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- Author: Sax Rohmer
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was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a
hidden enemy, he was at work here. Strozza’s opening the sarcophagus
clearly spoiled the scheme.”
“And led to the death—”
“Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes. I am at a loss to account for that.”
“Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?”
My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
“You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor—
Kwee—was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?”
I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining
the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.
It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge,
he turned it over.
“Heavy,” he muttered; “but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid. Hallo!”
He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine,
and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or “cork.”
“This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing,” he said.
“Ugh! it has a disgusting smell.”
I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
voice sounded outside in the hall. The door was thrown open,
and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather,
wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.
“Sir Lionel!” cried Smith eagerly. “I warned you!
And see, you have had a very narrow escape.”
Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor,
then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.
He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.
“Mr. Smith,” he said, with emotion, “what does this mean?
Tell me—quickly.”
In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night—
or so much as he knew of them. Sir Lionel Barton listened,
sitting quite still the while—an unusual repose in a man
of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.
“He came for the jewels,” he said slowly, when Smith was finished;
and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.
“I was wrong to submit him to the temptation. God knows what
Kwee was doing in hiding. Perhaps he had come to murder me,
as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe.
But—I don’t think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor.”
He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
Smith stared at him in surprise. “What do you mean, Sir Lionel?”
The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
“I received a wire from Professor Rembold tonight,” he continued.
“You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew
of my absence. I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
the Traveler’s. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon”—
again he looked toward the mummy case—“the tomb of Mekara;
and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.
He begged me not to open it.”
Nayland Smith was studying the speaker’s face.
“What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?” he asked.
Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
“One,” he replied at last, “which amused me—at the time. I must inform
you that Mekara—whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence
in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria—
was a high priest and first prophet of Amen—under the Pharaoh of the Exodus;
in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses.
I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me
with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi,
the French Egyptologist—particulars new to me.”
We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
“M. le Roi,” continued Barton, “discovered, but kept secret,
the tomb of Amenti—another of this particular brotherhood.
It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot—
these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley
of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him
for some reason—on seeing the mummy case—and he was found dead,
apparently strangled, beside it. The matter was hushed up
by the Egyptian Government. Rembold could not explain why.
But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara.”
A silence fell.
The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly,
coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton’s experience and reputation.
“How long had it lain in the docks?” jerked Smith.
“For two days, I believe. I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith,
but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts
respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God
that I did not see…whatever came out of that sarcophagus.”
Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face. “I am glad you
did not, Sir Lionel,” he said; “for whatever the priest Mekara
has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus,
Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life.
He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel.
He will not fail twice.”
IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry
at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle.
And—why should I not confess it?—my memories had frightened me.
I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted down
the following queries:—(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
of 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 murderer
escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist
a mere subjective hallucination—a figment of Croxted’s imagination—
or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
“It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,”
he had said only that morning.
“Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
brought into operation by the opening of the high priest’s coffin.
For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain
that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason
it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.
Don’t work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep
to the FACTS which are established.”
I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
pipe in hand. The house was quite still, for my landlady
and all the small household were out.
Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
door open. In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer,
took out my revolver, and stood up.
There WAS a sound. Someone or something was creeping upstairs
in the dark!
Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it. But the rustling
sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.
I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors
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 its
gruesome 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—
that pistol. Quick! I must speak to you.”
The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped
in a hooded cloak. My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence,
looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s messenger—
if her own statement could be credited, slave. On two occasions
this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most
profound mysteries of the 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,
and watching 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 must arrange
to replace the lock.”
She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders.
“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
conception of her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine,
she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.
In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man
who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman’s kiss.
“I will see that you are placed under proper protection,”
I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.
“It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England.
You are a free agent, or you could not be here now.
Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions.”
“Ah!” she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud
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,
the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer,
the shame. Bah!”
How beautiful she was in her indignation!
“Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that
to-day—TO-DAY—twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
who is brown, and”—whisper—“two hundred and fifty a Circassian,
who is 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 my eyes,
half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer
silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape;
wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled
gardens of Stamboul—a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic
setting of my rooms.
“Tonight I had no time to make myself an English miss,”
she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.
“You see me as I am.” Her garments exhaled a faint perfume,
and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her.
I looked into the challenging eyes.
“Your request
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