by Sax Rohmer
"Si Fan!" they cried together.
"Si Fan." Nayland Smith replied. We took our seats.
2
One of the most dreadful-looking old men I had ever seen in my life entered to the sound of three gongs. As cries of "Si Fan" died away, he took his place on the mattress one removed from ours. He was a Syrian, I thought, and of incalculable age. His fiercely hooked nose had a blade-like edge and from under tufted white brows hawk eyes surveyed the assembly with an imperious but murderous regard.
Beyond doubt this was the Sheikh Ismail, lineal successor of the devilish Sheikh al- Jebal, and lord of the Hashishin Upon ourselves, particularly, that fero- cious gaze seemed to linger. The atmosphere was positively electrical. It contained, I believe, enough evil force to have destroyed a battalion. I simply dared not contemplate what our fate would be in the event of our discovery. Our lives were in the hands of Weymouth and Petrie! One place remained--that in the centre of the crescent. A gong sounded--once.
The Mandarin Ki Ming came in and seated himself upon the vacant mattress....
I realized that having admitted the mandarin, the Negro doorkeeper had retired and closed the door. A hush of expectancy came. Then, from somewhere beyond the end of the saloon a silver bell sounded--seven times; and the beautiful doors swung open.
A woman appeared at the top of the steps, facing us but backed by shadow....
Her hair was entirely concealed beneath a jewelled headdress. She wore jewels on her slim, bare arms. A heavy girdle which glit- tered with precious stones supported a grotesquely elaborate robe, sewn thickly with emeralds. From proudly raised chin to slight, curving hips she resembled an ivory statue of some Indian goddess. Indeed, as I watched, I knew she was Kali, wife of Siva and patronne of thugs and dacoits, from whom they derived their divine right to slay!
All heads were lowered and a word sounding like a shuddering sigh, but to me unintelligible, passed around the assembly. I was fascinated--hypnotised--carried out of myself--as from under the sheltering cowl I looked and looked... into those brilliant jade-green eyes of Kali... Madame Ingomar! We had posed ourselves in imitation of the other groups:
Nayland Smith reclining beside the black cushion so that his elbow could rest upon it, and I crouching behind him. Any exchange of words at that moment was impossible.
In such a silence that I believe one could have heard the flight of a moth, Fah Lo Suee began to speak. She spoke first in Chinese, then in Turkish, of which I knew a few words. Her audience was spellbound. Her silver bell voice had a hypnotic quality utterly outside the range of my experience. She employed scarcely any gesture. Her breathing could not visually be detected. That slender body retained its ivory illusion. The spell lay in her voice... and in her eyes.
She uttered a phrase in Arabic.
Two strokes of a gong sounded from behind me.
The Mandarin Ki Ming stood up. Fah Lo Suee ceased speaking--and I heard the high, sibilant tones of the Chinaman.
I saw Sheikh Ismail leap to his feet like the old panther he was. I saw his blood-lustful gaze fixed upon mine.
We were discovered! Two gong strokes! The real Tibetans had escaped--were here!
A sickly sweet exotic perfume came to my nostrils. I experienced a sudden sense of pres- sure....
3
The illusion persisted. It seemed to have recurred at intervals for many nights and days, many weeks--for an immeasurable period....
Always, that vague exotic perfume heralded the phase. This, invariably, seemed to arouse me from some state of unconsciousness in which I thought I must have been suspended for long ages. Once, I became victim of a dreadful idea that I had solved the mystery of perpetual life but was condemned to live it in a tomb....
Then, next I saw her--the green goddess with eyes of jade. I knew that her smooth body was but a miraculous gesture of some Eastern craftsman immortalised in ivory; that her cobra hair gleamed so because of inlay and inlay of subtly chosen rare woods: her emerald robe I knew for an effect of cunning light, her movements for a mirage.
But when she knelt beside me, the jade- green eyes held life--cold ivory was warm satin. And slender insidious hands, scented lotus blossoms, touched me caressingly....
At last came true awakening--and memories.
Where was I? Obviously, I must be in the house of the Sheikh Ismail where the Council of Seven had met. I lay on a divan propped up with many cushions, in a room small enough to have been called a cabinet.
If it were day or night I had no means of judging. Heavy plush curtains of green and gold completely obscured what I assumed to be the window. And I felt as weak as a kitten. In fact, when I tried to sit up in order to study my strange surroundings, I failed to do so.
What had happened to me?
I saw that the floor was covered with a thick green carpet, and directly facing the divan on which I lay was a magnificent ormolu piece occupying the whole of one wall. A square lamp or lantern hung from the centre of the ceiling and flooded the room with amber light.
An ebony carved chair, evidently of Chinese workmanship, stood near me beside a glass-topped table upon which were phials, instruments, and other surgical items!
Weakly, I looked down at my body. I wore unfamiliar silk pyjamas and on my feet were soft Chinese slippers! What in heaven's name had happened to me?
Now, memory began to function....
Nayland Smith!
I remembered! I remembered! We had been betrayed--or had betrayed ourselves at that incredible meeting of the Council outside el-Kharga! I recalled the high, soft voice of the dreadful mandarin who had denounced us; the staring eyes of the terrible Sheikh.... I could recall no more.
Where was Nayland Smith? And where were Petrie and Weymouth?
Clearly had some time elapsed, a fact to which my inexplicable change of attire bore witness. But why had no rescue been attempted? Good God!--a truly horrible doubt came-- Weymouth and Petrie had fallen into a trap!
They had never reached el-Kharga! A dreadful certainty followed. They were dead! I alone had been spared for some unknown reason; and apparently I had been, and still remained, very ill.
Inch by inch--in some way I seemed to have lost the power of co-ordinating my muscles--I turned, seeking a view of that side of the room which lay behind me. All I saw was a flat green door set in the dull gold of the wall. There was a second such door, which I had already noted immediately before me.
As I reverted, laboriously to my previous position the latter door opened. It was a sliding door.
A Chinaman came in! He wore a long white coat of the kind used by hospital atten- dants. He closed the door behind him.
One swift look I ventured--noting that he was a comparatively young man with a high intellectual forehead, that he wore black- rimmed spectacles and carried a notebook. Then I closed my eyes and lay still.
He took the chair beside me, raised my wrist, and felt the pulse. As he dropped my hand I ventured on a quick glance. He was recording the pulse in his note-book.
Next, unbuttoning the jacket of my silk pyjamas, he inserted a clinical thermometer under my left armpit and, leaving it there, dipped the point of a syringe into a glass of water and carefully wiped it on a piece of lint. This, also, I witnessed, without being detected.
Engrossed in his tasks, he was not watching me. I saw him load a shot of some nameless drug into the syringe on the table.
I reclosed my eyes.
The Chinese surgeon removed the ther- mometer and recorded my temperature.
There was a long, silent interval. I kept my eyes closed. Something told me that he was intrigued, that he was studying me.
Presently, I felt his head close to my bare chest. He pressed his ear against my heart. I lay still, until:
"Ah, Mr. Greville," he said, with scarcely a trace of accent, "you are feeling better, eh?"
I opened my eyes.
The Chinaman was still watching me. His face was quite expressionless as his tones had been.
"Yes," I said... and my voice refused to function higher than a whisper! "Good." He nodded. "I was becoming anxious about you. It is all right now. The artificial nourishment, I think we may dispense with. Yes, I think so. Do you feel that some very savoury soup and perhaps a small glass of red wine would be acceptable? "
"Definitely!"
My whispering voice positively appalled me!
"I will see to it, Mr. Greville. "
"Tell me," I breathed, "where is Nayland Smith?"
The Chinese surgeon looked puzzled.
"Nayland Smith?" he echoed. "I know no one of that name. "
"He's here... in el-Kharga! "
"El-Kharga?" He stopped and patted me on the shoulder. "I understand. Do not think about this. I will see that you are looked after."
4
A little, wrinkled Asiatic, who either was deaf and dumb or who had had orders to remain silent, brought me a bowl of steaming soup and a glass of some kind of light Burgundy. It was a vegetable soup, but excel- lent, as was the wine.
And presently I found myself alone again.
I listened intently, trying to detect some sound which should enable me to place the location of this extraordinary green and gold room in which I found myself. Any attempt to escape was out of the question. I was too weak to stir from the divan.
Apart from a vague humming in my aching head, no sound whatever could I hear.
Was I in the house of the Sheikh Ismail? Or had I been smuggled away to some other place in the oasis? An irresistible drowsiness began to creep over me. Once, I aroused with a start which set my heart beating madly.
I thought I had heard a steamer's siren! Of course (I mused) I had been dreaming again. A sudden, acute anger and resentment stirred me. I was thinking of my companions. I groaned because of my great weakness.... I dozed.
Good heavens! What was that?
My heart beating wildly, I tried to sit up. Surely a motor horn! I lay there sweating from the shock of the effort.
I closed my weary eyes....
Divining, rather than knowing, that the door behind me had opened, I kept my lids lowered--but watched.
A faint perfume--which I later deter- mined was rather an aura than a physical fact --reached me. I knew it. This was the herald of another of those troubled visions--visions of the goddess Kali incarnated.
She stood beside me.
The mythical robes--perhaps never more than figments of delirium--were not there. She wore a golden Chinese dress not unlike a pyjama suit and little gold slippers. The suit was silk of so fine a texture that as she stood between me and the light I could detect the lines of her ivory body as though she floated in a mist of sunrise.
A soft hand touched my forehead.
I raised weary lids and looked up into jade-green eyes.
She smiled and dropped into the chair.
So it was Madame Ingomar that I had to thank for my escape!
"Yes," she answered softly in her strange bell-like voice. "I saved your life at great peril to my own."
But I had not spoken!
Her hand caressed my brow.
"I can tell what you are thinking," she said. "I have been listening to your thoughts for so long. When you are strong again, it will not be so--but now it is."
Her voice and her touch were soothing--magnetic. I found my brain utterly incapable of resentment. This woman, kin of the super- devil, Fu Manchu, my enemy, enemy of all I counted worth while--petted me as a mother pets her child!
And a coldness grew in my heart--yet I remained powerless to resist the spell-- because I realized that if she willed me not to hate, but to love her, I should obey... I could not refuse!
I dragged my gaze away from hers. Irre- sistible urges were reaching me from those wonderful eyes, which had the brightness of polished gems.
She stooped and slipped her arms under my head.
"You have been very ill", she whispered. Her lips were almost touching me. "But I have nursed you because I am sorry. You are so young and life is good. I want you to live and love and be happy...."
I struggled like a bird hypnotised by a snake. I told myself that her silver voice rang false as the note of a cracked bell; that her eyes were hideous in their unfathomable evil; that her red lips would give poisoned kisses; that her slenderness was not that of a willow but of a poised serpent. And then, as a worshipper calls on his gods, I called on Rima, conjuring up a vision of the sweet, grave eyes.
"The little Irish girl is charming," said that bell voice. "No one shall harm her. If it will make you happy, you shall have her.... And you must not be angry, or get excited. You may talk to me for a few minutes and then you must sleep...."
5
My next awakening was a troubled one. The strange room looked the same. But she had gone. How long?...
I had lost all track of time.
What had I imagined and what was real?
Had I asked her, or only dreamed that I had asked her, of the fate of my friends? I thought I had done so and that she had told me they were alive, but had refused to fell me more.
Alive--and, I could only suppose, prisoners! She had assured me, unemotionally, one arm pillowing my head and those magnetic fingers soothing my hot brow, that it was blind folly to oppose her. She wielded a power greater than that of any potentate living. Her strange soul was wrapped up in world politics. Russia, that great land "stolen by fools," was ripe for her purpose....
The present rulers? Pooh! Her specialists (calmly she spoke of them and I supposed her to mean professional assassins) would clear away such petty obstacles. Russia awaited a ruler. The ruler had arisen. And, backed by a New Russia, which then would be part and parcel of Asia--"my Asia"....
China, after many generations, was to be united again. Japan, in the Far East, Turkey, in the Near East, must be forced into submis- sion. Already the train was laid. Kemal stood in her way. Swazi Pasha, his secret adviser, must be removed....
"But I am so lonely, Shan. Your name is sweet to me, because it is like my own Chinese. Sometimes I know I am only a woman, and that all I see before me ends in nothing if it brings me only power and no love."
Now I was alone.
This was a superwoman into whose hands I had fallen! And what blindness had been upon me during our earlier if brief association to close my eyes to the fact that she had conceived a sudden, characteristically Oriental infatuation?
Perhaps a natural modesty. I had never been a woman's man and counted myself negligible when female favours were being distributed. Or, possibly, my preoccupation with Rima. Certainly, from the first moment I had met her, I had not so much as noticed any other woman's existence or bothered myself to wonder if any other woman had noticed mine.
Yet, as I recalled again and again, Madame Ingomar had chosen me to show her over the excavation and had sought me out many times. Yes, I had been blind....
Now, too late, I saw.
Beyond any dispute, she sprang from generations of autocrats; power was in her blood. She had selected me, for no reason that I could imagine; and I had read in those strange green eyes, as clearly as though she had spoken, that if I rejected her I must die! I knew, also, intuitively, that she had experienced love. Judged by Western standards, she was young. But judged by any standard she was old in knowledge. However I chose, my triumph would be a short one.
So musing, and weak as a half-drowned cat. I lay staring around my gold and green prison.
The door behind me opened and the Chinese doctor came in.
"Good morning, Mr. Greville."
I glanced at the heavy curtains. No trace of light showed through them.
"Good morning," I said.
My voice was stronger. The Chinaman went through the ritual of taking pulse and temperature; then:
"A great improvement," he announced. "You have an admirable constitution. "
"But what has been the matter with me?"
He moved his hands in a slight, depreca- tory gest
ure.
"Nothing, in itself, serious: a small injection. But it was necessary to renew it.... However, I am going to get you on your feet, Mr. Greville."
He clapped his hands sharply, and the silent man entered.
Together, and skilfully, they raised me from the divan and carried me into a beauti- fully equipped bathroom which adjoined the green and gold apartment.
"You must not object to our assistance in your toilet," said the doctor. "Because, although unknown to you, we have so assisted before!"
I submitted to the ordeal of being groomed. I had never been seriously ill before, and the business was new to me and utterly detestable. Then I was carried back to bed.
"A lightly boiled egg, and toast," the Chinaman declared, "will not be too severe. Tea--one cup--very weak...."
Presently this was brought and set upon the table beside me. Propped by cushions, I now found it possible to sit up.
With some trace of returning appetite I disposed of this light breakfast. The tray was removed by the dumb man and I lay waiting. Watching the doors alternately, I waited... for her. And I waited in a steadily mounting horror. In some way which I had never hith- erto experienced, this woman, for all her exotic beauty, terrified me.
The door opened... the dumb man came in with a number of books, a box of cigarettes, and other small comforts.
There was no clock in the room and my wrist-watch had been removed....
I saw no one but this silent Asiatic all day, of the progress of which I could judge only by the appearance of regular meals.
Several times, but more faintly than on the first occasion, I could have sworn I heard river noises, and once what strangely resem- bled a motor horn.
The Chinese surgeon attended me after I had dealt with a dinner excellently prepared, and "groomed" me for the night. When he had gone, I lay smoking a final cigarette and wondering if....
"Turn out the light when you are tired," had been his final injunction.
6
Lying there in silence and darkness. I almost touched rock bottom. Despair drew desperately near. I was utterly at the mercy of this woman. Whatever had happened to me had left me weaker than a child. And that damnable mystery, the true nature of my illness, was not the least of my troubles.