[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales October, November, December 1929.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_1. The Face in the Mist_
"We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go."
--Omar Khayyam.
The horror first took concrete form amid that most unconcrete of all
things--a hashish dream. I was off on a timeless, spaceless journey
through the strange lands that belong to this state of being, a million
miles away from earth and all things earthly; yet I became cognizant
that something was reaching across the unknown voids--something that
tore ruthlessly at the separating curtains of my illusions and
intruded itself into my visions.
I did not exactly return to ordinary waking life, yet I was conscious
of a seeing and a recognizing that was unpleasant and seemed out of
keeping with the dream I was at that time enjoying. To one who has
never known the delights of hashish, my explanation must seem chaotic
and impossible. Still, I was aware of a rending of mists and then the
Face intruded itself into my sight. I thought at first it was merely
a skull; then I saw that it was a hideous yellow instead of white,
and was endowed with some horrid form of life. Eyes glimmered deep in
the sockets and the jaws moved as if in speech. The body, except for
the high, thin shoulders, was vague and indistinct, but the hands,
which floated in the mists before and below the skull, were horribly
vivid and filled me with crawling fears. They were like the hands of
a mummy, long, lean and yellow, with knobby joints and cruel curving
talons.
Then, to complete the vague horror which was swiftly taking possession
of me, a voice spoke--imagine a man so long dead that his vocal organ
had grown rusty and unaccustomed to speech. This was the thought which
struck me and made my flesh crawl as I listened.
"A strong brute and one who might be useful somehow. See that he is
given all the hashish he requires."
Then the face began to recede, even as I sensed that I was the subject
of conversation, and the mists billowed and began to close again.
Yet for a single instant a scene stood out with startling clarity.
I gasped--or sought to. For over the high, strange shoulder of the
apparition another face stood out clearly for an instant, as if the
owner peered at me. Red lips, half parted, long dark eyelashes, shading
vivid eyes, a shimmery cloud of hair. Over the shoulder of Horror,
breath-taking beauty for an instant looked at me.
_2. The Hashish Slave_
"Up from Earth's center through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate."
--Omar Khayyam.
My dream of the skull-face was borne over that usually uncrossable
gap that lies between hashish enchantment and humdrum reality. I sat
cross-legged on a mat in Yun Shatu's Temple of Dreams and gathered the
fading forces of my decaying brain to the task of remembering events
and faces.
This last dream was so entirely different from any I had ever had
before, that my waning interest was roused to the point of inquiring as
to its origin. When I first began to experiment with hashish, I sought
to find a physical or psychic basis for the wild flights of illusion
pertaining thereto, but of late I had been content to enjoy without
seeking cause and effect.
Whence this unaccountable sensation of familiarity in regard to that
vision? I took my throbbing head between my hands and laboriously
sought a clue. A living dead man and a girl of rare beauty who had
looked over his shoulder. Then I remembered.
Back in the fog of days and nights which veils a hashish addict's
memory, my money had given out. It seemed years or possibly centuries,
but my stagnant reason told me that it had probably been only a few
days. At any rate, I had presented myself at Yun Shatu's sordid dive
as usual and had been thrown out by the great negro Hassim when it was
learned I had no more money.
My universe crashing to pieces about me, and my nerves humming like
taut piano wires for the vital need that was mine, I crouched in the
gutter and gibbered bestially, till Hassim swaggered out and stilled my
yammerings with a blow that felled me, half stunned.
Then as I presently rose, staggeringly and with no thought save of the
river which flowed with cool murmur so near me--as I rose, a light hand
was laid like the touch of a rose on my arm. I turned with a frightened
start, and stood spell-bound before the vision of loveliness which met
my gaze. Dark eyes limpid with pity surveyed me and the little hand on
my ragged sleeve drew me toward the door of the Dream Temple. I shrank
back, but a low voice, soft and musical, urged me, and filled with a
trust that was strange, I shambled along with my beautiful guide.
At the door Hassim met us, cruel hands lifted and a dark scowl on his
ape-like brow, but as I cowered there, expecting a blow, he halted
before the girl's upraised hand and her word of command which had taken
on an imperious note.
I did not understand what she said, but I saw dimly, as in a fog, that
she gave the black man money, and she led me to a couch where she had
me recline and arranged the cushions as if I were king of Egypt instead
of a ragged, dirty renegade who lived only for hashish. Her slim hand
was cool on my brow for a moment, and then she was gone and Yussef Ali
came bearing the stuff for which my very soul shrieked--and soon I was
wandering again through those strange and exotic countries that only a
hashish slave knows.
Now as I sat on the mat and pondered the dream of the skull-face I
wondered more. Since the unknown girl had led me back into the dive,
I had come and gone as before, when I had plenty of money to pay
Yun Shatu. Someone certainly was paying him for me, and while my
sub-conscious mind had told me it was the girl, my rusty brain had
failed to grasp the fact entirely, or to wonder why. What need of
wondering? So someone paid and the vivid-hued dreams continued, what
cared I? But now I wondered. For the girl who had protected me from
Hassim and had brought the hashish for me was the same girl I had seen
in the skull-face dream.
Through the soddenness of my degradation the lure of her struck like
a knife piercing my heart and strangely revived the memories of the
days when I was a man like other men--not yet a sullen, cringing slave
of dreams. Far and dim they were, shimmery islands in the mist of
years--and what a dark sea lay between!
I looked at my ragged sleeve and the dirty, claw-like hand protruding
from it; I gazed through the hanging smoke which fogged the sordid
room, at the low bunks along the wall whereon lay the blankly staring
dreamers--slaves, like me, of hashish or of opium. I gazed at the
slippered Chinamen gliding softly to and fro bearing pipes or roasting
balls of concentrated purgatory over tiny flickering fires. I gazed at
Hassim standing, arms folded, beside the door like a great statue of
black basalt.
And I shuddered and hid my face in my hands because with the faint
dawning of returning manhood, I knew that this last and most cruel
dream was futile--I had crossed an ocean over which I could never
return, had cut myself off from the world of normal men and women.
Naught remained now but to drown this dream as I had drowned all my
others--swiftly and with hope that I should soon attain that Ultimate
Ocean which lies beyond all dreams.
So these fleeting moments of lucidity, of longing, that tear aside the
veils of all dope slaves--unexplainable, without hope of attainment.
So I went back to my empty dreams, to my fantasmagoria of illusions;
but sometimes, like a sword cleaving a mist, through the high lands
and the low lands and seas of my visions floated, like half-forgotten
music, the sheen of dark eyes and shimmery hair.
You ask how I, Stephen Costigan, American and a man of some
attainments and culture, came to lie in a filthy dive of London's
Limehouse? The answer is simple--no jaded debauchee, I, seeking
new sensations in the mysteries of the Orient. I answer--Argonne!
Heavens, what deeps and heights of horror lurk in that one word alone!
Shell-shocked--shell-torn. Endless days and nights without end and
roaring red hell over No Man's Land where I lay shot and bayoneted to
shreds of gory flesh. My body recovered, how I know not; my mind never
did.
And the leaping fires and shifting shadows in my tortured brain drove
me down and down, along the stairs of degradation, uncaring until at
last I found surcease in Yun Shatu's Temple of Dreams, where I slew
my red dreams in other dreams--the dreams of hashish whereby a man
may descend to the lower pits of the reddest hells or soar into those
unnamable heights where the stars are diamond pinpoints beneath his
feet.
Now the visions of the sot, the beast, were mine. I attained the
unattainable, stood face to face with the unknown and in cosmic
calmness knew the unguessable. And was content after a fashion, until
the sight of burnished hair and scarlet lips swept away my dream-built
universe and left me shuddering among its ruins.
_3. The Master of Doom_
"And He that toss'd you down into the Field,
He knows about it all--He knows! He knows!"
--Omar Khayyam.
A hand shook me roughly as I emerged languidly from my latest debauch.
"The Master wishes you! Up, swine!"
Hassim it was who shook me and who spoke.
"To hell with the Master!" I answered, for I hated Hassim--and feared
him.
"Up with you or you get no more hashish," was the brutal response, and
I rose in trembling haste.
I followed the huge black man and he led the way to the rear of the
building, stepping in and out among the wretched dreamers on the floor.
"Muster all hands on deck!" droned a sailor in a bunk. "All hands!"
Hassim flung open the door at the rear and motioned me to enter. I had
never before passed through that door and had supposed it led into
Yun Shatu's private quarters. But it was furnished only with a cot, a
bronze idol of some sort before which incense burned, and a heavy table.
Hassim gave me a sinister glance and seized the table as if to spin it
about. It turned as if it stood on a revolving platform and a section
of the floor turned with it, revealing a hidden doorway in the floor.
Steps led downward in the darkness.
Hassim lighted a candle and with a brusk gesture invited me to descend.
I did so, with the sluggish obedience of the dope addict, and he
followed, closing the door above us by means of an iron lever fastened
to the under side of the floor. In the semi-darkness we went down the
rickety steps, some nine or ten I should say, and then came upon a
narrow corridor.
Here Hassim again took the lead, holding the candle high in front of
him. I could scarcely see the sides of this cave-like passageway but
knew that it was not wide. The flickering light showed it to be bare
of any sort of furnishings save for a number of strange-looking chests
which lined the walls--receptacles containing opium and other dope, I
thought.
A continuous scurrying and the occasional glint of small red eyes
haunted the shadows, betraying the presence of vast numbers of the
great rats which infest the Thames waterfront of that section.
Then more steps loomed out of the dark in front of us as the corridor
came to an abrupt end. Hassim led the way up and at the top knocked
four times against what seemed the under side of a floor. A hidden door
opened and a flood of soft, illusive light streamed through.
Hassim hustled me up roughly and I stood blinking in such a setting as
I had never seen in my wildest flights of vision. I stood in a jungle
of palm-trees through which wriggled a million vivid-hued dragons!
Then, as my startled eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw that
I had not been suddenly transferred to some other planet, as I had at
first thought. The palm-trees were there, and the dragons, but the
trees were artificial and stood in great pots and the dragons writhed
across heavy tapestries which hid the walls.
The room itself was a monstrous affair--inhumanly large, it seemed to
me. A thick smoke, yellowish and tropical in suggestion, seemed to
hang over all, veiling the ceiling and baffling upward glances. This
smoke, I saw, emanated from an altar in front of the wall to my left.
I started. Through the saffron billowing fog two eyes, hideously large
and vivid, glittered at me. The vague outlines of some bestial idol
took indistinct shape. I flung an uneasy glance about, marking the
Oriental divans and couches and the bizarre furnishings, and then my
eyes halted and rested on a lacquer screen just in front of me.
I could not pierce it and no sound came from beyond it, yet I felt eyes
searing into my consciousness through it, eyes that burned through my
very soul. A strange aura of evil flowed from that strange screen with
its weird carvings and unholy decorations.
Hassim salaamed profoundly before it and then, without speaking,
stepped back and folded his arms, statue-like.
A voice suddenly broke the heavy and oppressive silence.
"You who are a swine, would you like to be a man again?"
I started. The tone was inhuman, cold--more, there was a suggestion of
long disuse of the vocal organs--the voice I had heard in my dream!
"Yes," I replied, trance-like, "I would like to be a man again."
Silence ensued for a space; then the voice came again with a sinister
whispering undertone at the back of its sound like bats flying through
a cavern.
"I shall make you a man again because I am a friend to all broken men.
Not for a price shall I do it, nor for gratitude. And I give you a sign
to seal my promise and my vow. Thrust your hand through the screen."
At these strange and almost unintelligible words I stood perplexed, and
then, as the unseen voice repeated the last command, I stepped forward
and thrust my hand through a slit which opened silently in the screen.
I felt my wrist seized in an iron grip and something seven times colder
than ice touched the inside of my hand. Then my wrist was released, and
drawing forth my hand I saw a strange symbol traced in blue close to
the base of my thumb--a thing like a scorpion.
The voice spoke again in a sibilant language I did not understand, and
Hassim stepped forward deferentially. He reached about the screen and
then turned to me, holding a goblet of some amber-colored liquid which
he proffered me with an ironical bow. I took it hesitatingly.
"Drink and fear not," said the unseen voice. "It is only an Egyptian
wine with life-giving qualities."
So I raised the goblet and emptied it; the taste was not unpleasant,
and even as I handed the beaker to Hassim again, I seemed to feel new
life and vigor whip along my jaded veins.
"Remain at Yun Shatu's house," said the voice. "You will be given food
and a bed until you are strong enough to work for yourself. You will
use no hashish nor will you require any. Go!"
As in a daze, I followed Hassim back through the hidden door, down the
steps, along the dark corridor and up through the other door that let
us into the Temple of Dreams.
As we stepped from the rear chamber into the main room of the dreamers,
I turned to the negro wonderingly.
"Master? Master of what? Of Life?"
Hassim laughed, fiercely and sardonically.
"Master of Doom!"
_4. The Spider and the Fly_
"There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see."
--Omar Khayyam.
I sat on Yun Shatu's cushions and pondered with a clearness of mind new
and strange to me. As for that, all my sensations were new and strange.
I felt as if I had wakened from a monstrously long sleep, and though my
thoughts were sluggish, I felt as though the cobwebs which had clogged
them for so long had been partly brushed away.
I drew my hand across my brow, noting how it trembled. I was weak and
shaky and felt the stirrings of hunger--not for dope but for food. What
had been in the draft I had quenched in the chamber of mystery? And
why had the "Master" chosen me, out of all the other wretches of Yun
Shatu's, for regeneration?
And who was this Master? Somehow the word sounded vaguely familiar--I
sought laboriously to remember. Yes--I had heard it, lying half-waking
in the bunks or on the floor--whispered sibilantly by Yun Shatu or
by Hassim or by Yussef Ali, the Moor, muttered in their low-voiced
conversations and mingled always with words I could not understand. Was
not Yun Shatu, then, master of the Temple of Dreams? I had thought and
the other addicts thought that the withered Chinaman held undisputed
sway over this drab kingdom and that Hassim and Yussef Ali were his
servants. And the four China boys who roasted opium with Yun Shatu
and Yar Khan the Afghan and Santiago the Haitian and Ganra Singh, the
renegade Sikh--all in the pay of Yun Shatu, we supposed--bound to the
opium lord by bonds of gold or fear.
For Yun Shatu was a power in London's Chinatown and I had heard that
his tentacles reached across the seas into high places of mighty and
mysterious tongs. Was that Yun Shatu behind the lacquer screen? No; I
knew the Chinaman's voice and besides I had seen him puttering about in
the front of the Temple just as I went through the back door.
Another thought came to me. Often, lying half torpid, in the late hours
of night or in the early grayness of dawn, I had seen men and women
steal into the Temple, whose dress and bearing were strangely out of
place and incongruous. Tall, erect men, often in evening dress, with
their hats drawn low about their brows, and fine ladies, veiled, in
silks and furs. Never two of them came together, but always they came
separately and, hiding their features, hurried to the rear door, where
they entered and presently came forth again, hours later sometimes.
Knowing that the lust for dope finds resting-place in high positions
sometimes, I had never wondered overmuch, supposing that these were
wealthy men and women of society who had fallen victims to the craving,
and that somewhere in the back of the building there was a private
chamber for such. Yet now I wondered--sometimes these persons had
remained only a few moments--was it always opium for which they came,
or did they, too, traverse that strange corridor and converse with the
One behind the screen?
My mind dallied with the idea of a great specialist to whom came all
classes of people to find surcease from the dope habit. Yet it was
strange that such a one should select a dope-joint from which to
work--strange, too, that the owner of that house should apparently look
on him with so much reverence.
I gave it up as my head began to hurt with the unwonted effort of
thinking, and shouted for food. Yussef Ali brought it to me on a
tray, with a promptness which was surprizing. More, he salaamed as he
departed, leaving me to ruminate on the strange shift of my status in
the Temple of Dreams.
I ate, wondering what the One of the screen wanted with me. Not for an
instant did I suppose that his actions had been prompted by the reasons
he pretended; the life of the underworld had taught me that none of
its denizens leaned toward philanthropy. And underworld the chamber of
mystery had been, in spite of its elaborate and bizarre nature. And
where could it be located? How far had I walked along the corridor? I
shrugged my shoulders, wondering if it were not all a hashish-induced
dream; then my eye fell upon my hand--and the scorpion traced thereon.
"Muster all hands!" droned the sailor in the bunk. "All hands!"
* * * * *
To tell in detail of the next few days would be boresome to any who
have not tasted the dire slavery of dope. I waited for the craving to
strike me again--waited with sure sardonic hopelessness. All day, all
night--another day--then the miracle was forced upon my doubting brain.
Contrary to all theories and supposed facts of science and common sense
the craving had left me as suddenly and completely as a bad dream! At
first I could not credit my senses but believed myself to be still in
the grip of a dope nightmare. But it was true. From the time I quaffed
the goblet in the room of mystery, I felt not the slightest desire
for the stuff which had been life itself to me. This, I felt vaguely,
was somehow unholy and certainly opposed to all rules of nature.
If the dread being behind the screen had discovered the secret of
breaking hashish's terrible power, what other monstrous secrets had he
discovered and what unthinkable dominance was his? The suggestion of
evil crawled serpent-like through my mind.
I remained at Yun Shatu's house, lounging in a bunk or on cushions
spread upon the floor, eating and drinking at will, but now that I was
becoming a normal man again, the atmosphere became most revolting to
me and the sight of the wretches writhing in their dreams reminded me
unpleasantly of what I myself had been, and it repelled, nauseated me.
So one day, when no one was watching me, I rose and went out on the
street and walked along the waterfront. The air, burdened though it was
with smoke and foul scents, filled my lungs with strange freshness and
aroused new vigor in what had once been a powerful frame. I took new
interest in the sounds of men living and working, and the sight of a
vessel being unloaded at one of the wharfs actually thrilled me. The
force of longshoremen was short, and presently I found myself heaving
and lifting and carrying, and though the sweat coursed down my brow and
my limbs trembled at the effort, I exulted in the thought that at last
I was able to labor for myself again, no matter how low or drab the
work might be.
As I returned to the door of Yun Shatu's that evening--hideously
weary but with the renewed feeling of manhood that comes of honest
toil--Hassim met me at the door.
"You been where?" he demanded roughly.
"I've been working on the docks," I answered shortly.
"You don't need to work on docks," he snarled. "The Master got work for
you."
He led the way, and again I traversed the dark stairs and the corridor
under the earth. This time my faculties were alert and I decided that
the passageway could not be over thirty or forty feet in length. Again
I stood before the lacquer screen and again I heard the inhuman voice
of living death.
"I can give you work," said the voice. "Are you willing to work for me?"
I quickly assented. After all, in spite of the fear which the voice
inspired, I was deeply indebted to the owner.
"Good. Take these."
As I started toward the screen a sharp command halted me and Hassim
stepped forward and reaching behind took what was offered. This was a
bundle of pictures and papers, apparently.
"Study these," said the One behind the screen, "and learn all you can
about the man portrayed there-by. Yun Shatu will give you money; buy
yourself such clothes as seamen wear and take a room at the front of
the Temple. At the end of two days, Hassim will bring you to me again.
Go!"
The last impression I had, as the hidden door closed above me, was that
the eyes of the idol, blinking through the everlasting smoke, leered
mockingly at me.
The front of the Temple of Dreams consisted of rooms for rent, masking
the true purpose of the building under the guise of a waterfront
boarding-house. The police had made several visits to Yun Shatu but had
never gotten any incriminating evidence against him.
So in one of these rooms I took up my abode and set to work studying
the material given me.
The pictures were all of one man, a large man, not unlike me in build
and general facial outline, except that he wore a heavy beard and was
inclined to blondness whereas I am dark. The name, as written on the
accompanying papers, was Major Fairlan Morley, special commissioner to
Natal and the Transvaal. This office and title were new to me and I
wondered at the connection between an African commissioner and an opium
house on the Thames waterfront.
The papers consisted of extensive data evidently copied from authentic
sources and all dealing with Major Morley, and a number of private
documents considerably illuminating on the major's private life.
An exhaustive description was given of the man's personal appearance
and habits, some of which seemed very trivial to me. I wondered what
the purpose could be, and how the One behind the screen had come in
possession of papers of such intimate nature.
I could find no clue in answer to this question but bent all my
energies to the task set out for me. I owed a deep debt of gratitude to
the unknown man who required this of me and I was determined to repay
him to the best of my ability. Nothing, at this time, suggested a snare
to me.
_5. The Man on the Couch_
"What dam of lances sent thee forth to jest at dawn with Death?"
--Kipling.
At the expiration of two days, Hassim beckoned me as I stood in the
opium room. I advanced with a springy, resilient tread, secure in the
confidence that I had culled the Morley papers of all their worth. I
was a new man; my mental swiftness and physical readiness surprized
me--sometimes it seemed unnatural.
Hassim eyed me through narrowed lids and motioned me to follow, as
usual. As we crossed the room, my gaze fell upon a man who lay on
a couch close to the wall, smoking opium. There was nothing at all
suspicious about his ragged, unkempt clothes, his dirty, bearded face
or the blank stare, but my eyes, sharpened to an abnormal point, seemed
to sense a certain incongruity in the clean-cut limbs which not even
the slouchy garments could efface.
Hassim spoke impatiently and I turned away. We entered the rear room,
and as he shut the door and turned to the table, it moved of itself and
a figure bulked up through the hidden doorway. The Sikh, Ganra Singh,
a lean sinister-eyed giant, emerged and proceeded to the door opening
into the opium room, where he halted until we should have descended and
closed the secret doorway.
Again I stood amid the billowing yellow smoke and listened to the
hidden voice.
"Do you think you know enough about Major Morley to impersonate him
successfully?"
Startled, I answered, "No doubt I could, unless I met someone who was
intimate with him."
"I will take care of that. Follow me closely. Tomorrow you sail on the
first boat for Calais. There you will meet an agent of mine who will
accost you the instant you step upon the wharfs, and give you further
instructions. You will sail second class and avoid all conversation
with strangers or anyone. Take the papers with you. The agent will aid
you in making up and your masquerade will start in Calais. That is all.
Go!"
I departed, my wonder growing. All this rigmarole evidently had a
meaning, but one which I could not fathom. Back in the opium room
Hassim bade me be seated on some cushions to await his return. To my
question he snarled that he was going forth as he had been ordered,
to buy me a ticket on the Channel boat. He departed and I sat down,
leaning my back against the wall. As I ruminated, it seemed suddenly
that eyes were fixed on me so intensely as to disturb my sub-mind. I
glanced up quickly but no one seemed to be looking at me. The smoke
drifted through the hot atmosphere as usual; Yussef Ali and the Chinese
glided back and forth tending to the wants of the sleepers.
Suddenly the door to the rear room opened and a strange and hideous
figure came haltingly out. Not all of those who found entrance to Yun
Shatu's back room were aristocrats and society members. This was one of
the exceptions, and one whom I remembered as having often entered and
emerged therefrom. A tall, gaunt figure, shapeless in ragged wrappings
and nondescript garments, face entirely hidden. Better that the face
be hidden, I thought, for without doubt the wrapping concealed a
grisly sight. The man was a leper, who had somehow managed to escape
the attention of the public guardians and who was occasionally seen
haunting the lower and more mysterious regions of East End--a mystery
even to the lowest denizens of Limehouse.
Suddenly my supersensitive mind was aware of a swift tension in the
air. The leper hobbled out the door, closed it behind him. My eyes
instinctively sought the couch whereon lay the man who had aroused my
suspicions earlier in the day. I could have sworn that cold steely eyes
gleamed menacingly before they flickered shut. I crossed to the couch
in one stride and bent over the prostrate man. Something about his face
seemed unnatural--a healthy bronze seemed to underlie the pallor of
complexion.
"Yun Shatu!" I shouted. "A spy is in the house!"
Things happened then with bewildering speed. The man on the couch with
one tigerish movement leaped erect and a revolver gleamed in his hand.
One sinewy arm flung me aside as I sought to grapple with him and a
sharp decisive voice sounded over the babble which broke forth:
"You there! Halt! Halt!"
The pistol in the stranger's hand was leveled at the leper, who was
making for the door in long strides!
All about was confusion; Yun Shatu was shrieking volubly in Chinese
and the four China boys and Yussef Ali were rushing in from all sides,
knives glittering in their hands.
All this I saw with unnatural clearness even as I marked the stranger's
face. As the flying leper gave no evidence of halting, I saw the eyes
harden to steely points of determination, sighting along the pistol
barrel--the features set with the grim purpose of the slayer. The leper
was almost to the outer door, but death would strike him down ere he
could reach it.
And then, just as the finger of the stranger tightened on the trigger,
I hurled myself forward and my right fist crashed against his chin. He
went down as though struck by a trip-hammer, the revolver exploding
harmlessly in the air.
In that instant, with the blinding flare of light that sometimes comes
to one, I knew that the leper was none other than the Man Behind the
Screen!
I bent over the fallen man, who though not entirely senseless had been
rendered temporarily helpless by that terrific blow. He was struggling
dazedly to rise but I shoved him roughly down again and seizing the
false beard he wore, tore it away. A lean bronzed face was revealed,
the strong lines of which not even the artificial dirt and grease-paint
could alter.
Yussef Ali leaned above him now, dagger in hand, eyes slits of murder.
The brown sinewy hand went up--I caught the wrist.
"Not so fast, you black devil! What are you about to do?"
"This is John Gordon," he hissed, "the Master's greatest foe! He must
die, curse you!"
John Gordon! The name was familiar somehow, and yet I did not seem to
connect it with the London police nor account for the man's presence
in Yun Shatu's dope-joint. However, on one point I was determined.
"You don't kill him, at any rate. Up with you!" This last to Gordon,
who with my aid staggered up, still very dizzy.
"That punch would have dropped a bull," I said in wonderment; "I didn't
know I had it in me."
The false leper had vanished. Yun Shatu stood gazing at me as immobile
as an idol, hands in his wide sleeves, and Yussef Ali stood back,
muttering murderously and thumbing his dagger edge, as I led Gordon
out of the opium room and through the innocent-appearing bar which lay
between that room and the street.
Out in the street I said to him: "I have no idea as to who you are or
what you are doing here, but you see what an unhealthful place it is
for you. Hereafter be advised by me and stay away."
His only answer was a searching glance, and then he turned and walked
swiftly though somewhat unsteadily up the street.
_6. The Dream Girl_
"I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule."
--Poe.
Outside my room sounded a light footstep. The door-knob turned
cautiously and slowly; the door opened. I sprang erect with a gasp.
Red lips, half parted, dark eyes like limpid seas of wonder, a mass of
shimmering hair--framed in my drab doorway stood the girl of my dreams!
She entered, and half turning with a sinuous motion, closed the door. I
sprang forward, my hands outstretched, then halted as she put a finger
to her lips.
"You must not talk loudly," she almost whispered; "_He_ did not say I
could not come; yet----"
Her voice was soft and musical, with just a touch of foreign accent
which I found delightful. As for the girl herself, every intonation,
every movement proclaimed the Orient. She was a fragrant breath from
the East. From her night-black hair, piled high above her alabaster
forehead, to her little feet, encased in high-heeled pointed slippers,
she portrayed the highest ideal of Asiatic loveliness--an effect which
was heightened rather than lessened by the English blouse and skirt
which she wore.
"You are beautiful!" I said dazedly. "Who are you?"
"I am Zuleika," she answered with a shy smile. "I--I am glad you like
me. I am glad you no longer dream hashish dreams."
Strange that so small a thing should set my heart to leaping wildly!
"I owe it all to you, Zuleika," I said huskily. "Had not I dreamed of
you every hour since you first lifted me from the gutter, I had lacked
the power of even hoping to be freed from my curse."
She blushed prettily and intertwined her white fingers as if in
nervousness.
"You leave England tomorrow?" she said suddenly.
"Yes. Hassim has not returned with my ticket----" I hesitated suddenly,
remembering the command of silence.
"Yes, I know, I know!" she whispered swiftly, her eyes widening. "And
John Gordon has been here! He saw you!"
"Yes!"
She came close to me with a quick lithe movement.
"You are to impersonate some man! Listen, while you are doing this, you
must not ever let Gordon see you! He would know you, no matter what
your disguise! He is a terrible man!"
"I don't understand," I said, completely bewildered. "How did the
Master break me of my hashish-craving? Who is this Gordon and why did
he come here? Why does the Master go disguised as a leper--and who is
he? Above all, why am I to impersonate a man I never saw or heard of?"
"I can not--I dare not tell you!" she whispered, her face paling.
"I----"
Somewhere in the house sounded the faint tones of a Chinese gong. The
girl started like a frightened gazelle.
"I must go! _He_ summons me!"
She opened the door, darted through, halted a moment to electrify me
with her passionate exclamation: "Oh, be careful, be very careful,
sahib!"
Then she was gone.
_7. The Man of the Skull_
"What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?"
--Blake.
A while after my beautiful and mysterious visitor had left, I sat in
meditation. I believed that I had at last stumbled on to an explanation
of a part of the enigma, at any rate. This was the conclusion I had
reached: Yun Shatu, the opium lord, was simply the agent or servant
of some organization or individual whose work was on a far larger
scale than merely supplying dope addicts in the Temple of Dreams. This
man or these men needed co-workers among all classes of people; in
other words, I was being let in with a group of opium smugglers on a
gigantic scale. Gordon no doubt had been investigating the case, and
his presence alone showed that it was no ordinary one, for I knew that
he held a high position with the English government, though just what,
I did not know.
Opium or not, I determined to carry out my obligation to the Master.
My moral sense had been blunted by the dark ways I had traveled,
and the thought of despicable crime did not enter my head. I was
indeed hardened. More, the mere debt of gratitude was increased a
thousand-fold by the thought of the girl. To the Master I owed it
that I was able to stand up on my feet and look into her clear eyes
as a man should. So if he wished my services as a smuggler of dope,
he should have them. No doubt I was to impersonate some man so high
in governmental esteem that the usual actions of the customs officers
would be deemed unnecessary; was I to bring some rare dream-producer
into England?
These thoughts were in my mind as I went downstairs, but ever back of
them hovered other and more alluring suppositions--what was the reason
for the girl, here in this vile dive--a rose in a garbage-heap--and who
was she?
As I entered the outer bar, Hassim came in, his brows set in a dark
scowl of anger, and, I believed, fear. He carried a newspaper in his
hand, folded.
"I told you to wait in opium room," he snarled.
"You were gone so long that I went up to my room. Have you the ticket?"
He merely grunted and pushed on past me into the opium room, and
standing at the door I saw him cross the floor and disappear into the
rear room. I stood there, my bewilderment increasing. For as Hassim had
brushed past me, I had noted an item on the face of the paper, against
which his black thumb was tightly pressed as if to mark that special
column of news.
And with the unnatural celerity of action and judgment which seemed to
be mine those days, I had in that fleeting instant read:
African Special Commissioner Found Murdered!
The body of Major Fairlan Morley was yesterday discovered in a
rotting ship's hold at Bordeaux....
No more I saw of the details, but that alone was enough to make me
think! The affair seemed to be taking on an ugly aspect. Yet----
Another day passed. To my inquiries, Hassim snarled that the plans had
been changed and I was not to go to France. Then, late in the evening,
he came to bid me once more to the room of mystery.
I stood before the lacquer screen, the yellow smoke acrid in my
nostrils, the woven dragons writhing along the tapestries, the
palm-trees rearing thick and oppressive.
"A change has come in our plans," said the hidden voice. "You will not
sail as was decided before. But I have other work that you may do.
Mayhap this will be more to your type of usefulness, for I admit you
have somewhat disappointed me in regard to subtlety. You interfered the
other day in such manner as will no doubt cause me great inconvenience
in the future."