The Mask of Fu-Manchu (16 page)

“Look at me, Greville,” he said, “and listen closely.”

His words were spoken with such a note of authority that I was startled out of my misery. I met that steady glance, as:

“He will be crowned in Damascus,” said Nayland Smith distinctly.

I felt my eyes opening more widely as if under the influence of that compelling stare. Even as I realised that this was a shot at random, and grasped the purpose of the experiment, it succeeded— in a measure.

For one incalculable instant I saw with my mind’s eye an incredibly dirty old beggarman, hobbling along on a crutch. My expression must have given the clue, for:

“Quick!” rapped Nayland Smith; “what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking,” I replied in a flat, toneless voice, which during these last agonising hours I had come to recognise as my own, “that those words were spoken by a very old man, having one leg and carrying a crutch.”

“Keep your mind on that figure, Greville,” Nayland Smith ordered; “don’t lose it, but don’t get excited. You are sure it was a crutch—not a stick?”

I shook my head sadly. I thought I knew what he was driving at. Dr. Fu-Manchu, on the one occasion (so far as I remembered) that I had ever set eyes on him, had supported his weight upon a heavy stick.

“It was a crutch,” I replied. “I can hear the tap of it, now.”

“Did it
crunch
? Was the man walking on gravel—or sand?”

“No, a clear tap. It must have been on stone.”

“Did he speak in English?”

“Yes. I am almost sure the words were spoken in English.”

“Did he say ‘Damas’ or ‘Damascus’?”

“Damascus.”

“Anything else?”

“No—it’s all gone again.”

I dropped my head into my hands as Nayland Smith began to walk up and down before the window.

“Do you know, Greville,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, “that your memory of those words—for I am perfectly convinced that you really heard them—relieves my mind of a certain anxiety in regard to Rima.”

I looked up.

“What ever do you mean?”

“It confirms my first opinion that her disappearance was arranged, and arranged with fiendish ingenuity, by the Fu-Manchu group. This can only mean one thing, Greville. She has been abducted for a definite purpose. Had it been otherwise, in these rather disturbed times, I should have feared that her abduction had been undertaken for personal reasons. You understand what I mean?”

I nodded miserably.

Nayland Smith stepped across and laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Buck up, old chap. I think I know how you feel. But there’s nothing to despair about. Take my word for it: we shall have news of her before noon.”

Hoping, doubting, I looked up at the speaker.

“You don’t say that just to try to ease my mind?”

“To do so would be false kindness. I say it because I believe it.

“You mean… ?”

“I mean that Rima is to be used as an instrument to bring Sir Lionel to reason.”

“By heavens!” I sprang up, hope reborn in my heart. “Of course! Of course! It will be a case of ransom!”

“Rima’s life against the relics of the Prophet,” Nayland Smith returned dryly. He begun to walk up and down again. “And this time, Greville, the enemy will score. Not even Barton could hesitate.”

“Hesitate!” I cried. “Why, if he has to be forced to give them up at the point of a gun—give them up he shall!”

“I don’t think such persuasion will be necessary, Greville. Barton is a monument of selfishness where his professional enthusiasms are concerned, but he has a heart, and a big one at that.”

I dropped back into my seat again. A flood of relief had swept over me, for I believed Nayland Smith’s solution of the mystery to be the correct one. Truth to tell, I was physically tired to the point of exhaustion; yet sleep, I knew, was utterly impossible. And I sat there, watching that apparently tireless man; haggard, but alert, brighteyed, pacing up and down—up and down—his brain as clear and his nerves as cool as if he were fresh from his morning bath. Even the chief, who had the constitution of a healthy ox, had collapsed some time before and was now sleeping like a log.

I was conscious of an acute pain in the tendon behind my left ankle, and stooping, I began to rub it. As I did so:

“What’s the matter?” Nayland Smith asked sharply.

“I don’t know,” I replied, and lifting my foot I rolled my sock down and examined the painful spot.

“By Jove! something has cut in there. And my other ankle is painful, too, but in front.”

“Let me see,” he said rapidly. “Rest both feet on this chair here.”

Whereupon he stooped and examined my ankles with the utmost care, and finally:

“You have been tied,” he said, “and from the appearance of your ankles, brutally tied, with some very thin but presumably very strong material.” He glanced up, smiling sourly. “I think, Greville, I have a length of that same mysterious material carefully preserved among my belongings!”

He watched me steadily, and I knew what he hoped for.

“No!” I shook my head sadly. “I have undoubtedly been tied, as you surmise, but I have no recollection whatever of the matter.”

“Damn!” he rapped, and stood upright. “I can’t help you in this case. There’s no cue word, you see, to arouse that drugged memory. By heaven, Greville—” he suddenly shook his clenched fist in the air—“if I and those behind me can defeat the genius of this one old man, we shall have accomplished a feat which Homer might have sung. He is stupendous!”

He ceased suddenly and began to stare at me again.

“H’m!” he added. “I am forgetting how to keep my head in difficult moments. I have allowed elementary routine to go to the winds. Have you by any chance examined the contents of your pockets since you returned?”

“No!” I replied in surprise; “it never occurred to me.”

“Be good enough to turn out all your pockets and place their contents upon this table.”

Mechanically I obeyed. A wallet, a pipe, a pouch, a cigarette case, I extracted from various pockets and laid down upon the table. A box of matches, a pocketknife, a bunch of keys, some loose money, a handkerchief, a trouser button, two toothpicks, and an automatic lighter which never functioned but which I carried as a habit.

“That’s the lot,” I announced dully.

“Anything missing?”

“Not that I can remember.”

Nayland Smith took up my cigarette case, opened it, and glanced inside.

“How many cigarettes were in your case when you left?”

I paused for a moment, and then:

“None,” I replied confidently. “I remember dropping my last in the garden, here, just before I sighted Fah Lo Suee.”

He took up my pipe: it was filled but had not been lighted.

“Odd! Isn’t it?” he asked. “Remember anything about this?”

I dropped my weary head into my hands again, thinking hard, and at last:

“Yes,” I replied. “I remember that I never lighted it.”

Nayland Smith sniffed at the tobacco, opened my pouch and sniffed at the contents, also; then:

“Is your small change all right?”

“To the best of my recollection.”

“Examine the wallet. You probably know exactly what you had there.”

I obeyed; and at the first glance, I made a singular discovery.

A small envelope of thick gray paper containing a bulky enclosure protruded from one of the pockets of the wallet!

“Sir Denis!” I said excitedly, “this wasn’t here. This doesn’t belong to me!”

“It does now,” he replied grimly, and, stooping, he pulled out the envelope from the wallet which I held in my hand.

“‘Shan Greville, Private,’” he read aloud. “Do you know the writing?”

I stared at the envelope which he had placed on the table before me. Yes, that handwriting was familiar—hauntingly familiar, but difficult to place. Where had I seen it before?

“Well?”

It was queer, square writing, the horizontal strokes written very thickly, and the ink used was of a peculiar shade of green. I looked up.

“Yes, I have seen it—somewhere.”

“Good. As it is addressed to you and marked ‘private,’ perhaps you had better open it.”

I tore open the small square envelope. It contained a single sheet of the same thick, gray paper folded in which was a little piece of muslin, a tiny extemporised bag, tied with green silk. It contained some small, hard object, and I placed it on the table glancing at Nayland Smith, and then began to read the note written in green ink upon the gray paper. This is what I read:

I do not want you to suffer because of what I have been compelled to do. You love Rima. If she does not come back—trust me. I am not jealous. I send you a tablet which must be dissolved in a half litre of matured white wine, and which you must drink as quickly as possible. I trust you also—
TO BURN THIS LETTER
. To help you I say: He will be crowned in Damascus.

This I read aloud, then dropped the letter on the table and glanced at Nayland Smith. He was watching me fixedly.

“‘He will be crowned in Damascus,’” he echoed. “Quick! Do those words, now, take you back any further?”

I shook my head.

“Do you know the writing? Think.”

“I am thinking. Yes, I have it! I have only seen it once before in my life.”

“Well?”

“It’s the writing of Fu-Manchu’s daughter—Fab Lo Suee!”

Sir Denis snapped his fingers and began to walk up and down again.

“I knew it!” he snapped. “Greville! Greville! It’s the old days over again! But this time we’re dealing with a she-devil. And dare we trust her? Dare we trust her?”

I was untying the little packet, and from it I dropped an ordinary-looking tablet, small, round, and white, which might have been aspirin, upon the table.

“Personally,” I said, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “I would as soon think of following the instructions in her letter as of jumping out of that window.”

Nayland Smith continued to walk up and down.

“For the moment I express no opinion,” he replied. “I may have a better knowledge of the mentality of Eastern women than you have, Greville. And I may have paid a high price for my knowledge. But don’t misunderstand me.”

I picked up the tablet and was in the act of throwing it out into the garden, when:

“Don’t do that!” He sprang forward and grasped my wrist. “You leap to conclusions too hastily. Think! Thought is man’s prerogative. You definitely recognise this as the writing of Fu-Manchu’s daughter? Granting it even to be a forgery—what then?” He stared at me coldly. “Can you conceive of any object which would be served by bringing your death about in so complicated a manner?”

It was a new point of view—but a startling one.

“Frankly, no.” I admitted. “But we have had experience in the past, Sir Denis, of remarkable behaviour on the part of persons subjected to the poisons of Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

“You are thinking of an attempt once made unconsciously by Rima to murder
me
?” he suggested. I had thought of this. Don’t imagine I haven’t taken it into account. But no agent of Dr. Fu-Manchu, with such an object in mind, could be so clumsy as this.”

He pointed to the tablet upon the table.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said dully. “But all the same, you are not suggesting that I should follow out these instructions?”

Nayland Smith shook his head.

“I am merely suggesting,” he answered, “that you should keep this remarkable clue. It may have its uses later.”

Already he was sniffing at the paper and envelope, scrutinising the writing—holding the sheet up to the light—examining its texture.

“Very remarkable,” he “murmured, and, turning, stared at me fixedly.

Personally, I was on the verge of collapse and knew it. My brain was a veritable circus; my body was deadly weary. Desperately though anxiety rode me, I would have given all I had for one hour of sleep, of forgetfulness, of relief from this fever which was burning me up. Nayland Smith came forward and, seating himself beside me, put his arm around my shoulders.

“Listen, Greville,” he said. “Petrie is due back in a few minutes, now. He won’t have long to spare. But I’m going to make him put you to sleep. You understand?”

I had never in my life stood so near to the borders of hysteria.

“Thanks,” I replied; “of course I do. And I’ll submit to it; but there’s a proviso…”

“What is it?”

“Not for more than an hour. I can’t bear the thought of lying like a log while I might be of use to her.”

He gripped my tightly for a moment, and then stood up.

“You are off duty,” he snapped dryly. “I’m in charge, and you’ll take my orders. When Petrie comes, you’ll do exactly as Petrie directs. In the meantime, have I your permission to examine and photograph this letter? You will then, quite properly, wish to destroy it, as your correspondent directs.”

I agreed. At which very moment the door was thrown open and Petrie came in. One glance he cast at Sir Denis, and then directed that searching professional gaze upon me; the analytical look of a diagnostician. I saw that he was not favourably impressed.

“Smith,” he said, with another glance at Sir Denis, “our friend here must sleep.”

Nayland Smith nodded.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Petrie continued; “you’re most terribly overwrought, Greville. But if you share my opinion that sleep is necessary, I think I can manage you.”

“I do,” I replied.

“In that event, the matter is simple enough. We will go up to your room, now.”