again to Miska. He was torn by conflicting desires, but suddenly came resolution.

  "Listen, then." His voice was barely audible. "If I tell you that your life is your own--if I reveal to you a secret which I learned in the house of Abdûl Rozân in Cairo----"

  Miska watched him with eyes in which a new, a wild expression was dawning.

  "If I tell you that life and not death awaits you, will you come away to-night, and we sail for India to-morrow! Ah! I have money! Perhaps I am rich as well as--someone; perhaps I can buy you the robes of a princess"--he drew her swiftly to him--"and cover those white arms with jewels."

  Miska shrank from him.

  "All this mean nothing," she said. "How can the secret of Abdûl Rozân help me to live? And you--you will be dead before I die--yes! One little hour after he find out that we go!"

  "Listen again," hissed Chunda Lal intensely. "Promise me, and I will open for you a gate of life. For you, Miska, I will do it, and we shall be free. He will never find out. He shall not be living to find out!"

  Miska shrank yet further from him.

  "No, no, Chunda Lal," she moaned. "You have been my only friend, and I have tried to forget . . ."

  "I will forswear Kali for ever," he said fervently, "and shed no blood for all my life! I will live for you alone and be your slave."

  "It is no good. I cannot, Chunda Lal, I cannot."

  "Miska!" he pleaded tenderly.

  "No, no," she repeated, her voice quivering--"I cannot . . . Oh! do not ask it; I cannot!"

  She picked up the hideous wig, moving towards the door. Chunda Lal watched her, clenching his hands; and his eyes, which had been so tender, grew fierce.

  "Ah!" he cried--"and it may be I know a reason!"

  She stopped, glancing back at him.

  "It may be," he continued, and his repressed violence was terrible, "it may be that I, whose heart is never sleeping, have seen and heard! One night"--he crept towards her--"one night when I cry the warning that the Doctor Sahib returns to his house, you do not come! He goes in at the house, and you remain. But at last you come, and I see in your eyes----"

  "Oh!" breathed Miska, watching him fearfully.

  "Do I not see it in your eyes, now! Never before have I thought so until you go to that house, never before have you escaped from my care as here in London. Twice again I have doubted, and because there was other work to do I have been helpless to find out. To-night--he stood before her, glaring madly into her face--"I think so again--that you have gone to him. . . ."

  "Oh, Chunda Lal!" cried Miska piteously and extended her hands towards him. "No, no--do not say it!"

  "So!" he whispered--"I understand! You risk so much for him--for me you risk nothing! If he--the Doctor Sahib--say to you: 'Come with me, Miska----'"

  "No, no! Can I never have one friend in all the world! I hear you call, Chunda Lal, but I am burning the envelope and--Doctor Stuart--finds me. I am trapped. You know it is
so."

  "I know you say so. And because he--Fo-Hi-- is not sure and because of the piece of the scorpion which you find there, we go to that house--he and I--and we fail in what we go for." Chunda Lal's hands dropped limply to his sides. "Ah! I cannot understand, Miska. If we are not sure then, are we sure now? It may be"--he bent towards her--"we are trapped!"

  "Oh, what do you mean?"

  "We do not know how much the Frenchman learns. We do not know how much they read of what he had written. Why do we wait?"

  "He has some plan, Chunda Lal," replied Miska wearily. "Does he ever fail?"

  Her words rekindled the Hindu's ardour; his eyes lighted up anew.

  "I tell you his plan," he whispered tensely. "Oh, you shall hear me! He watch you grow from a little lovely child, as he watch his death-spiders and his grey scorpions grow! He tend you and care for you and make you perfect, and he plan for you as he plan for his other creatures. Then, he see what I see, that you are not only his servant but also a woman and that you have a woman's heart. He learn--who think he knows all--that he, too, is not yet a spirit but only a man, and have a man's heart, a man's blood, a man's longings! It is because of the Doctor Sahib that he learn it----"

  He grasped Miska again, but she struggled to elude him.

  "Oh, let me go," she pleaded. "It is madness you speak!"

  "It is madness, yes--for you! Always I have watched, always I have waited; and I also have seen you bloom like a rose in the desert. To-night I am here--watching . . . and he knew it! To-morrow I am gone! Do you stay, for--him?"

  "Oh," she whispered fearfully, "it cannot be."

  "You say true when you say I have been your only friend, Miska. To-morrow he plan that you have no friend."

  He released her, and slowly, from the sleeve of his coat, slipped into view the curved blade of a native knife.

  "Ali Khân Bhaî Salâm!" he muttered--by which formula he pronounced himself a Thug!"

  Rolling his eyes in the direction of the eastern wall, he concealed the knife.