by Sax Rohmer
“What is it?”
“Fu Manchu has struck again. We have just twenty minutes to catch the train. Come on!”
“But where are we going?”
“To a remote corner of the Essex marshes.”
In The Essex Marshes
A depressing drizzle was still falling when amid semi-gloom I found myself stepping out of a train at a station on one of those branch lines which intersect the map of Essex. A densely wooded slope arose on the north. It seemed in some way to bear down oppressively on the little station, as though at any moment it might slip forward and crush it.
“Gallaho is a good man to have in charge,” said Nayland Smith. “A stoat on a scent and every whit as tenacious.”
The chief detective inspector was there awaiting us—a thickset, clean-shaven man of florid coloring and truculent expression, buttoned up in a blue overcoat and having a rather wide-brimmed bowler hat, very wet, jammed tightly upon his head. With him was a uniformed officer who was introduced as Inspector Derbyshire of the Essex Constabulary. Greetings over: “This is an ugly business,” said Gallaho, speaking through clenched teeth.
“So I gather,” said Nayland Smith rapidly. “We can talk on the way. I’m afraid you’ll have to ride in front with the driver, Kerrigan.”
Gallaho nodded and presently, in a police car which stood outside the station, we were on our way. It was a longish drive, mostly through narrow, muddy lanes. At last, on the outskirts of a village through which ran a little stream, we pulled up. A constable was standing outside a barnlike structure, separated by a small meadow, from the nearest cottage. He was a sinister-looking man who harmonized with his surroundings and whose jet-black eyebrows joined in the middle to form one continuous whole. He saluted as we stepped down, unlocked the barn door and led the way in. In spite of the disheartening weather a group of idlers hung about staring vacantly at the gloomy building.
“Not a pleasant sight, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire warned us as he removed a sheet from something which lay upon a trestle table.
It was the body of a man wearing a tweed jacket and open-neck shirt, flannel trousers and thick-soled shoes: the equipment, I thought, of a hiker. All his garments—from which water dripped—were horribly stained with blood, and his face was characterized by an unnatural pallor.
I checked an exclamation of horror when I realized that he had died of a wound which appeared nearly to have severed his head from his body!
“Right across the jugular,” Gallaho muttered, staring down savagely at the victim of this outrage.
He began to chew vigorously, although as I learned later he used no gum; it was merely an unusual ruminatory habit.
“Good God!” Nayland Smith whispered. “Good God! No doubt of the cause of death here! Thank you, Inspector. Cover the poor fellow up. The surgeon has seen him, of course?”
“Yes. He estimated that he had been dead for six or seven hours. But I left him just as we found him for you to see.”
“He was hauled out of the river, I’m told?”
“Yes—half a mile from here. The body was jammed in under the branches of an overhanging willow.”
“Who found it?”
“A gipsy called Barnett who was gathering rushes. He and his family are basket makers.”
“When was that?”
“Ten-thirty, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire replied. “I got straight through to Inspector Gallaho; he arrived an hour later. Doctor Bridges saw the body at eleven.”
“Why did you call Scotland Yard?”
“I recognized him at once. He had reported to me yesterday morning—”
“As I told you, sir,” Gallaho’s growling voice broke in, “he was a bit after your time at the Yard. But Detective Sergeant Hythe was one of my most promising juniors. He was working under me. He was down here looking for the secret radio station. B.B.C. engineers had noticed interference from time to time and they finally narrowed it down to this end of Essex.”
We came out of the barn and the constable locked the door behind us. Smith turned and stared at Gallaho.
“It looks,” Gallaho added, “as though poor Hythe had got too near to the heart of the mystery.”
“If you’ll just step across to the constable’s cottage, sir, I want you to see the few things that were found on the dead man,” said Inspector Derbyshire.
As we walked along the narrow village street to the modest police headquarters the group of locals detached themselves from the barn and followed us at a discreet distance. Nayland Smith glanced back over his shoulder.
“No one of interest there, Kerrigan!” he snapped.
Laid out upon a table in the sitting room I saw a Colt automatic, an electric flashlamp and a Yale key.
“There wasn’t another thing on him!” said Inspector Derbyshire. “Yet I know for a fact that he carried a knapsack and a stick. He was smoking a pipe, too; and he asked me for the name of a cottage where he could spend a night, quiet-like, in the neighborhood.”
Smith was staring at the exhibits.
“This key,” he remarked, “is the most significant item.”
“I spotted that,” growled Gallaho. “It’s the key of an A.A. call box—and the nearest is at the crossroads by Woldham Forges, a mile or so from here.”
“Smart work,” snapped Smith. “What did this important discovery suggest to you?”
“It’s plain enough. He had been watching during the night (if the doctor’s right, he was murdered between four and five) and he’d found out something so important that he was making for the nearest phone to get assistance.”
“Anything else?”
“That the phone nearest to whatever he’d discovered was at Woldham Forges—and that he was working from some base where he must have left his other belongings.”
“What did you do?”
“We’ve made a house-to-house search, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire replied. “It isn’t very difficult about here. But we can’t find where he spent the night.”
Nayland Smith gazed out of the window. Several loiterers were hanging about, but the arrival of the constable now released from his duty as keeper of the morgue dispersed them.
“I shall want a big-scale map of the district,” said Smith.
“At your service, sir!”
We all turned and stared. The sinister-looking constable was the speaker. But he was sinister no more. His remarkable eyebrows were raised in what I assumed to be an expression of enthusiasm. He was opening the drawer of a bureau.
“Constable Weldon,” explained Inspector Derbyshire, “is an authority on this area . . .”
The Hut By The Creek
Ten minutes later I set out along a road running south by east. Nayland Smith had split up the available searchers in such a way that, the police station as centre, our lines of inquiry formed a rough star.
Sergeant Hythe’s equipment certainly suggested that if he had come upon a clue and had decided to work from some point nearby while covering it, an uninhabited building, any old barn or hut, might prove to be the base selected.
Nayland Smith had some theory regarding the spot at which Hythe had been attacked and accordingly had set out for Woldham Forges.
My own instructions, based upon the encyclopedic knowledge of the neighborhood possessed by Constable Weldon, were simple enough. My first point was a timbered ruin, once the gatehouse of a considerable monastery long ago demolished. Half a mile beyond was an unoccupied cottage (“Haunted,” Constable Weldon had said) in some state of dilapidation, but entrance could be affected through one of the broken windows. Finally, crossing a wooden bridge and bearing straight on, there was an old barn.
We had lunched hastily upon bread and cheese and onions and uncommonly flat beer . . .
The drizzling rain had ceased, giving place to a sort of Dutch mist which was even more unpleasant. I could see no further than five paces. My orders were so explicit, however, that I anticipated no difficulty; furthermore, I was provided with
a flashlamp.
In the reedy marshes about me, wild fowl gave their queer calls. I heard a variety of notes, some of them unfamiliar, which told me that this was a bird sanctuary undisturbed for generations. Once a mallard flew croaking and flapping across my path and made me jump. The strange quality of some of those cries sounded eerily through the mist.
From a long way off, borne on a faint southerly breeze, came the sound of a steamer’s whistle. I met never a soul, nor heard a sound of human presence up to the time that the ruined gatehouse loomed up in the gloom.
It was a relic of those days when great forests had stretched almost unbroken from the coast up to the portals of London, enshrined now in a perfect wilderness of shrubbery. I had no difficulty in obtaining entrance—the place was wide open. Decaying timbers supported a skeleton roof: here was poor shelter; and a brief but careful examination convinced me that no one had recently occupied it.
I stood for a moment in the gathering darkness listening to the notes of wild fowl. Once I caught myself listening for something else: the beating of a drum . . .
Then again I set out. I followed a narrow lane for the best part of half a mile. Ruts, but not recent ruts, combined to turn its surface into a series of muddy streamlets. At length, just ahead, I saw the cottage of ghostly reputation.
Mist was growing unpleasantly like certifiable fog, but I found the broken window and scrambled in. There was no evidence that anyone had entered the building for a year or more. It was a depressing place as I saw it by the light of the flashlamp. Some biblical texts were decaying upon one wall and in another room, among a lot of litter, I found a headless doll.
I was glad to get out of that cottage.
Greater darkness had come by the time I had regained the lane, and I paused in the porch to relight my pipe, mentally reviewing the map and the sergeant’s instructions. Satisfied that the way was clear in my mind, I moved on.
Very soon I found myself upon a muddy path following the banks of a stream. I was unable to tell how much water the stream held, for it was thick with rushes and weeds. But presently as I tramped along I could see that it widened out into a series of reedy pools—and right ahead of me, as though the path had led to it, I saw a wooden hut.
I paused. This was not in accordance with the plan. I had made a mistake and lost my way. However, the place in front of me was apparently an uninhabited building, and pushing on I examined it with curiosity.
It was a roughly constructed hut, and I saw that it possessed a sort of crude landing stage overhanging the stream. The only visible entrance from the bank was a door secured by a padlock. The padlock proved to be unfastened. Some recollection of this part of Essex provided by the garrulous sergeant flashed through my mind. At one time these shallow streams running out into the wider estuary had been celebrated for the quality of the eels which came there in certain seasons. As I opened the door I knew that this was a former eel fisher’s hut.
I shone a beam of light into the interior.
At first glance the place appeared to be empty, then I saw something . . . A recently opened sardine tin lay upon a ledge. Near it was a bottle bearing the label of a local brewer. And as I stepped forward and so obtained a better view I discovered in an alcove on the right of the ledge part of a loaf and a packet of butter.
My heart beat faster. By sheer accident I had found what I sought, for it seemed highly improbable from the appearance of the hut that this evidence had been left by anyone but Sergeant Hythe!
And now I made another discovery.
At one end of the place was what looked like a deep cupboard. Setting my lamp on the ledge I opened the cupboard—and what I saw clinched the matter.
There was a shelf about a foot up from the floor, and on it lay an open knapsack! I saw a clasp knife, a box of bar chocolate, a small tin of biscuits and a number of odds and ends which I was too excited to notice at the time—for, most extraordinary discovery of all, I saw a queer-looking hat surmounted by a coral bead.
At this I stared fascinatedly, and then taking it up, carried it nearer to the light. Its character was unmistakable.
It was a mandarin’s cap!
And as I stared all but incredulously at this thing which I had found in a deserted hut on an Essex marsh, a faint movement made me acutely, coldly alert.
Someone was walking very quietly along the path outside . . .
What sounded like the booming call of a bittern came from over the marshes. The footsteps drew nearer. I stood still in an agony of indecision. Like a revelation the truth had come to me: We were searching for the base used by the murdered man. Others were searching, too. And this astounding piece of evidence which I held in my hand—this was the object of their search!
I knew from the nearness of the footsteps that retreat was impossible. Already I had selected my hiding place. What to do with the mandarin’s cap was the only questionable point. I solved it quickly. I placed the cap upon the ledge littered with the remains of what had probably been poor Hythe’s last meal, extinguished my flash-lamp, crept into the cupboard and nearly closed the door . . .
The Mandarin’s Cap
Through the chink of the opening I stared out. I wondered if the fact that I had left the door open would warn whoever approached that someone was inside. However, he might not be aware that it was ordinarily fastened. Closer and closer drew the footsteps on the muddy path; then the sound gave place to the swishing of long, wet grass, and I knew that the intruder was actually at the door.
What had seemed at first to be impenetrable darkness proved now to allow of some limited vision. Framed in the grey oblong of the doorway I saw a motionless figure.
So still it was in that small building that I wondered if the sound of my breathing might be audible. The booming cry sounded again from near at hand, and I questioned it, listening intently, wondering if it might have been simulated—a signal from some watcher covering the motionless figure framed in the doorway.
During the few seconds that elapsed in this way I managed to make out certain details. The new arrival wore a long raincoat and what looked like a black cap; also I saw leggings or riding boots. So much I had discovered, peering cautiously out, when a beam from an electric torch shot through the darkness, directed straight into the hut. Its light fell upon the mandarin’s cap.
“Ah!” I heard.
That one exclamation revealed an astounding fact: the intruder was a girl!
She stepped in and crossed to the ledge. My heart began to beat irregularly. A queer mingling of fear and hope which had claimed me at the sound of her voice now became focused in one huge indescribable emotion as I saw that pure profile, the clinging curls under the black cap, the outline, I thought, of a Greek goddess.
As I quietly slipped across to the open door and stood with my back to it, the girl turned in a flash—and I found myself looking into those magnificent eyes which had so strangely and persistently haunted me from the hour of that first brief meeting.
Their expression now in the light reflected from the ray of the torch, which moved unsteadily in her grasp, was compounded of fear and defiance. She was breathing rapidly, and I saw the glitter of white teeth through slightly parted lips.
Quite suddenly, it seemed, she recognized me. As I wore a soft-brimmed hat, perhaps my features were partly indistinguishable.
“You!” she whispered, “you again!”
“Yes,” I said shortly. Now, although it had cost me an effort, I had fully mastered myself. “I again. May I ask what you are doing here?”
A hardness crept over her features; her lips set firmly. She put the torch down on the ledge beside her while I watched her intently, then:
“I might quite well ask you the same question,” she replied, and her enchanting accent gave the words the value of music, I laughed, standing squarely in the doorway and watching her.
Wisps of fog floated between us.
“I am here because a man was brutally murdered last night—and h
ere, on the ledge beside you, is the clue to his murderer.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked quietly.
“Only about what I know.”
“Suppose what you say is true, what has it to do with you?”
“It is every man’s business to run down a murderer.”
Her wonderful eyes opened more widely; she stared at me like a bewildered child—a pose, I told myself, perfectly acted.
“But I mean—what brings you here, to this place? You are not of the police.”
“No, I am not ‘of the police.’ My name is Bart Kerrigan; I am a journalist by profession. Now I am going to ask you what brings you here to this place. What is your name?”
Her expression changed again; she lowered her lashes disdainfully
“You could never understand and it does not matter. My name—my name—would mean nothing to you. It is a name you have never heard before.”
“All the more reason why I should hear it now.”
Unwittingly I said the words softly, for as she stood there wrapped in that soiled raincoat, her little feet in muddy riding boots, I thought there could be no more desirable woman in the world.
“My name is Ardatha,” she replied in a low voice.
“Ardatha! A charming name, but as you say one I have never heard before. To what country does it belong?”
Suddenly she opened her eyes widely.
“Why do you keep me here talking to you?” she flashed, and clenched her hand. “I will tell you nothing. I have as much right to be here as you. Please stand away from that door and let me go.”
The demand was made imperiously, but unless my vanity invented a paradox her eyes were denying the urgency of her words.
“It is the duty of every decent Christian,” I said, reluctantly forcing myself to face facts, “to detain any man or any woman belonging to the black organization of which you are a member.”
“Every Christian!” she flashed back. “I am a Christian. I was educated in Cairo.”
“Coptic?”
“Yes, Coptic.”
“But you are not a Copt!”
“Did I say I was a Copt?”
