IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious
inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange
chronicle. And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had
frightened me.
I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted down the
following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How had the murderer
escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber
stopper? (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the
green mist a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's
imagination--or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his
depth. "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the
Psychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of
Mandalay," he had said only that morning.
"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. For
my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr.
Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for
yourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work so much
upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are
established."
I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe in
hand. The house was quite still, for my landlady and all the small
household were out.
Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
door open. In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took out
my revolver, and stood up.
There WAS a sound. Someone or something was creeping upstairs in the
dark!
Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it. But the
rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially
opened door. I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the
horrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
"Who's there?" I cried. "Answer, or I fire!"
"Ah! no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical. "Put it down--that
pistol. Quick! I must speak to you."
The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in a
hooded cloak. My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence, looking
into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--if her own
statement could be credited, slave. On two occasions this girl, whose
association with the Doctor was one of the most profound mysteries of
the case, had risked--I cannot say what; unnameable punishment,
perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death.
For what was she come now?
Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, and
watching me with great passionate eyes.
"How--" I began.
But she shook her head impatiently.
"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must
arrange to replace the lock."
She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my
shoulders. "I have come again to ask you to take me away from him,"
she said simply.
And she lifted her face to me.
Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
Have I said that she was beautiful? It can convey no faint conception
of her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the
East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the most
seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon. In that electric
moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had bartered
honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I said
firmly, but my voice was not quite my own. "It is quite absurd to talk
of slavery here in England. You are a free agent, or you could not be
here now. Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a
cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress.
"No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia, the
desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the
shame. Bah!"
How beautiful she was in her indignation!
"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that
to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who
is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?"
She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my
eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in
gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim
shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit
for the walled gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible,
in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said,
wrapping her cloak quickly about her. "You see me as I am." Her
garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting
I had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.
"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secrets
of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--seen her
thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have seen men flogged
until they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself.
Death! What does it matter?"
She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and with
only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such
words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have
been a cultured European.
"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service. Tell
me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is my
master I will never betray him. Tear me from him--by force, do you
understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer. Ah! but
you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'--your police.
Police! Ah, I have said enough."
A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laid
her hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering among
the curved black lashes.
"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never understand
and release me from him! I must go. Already I have remained too long.
Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out--at a hotel, where you will,
but do not stay here."
"And Nayland Smith?"
"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my
lips? You are in danger--you hear me, in danger! Go away from here
to-night."
She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she
turned, stamping her foot passionately.
"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Be
warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something that
sounded like a sob.
I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the
arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down
the stairs, I heard her open and close the door--the door of which Dr.
Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me,
and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith
came running up.
"Did you see her?" I began.
But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of
my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in
bewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into
the familiar cracked briar.
"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and
undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You
should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had
that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."
"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
me a warning. She disarms me."
"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know the
Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position. She
fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you! If
you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her
down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she
knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection
that speech was forced from her. I am not joking; it is so, I assure
you. And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful
and strong!"
"Smith," I said, "be serious. You know what her warning meant before."
"I can guess what it means now," he rapped. "Hallo!"
Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
"No one at home?" said my friend. "I will go. I think I know what it
is."
A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger. I left him
behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which
subsequently he found. This will be fragments of the mummy."
"What! You think the mummy was abstracted?"
"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the
sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House. A sarcophagus, I find, is
practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes
evident--ventilation. How this person killed Strozza I have yet to
learn."
"Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the green
mist?"
Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways. Remember,
we have only one man's word that it existed. It is at best a confusing
datum to which we must not attach a factitious importance."
He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the
lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table. Suddenly the
lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in
tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box,
so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
Then happened a singular thing.
Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--an oily
vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and of
some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life!
Fu-Manchu sent that box!" I threw my arms round him. As he bent
forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils. I dragged him
back and all but pitched him out on to the landing. We entered my
bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tanned
face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identical
with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to be
something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what! It is the fumes of
chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works. We have been
blind--I particularly. Don't you see? There was no one in the
sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have
suffocated a regiment!"
Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a
scheme? I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy case
being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid
of the string--after Sir Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I take
it, is heavier than air."
"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a half
times heavier than air. You can pour it from jar to jar like a
liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask. In these respects this
stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would not
interest you. The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, and
the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining--except the smell."
"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar
with it. You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by the
arrival of Sir Lionel? The scent of those infernal flowers must
partially have drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the
stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where
Kwee was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient
draught to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the
floor now. I will go and open both windows."
Nayland raised his haggard face.
"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel
Barton," he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude,
Petrie?--contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is
justified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is
by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."