by Sax Rohmer
There were several Easterns present; but Smith, having given each of them a searching glance, turned to me with a slight shrug of disappointment. Coffee being placed before us, we sat sipping the thick, sugary beverage, smoking cigarettes and vainly seeking for some clue to guide us to the inner sanctuary consecrated to hashish. It was maddening to think that Kâramaneh might be somewhere concealed in the building, whilst I sat there, inert amongst this gathering whose conversation was of abnormalities in art, music, and literature.
Then, suddenly, the pale young man seated opposite paid his bill, and with a word of farewell to his companion, went out of the café. He did not make his exit by the door through which we entered, but passed up the crowded room to the counter whereat the Egyptian presided. From some place hidden in the rear, emerged a black-haired, swarthy man, with whom the other exchanged a few words. The pale young artist raised his wide-brimmed hat, and was gone—through a curtained doorway on the left of the counter.
As he opened it, I had a glimpse of a narrow court beyond; then the door was closed again and I found myself thinking of the peculiar eyes of the departed visitor. Even through the thick pebbles of his spectacles, although for some reason I had thought little of the matter at the time, his oddly contracted pupils were noticeable. As the girl, in turn, rose and left the café—but by the ordinary door—I turned to Smith.
“That man ...” I began, and paused.
Smith was watching covertly a Hindu seated at a neighboring table, who was about to settle his bill. Standing up, the Hindu made for the coffee counter, the swarthy man appeared out of the background—and the Asiatic visitor went out by the door opening into the court.
One quick glance Smith gave me, and raised his hand for the waiter. A few minutes later we were out in the street again.
“We must find our way to that court!” snapped my friend. “Let us try back, I noted a sort of alleyway which we passed just before reaching the café.”
“You think the hashish den is in some adjoining building?”
“I don’t know where it is, Petrie, but I know the way to it!”
Into a narrow, gloomy court we plunged, hemmed in by high walls, and followed it for ten yards or more. An even narrower and less inviting turning revealed itself on the left. We pursued our way, and presently found ourselves at the back of the Café de l’Egypte.
“There’s the door,” I said.
It opened into a tiny cul-de-sac, flanked by dilapidated hoardings, and no other door of any kind was visible in the vicinity. Nayland Smith stood tugging at the lobe of his ear almost savagely.
“Where the devil do they go?” he whispered.
Even as he spoke the words, came a gleam of light through the upper curtained part of the door, and I distinctly saw the figure of a man in silhouette.
“Stand back!” snapped Smith.
We crouched back against the dirty wall of the court, and watched a strange thing happen. The back door of the Café de l’Egypte opened outward, simultaneously a door, hitherto invisible, set at right angles in the hoarding adjoining, opened inward!
A man emerged from the café and entered the secret doorway. As he did so, the café door swung back and closed the door in the hoarding!
“Very good!” muttered Nayland Smith. “Our friend Ismail, behind the counter, moves some lever which causes the opening of one door automatically to open the other. Failing his kindly offices, the second exit from the Café de l’Egypte is innocent enough. Now—what is the next move?”
“I have an idea, Smith!” I cried. “According to Morrison, the place in which the hashish may be obtained has no windows but is lighted from above. No doubt it was built for a studio and has a glass roof. Therefore—”
“Come along!” snapped Smith, grasping my arm; “you have solved the difficulty, Petrie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE HOUSE OF HASHISH
Along the leads from Frith Street we worked our perilous way. From the top landing of a French restaurant we had gained access, by means of a trap, to the roof of the building. Now, the busy streets of Soho were below me, and I clung dizzily to telephone standards and smoke stacks, rarely venturing to glance downward upon the cosmopolitan throng, surging, dwarfish, in the lighted depths.
Sometimes the bulky figure of Inspector Weymouth would loom up grotesquely against the star-sprinkled blue, as he paused to take breath; the next moment Nayland Smith would be leading the way again, and I would find myself contemplating some sheer well of blackness, with nausea threatening me because it had to be negotiated.
None of these gaps were more than a long stride from side to side; but the sense of depth conveyed in the muffled voices and dimmed footsteps from the pavements far below was almost overpowering. Indeed, I am convinced that for my part I should never have essayed that nightmare journey were it not that the musical voice of Kâramaneh seemed to be calling to me, her little white hands to be seeking mine, blindly, in the darkness.
That we were close to a haunt of the dreadful Chinamen I was persuaded; therefore my hatred and my love cooperated to lend me a coolness and address which otherwise I must have lacked.
“Hullo!” cried Smith, who was leading—“What now?”
We had crept along the crown of a sloping roof and were confronted by the blank wall of a building which rose a story higher than that adjoining it. It was crowned by an iron railing, showing blackly against the sky. I paused, breathing heavily, and seated astride that dizzy perch. Weymouth was immediately behind me, and—
“It’s the Café de l’Egypte, Mr. Smith!” he said. “If you’ll look up, you’ll see the reflection of the lights shining through the glass roof.”
Vaguely I discerned Nayland Smith rising to his feet.
“Be careful!” I said. “For God’s sake don’t slip!”
“Take my hand,” he snapped energetically.
I stretched forward and grasped his hand. As I did so, he slid down the slope on the right, away from the street, and hung perilously for a moment over the very cul-de-sac upon which the secret door opened.
“Good!” he muttered “There is, as I had hoped, a window lighting the top of the staircase. Ssh!—ssh!”
His grip upon my hand tightened; and there aloft, above the teemful streets of Soho, I sat listening ... whilst very faint and muffled footsteps sounded upon an uncarpeted stair, a door banged, and all was silent again, save for the ceaseless turmoil far below.
“Sit tight, and catch!” rapped Smith.
Into my extended hands he swung his boots, fastened together by the laces! Then, ere I could frame any protest, he disengaged his hand from mine, and pressing his body close against the angle of the building, worked his way around to the staircase window, which was invisible from where I crouched.
“Heavens!” muttered Weymouth, close to my ear, “I can never travel that road!”
“Nor I!” was my scarcely audible answer.
In a anguish of fearful anticipation I listened for the cry and the dull thud which should proclaim the fate of my intrepid friend; but no such sounds came to me. Some thirty seconds passed in this fashion, when a subdued call from above caused me to start and look aloft.
Nayland Smith was peering down from the railing on the roof.
“Mind your head!” he warned—and over the rail swung the end of a light wooden ladder, lowering it until it rested upon the crest astride of which I sat.
“Up you come!—then Weymouth!”
Whilst Smith held the top firmly, I climbed up rung by rung, not daring to think of what lay below.
My relief when at last I grasped the railing, climbed over, and found myself upon a wooden platform, was truly inexpressible.
“Come on, Weymouth!” rapped Nayland Smith. “This ladder has to be lowered back down the trap before another visitor arrives!”
Taking short, staccato breaths at every step, Inspector Weymouth ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me, he wiped t
he perspiration from his face and forehead.
“I wouldn’t do it again for a hundred pounds!” he said hoarsely.
“You don’t have to!” snapped Smith.
Back he hauled the ladder, shouldered it, and stepping to a square opening in one corner of the rickety platform, lowered it cautiously down.
“Have you a knife with a corkscrew in it?” he demanded.
Weymouth had one, which he produced. Nayland Smith screwed it into the weather-worn frame, and by that means reclosed the trapdoor softly, then—
“Look,” he said, “there is the house of hashish!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“THE DEMON’S SELF”
Through the glass panes of the skylight I looked down upon a scene so bizarre that my actual environment became blotted out, and I was mentally translated to Cairo—to that quarter of Cairo immediately surrounding the famous Square of the Fountain—to those indescribable streets, wherefrom arises the perfume of deathless evil, wherein, to the wailing, luresome music of the reed pipe, painted dancing-girls sway in the wild abandon of dances that were ancient when Thebes was the City of a Hundred Gates; I seemed to stand again in el Wasr.
The room below was rectangular, and around three of the walls were divans strewn with garish cushions, whilst highly colored Eastern rugs were spread about the floor. Four lamps swung on chains, two from either of the beams which traversed the apartment. They were fine examples of native perforated brasswork.
Upon the divans some eight or nine men were seated, fully half of whom were Orientals or half-castes. Before each stood a little inlaid table bearing a brass tray; and upon the trays were various boxes, some apparently containing sweetmeats, others cigarettes. One or two of the visitors smoked curious, long-stemmed pipes and sipped coffee.
Even as I leaned from the platform, surveying that incredible scene (incredible in a street of Soho), another devotee of hashish entered—a tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a light coat over his evening dress.
“Gad!” whispered Smith, beside me—“Sir Byngham Pyne of the India Office! You see, Petrie! You see! This place is a lure. My God! ...”
He broke off, as I clutched wildly at his arm.
The last arrival having taken his seat in a corner of the divan, two heavy curtains draped before an opening at one end of the room parted, and a girl came out, carrying a tray such as already reposed before each of the other men in the room.
She wore a dress of dark lilac-colored gauze, banded about with gold tissue and embroidered with gold thread and pearls; and around her shoulders floated, so ethereally that she seemed to move in a violet cloud; a scarf of Delhi muslin. A white yashmak trimmed with gold tissue concealed the lower part of her face.
My heart throbbed wildly; I seemed to be choking. By the wonderful hair alone I must have known her, by the great, brilliant eyes, by the shape of those slim white ankles, by every movement of that exquisite form. It was Kâramaneh!
I sprang madly back from the rail ... and Smith had my arm in an iron grip.
“Where are you going?” he snapped.
“Where am I going?” I cried. “Do you think—”
“What do you propose to do?” he interrupted harshly. “Do you know so little of the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu that you would throw yourself blindly into that den? Damn it all, man! I know what you suffer!—but wait—wait. We must not act rashly; our plans must be well considered.”
He drew me back to my former post and clapped his hand on my shoulder sympathetically. Clutching the rail like a man frenzied, as indeed I was, I looked down into that infamous den again, striving hard for composure.
Kâramaneh listlessly placed the tray upon the little table before Sir Byngham Pyne and withdrew without vouchsafing him a single glance in acknowledgment of his unconcealed admiration.
A moment later, above the dim clamor of London far below, there crept to my ears a sound which completed the magical quality of the scene, rendering that sky platform on a roof of Soho a magical carpet bearing me to the golden Orient. This sound was the wailing of a reed pipe.
“The company is complete,” murmured Smith. “I had expected this.”
Again the curtains parted, and a ghazeeyeh glided out into the room. She wore a white dress, clinging closely to her figure from shoulders to hips, where it was clasped by an ornate girdle, and a skirt of sky-blue gauze which clothed her as Io was clothed of old. Her arms were covered with gold bangles, and gold bands were clasped about her ankles. Her jet-black, frizzy hair was unconfined and without ornament, and she wore a sort of highly colored scarf so arranged that it effectually concealed the greater part of her face, but served to accentuated the brightness of the great flashing eyes. She had unmistakable beauty of a sort, but how different from the sweet witchery of Kâramaneh!
With a bold, swinging grace she walked down the center of the room, swaying her arms from side to side and snapping her fingers.
“Zarmi!” exclaimed Smith.
But his exclamation was unnecessary, for already I had recognized the evil Eurasian who was so efficient a servant of the Chinese doctor.
The wailing of the pipes continued, and now faintly I could detect the throbbing of a darabûkeh. This was el Wasr indeed. The dance commenced, its every phase followed eagerly by the motley clientele of the hashish house. Zarmi danced with an insolent nonchalance that nevertheless displayed her barbaric beauty to greatest advantage. She was lithe as a serpent, graceful as a young panther, another Lamia come to damn the souls of men with those arts denounced in a long-dead age by Apolonius of Tyana.
“She seemed, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self....”
Entranced against my will, I watched the Eurasian until, the barbaric dance completed, she ran from the room, and the curtains concealed her from view. How my mind was torn between hope and fear that I should see Kâramaneh again! How I longed for one more glimpse of her, yet loathed the thought of her presence in that infamous house.
She was a captive; of that there could be no doubt, a captive in the hands of the giant criminal whose wiles were endless, whose resources were boundless, whose intense cunning had enabled him, for years, to weave his nefarious plots in the very heart of civilization, and remain immune. Suddenly—
“That woman is a sorceress!” muttered Nayland Smith. “There is about her something serpentine, at once repelling and fascinating. It would be of interest, Petrie, to learn what State secrets have been filched from the brains of habitués of this den, and interesting to know from what unsuspected spy-hole Fu-Manchu views his nightly catch. If ...”
His voice died away, in a most curious fashion. I have since thought that here was a case of true telepathy. For, as Smith spoke of Fu-Manchu’s spy-hole, the idea leapt instantly to my mind that this was it—this strange platform upon which we stood!
I drew back from the rail, turned, stared at Smith. I read in his face that our suspicions were identical. Then—
“Look! Look!” whispered Weymouth.
He was gazing at the trapdoor—which was slowly rising; inch by inch ... inch by inch ... Fascinatedly, raptly, we all gazed. A head appeared in the opening—and some vague, reflected light revealed two long, narrow, slightly oblique eyes watching us. They were brilliantly green.
“By God!” came in a mighty roar from Weymouth. “It’s Dr. Fu-Manchu!”
As one man we leapt for the trap. It dropped, with a resounding bang—and I distinctly heard a bolt shot home.
A guttural voice—the unmistakable, unforgettable voice of Fu-Manchu—sounded dimly from below. I turned and sprang back to the rail of the platform, peering down into the hashish house. The occupants of the divans were making for the curtained doorway. Some, who seemed to be in a state of stupor, were being assisted by the others and by the man, Ismail, who had now appeared upon the scene.
Of Kâramaneh, Zarmi, or Fu-Manchu there was no sign.
Suddenly, the lights were extingu
ished.
“This is maddening!” cried Nayland Smith—“maddening! No doubt they have some other exit, some hiding-place—and they are slipping through our hands!”
Inspector Weymouth blew a shrill blast upon his whistle, and Smith, running to the rail of the platform, began to shatter the panes of the skylight with his foot.
“That’s hopeless, sir!” cried Weymouth. “You’d be torn to pieces on the jagged glass.”
Smith desisted, with a savage exclamation, and stood beating his right fist into the palm of his left hand, and glaring madly at the Scotland Yard man.
“I know I’m to blame,” admitted Weymouth; “but the words were out before I knew I’d spoken. Ah!”—as an answering whistle came from somewhere in the street below. “But will they ever find us?”
He blew again shrilly. Several whistles replied ... and a wisp of smoke floated up from the shattered pane of the skylight.
“I can smell petrol!” muttered Weymouth.
An ever-increasing roar, not unlike that of an approaching storm at sea, came from the streets beneath. Whistles skirled, remotely and intimately, and sometimes one voice, sometimes another, would detach itself from this stormy background with weird effect. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the hashish house there went on ceaselessly a splintering and crashing as though a determined assault were being made upon a door. A light shone up through the skylight.
Back once more to the rail I sprang, looked down into the room below—and saw a sight never to be forgotten.
Passing from divan to curtained door, from piles of cushions to stacked-up tables, and bearing a flaming torch hastily improvised out of a roll of newspaper, was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Everything inflammable in the place had been soaked with petrol, and, his gaunt, yellow face lighted by the ever-growing conflagration, so that truly it seemed not the face of a man, but that of a demon of the hells, the Chinese doctor ignited point after point....
