by Sax Rohmer
Having little enough to do in the way of preparation, I might not have torn myself away so quickly had it not been for the arrival of the nurse, a stout and capable Scottish woman, well-known to the management.
Perhaps it was as well. Rima clung to me almost pitifully.... Yes! I think some Celtic premonition must have warned her.
Downstairs I found Petrie waiting. Nayland Smith had disappeared; but: "We are to join him at Esna," Petrie explained, "and for some reason which I should regard as lunatic in any other than Smith, we are to pose as natives! "
"What! "
"Complete outfits--of which he has quite a wardrobe--are ready in his rooms. Weymouth is up there, now... and Said is standing by to guide us to the meeting place."
We stared hard at one another. But neither of us was in jesting mood; and: "Please God we all get back safe," said Petrie simply.
Chapter Sixth
THE COUNCIL OF SEVEN
That journey across the desert was strange in many ways-- stranger and more horrible in its outcome than a merciful Provi- dence allowed me to foresee. Nevertheless it aroused within me that sort of warning sixth sense which once before, on the train to Cairo, had advised me of the fact that I was spied upon. Possibly those religious fanatics guarding the extraordinary woman who called herself Madame Ingomar, and whom I knew claimed a sort of divine ordinance for their ghastly crimes, reacted upon me in some odd way. All I know is that I seemed to have developed a capacity for smelling them out; as will presently appear.
Weymouth, Petrie, and Nayland Smith rode in the back of the car, and I sat in front with Said. The starting place outside Esna has been cunningly chosen and we had every reason to believe that the outset of our journey had been managed without attracting attention.
Our disguises were passably good. Both Weymouth and Petrie were well sun- browned, and I had the complexion which comes with months of exposure to the weather. Petrie's distinguished appearance was enhanced by a tarbush and we had agreed to address him as "Bey." Weymouth, his robes crowned by a small white turban, resembled a substantial village sheikh; and I knew I could pass anywhere for a working Arab. Nayland Smith had retained the dress he was wearing at our first meeting.
Clear of the cultivated land that borders the Nile, and well out upon that ancient route which once had known no passage more violent than that of the soft padding camels and the tinkling of the camel bells, we met never a soul for thirty miles.
An hour, and another hour, we carried on, over desolate, gravelly, boundless waste. The sun blazed down mercilessly, although it was dipping to the western horizon. On we went, and on; until, having mounted a long slope, I saw a wadi ahead.
Nothing moved within my view, although I searched the prospect carefully through Nayland Smith's field-glasses. The ground was hard as nails. But at the bottom of this little valley, I spied a clump of palms and knew that there must be water.
A sentinel vulture floated high overhead.
We bumped on merrily across the wildest irregularities. In no sense was this a motor road. And, having carefully studied the map, I had serious doubts of its practicability beyond the site of some Roman.ruins merely marked "el-Der."
Down we swept into the wadi. Said driving in that carefree manner which charac- terises the native chauffeur for whom tyres are things made to be burst, and engines, djinns or powerful spirits invulnerable to damage. However, we carried three spares and could only hope for the best.
I don't know what it was, unless perhaps the smoother running of the car, which drew my attention to the path ahead. We were now in the cup of the valley and rapidly approaching that clump of palms which I had noted. Suddenly:
"Pull up," rapped Nayland Smith.
His hand gripped my shoulder. Said pulled up.
"Look!"
We all stood and stared ahead. Nayland Smith pointed. The surface was compara- tively soft here; and clearly discernible upon the road, crossing and recrossing, were many tyre marks! "Fah Lo Suee!" said Smith, as if answering my unspoken query. "You can set your mind at rest, Greville. The road to Kharga is practicable for driving.
It was a curious discovery, and it set me thinking, hard. When Madame Ingomar had visited the camp, had she come all the way from the oasis, and had she returned there? Presumably, this was so. And, as always happened when my thoughts turned to this phenomenal woman, a very vivid mental picture presented itself before my mind. Her long, narrow, jade-green eyes seemed to be staring into mine. And I saw one of those small cigarettes which she loved, smouldering in a long engraved holder between delicate ivory fingers.
We passed the tree-shaded well, and mounted a stiff slope beyond. I cannot answer for the others, but, as I have indicated, my own thoughts were far away. It was just as we reached the crest, and saw a farther prospect of boundless desert before us, that I became aware, or perhaps I should say conscious, of that old sense of espionage.
Nothing moved upon that desolate expanse, over which the air danced like running water. But a positive conviction seized me--a conviction that news of our journey had reached the enemy, or would shortly reach the enemy. I began to think about that solitary Pharoah's Chicken--that sentinel vulture--floating high above the palms....
"Stop!" I said.
"What is it?" snapped Nayland Smith.
"May be nothing," I replied, "but I want to walk back to the brow of the hill and take a good look at the wadi through which we have just come. "
"Good!" He nodded. "I should have thought of it myself."
I got out the glasses, slung them across my shoulder, and walked rapidly back. At a point which I remembered, because a great blackened boulder lying straight across the road had nearly brought us to grief, I stooped and went forward more slowly. This boulder, I reflected, might provide just the cover I required. Lying flat down beside the stone, to the great alarm of a number of lizards who fled rapidly to right and left, I focused my glasses upon the clump of trees below me.
At first I could see nothing unusual. But the vulture still floated in the sky and the significance of his presence had become unmistakable.... Some living thing was hidden in the grove!
Adjusting the sights to a nicety, I watched, I waited. And presently my patience was rewarded.
A figure came out of the clump of trees! I could see him clearly and only hoped that he could not see me. He might have passed muster, except for his tightly knotted blue turban. Emphatically, he was not an Egyptian. Standing beside the irregularly marked path, he placed a box upon the ground. I studied his movements with growing wonderment.
What could he be about? He seemed to be fumbling in the box.
Then suddenly he withdrew his hand, raised it high above his head--and a grey pigeon swept low over the desert, rose up and up, higher and higher! It circled once, twice, three times. Then, straight as an arrow it set out... undoubtedly bound for the Oasis of Kharga!
"Very clever," said Nayland Smith grimly. "We shall therefore be expected. I might have guessed she wouldn't be taken unawares. But it confirms my theory. "
"What theory?" Petrie asked.
"That to-night is a very special occasion at the house of the Sheikh Ismail! "
"We're running into a trap," said Weymouth. "Now that we know beyond any doubt that we're expected, what are our chances? It's true there's a railway to this place--but it's rarely used. The people of the oases have never been trustworthy--so that our nearest help will be a hundred and fifty miles off!"
Smith nodded. He got out and joined me where I stood beside the car, loading and lighting his pipe. He began to walk up and down, glancing alternately at me, at Weymouth, and at Dr. Petrie. I knew what he was thinking and I didn't interrupt him. He was wondering if he was justified in risking our lives on so desperate a venture; weighing the chances of what success might mean to the world against our chances of coming out of the job alive. Suddenly: "What's the alternative?" he snapped, peering at Weymouth.
"There isn't one that I can think of.
"
"What do you say, Petrie?"
Petrie shrugged his shoulders.
"I hadn't foreseen this," he confessed. "But now that it's happened..."
He left the sentence unfinished.
"Get the map out, Greville," Nayland Smith rapped.... "Here, on the ground."
I dived into the front of the car and pulled out the big map.
This we spread on the gravelly path, keeping it flat by placing stones on its comers. Weymouth and Petrie alighted; and the four of us bent over the map.
"Ah!" Nayland Smith exclaimed and rested his finger on a certain spot. "That's the danger area, isn't it, Greville? That's where we might crash? "
"We might!" I replied grimly. "It's a series of hairpin bends and sheer precipices, at some points fourteen hundred feet up.... "
"That's where they'll be waiting for us!" said Nayland Smith.
"Good God!" Petrie exclaimed.
I exchanged glances with Weymouth. The expression in his blue eyes was enigmatical.
"Do you agree with me?" rapped Smith.
"Entirely. "
"In short, gentlemen," he went on, "if we pursue our present route it's certain we shall never reach el-Kharga."
There was an interval of silence; then: "We might easily break down before we get to the hills," I said slowly. "No one at the other end would be the wiser, except that we should never enter the danger zone. Now"--I bent and moved my finger over the map--"at this point, as you see, the old caravan road from Dongola to Egypt is only about thirty miles off. It's the Path of the Forty, formerly used by slave caravans from Central Africa. If we could find our way across to it, we might approach Kharga from the south, below the village marked Bulag--it means a detour of forty or fifty miles, even if we can do it. But..."
Nayland Smith clapped me on the shoulder.
"You've solved the problem, Greville!" he said. "Nothing like knowledge of the geog- raphy of a district when one's in difficulties. We're in luck if we make it before dusk. But how shall we recognise the Path of the Forty? "
"By the bleached bones," I replied.
3
Sunset dropped its thousand veils over the desert. The hills and wadis of its desolate expanses passed from a glow of gold through innumerable phases of red. We saw crags that looked yellow under a sky of green: we saw a violet desert across which the ancient route of the slave traders stretched like a long-healed scar. There were moments when all the visible world resembled the heart of a tulip. But at last came true dusk with those scat- tered battalions of the stars set like pearls in a deep, velvet-lined casket.
Wonderful to relate, we had forced the groaning Buick over trackless miles south- west of the road, had found a path through the hills and had struck the Darfur caravan route some twenty miles below el-Kharga. A difference in the quality of the landscape, a freshening and a cleanness in the air, spoke of the near oasis. Then, on a gentle slope: "A light ahead!" Weymouth cried.
I checked Said. We all stood up and looked.
"That must be Bulag," said Nayland Smith. "The house of the sheikh lies some- where between there and el-Kharga. "
"It's a straight road now," Petrie broke in. "Thank heaven, there's plenty of light. I'm all for blazing through the village as hard as we can go and then finding some parking place outside the town. "
"Pray heaven the old bus can stand it!" Weymouth murmured devoutly.
And so, headed north, we set out. The road was abominable, but fairly wide where it traversed the village. Nayland Smith had relieved Said at the wheel and the scene as he coaxed a way through that miniature bazaar was one I can never forget. Every man, woman, child and dog had turned out....
"They may send the news to el-Kharga," said Smith, as we finally shook off the last pair of staring-eyed Arab boys who ran after us, "but we've got to chance it."
We parked the doughty Buick in a grove of date-palms just south of the town. Weymouth seemed to anticipate trouble with Said, but I knew the man and had never doubted that he would consent to stand by. We left him a charged repeater and spare shells, and there were ample rations aboard to sustain him during the time he might have to mount guard. We marked an hour on the clock when, failing our reappearance, he was to push on with all possible speed to the post office at el-Kharga and communicate with Fletcher. How he carried out these orders will appear later.
As the four of us walked from the palm grove:
"It's a good many years," said Weymouth, "since I disguised myself!"
I looked at him in the moonlight, and I thought that he made a satisfactory and most impressive sheikh. True, his Arabic was bad, but so far as his appearance went, he was above criticism. Dr. Petrie was a safe bet; and Sir Denis, as I knew, could have walked about Mecca unchallenged. For my own part I felt fairly confident, for I knew the ways of the desert Arabs well enough to be capable of passing for one..
"We may be too late," said Nayland Smith; "but I feel disposed, Greville, to make straight for the town; otherwise we might lose ourselves. Then, you acting as spokesman, since you speak the best Arabic, we can inquire our direction boldly. "
"I agree," said I.
And so it was settled.
4
El-Kharga, as I vaguely remembered, though a considerable town of some seven or eight thousand inhabitants, consisted largely of a sort of maze of narrow streets roofed over with palm trunks so as to resemble tunnels at night. We penetrated, and presently found our way to the centre of the place. A mosque and two public buildings attracted my attention; and: "Down here," I said, "there's a cafe, where we shall learn all we want to know."
Two minutes later we were grouped around a table in a small smoke-laden room.
"Look about," said Nayland Smith. "Kismet is with us. Whatever is going on in el-Kharga is being discussed here, tonight."
"I told you this was the place," said I.
But I looked about as he had directed. Certainly we had discovered the one and only house of entertainment in el-Kharga.... Little did I realise, as I considered our neighbours, where my next awakening would be! Here were obvious townspeople, pros- perous date-merchants, rice growers, petty officials and others, smoking their pipes in evening contentment. A definite odour ofhashish pervaded the cafe. But the scene looked typical enough, until: "Those fellows in the comer don't seem quite in the picture," said Weymouth.
I followed the direction of his glance. Two men were bending over a little round table. They smoked cigarettes, and a pot of coffee stood between them. In type, they were unfamiliar; unfamiliar in the sense that one didn't expect to come across them in an outpost of Egypt. In Cairo, they might have passed unnoticed, but their presence in el- Kharga was extraordinary. I turned to Nayland Smith, who was glancing in the same direction; and: "What are they?" I asked.
"Afghans," he replied. "The great broth- erhood of Kali is well represented here. "
"Remarkable," I said, "There can be few relations between Afghanistan and this obscure spot. "
"None whatever!" Weymouth broke in. "And now, Greville, follow the direction in which my cigarette is pointing."
Endeavouring not to betray myself, I did as he suggested.
"A group of three," he added for my guid- ance.
I saw the group. I might have failed to identify them, but my memory was painfully fresh in regard to that dead man in the Tomb of the Black Ape. They wore their turbans in such a manner that the mark on the brow could not be distinguished. But I knew them for Burmans; and I did not doubt that they belonged to the mysterious fraternity of the dacoits! At which moment:
"Don't turn around until I give the signal," Nayland Smith rapped--"but just behind us."
I watched him as he glanced about, appar- ently in search of a waiter, then caught his signal. I looked swiftly into an alcove under the stairs... and then turned aside, as the gaze of a pair of fierce, wild-animal eyes became focused upon mine. The waiter arrived and Nayland Smith ordered more coffee. As the man departed to execute the
order:
Thugs!" he whispered. He bent over the table. "There are representatives of at least three religious fanatical sects in this place to- night. Dacoity is represented, also Thugee. The two gentlemen from Kandahar are phan- sigars, or religious stran-glers!" He stared at Weymouth. "Does this suggest anything to you?"
Weymouth's blue eyes were fixed on me and:
"I confess, Greville," he said, "that I feel as you do.... And I can see that you're puzzled. "
"I am," I agreed.
Nayland Smith raised his hand irritably and tugged at the lobe of his left ear; then: "You understand, Petrie?" he jerked.
I looked at Dr. Petrie and it was unneces- sary for him to reply. I saw that he did under- stand.
"Any doubt I may have had, Smith," he said, "regarding the purpose of this expedi- tion, is washed out. In some miraculous way you have brought us to what seems to be the focus of all the dangerous fanatics of the Eastern world!"
"I don't claim all the credit," Smith replied; "but I admit that the facts confirm my theory. "
"And what was your theory?" I asked.
"My theory," Smith replied, "based on the latest information to hand, and, as Weymouth here knows, almost hourly reports from police headquarters as widely divided as Pekin and Berlin, was this: That some attempt was being made to co-ordinate the dangerous religious sects of the East together with their sympathisers in the West. In short that the organisation once known as the Si Fan--you, alone, Greville," he turned to me, "fail to appreciate the significance of this--is in process otreconstruction! Some- thing vital to the scheme was hidden in the Tomb of the Black Ape. This--and I can only blame myself--was removed under my very nose. The centre of the conspiracy is Fah Lo Suee--Dr. Fu Manchu's daughter, whose temporary headquarters I know to be here. To-night, at least, I am justified. Look around."
He bent over the table and we all did like- wise, so that our four heads came very closely together; then:
"We are not too late," he said earnestly. "A meeting has been called... and we must be present!"
5
The two Indians in the alcove stood up and went towards the door. As the pair disap- peared: "They lead, and we follow!" said Nayland Smith.
