Works of Sax Rohmer

by Sax Rohmer

  “The Laurels!” I cried incredulously.

  “It is called so,” whispered the Eurasian. “It is the last house but one in College Road! From there I conducted my last experiment with L.K. Vapor, which resulted not in the death of Mr. Addison, but in that of Eric Coverly—”

  Gatton sprang to his feet.

  “Come along, Mr. Addison!” he cried. But:

  “The Laurels is empty,” came, ever more faintly. “In her Sothic fury, Nahémah fled. The bloodlust is upon her. I warn you. She is more dangerous ... than ... any rabid dog.... Tuberculosis will end her life ... before the snows ... come. But there is time for her to ... Ah, God’s mercy!”

  He writhed. He was contorted. Foam appeared Upon his lips.

  “Hlangkûna!” he moaned, “hlangkûna! She ... touched me with a poisoned needle ... two hours — ago....”

  He rose to his full height, uttered a stifled scream, and crashed down upon the floor — dead!

  In a species of consternation, Gatton and I stood looking at one another — standing rigidly like men of stone one on either side of that long, thin body stretched upon my study floor. The hawk face in profile was startlingly like that of Anubis as it lay against the red carpet.

  Neither of us, I think, was capable of grasping the fact that the inquiry was all but ended and that the mysteries which had seemed so dark and insoluble were cleared up and the inner workings of this strange conspiracy laid bare before us. One thought, I believe, was uppermost in both our minds: that the man who now lay dead upon the floor, a victim of one of his own devilish inventions, was no more than a brilliant madman.

  If his great work on the ape-men of Abyssinia and that greater one dealing with what he called “the psycho-hybrids” had ever had existence outside his own strange imagination no one was ever likely to know. But that Dr. Damar Greefe was a genius whom much learning had made mad, neither of us doubted.

  The whole thing seemed the wildest phantasy, and, for a time, in doubting the reality of the Eurasian’s work, I found myself doubting the evidence of my own senses and seriously wondering if this possessed witch-cat whose green eyes had moved like Satanic lanterns throughout the whole phantasmagoria, had any more palpable existence than the other strange things spoken of by the unscrupulous scientist.

  That Gatton’s thoughts had been running parallel with my own was presently made manifest, for:

  “Without a moment’s delay, Mr. Addison,” he said, speaking like a man newly awakened from slumber, “we must proceed to The Laurels and test the truth of what we have heard.”

  He crossed to the door, threw it open, and:

  “Sergeant!” he cried. “Come in! The prisoner is dead!”

  As the sergeant and the constable who were waiting came into the study and stood looking in stupefaction at the body stretched on the floor, I heard the telephone bell ring. I started nervously. That sound awakened ghastly memories, and I thought of the man who only a few hours before had met his death in the room where now the bell was ringing its summons.

  I doubted if I could ever spend another night beneath that roof, for here Dr. Damar Greefe, the arch-assassin, and one of his victims both had met their ends. I heard the voice of Coates speaking in the adjoining room, and presently, as Gatton went to the door:

  “Miss Merlin wishes to speak to you, sir,” said Coates.

  I ran eagerly to the ‘phone, and:

  “Hello!” I cried. “Is that you, Isobel?”

  “Yes!” came her reply, and I noted the agitation in her voice. “I am more dreadfully frightened than I have ever been in my life. If only you were here! Is it possible for you to come at once?”

  “What has alarmed you?” I asked anxiously.

  “I can’t explain,” she replied. “It is a dreadful sense of foreboding — and all the dogs in the neighborhood seem to have gone mad!”

  “Dogs!” I cried, a numbing fear creeping over me. “You mean that they are howling?”

  “Howling!” she answered. “I have never heard such a pandemonium at any time. In my present state of nerves, Jack, I did the wrong thing in coming to this funny lonely little house. I feel deserted and hopeless and, for some reason, in terrible danger.”

  “Are you alone, then?” I asked, in ever growing anxiety.

  To my utter consternation:

  “Yes!” she replied. “Aunt Alison was called away half an hour ago — to identify some one at a hospital who had asked for her—”

  “What! an accident?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But the servants?”

  “Cook left this morning. You remember Aunt told you she was leaving.”

  “There is the girl, Mary?”

  “Aunt ‘phoned for her to join her at the hospital!”

  “What! I don’t understand! ‘Phoned, you say? Was it Mrs. Wentworth herself who ‘phoned?”

  “No; I think not. One of the nurses, Mary said. But at any rate, she has gone, Jack, and I’m frightened to death! There’s something else,” she added.

  “Yes?” I said eagerly.

  She laughed in a way that sounded almost hysterical.

  “Since Mary went I have thought once or twice that I have seen some one or something creeping around outside the house in the shadows amongst the trees! And just a while ago something happened which really prompted me to ‘phone you.”

  “What was it?”

  “I heard a sort of scratching at an upper window. It was just like—”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “Like a great cat trying to gain admittance!”

  “See that all the doors and windows are fastened!” I cried. “Whatever happens or whoever knocks don’t open to any one, you understand? We will be with you in less than half an hour!”

  Still in that frightened voice:

  “For heaven’s sake,” she begged, “don’t be long, Jack!...”

  I became aware of a singular rasping sound on the wires, which rendered Isobel’s words almost unintelligible. Then:

  “Jack,” I heard, in a faint whisper, “there is a strange noise ... just outside the room....”

  Silence came. But, vaguely, above that rasping sound, I had detected the words: “Cutting ... telephone ... wires....”

  I replaced the receiver. My hand was shaking wildly.

  “Gatton!” I said, “do you understand? It has turned its attention to Miss Merlin!” Then, raising my voice: “Coates!” I cried, “Coates! run for the car! Hurry, man! Some one’s life depends on your speed!”

  Inspector Gatton grabbed the telephone directory.

  “I will instruct the local police,” he muttered. “Give me the exact address, Mr. Addison, and go and see the cab that’s outside. If it’s a good one we’ll take it instead of waiting.”

  Out I dashed, spurred by a sickly terror, crying Mrs. Wentworth’s address as I ran. And of the ensuing five minutes I retain nothing but chaotic memories: the bewildered cabman; the police bending over the gaunt form on my study floor; Gatton’s voice shouting orders. Then, we had jumped into the cab and enjoining the man to drive like fury, were speeding off through the busy London streets. Leaving the quietude of one suburb for the maelstrom of central London, we presently emerged into an equally quiet backwater upon the Northerly outskirts.

  It was a nightmare journey, but when at last we approached the house for which we were bound my apprehension and excitement grew even keener. It was infinitely more isolated and lonely than I had ever realized, behind its high brick walls.

  Of the local police there was no sign. And without hesitation we ran in at the open gate and up the path towards the porch. Every window in the house was brightly illuminated, testifying to the greatness of the occupant’s fear. Gaining the porch, we stopped, as if prompted by some mutual thought, and listened.

  There was the remote murmuring of busy London, but here surrounding us was a stillness as great as that which prevailed in my own neighborhood; and as we stood there, keenly alert — dis
tinctly we both heard the howling of dogs!

  “You hear it?” rapped Gatton.

  “I do!” I replied.

  Grasping the bell-knob, I executed a vigorous peal upon the bell. There was a light in the hallway but my ringing elicited no response, until:

  “My God, look!” cried Gatton.

  He pulled me backward out of the porch, looking upward to the window of a room on the first floor.

  A silhouette appeared there — undoubtedly that of Isobel. She seemed to be endeavoring to pull the curtain aside ... when the shadow of a long arm reached out to her, and she was plucked irresistibly back. The sound of a muffled scream reached my ears, and:

  “Great heavens! It has got in!” whispered Gatton.

  He raised his hand and the shrill note of a police whistle split the silence.

  The closed door was obviously too strong to be forced without the aid of implements for the purpose, and we began to run around the house, looking for some means of entrance. Suddenly:

  “There’s the way!” said Gatton, and pointed up to where the branches of an old elm tree stretched out before a window. The glass of the window was entirely shattered except for some few points which glittered like daggers around the edges of the frame.

  “Can you do it?”

  “In the circumstances — yes!” I said.

  Without more ado I began to climb the elm, stimulated by memories of how I had entered Friar’s Park. It afforded little foothold for the first six feet and proved an even tougher job than I had anticipated, but at last I reached a projecting limb, the bulk of which had been sawn off. Gatton’s agility was not so great as mine, but at the moment that I half staggered and half fell into the room, I heard him swinging himself onto the limb behind me so that as I leaped to the open door he came tumbling in through the window, and the pair of us raced side by side along the corridor towards an apartment facing front from which horrifying cries and sounds of conflict now arose.

  Gaining the closed door of this room, I literally hurled myself upon it. It crashed open ... and I beheld a dreadful spectacle.

  Isobel lay forced back upon a settee which occupied the window recess — and bending over her, having her back turned towards me, was a tall, lithe, black-clad woman who, so far as I could see, was clutching Isobel’s throat and forcing her further backward — backward upon the cushions strewn upon the settee!

  But instant upon the door’s opening this horrible scene changed. With never a backward glance (so that neither Gatton nor I had even a momentary glimpse of her face) the black-robed woman sprang to the window, opened it in a moment, and to my dismay and astonishment sprang out into the darkness!

  My first thought was for Isobel — but Gatton leaped across the room and craned out, peering on to the path below. Indeed, even as I dropped on my knees beside the swooning girl, I found myself listening for the thud of the falling body upon the gravel path. But no sound reached me. That uncanny creature must have alighted truly in the manner of a cat. Through the stillness of the house rang the flat note of a police-whistle. From some distant spot I heard a faint reply.

  For long I failed to persuade myself that Isobel had not sustained some ghastly injury from the attack of the cat-woman. Memories uprose starkly before me of that hlangkûna and the other dreadful death-instruments of the mad Eurasian doctor. Not even the assurances of the local medical man who had been summoned in haste could convince me. For I recognized how petty was his knowledge in comparison with that of Dr. Damar Greefe. But although I trembled to think what her fate might have been if we had arrived a few minutes later, the fact remained (and I returned thanks to Heaven) that she had escaped serious physical injury at the hands of her assailant.

  But, alas, to this very hour she sometimes awakes shrieking in the night. And her terrified cry is always the same: “The green eyes of Bâst!... the green-eyes of Bâst!”

  CHAPTER XXIX AN AFTERWORD

  I wish it lay in my power to satisfy the curiosity in all quarters expressed respecting the identity of “Nahémah” — the cat-woman, or psycho-hybrid, who figured in Dr. Damar Greefe’s statement. But it is my duty, as chronicler of the strange and awful occurrences which at this period disturbed the even tenor of my existence, to state that from the moment in which she leaped from the window of Mrs. Wentworth’s house to the path below, neither I nor any other witness who ever came forward beheld her again.

  At the end of a quest which exercised the intricate machinery of New Scotland Yard throughout the length and breadth of the land, Inspector Gatton was compelled to admit himself defeated in this particular. And his explanation of the failure to apprehend the central figure of the tragedies which had exterminated the house of Coverly was a curious one.

  “You know, Mr. Addison,” he said to me one evening, “the more I think of this Nahémah the more I wonder if such a person ever really existed!”

  “What do you mean, Gatton?” I asked.

  “Well,” he replied, “I mean that although you and I and others are prepared to testify to the existence of a woman in the case, what do we really know about her (leaving Damar Greefe’s statement out of the question) except that she possessed very remarkable eyes?”

  “And very remarkable agility,” I interrupted.

  “Yes, I’ll grant you that,” he said; “her agility was certainly phenomenal. But, still, as I was saying, except for this definite information we have no proof outside the statement of Dr. Damar Greefe that such a person as Nahémah ever existed or at any rate that there ever was a creature possessing the attributes which he ascribed to her. The Laurels is an ordinary suburban house, which has been leased for a number of years by a ‘Mr. and Miss da Costa’ — Damar Greefe, no doubt, and a female companion. But of his ‘great work’ and so forth there’s not a trace. There are a lot of Egyptian antiquities, I’ll admit, but not a scrap of evidence; and the rooms evidently used by the female inmate of the household are those of an ordinary cultured Englishwoman.”

  “But, good heavens, Gatton,” I cried, “whatever explanation can you offer of a series of crimes which were palpably directed against the members of the Coverly family?”

  “I don’t say,” continued Gatton, “that there wasn’t a sort of feud or vendetta at the bottom of the business. I merely mention that we have no evidence to show that the person responsible for it was any other than this Eurasian doctor.”

  “But what could have been his object?”

  “I could suggest several; but my point at the moment is this: although I am prepared to grant that he had a woman associate of some kind, I can’t see that there is any evidence to prove that she was otherwise than an ordinary human being, except that I am disposed to think she was demented.”

  “You are probably right there, Gatton,” I agreed; “and Dr. Damar Greefe was by no means normal; in fact I think he was a dangerous and very brilliant maniac.”

  “At any rate,” added Gatton, “no trace of this Nahémah has been found — which, at the least, is very significant.”

  “Significant, if you like,” I replied; “but for my own part I have no ambition whatever to see again those dreadful green eyes.”

  “I never did see them,” said Gatton musingly; “therefore I can’t speak upon the matter; but when we got Dr. Damar Greefe I think we had the head of the conspiracy. How much of his ‘statement’ is true and how much the product of a diseased mind is something we are never likely to know.”

  “Nor am I curious to know it,” I assured him. “I only desire to forget the tragedies associated with the green eyes of Bâst and to leave the darkness of the past behind—”

  “And,” said Gatton, with a smile less grim than usual, “you have my best wishes for the future.”

  THE END

  BAT-WING

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. PAUL HARLEY OF CHANCERY LANE

  CHAPTER II. THE VOODOO SWAMP

  CHAPTER III. THE VAMPIRE BAT

  CHAPTER IV. CRAY’S FOLLY />
  CHAPTER V. VAL BEVERLEY

  CHAPTER VI. THE BARRIER

  CHAPTER VII. AT THE LAVENDER ARMS

  CHAPTER VIII. THE CALL OF M’KOMBO

  CHAPTER IX. OBEAH

  CHAPTER X. THE NIGHT WALKER

  CHAPTER XI. THE SHADOW ON THE BLIND

  CHAPTER XII. MORNING MISTS

  CHAPTER XIII. AT THE GUEST HOUSE

  CHAPTER XIV. YSOLA CAMBER

  CHAPTER XV. UNREST

  CHAPTER XVI. RED EVE

  CHAPTER XVII. NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON

  CHAPTER XVIII. INSPECTOR AYLESBURY OF MARKET HILTON

  CHAPTER XIX. COMPLICATIONS

  CHAPTER XX. A SPANISH CIGARETTE

  CHAPTER XXI. THE WING OF A BAT

  CHAPTER XXII. COLIN CAMBER’S SECRET

  CHAPTER XXIII. INSPECTOR AYLESBURY CROSS-EXAMINES

  CHAPTER XXIV. AN OFFICIAL MOVE

  CHAPTER XXV. AYLESBURY’S THEORY

  CHAPTER XXVI. IN MADAME’S ROOM

  CHAPTER XXVII. AN INSPIRATION

  CHAPTER XXVIII. MY THEORY OF THE CRIME

  CHAPTER XXIX. A LEE-ENFIELD RIFLE

  CHAPTER XXX. THE SEVENTH YEW TREE

  CHAPTER XXXI. YSOLA CAMBER’S CONFESSION

  CHAPTER XXXII. PAUL HARLEY’S EXPERIMENT

  CHAPTER XXXIII. PAUL HARLEY’S EXPERIMENT CONCLUDED

  CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CREEPING SICKNESS

  CHAPTER XXXV. AN AFTERWORD

  CHAPTER I. PAUL HARLEY OF CHANCERY LANE

  Toward the hour of six on a hot summer’s evening Mr. Paul Harley was seated in his private office in Chancery Lane reading through a number of letters which Innes, his secretary, had placed before him for signature. Only one more remained to be passed, but it was a long, confidential report upon a certain matter, which Harley had prepared for His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. He glanced with a sigh of weariness at the little clock upon his table before commencing to read.

  “Shall detain you only a few minutes, now, Knox,” he said.

  I nodded, smiling. I was quite content to sit and watch my friend at work.