“He was listening,” she whispered. “He heard me.”
“I don’t believe he has a word of English.”
“But I heard you say, ‘Let me look at you!’ Does he look?”
“He just knew I was mad at him and looked up. It doesn’t mean he knows English.”
Zoe’s amber eyes blazed. “He was listening. You know he was listening!”
Brian tried to think clearly. “Suppose he was, Zoe. And suppose he does know English. What have you to worry about?”
She turned her head aside, so that the brim of her hat quite shadowed her face.
“I cannot explain to you, Brian. What was told to me was told—in confidence. For your sake I speak. If it is found out——”
“Well, Zoe dear, what then?”
“It could be terrible. But you can do nothing about it. Only one thing, to give me peace of mind about you … Do as I ask. Do not stay here one hour longer than you can help!”
“But, Zoe. I don’t know, and I’m not going to worry you to tell me, where you got hold of the idea that I’m in danger, but isn’t it possible you’re letting yourself get all het up for nothing?”
She turned, and her eyes challenged him. “It is not for nothing! Could it be for nothing that I beg you to go away when I want you to stay with me? How can you think this!”
Brian realized, at last, that Zoe was in a state of tremendous nervous tension. His well-meant but perhaps clumsy attempt to soothe her fears had only increased this. He must change his tactics. The situation was utterly fantastic. But he knew that the danger was real enough.
“I guess you’d like to get back.” He spoke uneasily. “I’ll try to contact Sir Denis.”
“It will be no use,” Zoe whispered. “But—yes—let us go, Brian.”
There was a note of such black despair in her voice that he felt chilled.
A cloud seemed to darken the Egyptian sunshine. He stood up, walked around and rested his hands on Zoe’s bowed shoulders.
“Don’t let it get you down, Zoe. I’ll go in and order a car right away to take us back to Cairo.”
She reached up and held both his hands. “Not to Cairo, Brian—to Port Said where we can find a ship! Do this and I will come with you.
Leave all you have. It will be better—for you and for me. I am not mad. I know what I say. Do it—do it, Brian!”
“But, Zoe, dear, tonight——”
“Tonight is too late. It is now or never! . . . Oh! It is hopeless!” She thrust his hands away. “I can never make you understand! Go, then. I will wait here.”
His brain behaving like a carousel, Brian went into the hotel and
arranged for a car. He could no longer delude himself. The ragged old ruffian he had found seated in the road was a spy. And he was there to listen to their conversation. Zoe knew this, and her pitiable panic was clear enough evidence of the menace overhanging them.
He toyed longingly with the temptation to accept her warning. She had become more than ever desirable. She was beautiful, and a delightful companion, responding to all his moods, equally prepared to dance, to swim or to ride as the humour moved him. And in all they did together she was graceful and efficient.
But it was morally unthinkable that he should break his contract with Sir Denis—particularly now, when Nayland Smith needed him.
He walked slowly back to the garden and along to their table.
But Zoe wasn’t there!
Brian felt his heart jump and then seem to stop for a moment. He sat down, looking at the empty chair. And by degrees he recovered himself.
He, too, was giving way to panic. No doubt she had merely gone into the hotel to prepare herself for the drive.
This theory kept him quiet for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Then he decided that it was wrong.
He went in to make inquiries. But no one had seen her. He went back to the deserted table … and it was still deserted.
A boy walked down the path, and Brian jumped up expectantly.
“Your car is waiting, sir… .”
Chapter 7
Dr. Fu Manchu, seated on a divan in the saloon of the old house near the Mosque of El-Ashraf, gazed straight before him as a man in a trance.
A sickly smell of opium hung in the still air. The long, hypnotic eyes were narrowed. Sometimes a sort of film seemed to pass across them and was gone, leaving them brilliantly green.
He aroused himself; struck a small gong which stood on a table beside him. And immediately, like a djinn answering a magic summons, a stocky Burmese with a caste-mark on his forehead, came in and saluted deeply.
Fu Manchu spoke to him in his own language: “Is Zobeida here?”
“She is here, Master.”
“Send her in to me.”
So soon after the man went out as to suggest that the girl had been waiting in some adjoining room, Zoe came in. She was dressed as she had
been dressed at Mena House, except that she no longer wore her sun-hat.
Although pale, she was quite composed. It was the composure of resignation.
Without attempting to meet the glance which Fu Manchu fixed upon her, she dropped to her knees and lowered her head. There was a long silence in the saloon. Sounds from the street outside sometimes penetrated dimly, but no word was spoken, until: “Look up,” Dr. Fu Manchu commanded harshly, now using Arabic.
“Look up! Speak!”
Zoe, known here as Zobeida, looked up.
“I have nothing to say, Master.” She lowered her head again.
“To me you mean, little serpent! ButAbdul al-Taleb (‘Abdul the Fox’) reports that you had much, too much, to say to Mr. Brian Merrick. Be so good as to tell me with what object you tried deliberately to disturb my plans.”
“I was sorry for him.”
Dr. Fu Manchu took a pinch of snuff from a little silver box, but never once ceased to watch the kneeling girl.
“There is no room for these moods of compassion in those who work for the Si-Fan. I bought you in an Arabian slave-market. I bought you for your beauty. A beautiful woman is a valuable weapon. But the blade must be true. You were trained to take your place in any walk of society. You have all the necessary accomplishments. Neither time nor money was spared in perfecting you for my purpose. Yet, like another I trained and trusted, your Arab blood betrayed you—and betrayed me!”
Fu Manchu’s strange voice rose to a hissing falsetto on the last word.
Zoe raised her hands to her face, and seemed to droop like a fading flower.
“Whispered words,” the remorseless voice went on, “a man’s caresses, and those years of patient training became wasted years in as many minutes. Yet, Zobeida, this was not by any means the first assignment you have carried out. You have passed through those fires unscathed—as you were taught to do. Tell me, Zobeida, are you afflicted by the delusion miscalled love?”
He gave to “love” so scornful an intonation that Zoe shrank even lower. She was trembling, now. Her answer was a whisper: “This one is young, and without experience, Master. He is not like—those others.”
Dr. Fu Manchu considered her silently for a moment.
“Had you spoken the unforgivable words, ‘I love him’, I should have sent for whips. It would have meant that you were of no future use, and therefore lash marks on your smooth skin would no longer have concerned me. But—you have betrayed the plans of the Si-Fan.”
Zoe looked up. “I have not! He knows nothing of your plans, for even
had I wanted to, I could have told him nothing. He knows that I think he is in danger, that he should go away——”
“With you, unless I misunderstood Abdul, who was listening.”
Zoe dropped her head again. “I would not have gone, Master, farther than Port Said. I dare not have gone. I thought, if I said this, he might be tempted to listen to me.”
Another silence fell—a long silence, and then: “Your desire to guide this attractive young man into the straight and narrow path is most
touchng. Fortunately, I was able to take instant steps to check further confidences.” Fu Manchu spoke softly. “Go to your room. You will not be returning to the hotel… .”
*
A faint hope that Zoe, piqued by his refusal to take her strange advice, might have found an empty cab at Mena House and returned alone to Cairo was disappointed when he got back to his hotel. She had not come in.
He had exhausted every probability before leaving Mena House.
There was no doubt that she had gone… . But no one had seen her go!
Frantically, he tried to think of possible sources of information. Apart from Nayland Smith, he knew none of her friends. In fact, as he realized now, he knew next to nothing about her except what she had told him.
And Nayland Smith had impressed upon him, “Don’t attempt to contact me …”
Who was this uncle by marriage, possibly still in Cairo, with whom Zoe had discussed those family matters on the previous night? Where was he staying? What was his name?
He didn’t know!
Once, as his widely travelled father had told him, when the British controlled Egypt, the Cairo police had been a highly efficient force. But now, when neither Britons nor Americans were too popular, what hope had he of co-operation?
The mystery of the thing appalled him … Had Zoe been abducted?
Clearly enough, she had picked up information somewhere concerning the existence of Fu Manchu—information which had terrified her. It was folly to try to pretend to himself that the dirty old vagabond sitting on the road at Gizeh in hearing of their conversation was not a spy; that his previous appearance in Sharia Abdin had been a coincidence.
Brian went up to his room and paced about there like a madman.
He had not dreamed. He had seen a vision. Could it be that the rest of it was true? Had Nayland Smith fallen into a trap? He smoked countless
cigarettes; had several drinks. In desperation, he called Mr. Ahmad’s number … No reply.
He was wondering what to do next when his phone buzzed. He grabbed it.
“Oh, Brian dear!”— Zoe!—”I cannot tell you how unhappy I am. My uncle finds out from the hotel porter where we are gone and comes out by car to Mena House to get me. There is not one moment to lose. My poor Aunt Isobel is dying. She asks for me. So we rush for the train. I am at the station now … The train just comes in! I must run.” The sound of a kiss.
“Good-bye, Brian …”
“But, Zoe——”
She had gone …
*
Mr. Ahmad called early in the morning. He found Brian on the terrace, looking wretched, toying with biscuits and cheese and a cup of coffee—apparently his breakfast. Mr. Ahmad sat down in a cane chair.
“You are not feeling so well, Mr. Merrick?”
“Thank you. I feel fine.”
“You looked, or so I thought, unhappy. Yes?”
Brian stared hard at Mr. Ahmad. And Mr. Ahmad forced a smile of sympathy.
“Shall I tell you something?” Brian asked. “I’m sick to death of all this mystery business. I’m told there’s a serious danger threatening the Western World. I’m told that I’m a marked man. Queer things happen.
And I’m left alone to think it all out. What kind of game is this? I can never get in touch with you—and Sir Denis orders me not to contact him!”
Ahmad shrugged. “Forgive me if I fail to follow you. I cannot know what took place between Sir Denis and yourself. I was not there. If your personal expenses have embarrassed you, I think I can promise that this can be arranged——”
“They haven’t! It’s not a question of money.”
“Then of what?”
“Of self-respect, I guess! I find out I have a spy on my trail. I should like to report it. There’s no one to report to! I’m supposed to be in on this thing. But I’m left sitting right outside.”
Even as he spoke so bitterly he was well aware that the real cause of his bitterness was the strange disappearance of Zoe. Her words, when she had called him, had sounded false, unreal. Either she had been playing a double game all along, and had now gone off with some unknown man
she really loved, or she had been abducted, had been forced to speak to him in order to put him off the scent.
But he didn’t want to talk to Ahmad about Zoe, and: “Could you deliver a message from me to Sir Denis?” he asked.
“But certainly. With pleasure.”
But Mr. Ahmad spoke in a curiously uneasy way.
“If you can see him, why not I?”
Mr. Ahmad now looked unmistakably embarrassed. Brian could see that he was trying hard to think up an answer to that one. But at last: “I can only obey Sir Denis’s orders, Mr. Merrick,” he explained.
“Surely you know that he thinks it important, until his plans are complete, that no connection between you should be suspected?”
“Yes, I know that. But unless my hotel phone is tapped, why can’t I call him?”
Mr. Ahmad leaned forward, his expression very earnest.
“Has Sir Denis told you where he is?”
“Yes. I knew, anyway. I didn’t tell you at the time, because I thought maybe he didn’t want me to know yet.”
Ahmad forced a smile. “It was discreet—for I, too, was in ignorance of his presence in Cairo at that time. But, now that you know, Mr. Merrick, I ask you: Is it likely that such a household would be on the telephone?”
Brian thought a while, and then, “No,” he agreed. “I guess not. But if I step in to a desk for a minute and write a note, can you undertake that he’ll get it?”
He stumped out the butt of his cigarette in an ash-tray.
“Most certainly. May I offer you one of mine?” Ahmad held out a gold case. “They are different from yours. Unusual. But you may like them.”
“Thanks.”
Brian took one. It was an “Aziza”! He accepted the offer of Mr.
Ahmad’s lighter and went in to write his note. But he sat at the desk a long time, pen in hand, before beginning to do so. Was it another coincidence that the girl in the Loofah office had advised him to inquire for Mr.
Ahmad from the Aziza Cigarette Company? And was it a still further coincidence that a spy whom he had mistaken for Zoe had followed him from the shop of the merchant in the Muski who claimed to be the sole Cairo agent for the sale of those cigarettes?
He sighed, looked once more at the name on the cigarette, and then went on smoking. He began to write. Above all things he mustn’t let his imagination run away with him again… .
When he came back to the terrace and handed the note to Mr. Ahmad: “I shall see that this is placed in Sir Denis’s hands not later than noon,”
Ahmad promised.
“Fine. Now, what about a drink?”
“Many thanks. But it is much too early for me! What I really came to tell you is that Sir Denis expects to be ready to start tomorrow or the next day.”
“Start for where?” Brian wanted to know.
“This I cannot tell you, because I have not been told myself.”
“I see. Well, I’m ready at short notice.”
“Good. And now I must go. My time is not my own… .”
Brian had a poor appetite for lunch, and was already finished when he was called to the phone. When he said, “Hullo,” a voice snapped, “Is that Brian Merrick?”
“Here, Sir Denis!”
“Didn’t recognize you for a moment. What’s up? Something gone wrong?”
“Not exactly. That is, nothing that concerns you, personally. But Zoe Montero left in a tremendous hurry yesterday. Called me from the railroad station (or so she said) and seemed very agitated. Told me her aunt in Luxor was dying. I’m rather worried, Sir Denis. I have a hunch something queer may be going on. We were covered by a man I’m almost sure was a spy while lunching at Mena House. Could you give me her uncle’s address and phone number?”
“Oh! I hope your hunch is wrong, Merrick. Don’t want that poor kid dragged into ou
r troubles. Situation rather complicated. Friend of the Sherif Mohammed happened to be leaving for Luxor day I got in. Asked him to let Zoe’s uncle know I was in Cairo. Safe man, Merrick; name of Jansen, Swedish artist. Jansen wired me Zoe was here.”
“But what’s his phone number?”
“That’s the snag, Merrick. Doubt if he has one. Runs a sort of art shop near the Palace Hotel, Never knew the address. Does reproductions of murals from the old temples, statuettes of gods and so on. Sir Lionel Barton employed him when he was excavating a tomb up there.”
“Well, how am I to contact him? Would a radiogram to the Palace Hotel find him?”
“It might, Merrick—in time. I can suggest nothing better. Shall be sorry if anything happens to Isobel Jansen. I know Jansen was devoted to her. By the way, stand by tomorrow. I’m breaking cover. Look out for me!”
Nayland Smith hung up. Brian rather resented the light dismissal of his concern for Zoe, but reflected that Sir Denis had affairs more serious on his mind than the erratic movements of a girl he evidently thought of as a child. He wrote out a careful message addressed to Jansen (he didn’t know his first name) at the Luxor Palace, and gave it to the operator for transmission.
But, try how he would to fight it off, a mood of black depression swept
down upon him… .
Chapter 8
Dr. Fu Manchu sat behind his desk, his disconcerting eyes focused upon Mr. Ahmad.
“You have instructed our agent at Luxor?”
“In detail, Excellency. The situation is under control.”
“Good. Return to your duties.” He resumed his reading of a closely written manuscript.
And Ahmad had not long gone out by one door when the Sherif Mohammed came in at another. “A messenger from China has just arrived, Excellency.”
Dr. Fu Manchu glanced up. “What has he to report?”
“There have been serious disturbances in three provinces. The Communist authorities have been compelled to send military reinforcements to——”
Fu Manchu suddenly stood up. His eyes blazed as though fires burned behind their greenness.
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