by Sax Rohmer
“No.”
“Did you?”
I thought a while, and then:
“No,” I replied. “I am positive on the point.”
“Good!” he muttered, and began to pace up and down again.
“There’s just a chance—just a chance he has overlooked me. Tell me, omitting no detail that you recall, exactly what took place.”
To the best of my ability, I did as he directed.
He interrupted me once only: when I spoke of that sepulchral warning—
“Where was the woman when you heard it?” he rapped.
“Practically in my arms. I had just dragged her back.”
“The voice was impossible to identify?”
“Quite.”
“And you could not swear to the fact that Petrie’s lips moved?”
“No. It was a fleeting impression, no more.”
“It was after this episode that she subjected you to her hypnotic tricks?”
“Hypnotic tricks!”
“Yes—you have narrowly escaped, Sterling.”
“You refer”—I said with some embarrassment, for I had been perfectly frank—“to my strange impulses?”
He nodded.
“No. It was the voice which broke the spell.”
He twitched his ear for some moments, then:
“Go on!” he rapped.
And when I had come to the end:
“You got off lightly,” he said. “She is as dangerous as a poised cobra! And now, I have another job for you.”
“I’m ready.”
“Hurry back to Villa Jasmin—and call me up here if all’s well there. Have you a gun?”
“No. I lent mine to the chauffeur.”
“Take this.” He drew an automatic from his topcoat pocket. “Drive like hell and shoot if necessary. You are a marked man.”
As I hurried out, Dr. Cartier hurried in. “Ah!” Nayland Smith exclaimed. “I regret troubling you, doctor; but I want you to examine Petrie very carefully.”
“What! There is some change?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out.”
CHAPTER TEN
GREEN EYES
The two-seater which had been placed at Petrie’s disposal was no beauty, but the engine was fairly reliable, and I set out along the Corniche about as fast as it is safe to travel upon such a tortuous road.
I suppose it had taken me a ridiculously long time to grasp the crowning horror which lay behind this black business. As I swung around the dangerous curves of that route, the parapet broken in many places and the mirror of the Mediterranean lying far below on the right, my brain grew very active.
The discovery of a fly-catching plant near the place where a man had been seized by this frightful infection, coupled with our finding later a similar specimen in Petrie’s laboratory, had suggested pretty pointedly that human agency was at work. Yet, somehow, in spite of the apparition of that grinning, yellow face in the kitchen-garden of the villa, I had not been able to realize, or not been able to believe, that human agency was actually directing the pestilence.
Sir Denis Nayland Smith had adjusted my perspective. Someone, apparently a shadowy being known as Fu-Manchu, was responsible for these outbreaks!
And the woman who had posed as Petrie’s wife, the woman who had tried, and all but succeeded in her attempt to bewitch me, was of the flesh and blood of this fiend. She was Chinese; and her mission had been—what?
To poison Petrie—as Sir Manston Rorke had been poisoned?
As I swung into the lighted tunnel cut through the rock, I laughed aloud when that seeming absurdity presented itself to my mind.
A new disease had appeared in the world. Yes; of this, I had had painful evidence. It was possibly due, according to Sir Denis, to the presence in France of an unfamiliar fly—what he had called a genus-hybrid.
So much I was prepared to admit.
But how could any man be responsible for the appearance of such an insect, anywhere and at any time; much less in such widely separated places as those which had been visited by the epidemic?
The Purple Shadow...
I had nearly reached the end of the rock cutting. There was a dangerous corner just ahead; and I had allowed my thoughts to wander rather wide of the job in hand. A big car, a Rolls-Royce, appeared suddenly. The driver—some kind of African, as I saw— was taking so much of the road on the bend that no room was left for me.
Jamming on the brakes, I pulled close in against the wall of the tunnel... and I acted only just in time.
The driver of the Rolls checked slightly and swept right—missing me by six inches or less!
I had a clear, momentary view of the occupants of the car which had so nearly terminated my immediate interest in affairs...
How long I stayed there after the beautiful black-and-silver thing had purred away into the darkness, I don’t know. But I remember turning round and staring over the folded, dusty hood in a vain attempt to read the number.
The car had two occupants.
In regard to one of those occupants I wondered if the wild driving of the Negro chauffeur and my preoccupation with the other had led me to form a false impression. Because, when the Rolls had swept on its lordly way, I realized that my memory retained an image of something not entirely human.
A yellow face buried in the wings of an upturned fur collar I had certainly seen: a keen wind from the Alps made the night bitingly cold. The man wore a fur cap pulled down nearly to his brows, creating a curious mediaeval effect. But this face had a placid, almost god-like immobility, gaunt, dreadful, yet sealed with power like the features of a dead Pharoah.
Some chance trick of the lighting might have produced the illusion (its reality I could not admit); but about the second traveller I had no doubts whatever.
Her charming head framed—as that other skull-like head was framed—in the upturned collar of a fur coat... I saw Fleurette!
And I thought of a moss-rose...
I turned to the wheel again.
Fleurette!
She had not seen me, had not suspected that I was there.
Probably, I reflected, it would not have interested her to know.
But her companion? I tested the starter, wondering if it would function after the shock. I was relieved to find that it did. The Rolls was miles away, now, unless the furious driving of the African chauffeur had led to disaster... That yellow face and those glittering green eyes—I asked myself the question: Could this be Mahdi Bey?
Somehow I could not believe the man with Fleurette to be an Egyptian. Yet, I reflected, driving on, there had been that about him which had conjured an image to my mind... the image of Seti the First—that King of Egypt whose majesty had survived three thousand years...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AT THE VILLA JASMIN
The car in which Nayland Smith had come from Cannes was standing just where the steep descent to the little garage made a hairpin bend. I supposed that the man had decided to park there for the night. But I was compelled to pull in behind, as it was impossible to pass.
I walked on beyond the bend to the back of the bungalow. A path to the left led around the building to the little verandah; one to the right fell away in stepped terraces, skirting the garden and terminating at the laboratory.
My mind, from the time of that near crash with the Rolls up to this present moment, had been preoccupied. The mystery of Fleurette had usurped my thoughts. Fleurette—her charming little bronzed face enveloped in fur; a wave of her hair gleaming like polished mahogany. Now, as I started down the slope, a warning instinct spoke to me. I found myself snatched back to dangerous reality.
I pulled up, listening; but I could not detect the Kohler engine.
Some nocturnal flying thing hovered near me; I could hear the humming of its wings. Vividly, horribly, I visualized that hairy insect with its glossy back, and almost involuntarily, victim of a swift, overmastering and sickly terror, I began striking ou
t right and left in the darkness...
Self-contempt came to my aid. I stood still again.
The insect, probably some sort of small beetle, was no longer audible. I thought of the fly-haunted swamps I had known, and grew hot with embarrassment. The Purple Shadow was a ghastly death; but Petrie had faced it unflinchingly...
Natural courage returned. A too vivid imagination had betrayed me.
I reached the laboratory and found it dark and silent. This was not unexpected. I supposed that the man had turned in on the couch. He was a tough type who had served in the French mercantile marine; I doubted if he were ever troubled by imagination. He had been given to understand, since this was the story we had told to Mme Dubonnet, that Petrie was suffering from influenza. He had accepted without demur Dr. Cartier’s assurance that there was no danger of infection.
Walking around to the door, I rapped sharply.
There was no reply.
Far below I could see red roofs peeping out of purplish shadow, and, beyond, the sea gleaming under the moon; but by reason of its position the laboratory lay in darkness.
Having rapped several times without result, I began to wish that I had brought a torch, for I thought that then I could have looked in at the window. But even as the idea crossed my mind, I remembered that the iron shutters were drawn.
Thus far, stupidly, I had taken it for granted that the door was locked. But failing to get a response from the man inside, I now tried the handle and found, to my great surprise, that the door was unlocked.
I opened it. The laboratory was pitch black and reeked of the smell of mimosa.
“Hullo, there!” I cried. “Are you asleep?”
There was no reply, but I detected a sound of heavy breathing as I groped for the switch. When I found it, the lamps came up very brightly, dipped, and then settled down.
“My God!” I groaned. The man from Cannes lay face downward on the couch!
I ran across and tried to move him. He was a big, heavy fellow, and one limply down-stretched arm, the fingers touching the floor, told me that this was no natural repose. Indeed, the state of the place had prepared me for this.
It was not merely in disorder—it had been stripped. Petrie’s specimen slides and all the documents which were kept in the laboratory had been removed!
The smell of mimosa was everywhere; it was getting me by the throat.
I rolled the man over on his back. My first impression, that he had been drinking heavily, was immediately dispelled. He was insensible but breathing stertorously. I shouted and shook him, but without avail. My Colt automatic, which I had lent him, lay upon the floor some distance away.
“Good heavens!” I whispered, and stood there, listening.
Except for the hum of the engine in its shed near by, and the thick breathing of the man on the couch, I could hear nothing. I stared at the chauffeur’s flushed features.
Was it... the Purple Shadow?
My medical knowledge was not great enough to tell me. The man might have been stunned by a blow or be suffering from the effects of an anaesthetic. Certainly, I could find no evidence of injury.
It was only reasonable to suppose that whatever the marauders had come to look for, they had found. I decided to raise the metal shutters and open a window. That stifling perfume, for which I was wholly at a loss to account, threatened to overpower me. I wondered if the searchers had upset a jar of some queer preparation of Petrie’s.
How little I appreciated at that moment the monumental horror which lay behind these opening episodes in a drama destined to divert the whole course of my life!
I came out of the laboratory. Some kind of human contact, sympathy, assistance was what I most desired. Leaving the lights on and the door and window open, I began to make my way up the steep path bordering the kitchen-garden, towards the villa. I had slipped my own automatic into my pocket and so was now doubly armed.
In my own defence I think I may say that blackwater fever leaves one very low, and, as Petrie had warned me, I had been rather overdoing it for a convalescent. This is my apologia for the fact that as I climbed up that narrow path to the Villa Jasmin, I was conscious of the darkest apprehension. I became convinced, suddenly but quite definitely, that I was being watched.
I had just stepped on to the verandah and was fumbling with the door key when I heard a sound which confirmed my intuition.
From somewhere behind me, near the laboratory which I had just left, came the call, soft but unmistakable, on three minor notes, of a Dacoit!
I flung the door open and turned up the light in the small, square lobby. Then I reclosed the door. What to do was the problem. I thought of the man lying down there helpless—at the mercy of unguessed dangers. But he was too heavy to carry, and at all costs I must get to the phone—which was here in the villa.
I threw open the sitting-room door and entered the room in which, that evening, I had quested through works in several languages for a clue to the strange plant discovered by Petrie. I switched on the lamps.
What I saw brought me up sharply with a muttered exclamation.
The room had been turned upside down!
Two cabinets and the drawers of a writing table had been emptied of their contents. The floor was littered with papers. Even the bookshelves had not escaped scrutiny. A glance showed me that every book had been taken from its place. They were not in their right order.
Something, I assumed, had disturbed the searchers.
What?
Upon this point there was very little room for doubt. That cry in the garden had given warning of my approach. To whom?
To someone who must actually be in the villa now!
My hand on the butt of an automatic, I stood still, listening. I was unlikely ever to forget the face I had glimpsed at the end of the kitchen-garden. It was possible that such a horror was stealthily creeping upon me at the present moment. But I could hear no sound.
I thought of Petrie—and the thought made me icily and murderously cool. Petrie—struck down by the dread disease he had risked his life to conquer; a victim, not of Fate, but of a man—
A man? A fiend! A devil incarnate he must be who had conceived a thing so loathsome.
Dr. Fu-Manchu!
Who was this Dr. Fu-Manchu of whom even Nayland Smith seemed to stand in awe? A demon—or a myth? Indeed, at the opening stage of my encounter with the most evil and the most wonderful man who, I firmly believe, has ever been incarnated, I sometimes toyed with the idea that the Chinese doctor had no existence outside the imagination of Sir Denis.
All these reflections, more or less as I have recorded them, flashed through my mind as I stood there listening for evidence of another presence in the villa.
And although I heard not the faintest sound, I knew, now, that someone was there—someone who was searching for the formula of “654,” and, therefore, not a Burmese bodyguard or other underling, but one cultured enough to recognize the formula if it should be found!
Possibly... Dr. Fu-Manchu!
I stepped up to the writing desk, upon which the telephone stood—and in doing so noticed that the shutters outside the window had been closed. First and foremost, I must establish contact with Sir Denis. I thought I should be justified in reporting that the enemy had not yet found the formula.
The automatic in my right hand, I took up the receiver in the left. Because of the position of the instrument, I was compelled to turn half away from the open door.
I could get no reply. I depressed the lever. There was no answering ring...
A slight sound, and a change in the illumination of the room brought me about in a flash.
The door was closed.
And the telephone line was dead—cut.
I leapt to the door, grasped the handle, and turned it fiercely. I remained perfectly cool—which is my way of seeing red. The door was locked.
At which moment the lights went out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MIMOSA
; I listened intently, not knowing what to expect. That this was a prelude to an attack on my life, I did not doubt.
The room was now in complete darkness, for, as I had already noted, the outside shutters had been closed. There were two points from which this attack was to be apprehended: the door or the window. There was no chimney, heat being provided by a stove, the pipe of which was carried out through an aperture in the wall high up near the ceiling.
At first I could not hear a sound.
Very cautiously I bent and pressed my ear to the thin panelling of the door. Now, I detected movement—and, furthermore, sibilant whispering. I could hear my own heart beating, too.
After a lapse of fully a minute, I became certain that someone else was standing on the other side of the door, listening, as I was.
A murderous rage possessed me.
It was unnecessary to recall Sir Denis’s instructions: “Don’t hesitate to shoot.” I did not intend to hesitate... I was anxious for an opportunity. Petrie’s haggard face was always before my mind’s eye. And if Nayland Smith were correct, Sir Manston Rorke also had been foully done to death by this callous, foul group surrounding the creature called Fu-Manchu.
A very slight movement upon the woodwork now enabled me to locate the exact position of the one who listened.
I hesitated no longer.
Standing upright, I clapped the nose of my automatic against the panel at a point about waist high and fired through the door...
The report in that tiny, enclosed space was deafening, but the accuracy of my judgment was immediately confirmed. A smothered, choking cry and a groan, followed by the sound of a heavy fall immediately outside, told me that my shot had not gone astray.
Braced tensely, I stood awaiting what would follow. I anticipated an attempt to rush the room, and I meant to give an account of myself.
What actually happened was utterly unexpected.
Someone was opening the outer door of the villa; then I heard a low voice—and it was a woman’s voice!
I had stepped aside, anticipating that my own method might be imitated, but now, heedless of risk, I bent and listened again. A faint smell of burning was perceptible where I had fired through the woodwork.