by Sax Rohmer
“Kara!” he cried. “My dear! What is it?”
Her wonderful eyes, widely opened, were staring past me through the window out into the courtyard; and:
“He is alive!” she whispered. “O God! He is alive!”
I wondered if she referred to Sir Lionel; when suddenly she turned to Petrie, clutching the lapels of his coat and speaking eagerly, fearfully.
“Surely you understand? You must understand. That cry in the garden and now—this! It is the Living Death! It is the Living Death! He knew before it claimed him. ‘Amber—inject.’” She shook Petrie with a sudden passionate violence. “Think!… The flask is in your safe.”
And, watching Petrie’s face, I realized that what had been unintelligible to me, to him had brought light.
“Merciful heavens!” he cried, and now I saw positive horror leap to his eyes. “Merciful heavens! I can’t believe it—I won’t believe it.”
He stared at me, a man distracted; and:
“Sir Lionel believed it,” his wife said. “He wrote it. This is what he means.”
And now I remembered those hideous oblique eyes which had looked in at me during my journey. I remembered the man in the car who had passed me at Shepheard’s. Dacoits! Bands of Burmese robbers! I had thought of them as scattered. Apparently they were associated—a sort of guild. Sir Lionel knew the Far East almost better than he knew the Near East. So, suddenly I spoke—or rather I cried the words aloud:
“Do you mean, Mrs. Petrie, that you think he’s been murdered?”
Dr. Petrie interrupted, and his reply silenced me.
“It’s worse than that,” he said.
If I had come to Cairo bearing a burden of sorrow, I thought, looking from the face of my host to the beautiful face of his wife, that my story had brought their happy world tumbling about them in dust.
The train to Luxor was full, but I had taken the precaution of booking accommodation before leaving the station. And, as I was later to learn, I had been watched!
I was frankly out of my depth. That Petrie was deeply concerned for his wife, who seemed now to be the victim of a mysterious terror, he was quite unable to conceal. The object locked in the safe referred to by Mrs. Petrie proved to be a glass flask sealed with wax and containing a very small quantity of what might, from its appearance, have been brandy. However, the doctor packed it up with care and placed it in his professional bag before leaving.
This, together with the feverish state of excitement into which I seemed to have thrown his household, was sufficiently mystifying. Coming on top of a tragedy and a sleepless night, it was almost the last straw.
Petrie explored the train as though he expected to find Satan in person on board.
“Are you looking for my cross-eyed man?” I asked.
“I am,” he returned grimly.
And somehow, as his steady glance met mine, it occurred to me that he was hoping, and not fearing, to see the oblique-eyed spy. It dawned upon me that his fears were for his wife, left behind in Cairo, rather than for us. What in heaven’s name was it all about?
However, I was too far gone to pursue these reflections, and long before the attendant had come to make the bed I fell fast asleep.
I was awakened by Dr. Petrie.
“I prescribe dinner,” he said.
Feeling peculiarly cheap, I managed to make myself sufficiently presentable for the dining car, and presently sat down facing my friend, of whom I had heard so much and whom the chief had evidently regarded as a safe harbour in a storm.
A cocktail got me properly awake again and enabled me to define where troubled dreams left off and reality began. Petrie was regarding me with an expression compounded of professional sympathy and personal curiosity; and:
“You have had a desperately trying time, Greville,” he said. “But you can’t have failed to see that you have exploded a bombshell in my household. Now, before I say any more on the latter point, please bring me up to date. If there’s been foul play, is there anyone you could even remotely suspect?”
“There is certainly a lot of mystery about our job,” I confessed. “I know for a fact that Sir Lionel’s rivals—I might safely call them enemies—have been watching him closely—notably Professor Zeitland.”
“Professor Zeitland died in London a fortnight ago.”
“What!”
“You hadn’t heard? We had the news in Cairo. Therefore, he can be ruled out.”
There was a short interval whilst the waiter got busy, and then:
“As I remember poor Barton,” Petrie mused, “he was always surrounded by clouds of strange servants. Are there any in your camp?”
“Not a soul,” I assured him. “We’re a very small party. Sir Lionel, myself, Ali Mahmoud, the headman, Forester, the chemist—I have mentioned him before; and the chief’s niece, Rima; who’s our official photographer.”
I suppose my voice changed when I mentioned Rima; for Petrie stared at me very hard, and:
“Niece?” he said. “Odd jobs women undertake nowadays.”
“Yes,” I answered shortly.
Petrie began to toy with his fish. Clearly his appetite was not good. It was evident that repressed excitement held him—grew greater with every mile of our journey.
“Do you know Superintendent Weymouth?” he asked suddenly.
“I’ve met him at the club,” I replied. “Now that you mention it, I believe Forester knows him well.”
“So do I,” said Petrie, smiling rather oddly. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him all day.” He paused, then:
“There must be associations,” he went on. “Some of you surely have friends who visit the camp?”
That question magically conjured up a picture before my mind’s eye—the picture of a figure so slender as to merit the description serpentine, tall, languorous; I saw again the brilliant jade-green eyes, voluptuous lips, and those slim ivory hands nurtured in indolence… Madame Ingomar.
“There is one,” I began—I was interrupted.
The train had begun to slow into Wasta, and high above those curious discords of an Arab station, I had clearly detected a cry:
“Dr. Petrie! A message for Dr. Petrie.”
He, too, had heard it. He dropped his knife and fork and his expression registered a sudden consternation.
As Petrie sprang to his feet, a tall figure in flying kit came rushing into the dining car, and:
“Hunter!” Petrie exclaimed. “Hunter!”
I, too, stood up in a state of utter bewilderment.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Petrie went on.
He turned to me, and:
“Captain Jameson Hunter, of Imperial Airways,” he explained— “Mr. Shan Greville.”
He turned again to the pilot.
“What’s the idea, Hunter?” he demanded.
“The idea is,” the airman replied, grinning with evident enjoyment, “that I’ve made a dash from Heliopolis to cut you off at Wasta! Jump to it! You’ve got to be clear of the train in two minutes!”
“But we’re in the middle of dinner!”
“Don’t blame me. It’s Superintendent Weymouth’s doing. He’s standing by where I landed the bus.”
“But,” I interrupted, “where are we going?”
“Same place,” said the airman, grinning delightedly. “But I can get you there in no time, save you the Nile crossing and land you, I believe, within five hundred yards of the camp. Where’s your compartment? You have to run for your things or leave them on the train. It doesn’t matter much.”
“It does,” I said. I turned to Petrie. “I’ll get your bag. Fix things with the attendant and meet me on the platform.”
I rushed out of the dining car, observed in blank astonishment by every other occupant. Our compartment gained, I nearly knocked over the night attendant who was making the bed. Dr. Petrie’s bag I grabbed at once. Coats, hats, and two light suitcases were quickly bundled out. I thrust some loose money into the hand of the b
adly startled attendant and made for the exit.
Petrie’s bag I managed to place carefully on the platform. The rest of the kit I was compelled to throw out unceremoniously—for the train was already in motion. I jumped off the step and looked along the platform.
Far ahead, where the dining car had halted, I saw Petrie and Jameson Hunter engaged apparently in a heated altercation with the station master. Heads craned through many windows as the Luxor express moved off.
And suddenly, standing there with the baggage distributed about me, I became rigid, staring—staring—at a yellow, leering face which craned from a coach only one removed from that we had occupied.
The spy had been on the train!
I was brought to my senses by a tap on the arm. I turned. An airways mechanic stood at my elbow.
“Mr. Greville,” he said, “is this your baggage?”
I nodded.
“Close shave,” he commented. He began to pick up the bags. “I think I can manage the lot, sir. Captain Hunter will show you the way.”
“Careful with the black bag!” I cried. “Keep it upright, and for heaven’s sake, don’t jolt it!”
“Very good, sir.”
Hatless, dinnerless, and half asleep I stood, until Jameson Hunter, Dr. Petrie, and the station master joined me.
“It’s all settled,” said Hunter, still grinning cheerfully. “The station master here was rather labouring under the impression that it was a hold-up. I think he’s been corrupted by American movies. Well, here we go!”
But the station master was by no means willing to let us go. He was now surrounded by a group of subordinates, and above the chatter of their comments I presently gathered that we must produce our tickets. We did so, and pushed our way through the group. Further official obstruction was offered… when all voices became suddenly silent.
A big man, wearing a blue serge suit, extraordinarily reminiscent of a London policeman in mufti, and who carried his soft hat so that the moonlight silvered his crisp white hair, strolled into the station.
“Weymouth!” cried Petrie. “This is amazing! What does it mean?”
The big, genial man, whom I had met once or twice at the club, appeared to be under a cloud. His geniality was less manifest than usual. But the effect of his arrival made a splendid advertisement for the British tradition in Egypt. The station master and his subordinates positively wilted in the presence of this one-time chief inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department now in supreme command of the Cairo detective service.
Weymouth nodded to me, a gleam of his old cheeriness lighting the blue eyes; then:
“I don’t begin to think what it means, Doctor,” he replied, “but it was what your wife told me.”
“The cry in the courtyard?”
“Yes. And the telegram I found waiting when I got back.”
“Telegram?” Petrie echoed. He turned to me. “Did you send it, Greville?”
“No. Do you mean, Superintendent, you received a telegram from Luxor?”
“I do. I received one today.”
“So did I,” said Petrie, slowly. “Who, in sanity’s name, sent those telegrams, Greville?”
But to that question I could find no answer.
“It’s mysterious, I grant,” said Weymouth. “But whoever he is, he’s a friend. Mrs. Petrie thinks—”
“Yes,” said Petrie, eagerly.
Weymouth smiled in a very sad way, and:
“She always knew in the old days,” he added. “It was uncanny.”
“It was,” Petrie agreed.
“Well, over the phone tonight she told me—”
“Yes?”
“She told me she had the old feeling.”
“Not—?”
“So I understood, Doctor. I didn’t waste another minute. I phoned Heliopolis and by a great stroke of luck found Jameson Hunter there with a bus, commissioned to pick up an American party now in Assouan. He was leaving in the morning, but I arranged with him to leave tonight.”
“Moonlight is bad for landing unless one knows the territory very well,” Jameson Hunter interrupted. “Fortunately I knew of a good spot outside here, and I know another just behind Der-el-Bahari. If we crash, it will be a bad show for Airways.”
We hurried out to where a car waited, Dr. Petrie personally carrying the bag with its precious contents; and soon, to that ceaseless tooting which characterizes Egyptian drivers, we were dashing through the narrow streets with pedestrians leaping like hares from right and left of our course.
Outside the town we ran into a cultivated area, but only quite a narrow belt. Here there was a road of sorts. We soon left this and were bumping and swaying over virgin, untamed desert. On we went, and on, in the bright moonlight. I seemed to have stepped over the borderline of reality. The glorious blaze of stars above me had become unreal, unfamiliar. My companions were unreal—a dream company.
All were silent except Jameson Hunter, whose constant ejaculations of “Jumping Jupiter!” when we took an unusually bad bump indicated that he at least had not succumbed to that sense of mystery which had claimed the rest of us.
On a long, gentle slope dangerously terminated by a ravine, the plane rested. Our baggage was quickly transferred from the car and we climbed on board. A second before the roar of the propeller washed out conversation:
“Hunter,” said Weymouth, “stretch her to the full. It’s a race to save a man from living death…”
CHAPTER TWO
Rima
It was bumpy traveling and I had never been a good sailor. Jameson Hunter stuck pretty closely to the river but saved miles, of course, on the many long bends, notably on that big sweep immediately below Luxor, where, leaving the Nile Valley north of Farshût, we crossed fifty miles of practically arid desert, heading east-southeast for Kûrna.
I was in poor condition, what with lack of sleep and lack of meals; and I will not enlarge upon my state of discomfort beyond saying that I felt utterly wretched. Sometimes I dozed; and then Rima’s grave eyes would seem to be watching me in that maddeningly doubtful way. Once I dreamed that the slender ivory hands of Madame Ingomar beckoned to me…
I awoke in a cold perspiration. Above the roar of the propeller I seemed to hear her bell-like, hypnotic voice…
Who was this shadowy figure, feared by Petrie, by his wife—by Weymouth? What had he to do with the chief’s sudden death? Were these people deliberately mystifying me, or were they afraid to tell me what they suspected?
Forester was convinced that Barton was dead. I could not doubt it. But in the incomprehensible message scribbled at the last, Petrie seemed to have discovered a hope which was not apparent to me. Weymouth’s words had reinforced it.
“A race to save a man from living death.”
Evidently he too, believed… believed what?
It was no sort of problem for one in my condition, but at least I had done my job quicker than I could have hoped. Luck had been with me.
Above all, my own personal experience proved that there was something in it. Who had sent the telegrams? Who had uttered that cry in the courtyard? And why had I been followed to Cairo and followed back? Thank heaven, at last I had shaken off that leering, oblique-eyed spy.
Jameson Hunter searched for and eventually found the landing place which he had in mind—a flat, red-gray stretch east of the old caravan road.
I was past reliable observation, but personally I could see nothing of the camp. This perhaps was not surprising as it nestled at the head of a wâdi, represented from our present elevation by an irregular black streak.
However, I was capable of appreciating that the selected spot could not be more than half a mile west of it. Hunter brought off a perfect landing, and with a swimming head I found myself tottering to the door.
When I had scrambled down:
“Wait a minute,” said Petrie. “Ah, here’s my bag. You’ve been through a stiff time, Greville. I am going to prescribe.”
His prescription wa
s a shot of brandy. It did me a power of good.
“If we had known,” said Hunter; “some sandwiches would have been a worthy effort. But the whole thing was so rushed—I hadn’t time to think.”
He grinned cheerfully.
“Sorry my Phantom-Rolls isn’t here to meet us,” he said. “Someone must have mislaid it. It’s a case of hoofing, but the going’s good.”
Carrying our baggage, we set out in the moonlight. We had all fallen silent now, even Jameson Hunter. Only our crunching footsteps broke the stillness. I think there is no place in the world so calculated to impress the spirit of man as this small piece of territory surrounding those two valleys where the quiet dead of Egypt lie. At night, when the moon sails full, he would be a pitiful soul who, passing that way, failed to feel the touch of eternity.
For my own part, as familiar landmarks appeared, a dreadful unrest compounded of sorrow and hope began to take possession of me. Above all, selfishly no doubt, I asked myself again and again— had Rima returned?
We were not expected until morning when the Cairo train arrived. Consequently I was astounded when on mounting the last ridge west of the wâdi I saw Forester hurrying to meet us. Of course, I might have known, had I been capable of associating two ideas, that the sound of our approach must have aroused the camp.
Forester began to run.
Bad news casts a long shadow before it. I forgot my nausea, my weariness. It came to me like a revelation that something fresh had occurred—something even worse than that of which I had carried news to Cairo.
I was not alone in my premonition. I saw Weymouth grasp Petrie’s arm.
Forester began shouting:
“Is that you, Greville? Thank God you’ve come!”
Now, breathless, he joined us.
“What is it?” I asked. “What else has happened?”
“Only this, old man,” he panted. “We locked the chief’s body in the big hut, as you remember. I had serious doubts about notifying the authorities. And tonight about dusk I went to… look at him.”
He grasped me by both shoulders.
“Greville!” Even in the moonlight I could see the wildness in his eyes. “His body had vanished.”
