CHAPTER XXVI
"THE DEMON'S SELF"
Through the glass panes of the skylight I looked down upon a scene sobizarre that my actual environment became blotted out, and I wasmentally translated to Cairo--to that quarter of Cairo immediatelysurrounding the famous Square of the Fountain--to those indescribablestreets, wherefrom arises the perfume of deathless evil, wherein, tothe wailing, luresome music of the reed pipe, painted dancing-girlssway in the wild abandon of dances that were ancient when Thebes wasthe City of a Hundred Gates; I seemed to stand again in el Wasr.
The room below was rectangular, and around three of the walls weredivans strewn with garish cushions, whilst highly colored Eastern rugswere spread about the floor. Four lamps swung on chains, two fromeither of the beams which traversed the apartment. They were fineexamples of native perforated brasswork.
Upon the divans some eight or nine men were seated, fully half of whomwere Orientals or half-castes. Before each stood a little inlaid tablebearing a brass tray; and upon the trays were various boxes, someapparently containing sweetmeats, other cigarettes. One or two of thevisitors 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 hisevening dress.
"Gad!" whispered Smith, beside me--"Sir Byngham Pyne of the IndiaOffice! 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, twoheavy curtains draped before an opening at one end of the room parted,and a girl came out, carrying a tray such as already reposed beforeeach of the other men in the room.
She wore a dress of dark lilac-colored gauze, banded about with goldtissue and embroidered with gold thread and pearls; and around hershoulders floated, so ethereally that she seemed to move in a violetcloud; a scarf of Delhi muslin. A white yashmak trimmed with goldtissue concealed the lower part of her face.
My heart throbbed wildly; I seemed to be choking. By the wonderfulhair alone I must have known her, by the great, brilliant eyes, bythe shape of those slim white ankles, by every movement of thatexquisite form. It was Karamaneh!
I sprang madly back from the rail ... and Smith had my arm in an irongrip.
"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 solittle of the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu that you would throw yourselfblindly into that den? Damn it all, man! I know what you suffer!--butwait--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 shouldersympathetically. Clutching the rail like a man frenzied, as indeed Iwas, I looked down into that infamous den again, striving hard forcomposure.
Karamaneh listlessly placed the tray upon the little table before SirByngham Pyne and withdrew without vouchsafing him a single glance inacknowledgment of his unconcealed admiration.
A moment later, above the dim clamor of London far below, there creptto my ears a sound which completed the magical quality of the scene,rendering that sky platform on a roof of Soho a magical carpet bearingme 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 shouldersto hips, where it was clasped by an ornate girdle, and a skirt ofsky-blue gauze which clothed her as Io was clothed of old. Her armswere covered with gold bangles, and gold bands were clasped about herankles. Her jet-black, frizzy hair was unconfined and withoutornament, and she wore a sort of highly colored scarf so arranged thatit effectually concealed the greater part of her face, but served toaccentuated the brightness of the great flashing eyes. She hadunmistakable beauty of a sort, but how different from the sweetwitchery of Karamaneh!
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 theevil Eurasian who was so efficient a servant of the Chinese doctor.
The wailing of the pipes continued, and now faintly I could detect thethrobbing of a _darabukeh._ This was el Wasr indeed. The dancecommenced, its every phase followed eagerly by the motley clienteleof the hashish house. Zarmi danced with an insolent nonchalance thatnevertheless displayed her barbaric beauty to greatest advantage. Shewas lithe as a serpent, graceful as a young panther, another Lamiacome to damn the souls of men with those arts denounced in a long deadage 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 barbaricdance completed, she ran from the room, and the curtains concealed herfrom view. How my mind was torn between hope and fear that I shouldsee Karamaneh again! How I longed for one more glimpse of her, yetloathed the thought of her presence in that infamous house.
She was a captive; of that there could be no doubt, a captive in thehands of the giant criminal whose wiles were endless, whose resourceswere boundless, whose intense cunning had enabled him, for years, toweave his nefarious plots in the very heart of civilization, andremain immune. Suddenly--
"That woman is a sorceress!" muttered Nayland Smith. "There is abouther something serpentine, at once repelling and fascinating. It wouldbe of interest, Petrie, to learn what State secrets have been filchedfrom the brains of habitues of this den, and interesting to know fromwhat unsuspected spy-hole Fu-Manchu views his nightly catch. If ..."
His voice died away, in a most curious fashion. I have since thoughtthat here was a case of true telepathy. For, as Smith spoke ofFu-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 hisface 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 appearedin 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 theplatform, peering down into the hashish house. The occupants of thedivans were making for the curtained doorway. Some, who seemed to bein a state of stupor, were being assisted by the others and by theman, Ismail, who had now appeared upon the scene.
Of Karamaneh, Zarmi, or Fu-Manchu there was no sign.
Suddenly, the lights were extinguished.
"This is maddening!" cried Nayland Smith--"maddening! No doubt theyhave some other exit, some hiding-place--and they are slipping throughour 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 theskylight with his foot.
"That's hopeless, sir!" cried Weymouth. "You'd be torn to pieces onthe jagged glass."
Smith desisted, with a savage exclamation, and stood beating his rightfist into the palm of his left hand, and glaring madly at the ScotlandYard man.
"I know I'm to blame," admitted Weymouth; "but the words were outbefore I knew I'd spoken. Ah!"--as an answering whistle came fromsomewhere in the street below. "But will they ever find us?"
; He blew again shrilly. Several whistles replied ... and a wisp of smokefloated 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 atsea, came from the streets beneath. Whistles skirled, remotely andintimately, and sometimes one voice, sometimes another, would detachitself from this stormy background with weird effect. Somewhere deepin the bowels of the hashish house there went on ceaselessly asplintering and crashing as though a determined assault were beingmade 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 tostacked-up tables, and bearing a flaming torch hastily improvised outof a roll of newspaper, was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Everything inflammable inthe place had been soaked with petrol, and, his gaunt, yellow facelighted by the evergrowing conflagration, so that truly it seemed notthe face of a man, but that of a demon of the hells, the Chinesedoctor 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 almostcertain death on the pavement...."
I dragged my pistol from my pocket and began wildly to fire shot aftershot into the holocaust below. But the awful Chinaman had escaped--probably by some secret exit reserved for his own use; for certainlyhe must have known that escape into the court was now cut off.
Flames were beginning to hiss through the skylight. A tremendouscrackling and crashing told of the glass destroyed. Smoke spurted upthrough the cracks of the boarding upon which we stood--and a greatshout came from the crowd in the streets....
In the distance--a long, long way off, it seemed--was born a new notein the stormy human symphony. It grew in volume, it seemed to besweeping down upon us--nearer--nearer--nearer. Now it was in thestreets immediately adjoining the Cafe 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 thelower rail, for the platform was growing uncomfortably hot.
Tongues of fire licked out, venomously, from beneath my feet. I leaptfor the railing in turn, and sat astride it ... as one end of theflooring burst into flame.
The heat from the blazing room above which we hung suspended was nowall but insupportable, and the fumes threatened to stifle us. My headseemed to be bursting; my throat and lungs were consumed by internalfires.
"Merciful heavens!" whispered Smith. "Will they reach us in time?"
"Not if they don't get here within the next thirty seconds!" answeredWeymouth grimly--and changed his position, in order to avoid a tongueof flame that hungrily sought to reach him.
Nayland Smith turned and looked me squarely in the eyes. Wordstrembled on his tongue; but those words were never spoken ... for abrass helmet appeared suddenly out of the smoke banks, followed almostimmediately by a second....
"Quick, sir! this way! Jump! I'll catch you!"
Exactly what followed I never knew; but there was a mighty burst ofcheering, a sense of tension released, and it became a task lessagonizing to breathe.
Feeling very dazed, I found myself in the heart of a huge, excitedcrowd, 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 sparksshot up into the night's darkness high above our heads.
"That's the platform gone!"