by Sax Rohmer
A dark shape lay almost at my feet, half hidden in shadow. I drew back sharply, looking down; and:
“Damned unfortunate, Greville,” said Nayland Smith rapidly.
He was standing near the door out of which I had come, a tall, angular figure, flooded by moonlight on the right, but a mere silhouette on the left. He wore a loose black gibbeh which I thought I recognized as the property of Ali Mahmoud. The angularity of his features was accentuated, and the one eye which was visible shone like polished steel. He glanced down.
“I used an extemporised sandbag from behind,” he explained, “and I’m afraid I hit too hard. I’m not masquerading, Greville—” indicating his black robe. “I borrowed this to help me to hide in the shadows. Is the other Negro dead?”
“Yes, he dashed his brains out against the wall of the mosque.”
“Damnably unfortunate!” Nayland Smith jerked. “I have no personal regrets, but either would have been an invaluable witness. There was a third on the roof of the mosque. His job was to keep a lookout. I missed him twice, but hit him the third time. He managed to get away, nevertheless. But I’m hoping he can’t escape from the building.”
Dimly, from far below, rose a murmuring of approaching steps and voices. Nayland Smith’s shots had awakened the neighbourhood.
“Damn it!” he rapped. “If a crowd gathers, it may ruin everything.”
He stooped and removed a loop of that strange tenuous line from a projection of the ornamental stonework decorating the railing of the balcony.
“Look!” he said, and held it up in the moonlight. “It doesn’t seem strong enough to support a kitten. Yet the black murderer and the iron box were swung from window to window upon a carefully judged length of it.” He thrust the line into his pocket. “I came prepared for wire,” he added grimly, and exhibited an implement which I recognized as part of Sir Lionel’s kit: a steel wire cutter.
“For heaven’s sake, what is it?” I asked.
Even now, I found difficulty in believing that a line no stouter than sewing thread could carry a man’s weight.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Greville. But it’s tremendously tough. It took a mighty grip to cut through it. Suspended from this balcony, you see, its length carefully estimated, it enabled one of these acrobatic devils to swing from a window of the mosque right onto a corresponding window of the house opposite. It also enabled him to swing the iron box across. But there’s work for us!”
He pushed me before him in his impetuous fashion; and:
“There was a fourth in the game, Greville,” he added… “perhaps a fifth. He, or they, were stationed behind the window of the mosque. The controlling influence—the man we’re looking for—was there!”
I started down at the wooden stair, Nayland Smith following hard behind me; until:
“One moment!” he called.
I paused and turned, directing the ray of my torch upward. He was fumbling in a sort of little cupboard at the head of the steps, and from it he presently extracted his shoes, and proceeded to put them on, talking rapidly the while.
“It was touch and go when that black devil came up, Greville. I also was black from head to feet; black robe, black socks, and a black head cover, made roughly from a piece of this old gibbeh, with holes cut for eyes and mouth! He didn’t see me, and he couldn’t hear me. I dodged him all round the gallery like a boy dodging around the trunk of a tree! When he made fast the line, on the end of which I could see two large iron hooks, and lowered it, I recognized the method.”
He had both his shoes on now and was busily engaged in lacing them.
“It confirmed my worst suspicions—but this can be discussed later. Having lowered it to its approved length, he swung it like a pendulum; and presently it was caught and held by someone hidden behind a window of the mosque. You will find, I think, that there is a still lighter line attached to the hooks. This enabled the Negro, having swung across from the mosque to the house, to haul the pendulum back until the box was safely disposed of. It was as he swung across in turn, that I got busy with the wire cutter.”
He came clattering down, and:
“Left!” he said urgently—“into the mosque.”
I found myself proceeding along that narrow, mysterious passage.
“Light out!”
As I switched the torch off, he opened a door. I was looking along a flat roof, silvered by moonlight—the roof of the mosque.
“I hit him just before he reached this door. There’s a bare chance he may have left a clue.”
“A clue to what?”
A considerable group of people had collected in the street, far below, including, I thought, Armenians from across the river, as many excited voices told me. But I was intent upon the strange business in hand; and:
“The sound!” said Nayland Smith; “that damnable, howling sound which was their signal.”
No torch was necessary now. The roof was whitely illuminated by the moon. And, stooping swiftly:
“My one bit of luck tonight,” he exclaimed. “Look!”
Triumphantly, for I could see his eyes gleaming, he held up an object which at first I was unable to identify, I suppose because it was something utterly unexpected. But presently recognition came. It was a bone... a human frontal bone!
“I’m afraid,” I said stupidly, “that I don’t understand.”
“A bull-roarer!” cried Nayland Smith. “Barton can probably throw light upon its particular history.”
He laughed. A length of stout twine was attached to the bone, and twisting this about his fingers he swung the thing rapidly round and round at ever increasing speed.
The result was uncanny.
I heard again that awesome whining which had heralded the death of Van Berg, which I had thought to be the note of some supernatural nocturnal creature. It rose to a wail—to a sort of muted roar—and died away as the swing diminished…
“One of the most ancient signaling devices in the world, Greville— probably prehistoric in origin. Listen!”
I heard running footsteps, many running footsteps, in the street below—all receding into the distance...
Sir Denis laughed again, shortly.
“Our bull-roarer has successfully dispersed the curious natives!” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BLACK SHADOW
Dawn was very near when that odd party assembled in the room which we used as an office, the room in which Van Berg had died. Nayland Smith presided, looking haggardly tired after his exertions of the night. He paced up and down continuously. The chief stood near the door, shifting from foot to foot in his equally restless fashion. Rima sat in the one comfortable chair and I upon the arm of it.
A Persian police officer who spoke perfect English completed the party.
“Dr. Van Berg, as you know,” said Sir Denis, “died in this room. I have tried to explain how the murderer gained access. The room being higher than Sir Lionel’s, the line used was shorter, but the method was the same. I found fingerprints and footmarks on the roof of the mosque and also on the ledge below these shutters. A man stabbed as Van Berg was stabbed bleeds from the mouth; therefore I found no bloodstains. The Negro was swung across, not from the window, but from the roof of the mosque. He employed the same device, having quietly entered, of spraying the head of the sleeper with some drug which so far we haven’t been able to identify. It smells like mimosa. Fortunately, a portion remains in the spray upon the dead African, and analysis may enlighten us.”
“But Dr. Van Berg was stabbed, as I remember?” said the Persian official.
“Certainly!” Nayland Smith snapped. “He had a pair of Caspian kittens sleeping at the foot of his bed. The bed used to stand there, just where you are sitting. They awakened immediately and in turn awakened him. He must have realised what was afoot, and he sprang straight for the box. It was his first and only thought—for already he was under the influence of the drug. The Negro knifed him from behind.”
&nbs
p; He pointed to a narrow-bladed knife which lay upon a small table.
“He came provided for a similar emergency tonight... That unhappy mystery, I think, is solved.”
“I cannot doubt it,” the Persian admitted. “But the strength of this material,” touching a piece of the slender yellow-gray line, “is amazing. What is it?”
“It’s silkworm gut,” Sir Lionel shouted. “I recognized it at once. It’s the strongest animal substance known. It’s strong enough to land a shark, if he’s played properly.”
“I don’t agree with you, Barton,” Nayland Smith said quietly. “It certainly resembles silkworm gut, but it is infinitely stronger.”
Before the chief could reply:
“A very singular business. Sir Lionel,” the suave official murmured. “But I am happy to leam that no Persian subject is concerned in this murderous affair.”
There was a pause, and then:
“A fourth man was concerned,” said Nayland Smith, speaking unusually slowly. “He, as well as the Negro whom I wounded, has managed to get away. Probably there are exits from the mosque with which I am unacquainted?”
“You suggest that the fourth man concerned was one of our subjects?”
“I suggest nothing. I merely state that there was a fourth man. He was concealed in a window of the mosque.”
“Probably another of these Negroes—who are of a type quite unfamiliar to me…”
“They are Ogboni!” shouted the chief. “They come from a district of the Slave Coast I know well! They’re members of a secret Voodoo society. You should read my book The Sorcerers of Dahomey. I spent a year in their territory. When I saw that bull roarer there—” he pointed to the frontal bone with the twine attached, which also lay upon the small table—“it gave me the clue. I knew that these West African negroes were Ogboni. They’re active as cats and every bit as murderous. But I agree with Smith, that they were working under somebody else’s direction.”
The Persian official, a dignified and handsome man of forty-odd, wearing well tailored European clothes, raised his heavy brows and smiled slightly.
“Are you suggesting. Sir Lionel,” he asked, “that the religious trouble, which I fear you have brought about, is at the bottom of this?”
“I am,” the chief replied, glaring at him truculently.
“It’s beyond doubt,” said Nayland Smith. “The aim of the whole conspiracy was to gain possession of the green box.”
The Persian continued to smile.
“And in this aim it would seem that the conspirators have been successful.”
“They certainly managed to smuggle the box out of the mosque,” Nayland Smith admitted grimly, “although one of the pair was wounded, as I know for a fact.”
Our visitor stood up.
“Some sort of rough justice has been done,” he said. “The actual assassin of your poor friend Dr. Van Berg has met his deserts, as has his most active accomplice. The green box, I believe, contained valuable records of your recent inquiries in Khorassan…”
His very intonation told me unmistakably that he believed nothing of the kind…
“I feel, Sir Lionel, that this may represent a serious loss to Oriental students—nor can I imagine of what use these—records can be to those who have resorted to such dreadful measures to secure them.”
The chief clapped his hands, and Ali Mahmoud came in. The Persian official stooped and kissed Rima’s fingers, shook hands with the rest of us, and went out. There was silence for a few moments, and then:
“You know, Barton,” said Nayland Smith, pacing up and down rapidly, “Ispahan, though quite civilised, is rather off the map; and frankly—local feeling is against you. I mean this Mokanna movement is going to play hell in Persia if it goes on. As you started it—you’re not popular.”
“Never have been,” growled the chief; “never expect to be.”
“Not the point,” rapped Smith. “There’s going to be worse to come—when they know.”
A silence followed which I can remember more vividly than many conversations. Rima squeezed my arm and looked up at me in a troubled way. Sir Denis was not a man to panic. But he had made it perfectly clear that he took a grave view of the situation.
Sir Lionel had fenced with the local authorities throughout, knowing that they could have no official information regarding the relics—since, outside our own party (and now Captain Woodville and Stratton Jean), nobody but Amir Khan knew we had found them.
At the cost of one life in our camp and two in their own the enemy had secured the green box... but the green box was empty! I knew now why the chief had been so conscience-stricken by the death of Van Berg; I knew that the relics had never been where we all supposed them to be from the time that we came to Ispahan.
Van Berg had died defending an empty box...
Sir Lionel began to laugh in his boisterous fashion.
“We’ve scored over them. Smith!” he shouted, and shook his clenched fist. They had Van Berg—but we got a pair of the swine tonight! Topping it all—they’ve drawn a blank!”
His laughter ceased, and that wonderful, lined old face settled down again into the truculent mask which was the front Sir Lionel Barton showed to the world.
“It’s a poor triumph,” he added, “to pay for the loss of Van Berg.”
Nayland Smith ceased his promenade at the window and stood with his back to all of us, staring out.
“I don’t know where you’ve hidden the relics, Barton,” he said slowly, “but I may have to ask you to tell me. One thing I do know. This part of the East is no longer healthy for any of us. The second attempt has failed—but the third…”
“What are you suggesting?” Sir Lionel growled; “that I give ’em up? Suppose it came to that. Who am I dealing with?”
Nayland Smith did not turn. But:
“I believe I can tell you,” he answered quietly.
“Then tell me! Don’t throw out hints. Speak up, man!”
At that, Nayland Smith turned and stared at the speaker, remaining silent for some moments. At last:
“I flew here in a two-seater from Basra,” he replied. “There was no other aircraft available in the neighbourhood. I have already made arrangements, however. Imperial Airways have lent us a taxi. You must realise. Barton, the position is serious.”
Something in his manner temporarily silenced the chief; until:
“I do realise it,” he admitted grudgingly. “Some organiser has got hold of this wave of fanaticism which my blowing up of El Mokanna’s tomb started, and he realises—I suppose that’s what you’re driving at?—that production of the actual relics would clinch the matter. Am I right?”
“You are!” said Nayland Smith. “And I must ask you to consider one or two facts. The drug which was used in the case of Van Berg, and again last night, is, I admit, unfamiliar. But the method of employment is not. You see what I mean?”
Rima’s grip on my arm tightened; and:
“Shan,” she said, looking up at me, “it was what happened two years ago in England!”
The chief’s face was a study. Under tufted eyebrows he was positively glaring at Nayland Smith. The latter continued:
“Rima begins to realise what I mean. The device for passing from house to house without employing the usual method of descending to the street is also familiar to me. It was experience, and nothing else, that enabled me to deal with the affair of last night.”
He paused, and I found my mind working feverishly. Then, bringing that odd conversation to a dramatic head, came a husky query from Sir Lionel.
“Good God! Smith!” he said. “He can’t be behind this?”
The emphasis on “he” resolved my final doubt.
“You’re not suggesting, Sir Denis,” I asked, “that we are up against Dr. Fu-Manchu?”
Rima clutched me now convulsively. Once only had she met the stupendous genius, Dr. Fu-Manchu, but the memory of that one interview would remain with her to the end of her days, as it
would remain with me.
“If I had had any doubts, Barton,” said Nayland Smith, “your identification of the murderer and his accomplice would have settled them. They belong, you tell me, to a secret society on the Slave Coast.”
He paused, staring hard at Sir Lionel.
“I believe that there is no secret society of this character, however small or remote, which is not affiliated to the organisation known as the Si-Fan. That natives of the Pacific Islands are indirectly controlled by this group, I know for a fact; why not Negroes of West Africa? Consider the matter from another angle. What are natives of the Slave Coast doing in Persia? Who has brought them here?
“They are instruments, Barton, in the hands of a master schemer. For what object they were originally imported, we shall probably never know, but their usefulness in the present case has been proved. There can be no association between this West African society and the survivors of the followers of El Mokanna. These Negroes are in the train of some directing personality.”
It was morning, and the East is early afoot. From a neighbouring market street came sounds of movement and discords human and animal. Suddenly Sir Denis spoke again.
“If any doubt had remained in my mind. Barton, it would have been removed last night. You may recall that just before the first signal came, someone passed slowly along the street below?”
“Yes! I heard him—but I couldn’t see him.”
“I heard him, too!” I cried…
“I both heard him and saw him,” Nayland Smith continued— “from my post on the minaret. Action was impossible—unfortunately—in the circumstances. But the man who walked along the street last night just before the second attempt on the green box… was Dr. Fu-Manchu!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROAD TO CAIRO
Weary though I was of all the East, nevertheless, Cairo represented civilisation. I think I have never felt a greater wave of satisfaction than at the moment when, completing the third and longest stage of our flight from Ispahan, we climbed down upon the sands of Egypt.