"THE DEMON'S SELF"
Through the glass panes of the skylight I looked down upon a scene so
bizarre that my actual environment became blotted out, and I was
mentally translated to Cairo--to that quarter of Cairo immediately
surrounding the famous Square of the Fountain--to those indescribable
streets, wherefrom arises the perfume of deathless evil, wherein, to
the wailing, luresome music of the reed pipe, painted dancing-girls
sway in the wild abandon of dances that were ancient when Thebes was
the City of a Hundred Gates; I seemed to stand again in el Wasr.
The room below was rectangular, and around three of the walls were
divans strewn with garish cushions, whilst highly colored Eastern rugs
were spread about the floor. Four lamps swung on chains, two from
either of the beams which traversed the apartment. They were fine
examples of native perforated brasswork.
Upon the divans some eight or nine men were seated, fully half of whom
were Orientals or half-castes. Before each stood a little inlaid table
bearing a brass tray; and upon the trays were various boxes, some
apparently containing sweetmeats, other cigarettes. One or two of the
visitors smoked curious, long-stemmed pipes and sipped coffee.
Even as I leaned from the platform, surveying that incredible scene
(incredible in a street of Soho), another devotee of hashish entered--
a tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a light coat over his
evening dress.
"Gad!" whispered Smith, beside me--"Sir Byngham Pyne of the India
Office! You see, Petrie! You see! This place is a lure. My God! ..."
He broke off, as I clutched wildly at his arm.
The last arrival having taken his seat in a corner of the divan, two
heavy curtains draped before an opening at one end of the room parted,
and a girl came out, carrying a tray such as already reposed before
each of the other men in the room.
She wore a dress of dark lilac-colored gauze, banded about with gold
tissue and embroidered with gold thread and pearls; and around her
shoulders floated, so ethereally that she seemed to move in a violet
cloud; a scarf of Delhi muslin. A white yashmak trimmed with gold
tissue concealed the lower part of her face.
My heart throbbed wildly; I seemed to be choking. By the wonderful
hair alone I must have known her, by the great, brilliant eyes, by
the shape of those slim white ankles, by every movement of that
exquisite form. It was Kâramaneh!
I sprang madly back from the rail ... and Smith had my arm in an iron
grip.
"Where are you going?" he snapped.
"Where am I going?" I cried. "Do you think--"
"What do you propose to do?" he interrupted harshly. "Do you know so
little of the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu that you would throw yourself
blindly into that den? Damn it all, man! I know what you suffer!--but
wait--wait. We must not act rashly; our plans must be well considered."
He drew me back to my former post and clapped his hand on my shoulder
sympathetically. Clutching the rail like a man frenzied, as indeed I
was, I looked down into that infamous den again, striving hard for
composure.
Kâramaneh listlessly placed the tray upon the little table before Sir
Byngham Pyne and withdrew without vouchsafing him a single glance in
acknowledgment of his unconcealed admiration.
A moment later, above the dim clamor of London far below, there crept
to my ears a sound which completed the magical quality of the scene,
rendering that sky platform on a roof of Soho a magical carpet bearing
me to the golden Orient. This sound was the wailing of a reed pipe.
"The company is complete," murmured Smith. "I had expected this."
Again the curtains parted, and a _ghazeeyeh_ glided out into the room.
She wore a white dress, clinging closely to her figure from shoulders
to hips, where it was clasped by an ornate girdle, and a skirt of
sky-blue gauze which clothed her as Io was clothed of old. Her arms
were covered with gold bangles, and gold bands were clasped about her
ankles. Her jet-black, frizzy hair was unconfined and without
ornament, and she wore a sort of highly colored scarf so arranged that
it effectually concealed the greater part of her face, but served to
accentuated the brightness of the great flashing eyes. She had
unmistakable beauty of a sort, but how different from the sweet
witchery of Kâramaneh!
With a bold, swinging grace she walked down the center of the room,
swaying her arms from side to side and snapping her fingers.
"Zarmi!" exclaimed Smith.
But his exclamation was unnecessary, for already I had recognized the
evil Eurasian who was so efficient a servant of the Chinese doctor.
The wailing of the pipes continued, and now faintly I could detect the
throbbing of a _darabûkeh._ This was el Wasr indeed. The dance
commenced, its every phase followed eagerly by the motley clientele
of the hashish house. Zarmi danced with an insolent nonchalance that
nevertheless displayed her barbaric beauty to greatest advantage. She
was lithe as a serpent, graceful as a young panther, another Lamia
come to damn the souls of men with those arts denounced in a long dead
age by Apolonius of Tyana.
"She seemed, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self...."
Entranced against my will, I watched the Eurasian until, the barbaric
dance completed, she ran from the room, and the curtains concealed her
from view. How my mind was torn between hope and fear that I should
see Kâramaneh again! How I longed for one more glimpse of her, yet
loathed the thought of her presence in that infamous house.
She was a captive; of that there could be no doubt, a captive in the
hands of the giant criminal whose wiles were endless, whose resources
were boundless, whose intense cunning had enabled him, for years, to
weave his nefarious plots in the very heart of civilization, and
remain immune. Suddenly--
"That woman is a sorceress!" muttered Nayland Smith. "There is about
her something serpentine, at once repelling and fascinating. It would
be of interest, Petrie, to learn what State secrets have been filched
from the brains of habitues of this den, and interesting to know from
what unsuspected spy-hole Fu-Manchu views his nightly catch. If ..."
His voice died away, in a most curious fashion. I have since thought
that here was a case of true telepathy. For, as Smith spoke of
Fu-Manchu's spy-hole, the idea leapt instantly to my mind that _this_
was it--this strange platform upon which we stood!
I drew back from the rail, turned, stared at Smith. I read in his
face that our suspicions were identical. Then--
"Look! Look!" whispered Weymouth.
He was gazing at the trapdoor--which was slowly rising; inch by inch ...
inch by inch ... Fascinatedly, raptly, we all gazed. A head appeared
in the opening--and some vague, reflected light revealed two long,
narrow, slightly oblique eyes watching us. They were brilliantly green.
"By God!" came in a mighty roar from Weymouth. "It's Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
As one man we leapt for the trap. It dropped, with a resounding bang--
and I distinctly heard a bolt shot home.
A gutteral voice--the unmistakable, unforgettable voice of Fu-Manchu--
sounded dimly from below. I turned and sprang back to the rail of the
platform, peering down into the hashish house. The occupants of the
divans were making for the curtained doorway. Some, who seemed to be
in a state of stupor, were being assisted by the others and by the
man, Ismail, who had now appeared upon the scene.
Of Kâramaneh, Zarmi, or Fu-Manchu there was no sign.
Suddenly, the lights were extinguished.
"This is maddening!" cried Nayland Smith--"maddening! No doubt they
have some other exit, some hiding-place--and they are slipping through
our hands!"
Inspector Weymouth blew a shrill blast upon his whistle, and Smith,
running to the rail of the platform, began to shatter the panes of the
skylight with his foot.
"That's hopeless, sir!" cried Weymouth. "You'd be torn to pieces on
the jagged glass."
Smith desisted, with a savage exclamation, and stood beating his right
fist into the palm of his left hand, and glaring madly at the Scotland
Yard man.
"I know I'm to blame," admitted Weymouth; "but the words were out
before I knew I'd spoken. Ah!"--as an answering whistle came from
somewhere in the street below. "But will they ever find us?"
He blew again shrilly. Several whistles replied ... and a wisp of smoke
floated up from the shattered pane of the skylight.
"I can smell _petrol_!" muttered Weymouth.
An ever-increasing roar, not unlike that of an approaching storm at
sea, came from the streets beneath. Whistles skirled, remotely and
intimately, and sometimes one voice, sometimes another, would detach
itself from this stormy background with weird effect. Somewhere deep
in the bowels of the hashish house there went on ceaselessly a
splintering and crashing as though a determined assault were being
made upon a door. A light shone up through the skylight.
Back once more to the rail I sprang, looked down into the room below--
and saw a sight never to be forgotten.
Passing from divan to curtained door, from piles of cushions to
stacked-up tables, and bearing a flaming torch hastily improvised out
of a roll of newspaper, was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Everything inflammable in
the place had been soaked with petrol, and, his gaunt, yellow face
lighted by the evergrowing conflagration, so that truly it seemed not
the face of a man, but that of a demon of the hells, the Chinese
doctor ignited point after point....
"Smith!" I screamed, "we are trapped! that fiend means to burn us alive!"
"And the place will flare like matchwood! It's touch and go this time,
Petrie! To drop to the sloping roof underneath would mean almost
certain death on the pavement...."
I dragged my pistol from my pocket and began wildly to fire shot after
shot into the holocaust below. But the awful Chinaman had escaped--
probably by some secret exit reserved for his own use; for certainly
he must have known that escape into the court was now cut off.
Flames were beginning to hiss through the skylight. A tremendous
crackling and crashing told of the glass destroyed. Smoke spurted up
through the cracks of the boarding upon which we stood--and a great
shout came from the crowd in the streets....
In the distance--a long, long way off, it seemed--was born a new note
in the stormy human symphony. It grew in volume, it seemed to be
sweeping down upon us--nearer--nearer--nearer. Now it was in the
streets immediately adjoining the Café de l'Egypte ... and now,
blessed sound! it culminated in a mighty surging cheer.
"The fire-engines," said Weymouth coolly--and raised himself on to the
lower rail, for the platform was growing uncomfortably hot.
Tongues of fire licked out, venomously, from beneath my feet. I leapt
for the railing in turn, and sat astride it ... as one end of the
flooring burst into flame.
The heat from the blazing room above which we hung suspended was now
all but insupportable, and the fumes threatened to stifle us. My head
seemed to be bursting; my throat and lungs were consumed by internal
fires.
"Merciful heavens!" whispered Smith. "Will they reach us in time?"
"Not if they don't get here within the next thirty seconds!" answered
Weymouth grimly--and changed his position, in order to avoid a tongue
of flame that hungrily sought to reach him.
Nayland Smith turned and looked me squarely in the eyes. Words
trembled on his tongue; but those words were never spoken ... for a
brass helmet appeared suddenly out of the smoke banks, followed almost
immediately by a second....
"Quick, sir! this way! Jump! I'll catch you!"
Exactly what followed I never knew; but there was a mighty burst of
cheering, a sense of tension released, and it became a task less
agonizing to breathe.
Feeling very dazed, I found myself in the heart of a huge, excited
crowd, with Weymouth beside me, and Nayland Smith holding my arm.
Vaguely, I heard;--
"They have the man Ismail, but ..."
A hollow crash drowned the end of the sentence. A shower of sparks
shot up into the night's darkness high above our heads.
"That's the platform gone!"