"SAKYA MUNI"
The faint disturbance faded into silence again. Across the dead man's
body I met Smith's gaze. Faint wreaths of fog floated in from the
outer room. Beeton clutched the foot of the bed, and the structure
shook in sympathy with his wild trembling. That was the only sound
now; there was absolutely nothing physical so far as my memory serves
to signalize the coming of the brown man.
Yet, stealthy as his approach had been, something must have warned us.
For suddenly, with one accord, we three turned upon the bed, and
stared out into the room from which the fog wreaths floated in.
Beeton stood nearest to the door, but, although he turned, he did not
go out, but with a smothered cry crouched back against the bed. Smith
it was who moved first, then I followed, and close upon his heels
burst into the disordered sitting-room. The outer door had been closed
but not bolted, and what with the tinted light, diffused through the
silken Japanese shade, and the presence of fog in the room, I was
almost tempted to believe myself the victim of a delusion. What I saw
or thought I saw was this:--
A tall screen stood immediately inside the door, and around its end,
like some materialization of the choking mist, glided a lithe, yellow
figure, a slim, crouching figure, wearing a sort of loose robe. An
impression I had of jet-black hair, protruding from beneath a little
cap, of finely chiseled features and great, luminous eyes, then, with
no sound to tell of a door opened or shut, the apparition was gone.
"You saw him, Petrie!--you saw him!" cried Smith.
In three bounds he was across the room, had tossed the screen aside
and thrown open the door. Out he sprang into the yellow haze of the
corridor, tripped, and, uttering a cry of pain, fell sprawling upon
the marble floor. Hot with apprehension I joined him, but he looked
up with a wry smile and began furiously rubbing his left shin.
"A queer trick, Petrie," he said, rising to his feet; "but
nevertheless effective."
He pointed to the object which had occasioned his fall. It was a small
metal chest, evidently of very considerable weight, and it stood
immediately outside the door of Number 14a.
"That was what he came for, sir! That was what he came for! You were
too quick for him!"
Beeton stood behind us, his horror-bright eyes fixed upon the box.
"Eh?" rapped Smith, turning upon him.
"That's what Sir Gregory brought to England," the man ran on almost
hysterically; "that's what he's been guarding this past two weeks,
night and day, crouching over it with a loaded pistol. That's what
cost him his life, sir. He's had no peace, day or night, since he
got it...."
We were inside the room again now, Smith bearing the coffer in his
arms, and still the man ran on:
"He's never slept for more than an hour at a time, that I know of, for
weeks past. Since the day we came here he hasn't spoken to another
living soul, and he's lain there on the floor at night with his head
on that brass box, and sat watching over it all day."
"'Beeton!' he'd cry out, perhaps in the middle of the night--'Beeton--
do you hear that damned woman!' But although I'd begun to think I
could hear something, I believe it was the constant strain working on
my nerves and nothing else at all.
"Then he was always listening out for some one he called 'the man with
the limp.' Five and six times a night he'd have me up to listen with
him. 'There he goes, Beeton!' he'd whisper, crouching with his ear
pressed flat to the door. 'Do you hear him dragging himself along?'
"God knows how I've stood it as I have; for I've known no peace since
we left China. Once we got here I thought it would be better, but it's
been worse.
"Gentlemen have come (from the India Office, I believe), but he would
not see them. Said he would see no one but Mr. Nayland Smith. He had
never lain in his bed until to-night, but what with taking no proper
food nor sleep, and some secret trouble that was killing him by inches,
he collapsed altogether a while ago, and I carried him in and laid him
on the bed as I told you. Now he's dead--now he's dead."
Beeton leant up against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his
hands, whilst his shoulders shook convulsively. He had evidently been
greatly attached to his master, and I found something very pathetic in
this breakdown of a physically strong man. Smith laid his hands upon
his shoulders.
"You have passed through a very trying ordeal," he said, "and no man
could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have
proved too strong for you. I am Nayland Smith."
The man spun around with a surprising expression of relief upon his
pale face.
"So that whatever can be done," continued my friend, "to carry out
your master's wishes, will be done now. Rely upon it. Go into your
room and lie down until we call you."
"Thank you, sir, and thank God you are here," said Beeton dazedly, and
with one hand raised to his head he went, obediently, to the smaller
bedroom and disappeared within.
"Now, Petrie," rapped Smith, glancing around the littered floor,
"since I am empowered to deal with this matter as I see fit, and since
you are a medical man, we can devote the next half-hour, at any rate,
to a strictly confidential inquiry into this most perplexing case. I
propose that you examine the body for any evidences that may assist
you determining the cause of death, whilst I make a few inquiries here."
I nodded, without speaking, and went into the bedroom. It contained not
one solitary item of the dead man's belongings, and in every way bore
out Beeton's statement that Sir Gregory had never inhabited it. I bent
over Hale, as he lay fully dressed upon the bed.
Saving the singularity of the symptom which had immediately preceded
death--viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation--I should
have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a
cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that
view. Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment
I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst
the litter of the outer room, when I made a curious discovery.
Lying in a fold of the disordered bed linen were a few petals of some
kind of blossom, three of them still attached to a fragment of slender
stalk.
I collected the tiny petals, mechanically, and held them in the palm
of my hand studying them for some moments before the mystery of their
presence there became fully appreciable to me. Then I began to wonder.
The petals (which I was disposed to class as belonging to some species
of _Curcas_ or Physic Nut), though bruised, were fresh, and therefore
could not have been in the room for many hours. How had they been
introduced, and by whom? Above all, what could their presence there
at that time portend?
"Smith," I called, and walked towards the door carrying the mysterious
fragments in my palm. "Look what I have found upon the bed."
Nayland Smith, who was bending over an open despatch case which he had
placed upon a chair, turned--and his glance fell upon the petals and
tiny piece of stem.
I think I have never seen so sudden a change of expression take place
in the face of any man. Even in that imperfect light I saw him blanch.
I saw a hard glitter come into his eyes. He spoke, evenly, but hoarsely:
"Put those things down----there, on the table; anywhere."
I obeyed him without demur; for something in his manner had chilled me
with foreboding.
"You did not break that stalk?"
"No. I found it as you see it."
"Have you smelled the petals?"
I shook my head. Thereupon, having his eyes fixed upon me with the
strangest expression in their gray depths, Nayland Smith said a
singular thing.
"Pronounce, slowly, the words _Sâkya Mûni,_'" he directed.
I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but----
"I mean it!" he rapped. "Do as I tell you."
"Sâkya Mûni," I said, in ever increasing wonder.
Smith laughed unmirthfully.
"Go into the bathroom and thoroughly wash your hands," was his next
order. "Renew the water at least three times." As I turned to fulfill
his instructions, for I doubted no longer his deadly earnestness:
"Beeton!" he called.
Beeton, very white-faced and shaky, came out from the bedroom as I
entered the bathroom, and whist I proceeded carefully to cleanse my
hands I heard Smith interrogating him.
"Have any flowers been brought into the room today, Beeton?"
"Flowers, sir? Certainly not. Nothing has ever been brought in here
but what I have brought myself."
"You are certain of that?"
"Positive."
"Who brought up the meals, then?"
"If you'll look into my room here, sir, you'll see that I have enough
tinned and bottled stuff to last us for weeks. Sir Gregory sent me out
to buy it on the day we arrived. No one else had left or entered these
rooms until you came to-night."
I returned to find Nayland Smith standing tugging at the lobe of his
left ear in evident perplexity. He turned to me.
"I find my hands over full," he said. "Will you oblige me by
telephoning for Inspector Weymouth? Also, I should be glad if you
would ask M. Samarkan, the manager, to see me here immediately."
As I was about to quit the room--
"Not a word of our suspicions to M. Samarkan," he added; "not a word
about the brass box."
I was far along the corridor ere I remembered that which, remembered
earlier, had saved me the journey. There was a telephone in every suite.
However, I was not indisposed to avail myself of an opportunity for a
few moments' undisturbed reflection, and, avoiding the lift, I
descended by the broad, marble staircase.
To what strange adventure were we committed? What did the brass coffer
contain which Sir Gregory had guarded night and day? Something
associated in some way with Tibet, something which he believed to be
"the key of India" and which had brought in its train, presumably,
the sinister "man with a limp."
Who was the "man with the limp"? What was the Si-Fan? Lastly, by what
conceivable means could the flower, which my friend evidently regarded
with extreme horror, have been introduced into Hale's room, and why
had I been required to pronounce the words "Sâkya Mûni"?
So ran my reflections--at random and to no clear end; and, as is often
the case in such circumstances, my steps bore them company; so that
all at once I became aware that instead of having gained the lobby of
the hotel, I had taken some wrong turning and was in a part of the
building entirely unfamiliar to me.
A long corridor of the inevitable white marble extended far behind me.
I had evidently traversed it. Before me was a heavily curtained archway.
Irritably, I pulled the curtain aside, learnt that it masked a
glass-paneled door, opened this door--and found myself in a small
court, dimly lighted and redolent of some pungent, incense-like perfume.
One step forward I took, then pulled up abruptly. A sound had come to
my ears. From a second curtained doorway, close to my right hand, it
came--a sound of muffled _tapping_, together with that of something
which dragged upon the floor.
Within my brain the words seemed audibly to form: "The man with
the limp!"
I sprang to the door; I had my hand upon the drapery ... when a woman
stepped out, barring the way!
No impression, not even a vague one, did I form of her costume, save
that she wore a green silk shawl, embroidered with raised white
figures of birds, thrown over her head and shoulders and draped in
such fashion that part of her face was concealed. I was transfixed
by the vindictive glare of her eyes, of her huge dark eyes.
They were ablaze with anger--but it was not this expression within
them which struck me so forcibly as the fact that they were in some
way familiar.
Motionless, we faced one another. Then--
"You go away," said the woman--at the same time extending her arms
across the doorway as barriers to my progress.
Her voice had a husky intonation; her hands and arms, which were bare
and of old ivory hue, were laden with barbaric jewelry, much of it
tawdry silverware of the bazaars. Clearly she was a half-caste of some
kind, probably a Eurasian.
I hesitated. The sounds of dragging and tapping had ceased. But the
presence of this grotesque Oriental figure only increased my anxiety
to pass the doorway. I looked steadily into the black eyes; they looked
into mine unflinchingly.
"You go away, please," repeated the woman, raising her right hand and
pointing to the door whereby I had entered. "These private rooms. What
you doing here?"
Her words, despite her broken English, served to recall to me the fact
that I was, beyond doubt, a trespasser! By what right did I presume to
force my way into other people's apartments?
"There is some one in there whom I must see," I said, realizing,
however, that my chance of doing so was poor.
"You see nobody," she snapped back uncompromisingly. "You go away!"
She took a step towards me, continuing to point to the door. Where had
I previously encountered the glance of those splendid, savage eyes?
So engaged was I with this taunting, partial memory, and so sure, if
the woman would but uncover her face, of instantly recognizing her,
that still I hesitated. Whereupon, glancing rapidly over her shoulder
into whatever place lay beyond the curtained doorway, she suddenly
stepped back and vanished, drawing the curtains to with an angry jerk.
I heard her retiring footsteps; then came a loud bang. If her object
in intercepting me had been to cover the slow retreat of some one she
had succeeded.
Recognizing that I had cut a truly sorry figure in the encounter, I
retraced my steps.
By what route I ultimately regained the main staircase I have no idea;
for my mind was busy with that taunting memory of the two dark eyes
looking out from the folds of the green embroidered shawl. Where, and
when, had I met their glance before?
To that problem I sought an answer in vain.
The message despatched to New Scotland Yard, I found M. Samarkan, long
famous as a _mâitre d' hôtel_ in Cairo, and now host of London's
newest and most palatial _khan_. Portly, and wearing a gray imperial,
M. Samarkan had the manners of a courtier, and the smile of a true Greek.
I told him what was necessary, and no more, desiring him to go to
suite 14a without delay and also without arousing unnecessary
attention. I dropped no hint of foul play, but M. Samarkan expressed
profound (and professional) regret that so distinguished, though
unprofitable, a patron should have selected the New Louvre, thus
early in its history, as the terminus of his career.
"By the way," I said, "have you Oriental guests with you, at the moment?"
"No, monsieur," he assured me.
"Not a certain Oriental lady?" I persisted.
M. Samarkan slowly shook his head.
"Possibly monsieur has seen one of the _ayahs?_ There are several
Anglo-Indian families resident in the New Louvre at present."
An _ayah?_ It was just possible, of course. Yet ...