by Sax Rohmer
I shook his hand mechanically, noting that he was looking at me in a a queer fashion; and then:
“Where is Sir Denis?” I asked rapidly, “and Miss Barton?”
Hewlett continued to look at me, and I have since learned that I presented a wild-eyed and strange appearance.
“All your friends, Mr. Greville,” he replied, “are out with the search party, operating from Bab el-Khalk. I came back here ten minutes ago for news. I’m glad I did.”
“Where are they searching?” I asked dazedly.
“All around the neighbourhood of the Bab ez-Zuwela—acting on information supplied by the taxi-man who drove you there.”
“Of course,” I muttered; “he returned here and reported my absence, I suppose?”
Hewlett nodded. His expression had changed somewhat, had become very grave.
“You look completely whacked,” he said. “But, nevertheless, I’m afraid I must ask you to come along and join Sir Denis. My car is just round the corner.”
My confusion of mind was such that I thought the search (which presumably had been for me) would now be continued in the hope of discovering the hiding place of Fah Lo Suee.
“Very well,” I replied wearily. “I should like a long drink before we start, and then I shall be entirely at your service.”
“Very well, Mr. Greville.”
I gave the necessary orders to the night porter, whose manner still remained strange, and dropped upon a lounge. Hewlett sat down beside me.
“In order that we don’t waste one precious moment,” he went on, “suppose you tell me exactly what happened tonight?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, “but I fear it’s not going to help very much.”
“What? How can that be?”
“Because the most important period is a complete blank.”
Whereupon I related my movements in the garden that night: how I had seen a woman, whom I was convinced was none other than the daughter of Fu-Manchu, going out by that gate of the garden which I had supposed always to be locked. How I had run through to the front of the hotel just in time to see her entering a car which waited upon the other side of the street.
“Describe this car,” said Hewlett eagerly.
I did so to the best of my ability, stressing its conspicuous yellow colour.
“I have no doubt that my driver’s account is more accurate than mine,” I continued. “He knew the names of all the streets into which we turned, with the exception of the last.”
“He led us there,” said Hewlett with a certain impatience, “but we drew a complete blank. What I want you to tell me, Mr. Greville, is into which house you went in that street.”
I smiled wryly, as the night porter appeared, bearing refreshments on a tray.
“I warned you that my evidence would be a disappointment,” I reminded him. “From that point up to the moment when I found myself standing outside Shepheard’s, here, my memory is a complete blank.”
Hewlett’s expression became almost incredulous. “But what happened?” he demanded. “The man tells us that he saw you run into a narrow turning on the left, as the yellow car—your description of which tallies with his—was driven off. He followed you a moment later and found no trace whatever. For heaven’s sake, tell me, Mr. Greville, what happened?”
“I had fallen into a trap,” I replied wearily. “I was drenched with some kind of anaesthetic. I don’t know how it was applied. Perhaps a cloth saturated in it was thrown over my head. Unconsciousness was almost instantaneous. Beyond telling you that this drug, which was used in the murder of Dr. Van Berg in Persia, has a smell resembling that of mimosa, I can tell you nothing more— absolutely nothing!”
“Good heavens!” groaned Hewlett, “this is awful. Our last hope’s gone!”
My brain seemed to be spinning. I was conscious of most conflicting ideas; and suddenly:
“Wait a moment!” I cried. “There is one other thing. At some time—I haven’t the faintest idea when, but at some time during the night I heard the words, ‘He will be crowned in Damascus’!”
“By whom were they spoken?”
I shook my head impatiently.
“I have no recollection that they were spoken by anybody. I merely remembered them, just before I came up the steps a little while ago. When and where I heard them I haven’t the slightest idea. But I’m ready, Mr Hewlett. I’m afraid I can’t be of the least assistance, but all the same I’m at your service.”
He stood up, and I detected again that queer expression upon his face.
“I suppose,” I added, “Miss Barton is in her room?”
Hewlett bit his lip and glanced swiftly aside. He was a man suddenly and deeply embarrassed. In a grave voice which he tried to make sympathetic:
“It’s hard to have to tell you, Mr. Greville,” he replied, “but it’s for Miss Barton we are searching.”
“What!”
I had turned, already heading for the door, when those words fell upon my ears. I grasped the speaker by both shoulders and, staring into his eyes like a madman, I suppose:
“Miss Barton! What do you mean? What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Go steady, Mr. Greville,” said Hewlett, and gripped my forearms tightly, reassuringly. “Above all things, keep your nerve.”
“But—” my voice shook almost hysterically—“she was with Reggie Humphreys, the Airways pilot… I left her dancing with him!”
“That was a long time ago, Mr. Greville,” was the reply, spoken gently. “Half an hour after the time you mention, there was a perfect hue and cry because you had disappeared. The hotel was searched, and finally Sir Denis got through to my office. Then the cabman turned up reporting your disappearance and where it had taken place. He reported to the central police station, first, and then came on here.”
“But,” I began, “but when—”
“I know what you’re going to ask, but I can’t answer you, because nobody seems to know. There’s only one scrap of evidence. An Egyptian chauffeur brought a note to one of the servants here and requested him to give it to Miss Barton. He telephoned to her room, found her there, and she immediately came down. From that moment the man (I have examined him closely) lost sight of her. But his impression, unconfirmed, is that she ran out onto the terrace. From which moment, Mr. Greville, I regret to say, nothing has been seen or heard of her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AMNESIA
My frame of mind when the new day broke, is better left to the imagination. I was convinced that my brain could not long sustain such stress. Maltreated already by an administration of some damnable drug, this further imposition was too great. I sat in the chief’s room in the light of early morning. Birds were flying from tree to tree outside in the garden; and I could hear the sound of a broom as a man below swept the sanded path.
Sir Lionel had gone to his room to rest, and Dr. Petrie had been recalled to his house by professional duties. Nayland Smith walked up and down in front of the open window. He looked haggard—a sick man; and his eyes were burning feverishly. Suddenly he stopped, turned, and stared at me very hard.
“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?”