CHAPTER XIX
"ZAGAZIG"
Fully two weeks elapsed ere Nayland Smith's arduous labors at last metwith a slight reward. For a moment, the curtain of mystery surroundingthe Si-Fan was lifted, and we had a glimpse of that organization'selaborate mechanism. I cannot better commence my relation of theepisodes associated with the Zagazig's cryptogram than from the momentwhen I found myself bending over a prostrate form extended upon thetable in the Inspector's room at the River Police Depot. It was thatof a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shopsuit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body.His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face,although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in deathanother and more dreadful expression.
Asphyxiation had accounted for his end beyond doubt, but there weremarks about his throat of clutching fingers, his tongue protruded,and the look in the dead eyes was appalling.
"He was amongst the piles upholding the old wharf at the back of theJoy-Shop?" said Smith tersely, turning to the police officer in charge.
"Exactly" was the reply. "The in-coming tide had jammed him right upunder a cross-beam."
"What time was that?'
"Well, at high tide last night. Hewson, returning with the ten o'clockboat, noticed the moonlight glittering upon the knife."
The knife to which the Inspector referred possessed a long curvedblade of a kind with which I had become terribly familiar in the past.The dead man still clutched the hilt of the weapon in his right hand,and it now lay with the blade resting crosswise upon his breast. Istared in a fascinated way at this mysterious and tragic flotsam ofold Thames.
Glancing up, I found Nayland Smith's gray eyes watching me.
"You see the mark, Petrie?" he snapped.
I nodded. The dead man upon the table was a Burmese dacoit!
"What do you make of it?" I said slowly.
"At the moment," replied Smith, "I scarcely know what to make of it.You are agreed with the divisional surgeon that the man--unquestionablya dacoit--died, not from drowning, but from strangulation. Fromevidence we have heard, it would appear that the encounter whichresulted in the body being hurled in the river, actually took placeupon the wharf-end beneath which he was found. And we know that a placeformerly used by the Si-Fan group--in other words, by Dr. Fu-Manchu--adjoins the wharf. I am tempted to believe that this"--he noddedtowards the ghastly and sinister object upon the table--"was a servantof the Chinese Doctor. In other words, we see before us one whomFu-Manchu has rebuked for some shortcoming."
I shuddered coldly. Familiar as I should have been with the methods ofthe dread Chinaman, with his callous disregard of human suffering, ofhuman life, of human law, I could not reconcile my ideas--the ideasof a modern, ordinary middle-class practitioner--with these Far Easterndevilries which were taking place in London.
Even now I sometimes found myself doubting the reality of the wholething; found myself reviewing the history of the Eastern doctor andof the horrible group of murderers surrounding him, with an incredulityalmost unbelievable in one who had been actually in contact not onlywith the servants of the Chinaman, but with the sinister Fu-Manchuhimself. Then, to restore me to grips with reality, would come thethought of Karamaneh, of the beautiful girl whose love had broughtme seemingly endless sorrow and whose love for me had brought her onceagain into the power of that mysterious, implacable being.
This thought was enough. With its coming, fantasy vanished; and I knewthat the dead dacoit, his great curved knife yet clutched in his hand,the Yellow menace hanging over London, over England, over thecivilized world, the absence, the heart-breaking absence, ofKaramaneh--all were real, all were true, all were part of my life.
Nayland Smith was standing staring vaguely before him and tugging atthe lobe of his left ear.
"Come along!" he snapped suddenly. "We have no more to learn here:the clue to the mystery must be sought elsewhere."
There was that in his manner whereby I knew that his thoughts were faraway, as we filed out from the River Police Depot to the cab whichawaited us. Pulling from his overcoat pocket a copy of a daily paper--
"Have you seen this, Weymouth?" he demanded.
With a long, nervous index finger he indicated a paragraph on the frontpage which appeared under the heading of "Personal." Weymouth bentfrowningly over the paper, holding it close to his eyes, for this wasa gloomy morning and the light in the cab was poor.
"Such things don't enter into my sphere, Mr. Smith," he replied, "butno doubt the proper department at the Yard have seen it."
"I _know_ they have seen it!" snapped Smith; "but they have also beenunable to read it!"
Weymouth looked up in surprise.
"Indeed," he said. "You are interested in this, then?"
"Very! Have you any suggestion to offer respecting it?"
Moving from my seat I, also, bent over the paper and read, in growingastonishment, the following:--
ZAGAZIG-Z,-a-g-a;-z:-_I_-g,a,-a,ag-_a_,z;- I;-g:z-a-g-A-z;i-:g;-Z,,-a;-gg-_-z-i;- G;-z-,a-g-:a-Z__I_;-g:-z-a-g;-a-:Z-,i-g: z,a-g,-a:z,i-g.
"This is utterly incomprehensible! It can be nothing but some foolishpractical joke! It consists merely of the word 'Zagazig' repeated sixor seven times--which can have no possible significance!"
"Can't it!" snapped Smith.
"Well," I said, "what has Zagazig to do with Fu-Manchu, or to do withus?"
"Zagazig, my dear Petrie, is a very unsavory Arab town in Lower Egypt,as you know!"
He returned the paper to the pocket of his over-coat, and, noting mybewildered glance, burst into one of his sudden laughs.
"You think I am talking nonsense," he said; "but, as a matter of fact,that message in the paper has been puzzling me since it appeared--yesterday morning--and at last I think I see the light."
He pulled out his pipe and began rapidly to load it.
"I have been growing careless of late, Petrie," he continued; and nohint of merriment remained in his voice. His gaunt face was drawngrimly, and his eyes glittered like steel. "In future I must avoidgoing out alone at night as much as possible."
Inspector Weymouth was staring at Smith in a puzzled way; and certainlyI was every whit as mystified as he.
"I am disposed to believe," said my friend, in his rapid, incisive way,"that the dacoit met his end at the hands of a tall man, possibly darkand almost certainly clean-shaven. If this missing personage wears, onchilly nights, a long tweed traveling coat and affects soft gray hatsof the Stetson pattern, I shall not be surprised."
Weymouth stared at me in frank bewilderment.
"By the way, Inspector," added Smith, a sudden gleam of inspirationentering his keen eyes--"did I not see that the s.s._Andaman_ arrivedrecently?"
"The Oriental Navigation Company's boat?" inquired Weymouth in ahopeless tone. "Yes. She docked yesterday evening."
"If Jack Forsyth is still chief officer, I shall look him up,"declared Smith. "You recall his brother, Petrie?"
"Naturally; since he was done to death in my presence," I replied;for the words awoke memories of one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's most ghastlycrimes, always associated in my mind with the cry of a night-hawk.
"The divine afflatus should never be neglected," announced NaylandSmith didactically, "wild though its promptings may seem."