CHAPTER XII
IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysteriousinquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strangechronicle. And--why should I not confess it?--my memories hadfrightened me.
I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted down thefollowing queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the deathof M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How had the murdererescaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubberstopper? (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was thegreen mist a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted'simagination--or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progresswas impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of hisdepth. "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for thePsychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately ofMandalay," he had said only that morning.
"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies werebrought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. Formy part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr.Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out foryourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work so muchupon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which areestablished."
I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe inhand. The house was quite still, for my landlady and all the smallhousehold were out.
Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the halldoor open. In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took outmy revolver, and stood up.
There WAS a sound. Someone or something was creeping upstairs in thedark!
Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seizedwith an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it. But therustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partiallyopened door. I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of thehorrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with itsgruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
"Who's there?" I cried. "Answer, or I fire!"
"Ah! no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical. "Put it down--thatpistol. Quick! I must speak to you."
The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in ahooded cloak. My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence, lookinginto the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--if her ownstatement could be credited, slave. On two occasions this girl, whoseassociation with the Doctor was one of the most profound mysteries ofthe case, had risked--I cannot say what; unnameable punishment,perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death.For what was she come now?
Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, andwatching me with great passionate eyes.
"How--" I began.
But she shook her head impatiently.
"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement."I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you mustarrange to replace the lock."
She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon myshoulders. "I have come again to ask you to take me away from him,"she said simply.
And she lifted her face to me.
Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.Have I said that she was beautiful? It can convey no faint conceptionof her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of theEast, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the mostseductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon. In that electricmoment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had barteredhonor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I saidfirmly, but my voice was not quite my own. "It is quite absurd to talkof slavery here in England. You are a free agent, or you could not behere now. Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing acloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress."No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave?Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia, thedesert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, theshame. Bah!"
How beautiful she was in her indignation!
"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe thatto-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, whois white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?"
She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed myeyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed ingossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slimshape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fitfor the walled gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible,in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said,wrapping her cloak quickly about her. "You see me as I am." Hergarments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meetingI had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.
"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secretsof that man, when they mean death to so many?"
"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--seen herthrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have seen men floggeduntil they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself.Death! What does it matter?"
She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and withonly her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear suchwords from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might havebeen a cultured European.
"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service. Tellme what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"--she clutched menervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is mymaster I will never betray him. Tear me from him--by force, do youunderstand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer. Ah! butyou do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'--your police.Police! Ah, I have said enough."
A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laidher hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering amongthe curved black lashes.
"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never understandand release me from him! I must go. Already I have remained too long.Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out--at a hotel, where you will,but do not stay here."
"And Nayland Smith?"
"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal mylips? You are in danger--you hear me, in danger! Go away from hereto-night."
She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway sheturned, stamping her foot passionately.
"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Bewarned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something thatsounded like a sob.
I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of thearch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering downthe stairs, I heard her open and close the door--the door of which Dr.Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me,and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smithcame running up.
"Did you see her?" I began.
But his face
showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him ofmy strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried inbewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture intothe familiar cracked briar.
"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "andundoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Youshould have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have hadthat woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."
"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to giveme a warning. She disarms me."
"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burstinto one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek."She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know theOriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position. Shefears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you! Ifyou would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl herdown and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything sheknows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflectionthat speech was forced from her. I am not joking; it is so, I assureyou. And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forcefuland strong!"
"Smith," I said, "be serious. You know what her warning meant before."
"I can guess what it means now," he rapped. "Hallo!"
Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
"No one at home?" said my friend. "I will go. I think I know what itis."
A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger. I left himbehind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence whichsubsequently he found. This will be fragments of the mummy."
"What! You think the mummy was abstracted?"
"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else was in thesarcophagus when it reached Rowan House. A sarcophagus, I find, ispractically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomesevident--ventilation. How this person killed Strozza I have yet tolearn."
"Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the greenmist?"
Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways. Remember,we have only one man's word that it existed. It is at best a confusingdatum to which we must not attach a factitious importance."
He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in thelid of the square box, which now stood upon the table. Suddenly thelid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual intea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box,so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
Then happened a singular thing.
Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--an oilyvapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and ofsome words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life!Fu-Manchu sent that box!" I threw my arms round him. As he bentforward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils. I dragged himback and all but pitched him out on to the landing. We entered mybedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tannedface was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identicalwith chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to besomething else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what! It is the fumes ofchlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works. We have beenblind--I particularly. Don't you see? There was no one in thesarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to havesuffocated a regiment!"
Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such ascheme? I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy casebeing overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aidof the string--after Sir Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I takeit, is heavier than air."
"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a halftimes heavier than air. You can pour it from jar to jar like aliquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask. In these respects thisstuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would notinterest you. The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, andthe gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining--except the smell."
"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliarwith it. You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by thearrival of Sir Lionel? The scent of those infernal flowers mustpartially have drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled thestuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, whereKwee was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created sufficientdraught to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on thefloor now. I will go and open both windows."
Nayland raised his haggard face.
"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir LionelBarton," he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude,Petrie?--contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt isjustified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It isby no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."