by Sax Rohmer
In those few fleeting seconds I saw Sir Denis Nayland Smith, for the first and last time in my knowledge of him, fighting to subdue his emotions. His head dropped into his upraised hands, his fingers clutched his hair.
Then he had conquered. He stood up.
“Lift him!” he said hoarsely—”out here, into the light.”
I was half stunned. Horror and sorrow had me by the throat. But I helped to move Petrie farther into the middle of the floor, where a central light shone down upon him. One glance told me the truth—if I had ever doubted it.
A sort of cloud was creeping from his disordered hair, down over his brow.
“Heaven help him!” I whispered. “Look—look!...the purple shadow!”
chapter fifth
THE BLACK STIGMATA
the laboratory was very silent. Through the windows, which still remained open, I could hear the hum of the Kohler engine in its little shed at the bottom of the garden—the chirping of crickets, the clucking of hens.
There was a couch littered with books and chemical paraphernalia. Sir Denis and I cleared it and laid Petrie there.
I had telephoned Dr. Cartier from the villa.
That ghastly purple shadow was creeping farther down my poor friend’s brow.
“Shut the door. Sterling,” said Nayland Smith sharply.
I did so.
“Stand by,” he went on, and pointed.
Petrie, who wore a woollen pullover with long sleeves when he was working late, had evidently made an attempt to peel it off just before coma had claimed him.
“You see what he meant to do,” Nayland Smith went on. “God knows what the consequences will be, but it’s his only chance. He must have been fighting it off all day. The swelling in his armpit warned him that the crisis had come.”
He examined the milky liquid in a small glass measure.
“Have you any idea what this is?”
I indicated the broken tube and scattered white powder on the floor.
“A preparation of his own—to which I have heard him refer as ‘654.’ He believed it was a remedy, but he was afraid to risk it on a patient.”
“I wonder?” Sir Denis murmured. “I wonder——”
Stooping, I picked up a fragment of glass to which one of Petrie’s neatly written labels still adhered.
“Look here, Sir Denis!”
He read aloud:
“‘654.’ 1 grm. in 10 c.c. distilled water: intravenous.”
He stared at me hard, then:
“It’s kill or cure,” he rapped. “We have no choice....”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Cartier?”
“Wait!” His angry glare startled me. “With luck, hell be here in three quarters of an hour. And life or death in this thing is a matter of minutes’. No! Petrie must have his chance. I’m not an expert—but I can do my best....”
I experienced some difficulty in assisting at what followed;
but Nayland Smith, his course set, made the injection as coolly as though he had been used to such work for half a lifetime. When it was done:
“If Petrie survives,” he said quietly, “his own skill will have saved him—not ours. Lay that rug over him. It strikes one as chilly in here.”
The man’s self-mastery was almost superhuman.
He crossed to close the windows—to hide his face from me. Even that iron control had its breaking point. And suddenly the dead silence which fell with the shutting of the windows was broken by the buzzing of an insect.
I couldn’t see the thing, which evidently Sir Denis had disturbed, but it was flying about the place with feverish activity. Something else seemed to have arrested Sir Denis’s attention: he was staring down at the table.
“H’m!” he muttered. “Very queer!”
Then the noise of the busy insect evidently reached his ears. He turned in a flash and his expression was remarkable.
“What’s that, Sterling?” he snapped. “Do you hear it?”
“Clearly. There’s a gadfly buzzing about.”
“Gadfly—nothing! I have recently spent many hours in the laboratory of the School of Tropical Medicine. That’s why I’m here! Listen. Did you ever hear a gadfly that made that noise?”
His manner was so strange that it chilled me. I stood still, listening. And presently, in the sound made by that invisible, restless insect, I detected a difference. It emitted a queer sawing note. I stared across at Nayland Smith.
“You’ve been to Uganda,” he said. “Did you never hear it?”
At which moment, and before I had time to reply, I caught a glimpse of the fly which caused this peculiar sound. It was smaller than I had supposed. Narrowly missing the speaker’s head, it swooped down onto the table behind him, and settled upon something which lay there—something which had already attracted Sir Denis’s attention.
“Don’t move,” I whispered. “It’s just behind you.”
“Get it,” he replied, in an equally low voice; “a book, a roll of paper—anything; but for God’s sake don’t miss it....”
I took up a copy of the Gazette de Monte Carlo. One of poor Petrie’s hobbies was a roulette system which he had never succeeded in perfecting. I rolled it and stepped quietly forward.
Nayland Smith stood quite still. Beside him, my improvised swatter raised, I saw the insect distinctly. It had long, narrow, brownish wings and a curiously hairy head. In the very moment that I dashed the roll of paper down, I recognized the object upon which it had settled.
It was a spray of that purple-leaved drosophyllum, identi-cal except that it was freshly cut, with a fragment which I knew to be sealed in a tube somewhere in Petrie’s collection!
“Make sure,” said Sir Denis, turning.
I repeated the blow. Behind us, on the couch Petrie lay motionless. Sir Denis bent over the dead insect.
“Don’t you know what this is. Sterling?” he demanded.
“No. Flies are a bit outside my province. But I can tell you something about the purple leaves....”
Taking the roll of paper from me, he moved the dead fly further forward upon the polished table-top where direct light fall upon it; then:
“Hullo!” he exclaimed.
He snatched up a lens which lay near by and bent over the insect, peering down absorbedly.
I turned and looked towards the couch were Petrie lay, and I studied his haggard features. I could detect no evidence of life. The purple shadow showed like a bruise on his forehead;
but I thought that it had not increased.
Yet I believed he was doomed, already dying, and my thoughts jumped feverishly to that strange plant upon the table—and from the plant to the yellow face which so recently had leered at me out of the darkness.
Was it conceivable—could it be—that some human agency directed this pestilence?
I turned, looking beyond the bent, motionless figure of Nayland Smith, out into the dusk—and a desire to close the steel shutters suddenly possessed me.
This operation I completed without drawing a single comment from Sir Denis. But, as that menacing dusk was shut out, he stood upright and confronted me.
“Sterling,” he said, and there was something in his steady gaze which definitely startled me—”have you, as a botanist, ever come across a true genus-hybrid?”
“You mean a thing between a lily and a rose—or an oak growing apples?”
“Exactly.”
> “In the natural state, never—although some curious hybrids have been reported from time to time. But many freaks of this kind can be cultivated, of course. The Japanese are experts.”
“Cultivated? I agree. But nature, in my experience, sticks to the common law. Now here. Sterling—” he indicated the table—”lies an insect which, from the sound it made when flying, I took to be a tsetse fly——”
“A tsetse! Good heavens! Here?”
He smiled grimly.
“Well outside its supposed area,” he admitted, “and above its usual elevatio
n. I thought you might have recognized its note, as you have travelled in the flybelt. However, I was right—up to a point. It definitely possesses certain characteristics ofglossina, the tsetse fly; notably the wings, which are typical. You see, I have been taking an intensive course on this subject! But can you imagine, Sterling, that it has the legs and head of an incredibly large sand-fly? The thing is a nightmare, an anachronism; it’s a sort of giant flying flea”
His words awakened a memory. What had Petrie said to me, earlier in the evening?...that “even if Nature is turning topsy-turvy, I think I can puzzle her!...”
“Sir Denis,” I broke in, “I think you should know that Petrie found, in the blood of a patient, some similar freak—a sort of hybrid germ, which I lack the knowledge to describe to you. He found sleeping sickness and plague combined——”
“Good God!”
I thought that the lean, sun-baked face momentarily grew yet more angular.
“You know,” he interrupted, “that tsetse carries sleeping sickness? Sand-fly is suspect in several directions. But the rat-flea (and this is more like a flea than a sand-fly) is the proved cause of plague infection....Am I going mad?”
He suddenly crossed and bent over Petrie. He examined him carefully and in detail. The fact dawned upon me that Sir Denis Nayland Smith had more than a smattering of the medical art. I watched in silence while finally he took the temperature of the unconscious man.
“There’s no change,” he reported. “‘654’ seems already to have checked its progress. But this coma....Dare we hope?”
“I don’t know what to hope, or what to believe. Sir Denis!”
He nodded.
“Nor do I. The nature of my job has forced me to pick up some elements of medicine; but this is a specialist’s case....However, tell me about these leaves—the leaves which seemed to attract the fly....”
I told him briefly all that I knew of the insect-catching plant.
“The specimen which Petrie has preserved,” I concluded, “bears traces of human blood.”
Sir Denis suddenly grabbed the lens again and bent over the purple leaves on the table-top. A moment he looked, then turned.
“So does this!” he declared. “Fresh blood.”
I was dumb for a matter of seconds; then:
“The insect which I partly crushed?” I suggested.
He shook his head irritably.
“Quantity too great. These leaves have been sprayed with blood!”
“How, in heaven’s name, did they get here? And how did that damnable fly get here?”
He suddenly clapped his hands upon my shoulders arid stared at me fixedly.
“You’re a man of strong nerve. Sterling,” he said, “and so I can tell you. They were brought here. And—” he pointed to the still body on the couch—”for that purpose.”
“But——”
“There are no *buts.’ I left the car in which I had been driven over from Cannes some distance back on the road tonight, and walked ahead to look for this villa, the exact location of which my driver didn’t know. I had nearly reached the way in when I heard a sound.”
“I heard it too.”
“I know you did. But to you it meant nothing—except that it was horrible; to me, it meant a lot. You see, I had heard it before.”
“What was it? I shall never forget it!”
“It was the signal used by certain Burmans, loosely known as dacoits, to give warning to one another. If poor old Petrie shad come across this new species of tsetse fly—he would have begun to think. If he had heard that cry...he would have known!”
“He would have known what?” I asked, aware of a growing excitement communicated to me by the speaker.
“He would have known what he was up against.” He raised his fists in a gesture almost of despair. “We are children!” he said vehemently, momentarily taken out of himself. “What do you know of botany, and what does Petrie know of medicine beside Dr. Fu Manchu?”
“Dr. Fu Manchu?” I echoed.
“A synonym for Satan—evil immutable; apparently eternal.”
“Sir Denis——” I began.
But he turned aside abruptly, bending again over the motionless body of his old friend.
“Poor Karamaneh!” he murmured.
He was silent a while, then, without looking around:
“Do you know his wife, Sterling?” he asked.
“No, Sir Denis; we have never met.”
“She is still young, as we count tears to-day. She was a child when Petrie married her—and she is the most beautiful woman I have ever known....”
As he spoke I seemed to hear a soft voice saying, “Think of me as Derceto”...Fleurette! Fleurette was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen....
“She was chosen by a master—who rarely makes mistakes.”
His manner and his words were so strange that I may be forgiven for misunderstanding.
“A master? Do you mean a painter?”
At that, he turned and smiled. His smile was the most boyish and disarming I had ever met with in a grown man.
“Yes, Sterling, a painter! His canvas, the world; his colours, the human races....”
This was mystery capping mystery, and certainly I should never have left the matter there; but at this moment we were interrupted by a series of short staccato shrieks.
I ran to the door. I had recognized the voice.
“Who is it?” Sir Denis snapped.
“Mme Dubonnet.”
“Housekeeper?”
“Yes.”
“Keep her out.”
I threw the door open—and the terrified woman tottered into my arms.
“M. Sterling,” she panted, hysterically—”something terrible has happened! I know—I know—something terrible has happened!”
“Don’t worry, Mme Dubonnet,” I said, and endeavoured to lead her away. “Dr. Petrie——”
“But I must tell the doctor—it concerns him. As I look up fi-om my casserole dish I see at the window just above me—a face—a dreadful yellow face with cross eyes....”
“Rather a quandary, Sterling,” Sir Denis cut in, standing squarely between the excited woman and the insensible man on the couch. “One of those murderous devils is hanging about the place....”
Dimly I heard the sound of an insistent motor horn on the Comiche road above, nearing the head of that narrow byway which debouched from the Comiche and led down to the Villa Jasmin.
“The ambulance from the hospital!” Sir Denis exclaimed in relief.
chapter sixth
“654”
mme dubonnet, still shaking nervously, was escorted back to her quarters. Petrie, we told her, was down with a severe attack of influenza and must be moved immediately. The appearance of the yellow face at the window, mendacity had failed to explain; and the old lady announced that she should lock herself into the kitchen until such time as someone could take her home.
She was left lamenting, “Oh, the poor, dear kind doctor!...”
Cartier had come in person, with two orderlies and a driver. The bearded, round-faced little man exhibited such perfect consternation on beholding Dr. Petrie that it must have been fanny had it not been tragic. He dropped to his knees, bending over the insensible man.
“The black stigmata!” he muttered, touching the purple-shadowed brow. “I am too late! The coma. Soon—in an hour, or less, the final convulsions...the end! God! it is terrible. He is a dead man!”
“I’m not so sure,” Sir Denis interrupted. “Forgive me, doctor; my name is Nayland Smith. I have ventured to give an injection——”
Dr. Cartier stood up excitedly.
“What injection?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Sir Denis replied calmly.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know. I used a preparation of Petrie’s which he called ‘654.’“
“654!”
Dr. Carter dropped upon his knees again beside the insensible man.
“How long,” he demanded, “since the shadow appeared?”
“Difficult to say, doctor,” I replied. “He was alone here. But it hasn’t increased.”
“How long since the injection?”
Nayland Smith shot out a lean brown wrist and glanced at a gun-metal watch in a leather strap.
“Forty-three minutes,” he reported.
Cartier sprang to his feet again.
“Dr. Smith!” he cried excitedly—and I saw Sir Denis suppress a smile—”this is triumph! From the time that the ecchy-mosis appears, it never ceases to creep down and down to the eyes! It has remained static for forty-three minutes, you tell me? This is triumph!”
“Let us dare to hope so,” said Sir Denis gravely.
When all arrangements had been completed and the good Dr. Cartier had grasped the astounding fact that Nayland Smith was not a confrere but a super-policeman:
“It’s very important,” Sir Denis whispered to me,, “that this place should be watched to-night. We have to take into consideration—” he gripped my arm—”the possibility that they fail to save Petrie. The formula for ‘654’ must be somewhere here!”
But we had searched for it in vain; nor was it on his person.
The driver of the car in which Sir Denis had come, agreed, on terms, to mount guard over the laboratory. He remained in ignorance of the nature of Petrie’s illness; but Dr. Cartier assured us there was no danger of direct infection at this stage.
And so, poor Petrie having been rushed to the isolation ward, Nayland Smith going with the ambulance, I drove Mme Dubonnet home, leaving the chauffeur from Cannes on guard. Returning, I gave the man freedom of the dinner which Fate had decreed that Petrie and I were not to eat, lent him a repeater, and set out in turn for the hospital.
This secret war against the strange plague which threatened to strip the Blue Coast of visitors and prosperity had aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of that small hospital staff.
Petrie, with other sufferers from the new pestilence, was lodged in an outbuilding separated from the hospital proper by a stretch of waste land. A porter, after some delay, led me through this miniature wilderness to the door of the isolation ward. The low building was dominated by a clump of pines.