by Sax Rohmer
“Quite possible,” I replied, “but lacking special information to the contrary the first thing any excavator would do would be to open the mummy case.”
“This seems to have been done.”
“What!” I cried. “What!”
“Look for yourself,” Weymouth invited, a curious expression in his voice.
He directed a ray on one end of the sarcophagus; whereupon:
“Good God!” I cried.
The wooden rivets had been removed, the lid raised and then replaced! Two wedges prevented its falling into its original position, leaving a gap of an inch or more all around…
I stared in utter stupefaction, until:
“Have you any idea why that should be done?” Weymouth asked.
I shook my head. “Unless to make it easier to lift again,” I suggested.
“If that was the idea,” Weymouth went on quickly, “we will take advantage of it.” He turned to Ali. “Hold the light — so. Now, Greville, get a grip with me, here. Don’t move to any other part of the lid if you can avoid it — there may be fingerprints. And now… see if we can raise it.”
In a state of such excitement as I cannot describe, I obeyed. Simultaneously we lifted, steadily. It responded to our efforts, being lighter than I had supposed…
I fixed a half-fearful gaze upon its shadowy interior.
It appeared to contain a dull, gray mass, irregular in contour, provokingly familiar yet impossible to identify in that first dramatic moment. The very unexpectedness of its appearance destroyed my reasoning powers, temporarily defeating recognition.
When we had the lid at an angle of about forty-five:
“Hold it!” I called. “I’ll take the other end.”
“Right!” Weymouth agreed.
“Now!”
We lifted the lid bodily and laid it on the floor.
I could not have believed that that night of mystery and horror had one more thrill for my jaded nerves. Yet it was so, and it came to me then — an emotion topping all the others; such a thing as no sane man could have conjured up in his wildest imaginings…
Amazed beyond reasonable articulation, I uttered a sort of strangled cry, staring — staring — down into the sarcophagus.
Overstrain and the insufferable atmosphere of the place may have played their parts. But I must confess that the procession of apes began to move about me, the walls of the tomb to sway.
I became aware of a deadly sickness, as I stared and stared at the gray-white face of Sir Lionel Barton, lying in that ancient coffin wrapped in his army blanket!
PART TWO
CHAPTER FOUR
FAH LO SUEE
“Better turn in, Greville,” said Dr. Petrie rapidly. “Lie down at any rate. Can’t expect you to sleep. But you’ve had enough for one night. Your job is finished for the moment. Mine begins.”
How the others had reacted to our astounding discovery I am quite unable to relate. I was in no fit condition to judge.
Petrie half supported me along the sloping passage, and administered a fairly stiff peg from his flask which enabled me with Ali’s aid to mount the ladders. I was furious with myself. To have to retire when the most amazing operation ever attempted by a surgeon was about to be performed — the restoring of a dead man to life!… But when at last I dropped down on my bed in the tent, I experienced a moment of horrible doubt — a moment during which I questioned my own sanity.
Ali Mahmoud’s expression, as he stood watching me anxiously, held a certain reassurance, however. That imperturbable man was shaken to the depths of his being.
“Effendim,” he whispered, “it is Black Magic! It is Forbidden this tomb!” He grasped an iron ring which he wore upon his right hand, and pronounced the takbîr, being a devout Moslem. “Everyone has told me so. And it is true!”
“It would seem to be,” I whispered. “Go back. You will be wanted.”
I had always loved the chief, and that last glimpse of his gray-white face, under the astounding circumstances of our discovery, had utterly bowled me out. The things I had heard of Dr. Fu-Manchu formed a sort of dizzy background — a moving panorama behind this incredible phantasy. There was no sanity in it all — no stable point upon which one could grasp.
Was Sir Lionel dead, or did he live? Dead or alive, who had stolen his body, and why? Most unanswerable query of all — with what possible object had he been concealed in the sarcophagus?
A thousand other questions, equally insane, presented themselves in a gibbering horde. I clutched my head and groaned. I heard a light footstep, looked up, and there was Rima standing in the opening of the tent.
“Shan, dear!” she cried, “you look awful! I don’t wonder. I have heard what happened. And truly I can’t believe it even now! Oh, Shan, do you really, really think—”
She fell on her knees beside me and grasped my hand.
“I don’t know,” I said, and scarcely knew my own voice. “I have had rather a thick time, dear, and I, well… I nearly passed out. But I saw him.”
“Do you think I could help?”
“I don’t know,” I replied wearily. “If so, Petrie will send for you. After all, we’re quite in his hands. I don’t want you to hope for too much, darling. This mysterious ‘antidote’ seems like sheer lunacy to me. Such things are clean outside the scope of ordinary human knowledge.”
“Poor, old boy,” said Rima, and smoothed my hair caressingly.
Her touch was thrilling, yet soothing; and I resigned myself very gladly to those gentle fingers. There is nothing so healing as the magnetism of human sympathy. And after a while:
“I think a cigarette might be a good idea, Rima,” I said. “I’m beginning to recover consciousness!”
She offered me one from a little enamelled case which I had bought in Cairo on the occasion of her last birthday — the only present I had ever given her. And we smoked for a while in that silence which is better than speech; then:
“I saw something queer,” said Rima suddenly, “while you were away with Mr. Weymouth. Are you too weary — or do you want me to tell you?”
Her tone was peculiar, and:
“Yes — tell me what you saw,” I replied, looking into her eyes.
“Well,” she went on, “Captain Hunter came along after you had gone. Naturally, he was as restless as any of us. And after a while — leaving the hut door open, of course — I went and stood outside to see if there was any sign of your return…”
She spoke with unwonted rapidity and I could see that in some way she had grown more agitated. Of course I had to allow for the dreadful suspense she was suffering.
“You know the path, at the back of the small hut,” she continued, “which leads up to the plateau.”
“The path to Lafleur’s Shaft?”
Rima nodded.
“Well, I saw a woman — at least, it looked like a woman — walking very quickly across the top! She was just an outline against the sky, and I’m not positive about it at all. Besides, I only saw her for a moment. But I can’t possibly have been dreaming, can I? What I wondered, and what I’ve been wondering ever since is: What native woman — she looked like a native woman — would be up there at this time of night?”
She was sitting at my feet now, her arm resting on my knees. She looked up at me appealingly.
“What are you really thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking about that photograph!” she confessed. “I believe it was — Madame Ingomar! And, Shan, that woman terrifies me! I begged Uncle not to allow her to come here — and he just laughed at me! I don’t know why he couldn’t see it… but she is dreadfully evil! I have caught her watching you, when you didn’t know, in a way…”
I bent down and rested my head against her tangled curls.
“Well?” I said, my arm about her shoulders.
“I thought you… found her attractive. Don’t get mad. But I knew, I knew, Shan, that she was dangerous. She affects me in the same way as a snake. She has some
uncanny power…”
“Irish colleens are superstitious,” I whispered.
“They may be. But they are often wise as well. Some women, Shan — bad women — are witches.”
“You’re right, darling. And it was almost certainly Madame Ingomar that you saw!”
“Why do you say so?”
Then I told her what had happened in the tomb, and, when I had finished:
“Just as she disappeared,” Rima said, “I heard footsteps — quick, padding footsteps — on the other side of the wâdi. I called out to Dr. Petrie, but the sound had died away… I’d had one glimpse of him, though — a man running.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Yes.”
Rima looked up at me reflectively, and:
“Do you remember an Arab who came into camp some days ago and insisted that he must see Uncle?”
I nodded.
“I think I know the man you mean — the chief asked me to find out what he wanted?”
“Yes.”
“A gaunt-faced fellow — steely piercing eyes? Spoke very queer Arabic and denied all knowledge of English. Told me quite bluntly he had nothing whatever to say to me, but must see Sir Lionel. I finally told him to go to the devil. Why, good heavens, Rima… that was the evening before the tragedy!”
“Well,” said Rima in a very low voice, “this was the man I saw running along the ridge tonight!”
“I don’t like the sound of it,” I admitted. “We have trouble enough already. Did he see you?”
“He couldn’t have done. Besides, he was running at tremendous speed.”
Even as she spoke the words, my heart seemed to miss a beat. I sprang up. Rima clutched me, her beautiful eyes widely opened.
Racing footsteps were approaching the tent!
I didn’t know what to expect. My imagination was numb. But when the flap was dragged aside and Ali Mahmoud unceremoniously burst in, I was past reprimand, past any comment whatever.
“Effendim! Effendim! Quick, please. They tell me not to disturb Forester Effendim and Captain Hunter… His camp bed!”
“What! The chief’s?”
“I am ordered to carry it up to the mouth of the old shaft!”
“Ali Mahmoud!”
Rima sprang forward and grasped the headman’s shoulders.
“Yes! Yes!” His eyes were gleaming madly. “It is true, lady! It is Black Magic, but it is true.”
Of all the queer episodes of that nightmare business there was none more grotesque, I think, than this of Ali and I carrying Sir Lionel’s camp bed up the steep path to that gaunt and desolate expanse upon which Lafleur’s Shaft opened. As we had come out of the chief’s tent, I had heard the voices of Jameson Hunter and Forester in the big hut.
I was literally bathed in perspiration when we reached our goal. Dropping down upon the light bed, I stared out over that prospect beneath me. Right at my feet lay the Sacred Valley of Der-el-Bahari; to the right the rugged hills and ravines of this domain of the dead. Beyond, indicated by a green tracing under the stars, the Nile wound on like a river of eternity. For a few moments I regarded it all, and then Rima’s fingers closed over my own.
A lantern stood at the mouth of Lafleur’s Shaft.
We began to descend — to where a group awaited us.
Never, to the end of everything, shall I forget that moment when Weymouth and Dr. Petrie lifted Sir Lionel, still swathed in his worn army blanket, and laid him on the camp bed. Ali Mahmoud, who possessed the lean strength of a leopard, had carried him up the short ladder on his shoulders. But the effort had proved dangerously exhausting to the sufferer. Anxiety was written deeply upon Petrie’s face as he bent over him.
Rima was almost as ghostly pale as he who had been plucked out of the gates of death. She was staring at Petrie fearfully, as one who glimpses a superman. But my own feelings were oddly compounded of joy and horror — joy because the dear old chief had been given a chance to live; horror, because I recognized a scientific miracle — and suddenly, awfully, appreciated the terrifying genius of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
At which moment, Sir Lionel opened his eyes — gazed vacantly, and then saw us.
“Cheer up, Rima — child,” he whispered. “God bless you fellows.” And to me: “Thanks for the dash to Cairo. Good scout!”
He closed his eyes again.
“Well, Nurse,” said Petrie, as Rima came out and joined us on the hotel terrace, “what do you think of our patient?”
Rima, a delicious picture in a dainty frock which had taken the place of the rough kit she wore in camp, fixed that grave look of hers on the speaker.
Then she turned swiftly aside, and I saw a threat of tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” Petrie murmured. “I don’t quite know what to make of him. I’m only an ordinary practitioner, Rima, and although I’ve searched every hotel in Luxor, this is an off-season. There isn’t a man in Upper Egypt whose opinion I could take. And the only likely Cairo man, as bad luck would have it, is away on leave.”
Silence fell between us. Sir Lionel Barton — first perhaps of modern Orientalists — lay in his room in a state of unconquerable coma, a mysterious secret locked in his memory. Petrie had rescued him from death — dragged him back, indeed, from the other side of that grim Valley — by virtue of an unnamed drug prepared by the greatest physician the world had ever known.
Strange, tragic, that so mighty a brain as that of Dr. Fu-Manchu should be crooked — that an intellect so brilliant should be directed not to healing but to destruction. He was dead. Yet the evil of his genius lived after him…
In a few weeks now this quiet spot in which we sat would be bustling with busy, international life. The tourist season would have set in. Dragomans, sellers of beads, of postcards and of scarabs would be thick as flies around the doors of the hotels. Thomas Cook’s dahabîyehs would moor at the landing places; fashionable women would hurry here and there, apparently busy, actually idle: white-suited men, black-robed guides — bustle — excitement…
Even now, as I stared across the nearly deserted roadway and beyond old peaceful Nile to where crags and furrows marked the last resting place of the Pharaohs, even now I could scarcely grasp the reality of it all.
What was the secret of the Tomb of the Black Ape? Careful examination had enabled us to prove that Lafleur at the time his excavation was abandoned — that is at the time of his disappearance in 1909 — had got within a few yards of the passage leading to the burial chamber. Some unknown hand had completed the work and then had so carefully concealed the opening that later Egyptologists had overlooked it. Or had the hand been that of Lafleur himself?
More astounding still: the inner stone door, or portcullis, had been opened before! And it had been reclosed — so cunningly that even the chief had thought it to be intact! We were not the first party to reach it.
Therefore… when had the tomb been emptied? In Lafleur’s time or a week ago whilst I was in Cairo? Who had reclosed it, and why had he done so? Above all — what had it contained?
Maddening to think that poor Sir Lionel might know… but was unable to tell us…
My musings were interrupted.
“Next to Brian Hawkins,” came Petrie’s voice, “of Wimpole Street, there’s one man with whom I’d give half I possess to have ten minutes’ conversation.”
“Who is that?” Rima asked.
“Nayland Smith.”
I looked across.
“Not as a professional consultant,” Petrie added. “But somehow, in the old days, he seemed to find a way.”
“Uncle was always talking about him,” said Rima. “And I’ve hoped we should meet. He’s chief of some department of Scotland Yard, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He finally left Burma five years ago. And I’m looking forward to meeting him in England.”
“Weymouth cabled him,” said I, “but had no reply.”
“I know.” Petrie stared vacantly before him. “It’s rather queer and quite unlike Smith.�
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“Is there really nothing we can do?” said Rima.
She rested her hand suddenly on Petrie’s arm and I knew she feared that she might have offended him.
“I didn’t mean you’re not doing everything that’s possible — I just mean do you think we’re justified in waiting?”
“I don’t!” he replied honestly; for honesty was the keynote of his character. “But I doubt if either of the men I mentioned could indicate any treatment other than that which we’re following. Physically, Sir Lionel is gaining strength day by day, but his mental condition puzzles me.”
“Is it contrary to your experience, Doctor,” I asked; “I mean your experience of this strange drug which must have been used in his case?”
Petrie nodded.
“Quite contrary,” he assured me. “The crowning triumph of Fu-Manchu’s method was their clean-cut effects. His poisons served their purpose to a nicety. His antidotes restored to normal.”
A thickset figure rounded the corner of the building and bore down upon us.
“Ah, Weymouth!” said Petrie. “You look as though a long drink with a lump of ice in it would fit the bill.”
“It would!” Weymouth confessed, dropping into a cane chair.
He removed his hat and mopped his forehead.
“Any luck?” said I.
Whilst Petrie gave an order to a waiter, Weymouth shook his head sadly.
“Madame Ingomar is known to a number of people in Luxor and neighborhood,” he replied, “but not one of them can tell me where she lives!”
“It’s therefore fairly obvious that she must have been either living in the native quarter or renting a villa!”
Weymouth looked at me with a tolerant smile, and:
“I agree,” he replied. “My best local agent reported this morning, and you can take it for granted that madame has not been living in the native quarter. I have personally just returned from a very tiring inspection of a list of the available villas in and about Luxor. I can state with a fair amount of certainty that she did not occupy any of these.”