by Sax Rohmer
Great heavens! I was back in Limehouse! ... But no--this place was green and gold, but smaller--much smaller than the room of my long captivity.
It was a miniature room--something was radically wrong with it. There were tow windows, draped in those heavy gold curtains which I remembered; a tracing of green figures was brushed across the gold. There was a tall lacquer cabinet and upon it stood a jade image of Kali... tiny, minute. There were flat green doors and a green carpet; golden rugs. An amber lamp gave green light. Upon a black divan was a second, larger figure of Kali... as large as a carnival doll.
But, no! This figure resembled Kali only in her features:
she wore a green robe and high-heeled black shoes. In one slender hand, a soft hand nurtured in luxury, was a long cigarette holder. I could see the smoke from the burning cigarette.... A doll--but a living doll! The picture grew smaller yet. The doll became so tiny that I could no longer discern her features. I was a giant in a microscopic room!
And then--the colours became audible! "I am green" said the carpet. "We are gold," the miniature curtains replied....
Raising both hands I clutched my head! I was mad! I knew it--because I wanted to laugh!
The room began to increase in size! From the dimensions of a doll's house fashioned by gnomes it swelled to those of a gigantic palace!... I was a mere fly in an apartment which could scarcely have found ground space in Trafalgar Square!
But, now--I recognized that green- draped figure on the black divan. It was Fah Lo Suee!
The mighty roof, higher than that of any mosque, of any cathedral in the world, began to descend: the walls closed in... huge pieces of furniture were pushed towards me. Fah Lo Suee towered above my shrinking body, her monstrous cigarette sending up a column of smoke like that of a sacrifice....
I cried out... and saw the cry!
"God help me!"
It issued from my lips in squat green letters! I closed my eyes, and:
"So you are awake, Shan?" said a bell-like voice.
But I was afraid to raise my eyelids.
"Look at me. You are all right now...."
I looked.
My head was swimming and every muscle in my body ached--but the room had taken on normal proportions. It was a large room, filled with modern furniture, except that its scheme was severely green and gold and that there were Oriental pieces placed about.
Fah Lo Suee watched me... but the jade- green eyes were hard.
"You are better," she continued. "Cannabis indica produces strange delusions-- but as we use it, there is no drug so swift to serve our purpose."
I considered the situation. I was seated in a big armchair facing the divan upon which Fah Lo Suee reclined indolently watching me. The damnable fumes of the drug began to leave my brain. Fah Lo Suee, slender, sinuous, insolent, was a woman--but a deadly enemy. I knew what Nayland Smith would have done!
Preparatory to a spring, I drew my feet together... a certain distance. Then-- My ankles were fastened to the chair! Fah Lo Suee dropped ash from her yellow cigarette into a copper bowl upon the low table beside her. I watched the elegant, voluptuous movements of that feline hand with a queer sense of novelty. What a tigress she was!
"The chief purpose of my visit to England," she said, speaking as though nothing unusual existed between hostess and visitor, "was defeated by Sir Denis Nayland Smith. My further plans are in abeyance-- pending his suppression."
My head ached as though my brain were on fire, but:
"He is by way of being rather a nuisance?" I suggested viciously.
Fah Lo Suee smiled, a smile of contempt.
"I could have dealt with him--alone. But one of my own people proved treacherous. In your pocket, Shan, you had two addresses. One was that of Dr. Murray--in whose home your brilliant friend is hiding; the other was that of this house."
She continued to smile--and she continued to watch me. I tried to conquer my wandering ideas. I tried to hate her. But her eyes caressed me, and I was afraid--horribly afraid of this witch-woman who had the uncanny power which Homer gave to Circe, of stealing men's souls.
If I could trust Li King Su, Nayland Smith was coming here--to this house-- where death awaited!
And now I was powerless to stop him! "Li King Su was a traitor." Through the beats of a sort of drumming which had started in my brain I heard the bell-like voice. "No doubt he counted on a great reward."
She ceased speaking and clapped her hands sharply. That gigantic Negro who had been the door-keeper in el-Kharga, and who had overpowered me at the meeting of the Seven, came in!
Fah Lo Suee addressed him rapidly. She spoke in a sort of bastard Arabic--the Nubian dialect; and I found time for wonder. I knew North Africa from the inside; but I had never learned that queer lingo of the Nubians. Yet this woman--who was Chinese--used it familiarly!
The Nubian went out. Fah Lo Suee removed the stump of a yellow cigarette from her long holder, selected a fresh one from a cloisonne box, and fitted it into place. She ignited it with an enamelled lighter.
A dragging sound came.
I saw the Nubian pulling a heavy trunk through the door and across the carpet. This trunk was vaguely familiar. Then, on top, I saw white painted initials: L.K.S.
The Negro removed the straps and threw the lid back.
"Look," said Fah Lo Suee. "He was a traitor."
Li King Su lay in his own trunk--dead!
5
Not until I found myself aloud could I think my own thoughts, uninfluenced by the promptings of those jade-green eyes. But when the door closed behind Fah Lo Suee, I began desperately to weigh my chances.
Nayland Smith was doomed! This was the thought which came uppermost in my mind. The clue upon which he was working, and which would lead him that night to this house, was a false clue--a bait! And that our enemies did not spare those who crossed their path I had learned.
The trunk had been dragged from the room.... But I could still see, in imagination, that strangled grin on the dead man's face.
I tried to reconstruct the details of our interview in Babylon House. Had I detected, or only deluded myself that I had detected, a swift exchange of signs between Li King Su and someone concealed in an inner room? Had I merely imagined the presence of this other?... Or had I been right in supposing someone to be there but wrong in my natural deduction that he was a friend of the Chinese doctor?
Had the hidden man murdered Li King Su and caused his body to be removed in the big trunk?...
"The garden of this house adjoins the Regent Canal," he had said.
The Regent Canal! A gloomy whispering waterway, now little used, and entering a long tunnel somewhere near this very spot where I found myself a prisoner!
I bent forward to inspect the fastenings which confined my ankles... I was checked.
In the mad fantasies attendant upon my recovering from the effects of hashish, and afterwards under the evil thrall of Fah Lo Suee, I had failed to note a significant fact.
A rope was around my waist, binding me to the heavy chair!
True, my hands were free, but I could neither reach my ankles nor the knots fastening the line about my body, which were somewhere under the back of the chair.
A coffee-table on which were whisky and soda and cigarettes stood conveniently near. I was about to take a cigarette... when I hesi- tated. Reaching to my pocket I took out my own case and with a lighter which lay on the table started a cigarette.
At all costs I must keep my head. Upon me, alone, rested the fate of Nayland Smith-- perhaps the fate of a million more!
I smoked awhile, sitting deliberately relaxed, and thinking... thinking. My bonds occasioned me no inconvenience provided I remained inactive. Short of a painful, tortoise-like progress across the room, drag- ging the heavy chair with me, it became increasingly clear that to move was a physical impossibility.
The house was silent--very silent. Those heavy gold draperies seemed to exclude all sound.
For a long time I
sat there smoking cigarette after cigarette. Then I heard something.
One of the two doors opened.
The huge Nubian came in, carrying a tray upon which were sandwiches and fruit. He set the tray on the table beside me. His girth of shoulder was amazing; and as he stooped he gave me a wicked glance of his small, sunken, bloodshot eyes. Without a word, he went out again, quietly closing the door. Was I being watched? Having avoided the cigarettes and the whisky, was this a further attempt to dope me? I considered the facts....
What had they to gain? I was utterly at their mercy. Secret poisoning was unnecessary.
I ate a sandwich and drank a glass of whisky and soda. Silence....
The figure of Kali on the lacquer cabinet engaged my attention. I found myself studying it closely--so closely that I began to imagine it was moving....
Kali--symbol of this hellish organisation, the Si Fan into whose power I had fallen....
The door opened, and Fah Lo Suee came in.
"I am glad to see that you have called on your philosophy," she said. "You will need it. Unless you are prepared to face another injection of F. Katalepsis you must give me your parole for half an hour...."
She stood in the open doorway, one slender hand, its polished nails gleaming like gems, resting on her hip. Her eyes were mercilessly hard.
I can't say what it was in her bearing that told me; but I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all was not going smoothly with Madame Ingomar.
"Naturally, I must decline. "
"You mean it? "
"Definitely."
She smiled. Her passionate lips betrayed a weakness which was not to be read in those jade-green eyes. She clapped her hands. The big emerald which she wore on an index finger glittered evilly.
The huge Nubian entered. Fah Lo Suee spoke rapidly, and he crossed to me.
"Don't resist," she said softly. "It would be merely melodrama. He could strangle you with one hand. Do as I ask. I am being merciful."
My wrists were firmly knotted behind me. Those lashings which held me to the heavy chair were cast off. Then the black picked me up as one might raise a child and carried me out of the room!
"In half an hour," said Fah Lo Suee, "I will free you again-- and we will talk."
Clenching my teeth grimly--for curses, execrations, torrents of poisonous, futile words, bubbled up in me--I was borne across an elegantly furnished lobby. Everywhere I detected an ultra-modem note, in spite of the presence of old Oriental pieces.
Upstairs I was carried, and into a dark little room opening off the first floor landing. I was laid down, prone, on a narrow settee. The Nubian went out and locked the door....
Trussed as I found myself, it was no easy matter to regain my feet. But I managed it, and stood staring around me in semi-dark- ness. The only light, I saw, came through a window which, on the outside, was reinforced with iron bars. And this light was the light of the moon.
The place seemed to be a small writing- room. There was a bureau at the end near the window, closed, a square Cubist-looking chair before it. The black-and-gold walls were bare. There was a closed bookcase, a low stool of Arab workmanship, and the narrow settee upon which I had been placed.
I contrived to get to the window.
It overlooked a neglected garden... and at the end of the garden I saw the Canal! Dropping into the chair, I began to taste that most bitter of all draughts which poor humanity knows--despair. I remembered Nayland Smith's story of the house at el- Kharga:... "A Buddhist-like resignation was threatening me more and more...."
Nayland Smith!
Whilst I sat here, a fiery furnace raging within, but nevertheless useless as any snared rabbit, he was walking into a death trap! She would have no mercy. I had seen how she dealt with those who crossed her: I had read his sentence in her glittering eyes. This time, there would be no "sporting gesture." And I... I should awake somewhere in China, as a male concubine of this Eastern Circe! I bent down, resting my throbbing head on the bureau....
Then came sounds.
Somewhere a bell rang. There were voices. I heard movements--I divined that some heavy burden had been carried in.
The sounds died away. Silence fell again.
How long I sat there, in a dreadful apathy, I had no means of judging. But suddenly the door was unlocked, and I started up.
Fah Lo Suee came in, carrying a long- bladed knife.
6
She stood watching me.
"Well?" I said. "What are you waiting for?"
She smiled, that one-sided voluptuous smile which was never reflected in her eyes; then:
"I am waiting," she replied--her bell-like voice very soft-- "to try to guess what you will do when I release you."
She came forward, bent so that her small, shapely head almost rested on my shoulder, and cut the lashings which confined my wrists. Her left hand grasped my arm as she stooped. Dropping to her knees, with two strokes of the keen blade she cut away the ropes binding my ankles.
Then she stood upright, very near to me, and met my stare challengingly.
"Well?" she said in mockery.
My first impulse--for I had been thinking about Nayland Smith almost continuously-- was to be read in my glance.
"It can never happen twice to me, Shan," said Fah Lo Suee.
She called a name.
The door opened--and I saw the giant Nubian looking in.
Fah Lo Suee gave a brief order. The Negro retired, closing the door.
"Does no more subtle method occur to you?" she asked, her voice softer than ever. "I am as ready to be lied to as any other woman, Shan--by the right man--if he only tells his lies sweetly."
And, face to face with this evilly beautiful woman, know ing, as I knew too well, that my own life was at stake, that possibly I could even bargain for that of Nayland Smith, I asked myself--why not? With her own lips she had reminded me of that old adage, "all's fair in love and war." With her it was love-- or the only sort of love she knew; with me it was war. Perhaps, on a scruple, hung the fate of nations!
She drew a step nearer. The perfumed aura of her personality began to envelop me. Choice was being filched from the bargain. Those mad urgings which I had known in the green-gold room in Limehouse began to beat upon my brain.
I clenched my fists. I could possibly but the safety of the Western world with a kiss!
Tensed fingers relaxed. In another instant my arms would have been around that slender, yielding body; when:
"Greville!" came a distant cry. "Greuille!"
And I knew the voice! I sprang back from Fah Lo Suee as from a poised cobra. Her face changed. It was as though a mask had been dropped. I saw Kali --the patronne of assassins....
She snapped her fingers.
Before I could move further, collect my scattered thoughts, the Nubian was on me! I got in one straight right, perfectly timed. It didn't even check him....
As his Herculean grip deprived me of all power of movement, Fah Lo Suee turned and went out. She hissed an order.
The Nubian threw me face downward on the settee. Never, in the whole of my experi- ence of rough-houses, had I been so handled. I was helpless as a rat in the grip of a bull terrier. My knowledge of boxing as well as a smattering of jiu-jitsu were about as useful as botany!
I honestly believe he could have broken any normally strong man across his knee.
One of the ghastly Burmans, with the mark of Kali on his. forehead, came to assist. I was trussed up like a chicken, tossed on to the Negro's mighty shoulder, and carried from the room.
This was the end.
I had played my hand badly. On me the ultimate issue had rested... and I had failed. That swift revulsion, at the sound of my name--that sudden, irrational reversion to type--had sealed the doom of... how many?
Helpless, a mere inanimate bundle, I was carried down to the room where the image of Kali sat on a lacquer cabinet.
The Nubian threw me roughly on the divan, so that I had no view beyond th
at of the lacquer cabinet and the wall against which it stood. He withdrew. I heard the closing of a door.
I turned....
In the big, carved chair which formerly I had occupied. Nayland Smith was firmly lashed! There were bloodstains on his collar.
"Sir Denis! How did you know I was here?"
He glanced down at the coffee-table.
"You left you cigarette case!" he replied. "I shouted for you--but a dacoif--he indi- cated the bloodstains--"silenced me."
I stared at him. No words came.
"Weymouth and Yale," he went on, and the tone of his voice struck the death-knell of lingering hope, "are watching the wrong house. I have made my last mistake, Greville."
Chapter Twelfth
LORD OF THE SI FAN
"I thought I had found a secret base of operations," said Nayland Smith. "It's one I have used before--the house of Dr. Murray who bought Petrie's practice years ago. Evidently it's been known for some time past that I employed it in this way. I discovered-- too late--that a parlour maid in Murray's service is a spy. She doesn't know the real identity other employers, but she has been none the less useful to them...."
As he spoke, he was studying every detail of the room in which we lay trapped. Appar- ently he had accepted his fastenings as immovable; and evidently divining my thoughts:
"These lashings are the work of a Sea- Dyak," he explained-- "palpably a specialist. Though seemingly simple, no one except the late Houdini could hope to escape from them. "
"A fellow with the mark on his forehead? He tied me up! I mistook him for Burmese!"
Nayland Smith shook his head irritably.
"A member of the murder group--yes. But no Burman. He belongs to Borneo..... The story of my stupidity, Greville, for which so many may be called upon to pay a ghastly price, is a short one. Yale brought me a clue to-day. Its history doesn't matter--now. It was a fake. But it consisted of fragments of tom-up correspondence written in Chinese and a few cipher notes in another hand. I grappled with it: no easy task. But by about four o'clock I saw daylight. I phoned Weymouth to stand by between six and seven. "
"He told me so. "