CHAPTER XIV
THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold. I confessthat I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood inthe path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history haddevoted his intellect to crime. I knew that the enormous wealth of thepolitical group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europeand to America greater than that of the plague. He was a scientisttrained at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who hadgone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man. Hismission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--from the path ofthat secret movement which was progressing in the Far East. Smith andI were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at hiscommand, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave thesubject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wrigglingtowards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider bepreparing to drop from the roof! Fu-Manchu might have released aserpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsomedisease!
"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear thissuspense. He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"
"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
"You mean--?"
"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collarabout his neck.
"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but wemust neglect no minor chance. Try with your pocket-knife if you canforce the lock. I am trying to break this one."
Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but Iimmediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with thesmall blade of my knife. I was so engaged, and, having snapped oneblade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me. It camefrom beneath my feet.
"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar. I held mybreath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay. Itwidened--became an oblong. A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me,there rose a dimly seen head. Horror I had expected--and death, orworse. Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass ofcurling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely armclasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stonefloor. In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision,with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feetencased in little red slippers. In short, this was the houri of myvision, materialized. It was difficult to believe that we were inmodern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives ofa caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.
"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly. "She has come to saveYOU."
"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely,fearfully. "A sound and he will kill us all."
She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken mypenknife--and the collar was off. As I rose to my feet the girl turnedand released Smith. She raised the lantern above the trap, and signedto us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
"Your knife," she whispered to me. "Leave it on the floor. He willthink you forced the locks. Down! Quickly!"
Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness. Irapidly followed. Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold bandabout one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which shecarried. We stood in a low-arched passage.
"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,"she ordered.
Neither of us hesitated to obey her. Blind-folded, I allowed her tolead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder. In that order weproceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.
"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper. "There is danger onthe right."
With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressedforward. The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing wassteamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life. But afaint animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subduedstir about me, infinitely suggestive--mysterious.
Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.A gong sounded. We stopped.
The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear; "that is atom-tom!"
"S-sh! S-sh!"
The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously. We were near a dooror a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air; and itreminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was nowleading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her own lips, hadtold me that she was his slave. Through the horrible phantasmagoriashe flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing outrichly in its black setting of murder and devilry. Not once, but athousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature of the tie whichbound her to the sinister Doctor.
Silence fell.
"Quick! This way!"
Down a thickly carpeted stair we went. Our guide opened a door, andled us along a passage. Another door was opened; and we were in theopen air. But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveledpath, with a fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until,unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank. Now, planking creaked toour tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw thegleam of water beneath my feet.
"Be careful!" I was warned, and found myself stepping into a narrowboat--a punt.
Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled outinto the stream.
"Don't speak!" she directed.
My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or ifthe reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar and thissilent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guidewho might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights" werefantasy--the mockery of sleep.
Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,or the Styx.
The punt touched a bank.
"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes," said the girl, withher soft, charming accent, "but I rely upon your honor not to removethe handkerchiefs until then. You owe me this."
"We do!" said Smith fervently.
I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand wasplaced in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma. Arrived onthe bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
"You must not go back," I whispered. "We will take care of you. Youmust not return to that place."
"Let me go!" she said. "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, policeprotection! You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make mebetray him! For what? For what?" She wrenched herself free. "Howlittle you understand me. Never mind. Perhaps one day you will know!Until the clock strikes!"
She was gone. I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the waterfrom the pole. Fainter it grew, and fainter.
"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me. "Why does she clingto that monster?"
The distant sound died away entirely. A clock began to strike; itstruck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off, and so wasSmith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left the moon shoneupon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
It was Windsor Castle.
"Half-past ten," cried Smith. "Two h
ours to save Graham Guthrie!"
We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train toWaterloo; and we caught it. But I sank into a corner of thecompartment in a state bordering upon collapse. Neither of us, Ithink, could have managed another twenty yards. With a lesser stakethan a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have attempted thatdash to Windsor station.
"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith. "That gives usthirty-nine minutes to get to the other side of the river and reach hishotel."
"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated? Did we come up or downstream?"
"I couldn't determine. But at any rate, it stands close to theriverside. It should be merely a question of time to identify it. Ishall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping fornothing. Our escape will warn him."
I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from myforehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar with thebroadcut Latakia mixture.
"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard, andwhat did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon? I noticed how itaffected you."
My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909," hereplied: "an utterly mysterious epidemic. And this beastly wailingwas associated with it."
"In what way? And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there onbusiness connected with some new iron buildings. One night he went tohis room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into thecourtyard. Broke his neck, of course."
"Suicide?"
"Apparently. But there were singular features in the case. Forinstance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
"In the courtyard?"
"In the courtyard!"
"Was it murder by any chance?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
"But the wailing business?"
"That began later, or was only noticed later. A French doctor, namedLafitte, died in exactly the same way."
"At the same place?"
"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room. Here is theextraordinary part of the affair: a friend shared the room with him,and actually saw him go!"
"Saw him leap from the window?"
"Yes. The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case ofLafitte than of that of the American. I spoke to the man about itpersonally. He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he toldme that the cry seemed to come from above him."
"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--the sort ofmoonlight you get in Burma. Lafitte, for some reason, had just gone tothe window. His friend saw him look out. The next moment with adreadful scream, he threw himself forward--and crashed down into thecourtyard!"
"What then?"
"Martin ran to the window and looked down. Lafitte's scream hadaroused the place, of course. But there was absolutely nothing toaccount for the occurrence. There was no balcony, no ledge, by meansof which anyone could reach the window."
"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"
"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night thisuncanny howling aroused me. I heard it quite distinctly, and am neverlikely to forget it. It was followed by a hoarse yell. The man in thenext room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
"Did you change your quarters?"
"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-classestablishment--several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both inRangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein. A story got about the nativequarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva wasreborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story,which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the DistrictSuperintendent no end of trouble."
"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
"They all developed marks after death, as though they had beenstrangled! The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, thoughit was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to bethe five heads of Siva."
"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
"Oh, no. Several Burmans and others died in the same way. At firstthere was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy andcommitted suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
"Yes. I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night,and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from the top deck of the steameraboard which I was traveling! My God! to think that the fiendFu-Manchu has brought That to England!"
"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity. "What has hebrought? An evil spirit? A mental disease? What is it? What CAN itbe?"
"A new agent of death, Petrie! Something born in a plague-spot ofBurma--the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."