by Unknown
Willoughby stroked his beard.
"And now, of course," concluded the evidently almost frantic Saville, "the story's got amongst the native crew, and you'll see there'll be trouble in the fo'c'sle."
Willoughby remarked that that would be a pity.
Now the captain was a man of prompt decision and determined action. From Tilbury to Rangoon, Southampton to Calcutta, his favourite and constantly repeated motto had given him the name of "Stitch-in-Time Willoughby". Judgement of him must in any case be qualified by consideration of his sense of duty to passengers and crew.
He proceeded forthwith, still stroking his beard, to the cabin of Abdullah Jan, remained there some five minutes, and then emerged looking perhaps a little haggard, but if anything more determined still.
It was at breakfast-time next morning that he informed the first saloon of the fate which had befallen the unfortunate Abdullah Jan. He had set up such a disturbance in the night that it had been decided to remove him to a bunk for'ard. In course of transit he had escaped from his attendants and jumped overboard. Raving mad of course. The worst part of it was that the other lascars who had seen him drop had not given the alarm...
"Why not?" asked everyone.
"They thought he brought bad luck," said Willoughby. "A kind of Jonah. They didn't want him to be rescued..."
"Perhaps he was pushed over," one suggested. "If they thought he was unlucky. There may have been foul play."
"No," said the captain steadily. "Oh, no. I shouldn't think there was foul play."
But both the doctor and the second mate remarked a certain bleakness in the eye of Willoughby.
And there, so far as Burrows' log can carry us, the amazing episode was abruptly ended. The Man with the Smoking Leg had come amongst them as a mystery. He had left them shrouded in a mystery greater still.
But Stitch-in-Time Willoughby, when he dropped anchor at Southampton, found that the extraordinary sinkings had continued, for now the tale of vanished ships had risen to thirteen.
* * *
Mr. Frederick Shaw, M.B., was a bachelor in middle life and failing health. His doctor's plate which once had beamed refulgent in a West End square, now hung in gorgonzola-tinted turpitude upon the railings of a block of tenements near Shepherd's Bush. Behind it Mr. Shaw was stained and dingy too. His instincts had become increasingly crepuscular, his means of livelihood distinctly subterraneous. His neck was creased and wizened like a piece of perished rubber and the collar which encircled it extremely dirty. Around his otherwise bald head there ran a scanty ring of rufous hair.
He was sitting in his dismal little living-room with Geoghan's months-old letter in his hand and a look of consternation on his face.
"Good Lord!" he whispered thickly to himself and then again "Good Lord!"
He drained a glass of whisky. Whisky accounted for a great deal in the life of Mr. Shaw. It accounted for Shepherd's Bush and for his dirty collar. Presently it would undoubtedly account for Mr. Shaw himself.
Now the letter on arrival had interested him but mildly. It showed of course that Geoghan was far madder than had been supposed, but as for giving ground for serious and personal concern... He had dismissed the matter with a raucous laugh and stuffed the letter underneath a pile of others waiting to be burned.
And now, this evening, he had fished it out again with trembling hand and read and re-read every word with eyes that goggled in amazement and alarm.
The trouble was that Geoghan's ravings had come true.
An hour had passed since in this very room Abdullah Jan had told his frantic tale of shipwreck and distress, had bared the horror of the Smoking Leg and then implored his aid.
Three days ago the lascar had been wrecked upon the Cornish coast. The sole survivor, he had been conveyed to London and placed within a Seaman's Home. There he had spent one night to sally forth next morning on his quest for Freddy Shaw.
It was absurd, ridiculous. Mr. Shaw's world, such as it was, fell about him in confusion as he thought on what had happened. There, in that old armchair of faded greenish plush he knew so well, the lascar boy had sat and told his tale. Then, stretching out his leg and resting it upon another chair, he had unwound the bandage that swathed it.
The thing had shone. Mr. Shaw was still quite unable to deny that it had shone. It had not burnt or smoked but simply shone. It had shone with a clear and lemon-coloured glow that seemed to fill the room.
His recollections of what followed were confused. He had collapsed, he supposed, upon his chair. Very probably he had fainted. When he recovered the lascar had considerately rewound the bandages about his leg. He had seemed hurt, however, on being asked to leave.
By dint of threats, entreaties, promises, he had been banished for a time, but he would certainly return. That was the trouble. The man was going to be a downright nuisance. To what an ebb would Mr. Shaw's already somewhat dubious reputation sink when ragged lascars with effulgent nether limbs were daily at his door?
For the hundredth time at least he conned the words of Geoghan's merry note.
"The jewel and the amulet are sewn up side by side. The jewel was an idol's eye. It is a ruby and worth at least £2,000, but precious queer in its behaviour. It's given me a lot of trouble in its time. The amulet is worth nothing except for its luck. I popped it in to give the chap a sporting chance and keep the jewel quiet. Wonder how the two'll hit it off together. Mind which you take out first. Well, there you are, old horse; don't say I never did you a good turn."
Mr. Shaw groaned aloud.
For several moments he sat lost in troubled thought, but presently his eyes reverted from the squalor of the faded parlour to the letter in his hands.
'Two thousand pounds,' he murmured wonderingly.
Once more he groaned, but less emphatically: a dubious, one might almost say a pensive, groan.
* * *
Ten days have passed. The scene is still the doctor's dingy sitting- room, the hour, half-past seven in the evening. Upon a couch, his eyes revolving in expectant dread, is stretched Abdullah Jan. In the opposite corner Mr. Shaw is steadying his nerves with another glass of whisky. Besides these two the room contains the usual sinister properties – sponges, a roll or two of lint, basin and towels, and, spread beneath the recumbent figure on the couch, a sheet of which the horrific and precarious whiteness might cause the stoutest heart to quail.
It had come at last to this. It had come to this as Mr. Shaw had known it would. And, after all, what else could he have done? Send the man packing to some hospital against his will? Impossible. Call in some prying surgeon to nose about officiously in his affairs? Still more impossible. Mr. Shaw was conscious of certain features in the conduct of his practice which to a pharisaic mind must seem irregular... Besides which, Wimpole Street would certainly appropriate a ruby when it saw one. He had gone so far, indeed, a few days ago as to procure Barrymore's opinion in the case. Barrymore lived callously dispensing squills and orange-tinted tonic for the kidneys from behind the counter of a dubious druggist's shop near Leicester Square. Together they had viewed the Leg and it had mocked them. It had lain doggo and assumed an air of guileless innocence. It was not even angry or inflamed, and as for shining... Its absolute normality was touching. Barrymore had cast a sneering eye upon the tantalus and gone out huffed.
And now the stage was set and all prepared for the enactment of the final scene. Mr. Shaw stood with his back towards his patient, spurring his failing courage to he knew not what.
He was about to operate upon the leg which Geoghan had bewitched, to plunge his impious knife into the flesh that he had seen to shine as pure gold. After all, had it shone? Ten days ago he could have sworn it; but latterly the thing had been so quiet... Quite possibly he had only imagined that it shone. He was given to imagining things, he knew. Rats with pink tails – boys with golden legs. Anyhow he must do something, or the man would drive him mad. Just one more nip to steady one, and then – here went!
He administered
the anaesthetic. Trembling, he made the first incision.
He paused a moment, half looking for some dire and shattering phenomenon. The perspiration broke upon his forehead.
Then, feverishly, he proceeded with his task. He had stipulated with himself that at the slightest hint of anything untoward or abnormal he would at once desist, but now a strange excitement gripped him. For a couple of minutes he worked in furious haste...
Suddenly he stopped and with a startled cry gazed wonderingly at what his scalpel had revealed.
There, sure enough, they lay within their prison-house of human flesh, the jewel and the amulet of Geoghan's letter. The ruby that was once an idol's eye, and by its side the jade-green charm that held its thwarted fury on the leash. Surely no stranger treasure ever slept in stranger cache.
For several seconds Mr. Shaw remained transfixed. Then he began to tremble. The curious excitement which till now had buoyed him up was ebbing fast away and in its place a stealthy terror grew upon him. He seemed to feel the imminence of some obscene and ghastly happening, the sudden menace of some deadly peril...
With starting eyeballs he gazed down upon the wound his knife had made. In no describable particular could he distinguish any change, but yet the thing was nasty – nasty with a peculiar and utter nastiness at which his soul revolted and his senses swooned. For a moment he had turned away to flee, but something wheeled him in his tracks and brought him back. Within his easy grasp there lay the costly gem. Its glitter chained his eyes. Half whimpering, he stretched forth his hand above the place, then sickly paused.
Which of those warring powers should he first remove – the blood-red jewel or the amulet? For several seconds he remained irresolute, his soul the battleground of fear and avarice. Then, with a half-smothered cry of terror, he thrust his fingers deep within the wound.
Unchecked by thought of Geoghan's warning words they closed about the crimson-shining stone and drew it forth.
There was a blinding flash. A choking volume of black smoke debouched upon the room. A rosy column of devouring light sprang upwards to the ceiling. An awful wail of anguish rent the air.
Then, echoing that fearful and despairing cry, Abdullah Jan awoke.
He rubbed his eyes and gazed. He could see nothing of the column of rosy light. He could see nothing of the rolling clouds of smoke nor of that terrible and searing flash from which they sprang.
He could see nothing of that hapless wretch on whom the suddenly unfettered power of the stone had wreaked at last its will.
He could see only a few curling wreaths of quickly fading vapour that marked the place where Mr. Shaw had stood.
But chuckling in the rifled storehouse of his knee, there gleamed in kindly benison the jade-green amulet.
finis
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IN PAGETURNER EDITIONS
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The Interplanetary Huntress Returns – Arthur K. Barnes
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