by Sax Rohmer
“What are they?” I asked.
“Afghans,” he replied. “The great brotherhood of Kâli is well represented there.”
“Remarkable,” I said. “There can be few relations between Afghanistan and this obscure spot.”
“None whatever!” Weymouth broke in. “And now, Greville, follow the direction in which my cigarette is pointing.”
Endeavouring not to betray myself, I did as he suggested.
“A group of three,” he added for my guidance.
I saw the group. I might have failed to identify them, but my memory was painfully fresh in regard to that dead man in the Tomb of the Black Ape. They wore their turbans in such a manner that the mark on the brow could not be distinguished. But I knew them for Burmans; and I did not doubt that they belonged to the mysterious fraternity of the Dacoits! At which moment:
“Don’t turn around until I give the signal,” Nayland Smith rapped— “but just behind us.”
I watched him as he glanced about, apparently in search of a waiter, then caught his signal. I looked swiftly into an alcove under the stairs… and then turned aside, as the gaze of a pair of fierce, wild-animal eyes became focused upon mine. The waiter arrived and Nayland Smith ordered more coffee. As the man departed to execute the order:
“Thugs!” he whispered. He bent over the table. “There are representatives of at least three religious fanatical sects in this place tonight. Dacoity is represented, also Thugee. The two gentlemen from Kandahar are phansigars, or religious stranglers!” He stared at Weymouth.
“Does this suggest anything to you?”
Weymouth’s blue eyes were fixed on me; and:
“I confess, Greville,” he said, “that I feel as you do… And I can see that you’re puzzled.”
“I am,” I agreed.
Nayland Smith raised his hand irritably and tugged at the lobe of his left ear; then:
“You understand, Petrie?” he jerked.
I looked at Dr. Petrie and it was unnecessary for him to reply. I saw that he did understand.
“Any doubt I may have had, Smith,” he said, “regarding the purpose of this expedition, is washed out. In some miraculous way you have brought us to what seems to be the focus of all the dangerous fanatics of the Eastern world!”
“I don’t claim all the credit,” Smith replied; “but I admit that the facts confirm my theory.”
“And what was your theory?” I asked.
“My theory,” Smith replied, “based on the latest information to hand, and, as Weymouth here knows, almost hourly reports from police headquarters as widely divided as Pekin and Berlin, was this: That some attempt was being made to coordinate the dangerous religious sects of the East together with their sympathizers in the West. In short that the organization once known as the Si-Fan — you, alone, Greville,” he turned to me, “fail to appreciate the significance of this — is in process of reconstruction! Something vital to the scheme was hidden in the Tomb of the Black Ape. This — and I can only blame myself — was removed under my very nose. The centre of the conspiracy is Fah Lo Suee — Dr. Fu-Manchu’s daughter, whose temporary headquarters I know to be here. Tonight, at least, I am justified. Look around.”
He bent over the table and we all did likewise, so that our four heads came very closely together; then:
“We are not too late,” he said earnestly. “A meeting has been called… and we must be present!”
The two Indians in the alcove stood up and went towards the door. As the pair disappeared:
“They lead, and we follow!” said Nayland Smith. “Go ahead, Weymouth, and act as connecting link.”
He stood up, clapping his hands for the waiter. Weymouth had his meaning in a moment, nodded, and went out.
“Follow him, Greville!”
I grasped the scheme and went out behind the superintendent. The spirit of the thing was beginning to get me. Truly this was a desperate adventure… for the stakes were life or death!
We were dealing with savagely dangerous characters who were, moreover, expert assassins to a man. Possibly those we had actually identified in the cafe represented only a small proportion of the murderous fanatics assembled that night in el-Khârga…
Weymouth led and I followed. I had grasped Nayland Smith’s routine — and I knew that Petrie would be behind me. The score discharged, Smith would track Petrie.
I saw the bulky form of the superintendent at the far side of the square. By a narrow street he paused, peered ahead, and then glanced back.
I raised my hand. Weymouth disappeared.
Reaching the street in turn, I looked along it. I saw a sheer tunnel, but recognized it for that by which we had reached the square. There was an open space at the further end; and I saw Weymouth standing there in the moonlight and knew that I must be visible to him — as a silhouette.
He raised his arm. I replied. Then I looked back.
Dr. Petrie was crossing the square!
We exchanged signals and I followed Weymouth. The chain was complete.
For a time I thought that the house of the Sheikh Ismail might be somewhere on the road we had pursued from the palm grove to the town. But it was not so. Weymouth, ahead of me, paused, and gave the signal: left.
A narrow path through rice fields, with scanty cover other than that of an occasional tree, proved to be the route. If the men walking a few hundred yards ahead of Weymouth looked around, they could scarcely fail to see him! I only prayed, should they do so, that they would take it for granted he was bound upon business similar to their own.
Where an acacia drooped over a dome, very white in the moonlight, which marked the resting place of some holy man, the path seemed to end. So also did the cultivated land. Beyond stretched the desert, away to the distant hills.
By the shrine Weymouth paused, turned, and signaled. I looked back. Petrie was not in sight. I waited, anxiously… and then I saw him, just entering the rice field.
We exchanged signs and I pressed on.
Left of the cultivated land, and invisible from the rice, was a close grove of dôm palms. As I cautiously circled around the shrine and saw nothing but desert before me, instinctively I looked to right and left. And there was Weymouth, not fifty yards away!
I joined him, and:
“The house is just, beyond the trees,” he said. “There’s a high wall all around it. The two Indians have gone in.”
We waited for Petrie. Then Nayland Smith joined us. He turned and stared back along the path. Evidently no other party was on the way yet. The track through the rice field was empty as far as the eye could see.
“What next?” said Smith. “I’m afraid I’ve left too much to chance. We should have visited the mudîr. The thing begins to crystallize. I know, now, what to expect.”
He turned, and:
“Weymouth,” he said, “do you remember the raid on the house in London in 1917?”
“By God!” cried Weymouth. “You mean the meeting of the Council of Seven?”
“Exactly!” Smith rapped.
“Probably the last.”
“In England, certainly.”
“The Council of Seven?” I said. “What is the Council of Seven?”
“It’s the Si-Fan!” Petrie replied, without adding to my information.
But the tone of his voice turned me cold in spite of the warmth of the night.
“The Council of Seven,” Weymouth explained, in his kindly way, “was an organization with headquarters in China…”
“In Honan,” Smith jerked.
“The president, or so we always believed,” Weymouth continued, “was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Its objects we never learned except in a general way.”
“World domination,” Petrie suggested.
“Well, that’s about it, I suppose. Their methods, Greville, included wholesale robbery and murder. Everybody in their path they removed. Poison was their favourite method, animal or vegetable, and they apparently controlled in their campaign the underworlds of Eur
ope, Asia, Africa, and America. They made the mistake of meeting in London, and” — his tone grew very grim— “we got a few of them.”
“But not all,” Nayland Smith added. He suddenly grasped my shoulder, and: “Are you beginning to understand,” he asked, “what was hidden in the Tomb of the Black Ape?”
I looked at him in blank surprise.
“I can see no connection,” I confessed.
“Something,” he went on tensely, “which has enabled the woman you know as Madame Ingomar after an interval of thirteen years, to summon the Council of Seven!”
In the shadow cast by a lebbekh tree we all crouched, Nayland Smith having his glasses focused upon the door in a long high wall.
The two Afghans had approached and now stood before this door. So silent was the night that we distinctly heard one of them beat on the panels. He knocked seven times…
I saw the door open. Faintly to my ears came the sound of a strange word. It was repeated — by another voice. The murderous Asiatics were admitted. The door was closed again.
“Representatives of at least two murder societies have arrived,” said Smith, dropping the glasses and turning. “We are learning something, but not enough. In short, how the devil are we going to get into that house?”
There was a pause and then:
“Personally,” said Dr. Petrie, “I think it would be deliberate suicide to attempt to do so. We have not notified the officials of el-Khârga of our presence or our business; and as it would appear that the most dangerous criminal group in the world is assembling here tonight, what could we hope to do, and what would our chances be?”
“Sanity, Petrie, sanity!” Nayland Smith admitted. But the man’s impatience, his over-brimming vitality, sounded in his quivering voice. “I’ve bungled this business — but how could I know?… I was guessing, largely.”
He stood up and began to pace about in the shadow, carefully avoiding exposing himself to the light of the moon; then:
“Yes,” he murmured. “We must establish contact with el-Khârga. Damnable! — because it means splitting the party… Hello!”
A group of three appeared, moving like silhouettes against the high, mud-brick wall — for the moon was behind us. Nayland Smith dropped prone again and focused the glasses…
“The Burmans,” he reported. “Dacoity has arrived.”
In tense silence we watched this second party receive admittance as the first had done. And now I recognized the word. It was Si-Fan!… Again the great iron-studded door was closed.
“We don’t know how many may be there already,” said Petrie. “Possibly those people we saw in the café—”
“Silence!” Smith snapped.
As he spoke, a tall man dressed in European clothes but wearing no hat appeared around the corner of the wall and approached the door. He had a lithe, swinging carriage.
“This one comes alone,” Nayland Smith murmured. He studied him through the glasses. “Unplaceable. But strangely like a Turk…”
The tall man was admitted — and the iron-studded door closed once more.
Nayland Smith stood up again and began beating his fist into the palm of his hand, walking up and down in a state of tremendous excitement.
“We must do something!” he said in a low voice— “we must do something! Hell is going to be let loose on the world. Tonight, we could nip this poisonous thing in the bud, if only…” he paused. Then: “Weymouth,” he rapped, “you have official prestige. Go back to el-Khârga — make yourself known to the mudîr and force him to raise a sufficient body of men to surround this house! You can’t go alone, therefore Dr. Petrie will go with you…”
“But, Smith!…”
“My dear fellow,” — Nayland Smith’s voice altered entirely— “there’s no room for sentiment! We’re not individuals tonight, but representatives of sanity opposed to a dreadful madness. Greville here has a peculiarly intimate knowledge of Arab life. He speaks the language better than any of us. This you will both admit. I must keep him by me, because my job may prove to be the harder. Off you go, Weymouth! I’m in charge. Get down the dip behind us and circle round the way we came. Don’t lose a moment!”
There was some further argument between these old friends, but finally the dominating personality of Nayland Smith prevailed; and Weymouth and Dr. Petrie set out. As they disappeared into the hollow behind us:
“Heaven grant I haven’t bungled this thing!” said Nayland Smith and gripped my arm fiercely. “But I’ve stage-managed it like an amateur. Only sheer luck can save us now!”
He turned aside and focused his glasses on the distant angle of the wall. A minute passed — two — three — four. Then came a sudden outcry, muffled, but unmistakable.
“My God!” Smith’s voice was tragic. ‘They’ve run into another party! Come on, Greville!”
Breaking cover we hurried across in the moonlight. Regardless of any watcher who might be concealed behind that iron-studded door in the long wall, we raced head-long to the corner. I was hard and fit; but, amazing to relate, I had all I could do to keep pace with Nayland Smith. He seemed to be a man who held not sluggish human blood but electricity in his veins.
Around the corner we plunged… and almost fell head-long over a vague tangle of struggling figures!
“Petrie!” Nayland Smith cried. “Are you there?”
“Yes, by the grace of God!” came pantingly…
“Weymouth?”
“All clear!”
Dense shadow masked the combatants; and risking everything, I dragged out my torch and switched on the light.
Dr. Petrie, rather dishevelled and, lacking his tarboosh, was just standing up. A forbidding figure, muffled in a shapeless camel-hair garment, lay near. Weymouth was resting his bulk upon a second.
“Light out!” snapped Nayland Smith.
I obeyed. Weymouth’s voice came through the darkness.
“Do you remember, Sir Denis, that other meeting in London? There was only one Lama monk there. There are two here!”
His words explained a mystery which had baffled me. These were Tibetan monks!
“They must have heard us approaching,” Petrie went on. “They were hiding in the shadows. And as we climbed up onto the path, they attacked us. I may add that they were men of their hands. Personally I’m by no means undamaged, but by sheer luck I managed to knock my man out.”
“I think I’ve strangled mine!” said Weymouth grimly. “He was gouging my eye,” he added.
“Petrie!” said Nayland Smith. “We’re going to win! This is the hand of Providence!”
For one tense moment none of us grasped his meaning; then:
“By heavens, no. It’s too damned dangerous,” Weymouth exclaimed. “For God’s sake don’t risk it!”
“I’m going to risk it!” Smith snapped. “There’s too much at stake to hesitate. If they were in our place, there’d be two swift executions. We can’t stoop to that. Gags we can improvise. But how the devil are we going to tie them up?”
At which moment the man on whose body Weymouth was kneeling uttered a loud cry. The cry ceased with significant suddenness; and:
“Two of us wear turbans,” said Weymouth: “that’s twelve feet of stout linen. What more do we want?”
We gagged and bound the sturdy Tibetans, using torchlight sparingly. One of them struggled a lot; but the other was still. Petrie seemed to have achieved a classic knockout. Then we dragged our captives down into the shadow of the hollow; and Nayland Smith and I clothed ourselves in those hot, stuffy, camel-hair garments.
“Remember the sign,” he rapped— “Si-Fan!… then the formal Moslem salute.”
“Good enough! But these fellows probably talked Chinese…”
“So do I!” he rapped. “Leave that to me.” He turned to Weymouth. “Your job is to raise a party inside half an hour. Off you go! Good luck, Petrie. I count on you, Weymouth.”
But when a thousand and one other things are effaced — including that diffic
ult parting — I shall always retain my memories of the moment, when Nayland Smith and I, wearing the cowled robes of the monks, approached that iron-studded door.
My companion was a host in himself; his splendid audacity stimulated. I thought, as he raised his fist and beat seven times upon the sun-bleached wood, that even if this adventure should conclude the short tale of my life, yet it would not have been ill-spent since I had met and been judged worthy to work with Sir Denis Nayland Smith.
PART THREE
CHAPTER SEVEN
KLI
Almost immediately the door opened.
Conscious of the fact that our hoods were practically our only disguise, that neither of us possessed a single Mongol characteristic, I lowered my head apprehensively, glancing up into a pair of piercing eyes which alternately regarded my companion and myself.
The keeper of the door was a tall, emaciated Chinaman!
“Si-Fan,” said Nayland Smith, and performed the salutation.
“Si-Fan,” the doorkeeper replied and indicated that he should enter.
“Si-Fan,” I repeated; and in turn found myself admitted.
The Chinaman closed and bolted the door. I discovered myself to be standing in a little arbor within the gateway. Shadow of the wall lay like a pall of velvet about us, but beyond I saw a garden and moon-lighted pavilions, and beyond that again a courtyard set with orange trees. The house embraced this courtyard, and from mûshrabîyeh windows dim lights shone out. But there was no movement anywhere. No servants were visible, other than the tall, emaciated Chinaman who had admitted us. I clutched my monkish robe, recovering some assurance from the presence of the repeater which I carried in my belt.
Extending a skeleton hand, the keeper of the gate indicated that we were to cross the garden and enter the house.
I had taken my share of ordinary chances, having lived anything but a sheltered life. Yet it occurred to me, as I stood there beside Nayland Smith, looking in the direction of the tree-shaded courtyard, that this was the wildest venture upon which I had ever been launched.
Our wits alone could save us!
In the first place it seemed to me that survival hung upon one slender point: Were the Mongolian monks known personally to anyone in the house? If so, we were lost! The several groups assembled in the café at el-Khârga obviously had been strangers to one another… out there might be — must be — some central figure to whom they were all known.