by Sax Rohmer
A sickly sweet exotic perfume stole to my nostrils… I knew it!
To crouch there inactive with definite terror beginning to claim me was next to impossible; and I wondered why Nayland Smith had imposed so appalling a task. I wondered where he was—I wondered if he had seen what I could see—knew what I knew.
The answer came swiftly, almost silently. I heard a dull, nauseating thud, followed by a second, heavier thud on the carpet. Nayland Smith’s voice came in a tense whisper:
“Don’t stir, Greville.”
My heart was beating like a sledge-hammer.
I began to count the seconds… Fully a minute passed in absolutely unbroken silence.
Nayland Smith, I realized now, had been concealed in one of two recesses flanking the projecting fireplace. This same formation occurred in my own room, and might betoken a girder or platform, or possibly a flue. Formerly, the Park Avenue had been fitted with open coal fires.
Another minute passed. Nothing happened. The suspense began to grow intolerable. A third minute commenced—then a sound broke that electric stillness; a soft shuffling sound, like that which had heralded the approach of the Arabian dwarf. It was all the more obvious now since the back of the fireplace had been displaced, and it resembled that of a heavy body moving in a narrow space.
Sounds of movement grew suddenly louder and then ceased altogether.
Silence fell again. This, I believe, was the least endurable moment of all. Every sense told me that someone was peering out into the room. But I hadn’t the slightest idea what to expect—nor, if attack were coming, what form it would take!
Soft padding.
Silence.
A whispered phrase came like a hiss out of the darkness:
“Enta raih fên?” (Where has he gone?)
The words were Arab—but not spoken by an Arab!
Yet I gathered that the speaker, in what I judged to be a state of excitement, had abandoned his own tongue in favor of that of the murderous dwarf, whose absence clearly puzzled him. But I had little time for thought.
There came a rush, and a crash which shook the room… a shot!—a flash of dim light and the tinkle of broken glass! The bullet had shattered the window above my head… Then:
“The switch, Greville!” came Nayland Smith’s voice. “Over the bed!”
I sprang up as well as my cramped limbs would permit, jumped onto the bed, and groped for the pendant switch.
A sound of panting and gurgling came from somewhere down on the carpet between the bed and the fireplace; loud banging on the floor. Presently I found the switch, and was dazzled when the room became flooded with light. I jumped across to the other side of the bed. I could hear racing footsteps in the corridor outside, excited voices, movement all about…
At my feet sprawled a man in pajamas, his head thrown back and his eyes staring upward, almost starting from their sockets. Nayland Smith knelt upon him, his right hand clutching the throat of the prostrate man, his left pressing to the floor sinewy brown fingers in which a pistol was gripped.
“Get his gun!” he snapped, without releasing that strangle-hold.
I slipped around the combatants and snatched the pistol from that virile grasp. As I stooped, I had my first proper view of the captive…
He was the man I had seen in the corridor—Mr. Solkel!
A bell was ringing furiously. Someone was banging on the outer door.
“Open!” Smith panted.
Half under the bed lay the hideous dwarf, motionless.
Weymouth’s voice was raised outside in the corridor now.
“Hello, there!” he bellowed. “Open this door! Be quick, or we shall have to force it!”
“Open!” Smith rapped irritably.
I turned and ran to the door.
One glance of incredulity Weymouth gave; then, followed by Fletcher and two others who wore the Park Avenue livery, he rushed past me.
“Good God!” I heard. “Sir Denis!” Then: “Are you mad, sir? You’re strangling Swâzi Pasha!”
“Our first captures!” said Nayland Smith.
An overcoated figure in charge of two detectives dressed as footmen disappeared from the suite.
“Your mistake, Weymouth, was natural enough. In appearance he is Swâzi Pasha.”
“He is,” said Dr. Petrie, who had joined us in the apartment—all the hotel had been aroused by the shot. “I met Swâzi in Cairo only a year ago; and if the man under arrest is not Swâzi Pasha, then I shall never trust my eyes again.”
“Really, Petrie?” said Nayland Smith, and smiled in that way which lent him such a boyish appearance. “Yet”—he pointed to the open fireplace—“the metal back of this recess has been removed very ingeniously. It has been reattached to the opening which it was designed to mask, but tonight as you see it hangs down in the ventilation shaft by reason of the fact that a stout piece of canvas has been glued to the back so as to act as a hinge.
“Can you suggest any reason why Swâzi Pasha should remove the back of his fireplace and why he should climb down a rope ladder from the apartment of a certain Mr. Solkel in the middle of the night?”
It was Weymouth who answered the question, and:
“I admit I can’t, Sir Denis,” he said.
“No wonder! The details of this amazing plot are only beginning to dawn upon me by degrees. In addition to the ladder which undoubtedly communicates with Room 41 above us, there’s this stout length of rope with a noose at the end. Can you imagine what purpose it was intended to serve?”
We all stared into the recess. As Smith had said, and as we all had noticed, such a ladder as he described hung in the shaft, possibly as a means of communication between the two floors. A length of rope had been carried into the room. The noose with which it ended lay upon the carpet at our feet.
“I shall make a suggestion,” Smith went on. “Mr. Solkel has been occupying Number 41, I understand, for a week past. He has employed his time well! We shall find that the imitation tiling at the back of his fireplace has been removed in a similar fashion to this… because Suite Number 5 was reserved for Swâzi Pasha as long as a month ago. The purpose of the ladder is obvious enough. A moment’s consideration will convince us, I believe, of the use to which this noose was intended to be put. The business of the dwarf, a highly trained specialist—now in Vine Street Police Station—was quietly to enter Swâzi Pasha’s room and to silence him with a wad of cottonwool which you recall he clutched in his hand, and which was saturated with some narcotic. The smell is still perceptible. Possibly you, Petrie, can tell us what it is?”
Petrie shook his head doubtfully; but:
“I have preserved it,” he said. “It’s upstairs. Some preparation of Indian hemp, I think.”
“Cannabis indica was always a favorite, I seem to recall, with this group,” Smith said grimly. “Probably you are right. The pasha being rendered quietly unconscious, it was the duty of the dwarf to slip the noose under his arms and to assist the man waiting in the room above to haul the body up. These dwarfs, of whom the first living specimen now lies in a cell in Vine Street—the only Hashishîn, I believe, ever captured by European police—have the strength of gorillas, although they are of small stature. The body of the insensible man being carried up to Number 41 by the dwarf on the rope ladder, assisted by the efforts of ‘Mr. Solkel’ above, the pasha was to be placed in bed. Once there, no doubt it was their amiable intention to dispose of him in some manner calculated to suggest that he had died of heart failure.
“Sokel would have taken his place.
“The distressing death of an obscure guest from Smyrna would have been hushed up as much as possible by the hotel authorities— and Mr. Solkel would have lunched with the prime minister in the morning. I am even prepared to believe that the back of the fireplace in Number 41 would have been carefully replaced; although I fail to see how the same could have been done for this one. The dwarf, no doubt, would have been despatched by the new pasha in a crate as a piece of
baggage to some suitable address.”
“But how did the dwarf get in?” I exclaimed.
“Almost certainly in the wardrobe trunk which Mr. Solkel received today,” Weymouth answered.
“You’re right,” Smith confirmed.
“But,” I cried, “how could the impostor, granting his extraordinary resemblance to Swâzi Pasha, have carried on?”
“Quite easily,” Smith assured me. “He knew all that Swâzi knew. He was perfectly familiar with the latter’s movements and with his peculiarly secluded life. He was intimately acquainted with his domestic affairs.”
“But,” said Petrie, “who is he?”
“Swâzi Pasha’s twin brother,” was the astounding reply; “his deadly enemy, and a member of the Council of Seven.”
“But the real Swâzi Pasha?”
“Is at the Platz Hotel,” Smith replied, “masquerading as a member of his own suite.”
He was silent for a moment, and, then:
“The first time I ever used a sandbag,” he said reflectively, weighing one of those weapons in his hand. “But having actually reached Victoria without incident, I determined that this was the point of attack. A transfer of overcoats was made on the train, and the muffled gentleman who entered the Park Avenue was not Swâzi Pasha, but I! Multan Bey, the secretary, escaped at a suitable moment and left me in sole possession of Suite Number 5.
“I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared for anything. And you must remember, Petrie,”—turning to the latter—“that I had had some little experience of the methods of this group! I heard the sound, faint though it was, high up in the ventilation shaft—the same which disturbed you, Greville. Then a hazy idea of what to expect dawned on my mind. A sandbag, the history of which I must tell you later, was in my trunk in the lobby. As I came out to secure it, since. I considered it to be the most suitable instrument for my purpose, I heard your soft but rapid footsteps, Greville. I realized that someone was approaching the door; that he must be stopped knocking or ringing at all costs, since my purpose was to catch the enemy red-handed.”
There was a pause, and then:
“It’s very late,” said Dr. Petrie slowly, his gaze set upon Nayland Smith; “but I think, Smith, you owe us some further explanation.”
“I agree,” Nayland Smith replied quietly.
It was a strange party which gathered in the small hours in Dr. Petrie’s sitting room. Petrie’s wife, curled up in a shadowy corner of the divan, seemed in her fragile beauty utterly apart from this murderous business which had brought us together. Yet I knew that in the past she had been intimately linked with the monstrous organization which again was stretching out gaunt hands to move pieces on the chessboard of the world. Weymouth, in an armchair, smoked in stolid silence. Petrie stood on on the hearthrug watching Nayland Smith. And I, seated by the writing table, listened to a terse, unemotional account of an experience such as few men have passed through. Nayland Smith, speaking rapidly and smoking all the time—striking many matches, for his pipe constantly went out— paced up and down the room.
“You have asked me, Petrie,” he said, “to explain why I allowed you to believe that I was dead. The answer is this: I had learned during, my investigations in Egypt that an inquirer who has no official existence possesses definite advantages. My dear fellow,” — he turned impulsively to the doctor—“I knew it would hurt, but I knew there was a cure. Forgive me. The fate of millions was at stake. I will tell you the steps by which I arrived at this decision.
“I don’t know how much you recall, Greville, of that meeting at the house of the Sheikh Ismail. But you remember that I recognized the venerable mandarin who received us in the lobby? It was none other than Ki Ming, president of the Council of Seven! You remember the raid in London, Weymouth, and the diplomatic evasion by which he slipped through our fingers?”
“Very clearly,” Weymouth replied.
“One of the finest brains and most formidable personalities in the world today. I rank him second only to Dr. Fu-Manchu. I have yet to test the full strength of the lady known as ‘Madame Ingomar,’ but possibly she is deserving of a place. We shall see. I doubted if he knew me, Greville. Even had I been sure, I don’t know what I could have done. But at least I knew my man and saw our danger.”
“I had seen it all along,” I interrupted.
Nayland Smith smiled, and:
“A V. C. would not be too high a reward for your courage on that occasion!” he said. “Had the mandarin been sure, he would never have admitted us to the council. He only suspected; but he took instant steps to check these suspicions. I didn’t like the way Sheikh Ismail looked at us when he came in.
“A messenger had been despatched to el-Khârga to make sure that the Tibetan deputies had actually set out. He found them on the way. They must have succeeded in attracting his attention. That messenger was the third member of the Burmese party—the Dacoit who was absent from the council.
“The two gong notes told me what had happened. As Ki Ming began to speak—denouncing us—I glanced back.
“That gigantic Negro doorkeeper—he had entered and approached us silently as a cat—was in the act of throwing a silk scarf over your head!… the third Dacoit stood at my elbow.
“One’s brain acts swiftly at such times. I realized that the mandarin’s orders were that we be taken alive. But simultaneously, I realized that the Sheikh el-Jébal had his atrociously wicked eyes fixed upon me in an unmistakable way.
“These thoughts, these actions, occupied seconds. I could not possibly save you. Resistance to such men and such numbers was out of the question. I could only hope to save myself and to rescue you by cunning.”
Such a statement, spoken incisively, coolly, from another than Sir Denis Nayland Smith must have sounded equivocal. Coming from him, it sounded what it was—the considered decision of a master strategist.
“You remember our position, Greville? We weren’t ten paces from the steps on the top of which Fah Lo Suee stood. Anticipating the intention of the Old Man of the Mountain and of the Burman who now sprang like a leopard, I ducked. He missed me… and I raced across the floor, up the steps, and before madame could realize my purpose, had one arm around her waist and the muzzle of a pistol tight against her ear!”
Nayland Smith paused for a moment, and we remained silent, spellbound, until:
“She is not human, that woman,” came a hushed voice. “She is a vampire—she has his blood in her.”
All eyes turned in the direction of the divan. Mrs. Petrie was the speaker.
“I agree with you,” Nayland Smith replied coolly. “A human woman would have screamed, fought, or fainted. Fah Lo Suee merely smiled, and scornfully. Nevertheless I had won, for the moment. Her lips smiled, but her cold green eyes read the truth in mine.
“‘Tell them,’ I directed her, ‘that if anyone stirs a finger I shall shoot you!’
“She continued to smile, and ‘Please move your pistol,’ she asked, ‘so that I may speak.’ I moved the pistol swiftly from her head to her heart. She looked aside at me and paid me a compliment which I shall always value: ‘You are clever,’ she said. Then she spoke to the petrified murderers in the room below.
“I risked one swift glance… You had disappeared, Greville. The Negro had carried you out!… Fah Lo Suee began to speak. The cloak of her father has fallen upon her. She spoke as coolly as if I had not been present. First in Chinese, then in Hindustani, and thirdly in Arabic.
“Then: ‘Order all to remain where they are,’ I said —‘except one, who is to give instructions for my friend to be brought to meet me outside the house.’ She gave these orders—and the frustrated Dacoit, who still crouched on the mattress where he had fallen, went to carry out my directions.
“‘Lead the way!’ I said.
“She turned, I knew I was safe for the moment. We entered a little room upon which the big doors opened. This room was not empty… She was well guarded. And never can I forget her guards! Ha
lf a dozen words, however, reduced them to impotence. I could not afford to take my eyes off Fah Lo Suee for long; but nevertheless, as we passed through that anteroom, I solved a mystery. I grasped the explanation of something which has been puzzling us since it became evident that the first step in this new campaign of devilry was directed towards the Tomb of the Black Ape.”
He paused, beginning to knock out his pipe, and:
“Yes, Sir Denis,” I said eagerly, “go on!”
He turned to me smiling grimly.
“This is your particular province, Greville,” he continued, “which fate brought into mine. It isn’t any secret of the ancient Egyptians; it’s something more dangerous—more useful. For in that room, Petrie,” he turned now to the doctor—“were phials, instruments, and queer-looking yellow-bound books. Also several caskets, definitely of Chinese workmanship.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Petrie confessed.
“Possibly I can enlighten you,” said Nayland Smith, “for I think I have solved the mystery. At some time between his supposed death in 1917 and this year, Dr. Fu-Manchu concealed there the essential secrets of his mastery of the Eastern world; the unique drugs, the unknown works dealing with their employment—and the powers, whether tangible—amulets and signets—or instructional and contained in his papers, which gave him control of practically all the fanatical sects of the East.”
“Good God!” Weymouth murmured.
“This was what Dr. Fu-Manchu’s daughter went to Egypt to recover. This was why Professor Zeitland was murdered. Barton escaped by a miracle. Their possession, you understand…”
He paused in his restless promenade and looked about from face to face.
“Their possession made her mistress of the most formidable criminal organization in the world!”
“I walked with Fah Lo Suee through that strange house, across a path to a garden at the back—not that through which we had entered— and out onto a narrow road bordering the wall on the side which faced the palm grove. This path was deserted.
