The Black Lizard and Beast In the Shadows

by Rampo Edogawa

  She called to them, voice shrill. Inside the cage, Adam and Eve had been whispering together, facing each other, but at her sudden attack each of them braced defensively. Sanae once again curled up into the corner like a monkey, and the young man stood up abruptly and approached the kidnapper, fists ready.

  ‘Why don’t you answer? You did it, didn’t you? Dressed my dolls!’

  ‘Damn fool! You can see I’m imprisoned in this cage! Are you totally insane?’

  His entire body was filled with fury as he shouted his reply.

  ‘Oh, you’re still full of pride, I see! Well, as long as it wasn’t you who did it, it doesn’t really matter, because I have plans of my own. By the way, how do you like our little miss?’

  For some reason, the Black Lizard changed the subject. The young man stood silent, and she asked once more ‘I asked you if you liked her.’

  He exchanged a quick glance with Sanae, huddled in the corner, then he shouted out ‘Yes, I like her! I like her, and because I like her, I’ll protect her! I won’t let you lay one finger on her!’

  ‘Oh, I thought it might be something like that,’ she chortled. ‘Well, you go right ahead and protect her.’

  Still snickering, she turned and saw that Amamiya Jun’ichi, clad in overalls, had just arrived.

  ‘Jun-chan, pull that girl out of there and dump her in the tank,’ she commanded sharply, handing Jun’ichi the key.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit too soon? She’s only been here one night,’ commented Jun’ichi, looking to see her reaction as he spoke through his huge false moustache.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. This is hardly the first time I’ve decided things on the spur of the moment. Go ahead and take care of her now… I’ll be in my room, eating breakfast. I want you to get everything ready. And make sure they return all those jewels to their display cases. Got it?’

  The Black Lizard walked back toward her room, not even turning to face Jun’ichi as she spoke.

  She was furious. The bizarre prank with the mannequins had upset her very much, and when she saw her two captives whispering to each other in the cage so harmoniously it had been the final straw, and her fury burst.

  She’d had no intention of providing Sanae as a bride-to-be: she only wanted to frighten her, to shame her, to enjoy her terrified and sad state in the cell. But her plans had gone totally awry, with the young man determined to protect Sanae by force, while Sanae had looked up at him with delight and indescribable appreciation in her eyes! It was not hard to understand why the Black Lizard burned with a foul displeasure, much like jealousy.

  Faced with a difficult job, Jun’ichi hesitated for a moment, and then, no other choice available, approached the cage door.

  ‘You swine! What do you think you’re going to do to this girl?’

  Inside the cage, the young man had adopted a fighting stance, with a fearsome expression suggesting he would kill Jun’ichi on the spot if he tried to step inside. However, Jun’ichi had a few fights of his own under his belt and he remained unimpressed as he stood at the door. He inserted the key and rattled it around a little, then suddenly swung the door open and leaped inside.

  The two of them – a moustachioed man in factory garb, and a naked youth – grappled each other’s arms furiously.

  ‘Not a chance! As long as I’m alive you’ll not touch this girl. Go ahead and try! But before you do, you’d better be prepared to be throttled to death!’

  His hands, driven by his fury, grew ever closer to Jun’ichi’s neck.

  And, astonishing as it was, Jun’ichi made no effort to resist them! Still holding the other’s arms, he thrust his neck forward, and brought his head close to the young man’s ear, whispering something.

  At first the youth shook his head, determined not to listen, but then an expression of sheer wonder swept across his face. At the same time, he suddenly grew quiet, dropping his hands from the other’s neck to hang at his sides.

  A short while after having somehow persuaded the young man in the cage to quiet down, Amamiya Jun’ichi took the naked damsel – who seemed numbed out of her wits – under his arm and went to the front of the glass-lined tank. There was an upright ladder on the side of the tank. Holding Sanae, he climbed to the top rung, lifted the steel-plate cover and threw her body in. After closing the cover and descending the ladder, he went to the Black Lizard’s private quarters, opened the door slightly and said,

  ‘My Lady, I’ve carried out your instructions as commanded. Sanae-san is swimming about inside the tank now. Hurry and take a look!’

  Next he went to a seat at the side of the tank, took a small folded sheet of newspaper from his overall pocket, opened it, and placed it carefully on the seat. Then, for some reason, he quickly moved off to the other side of the passage.

  From the opposite direction, the woman in black opened the door and stalked to the front of the tank.

  On the other side of the glass plate, the bluish water swayed violently. The different-sized fronds of seaweed rearing up like serpents from the bottom were also moving wildly to and fro.

  And among them, swimming with a flailing action, a naked woman… the phantasm Sanae had seen the night before had become reality.

  The woman in black stared at the tank, eyes shining cruelly, pale cheeks twitching strangely with excitement. Both her fists were tightly clenched and she was gritting her teeth. Then she noticed that the naked woman was not moving as vigorously as usual. It was not just a question of degree – the naked woman was not flailing at all. It was the swaying water that made it look that way. She realized that the young woman’s white body was simply moving with the water.

  Had the frail Sanae fainted before entering the tank, thus avoiding the agony of being under water? It seemed not. As the Black Lizard watched, the body of the woman in the tank gradually revolved and the face, which had been turned away, now appeared at the front glass. Wait a minute! Was this Sanae’s face? Yet submersion could not have altered it thus. Oh, but now it became clear. Wasn’t this the taxidermist’s model of the Japanese girl from the display case? But how on earth could such a slip up have taken place?

  ‘Is there anyone there? Where did Jun-chan go?’

  Forgetting herself, the woman in black was shouting at the top of her lungs. Her minions came thronging in from where the stuffed mannequins were exhibited. Their ashen look suggested something had affected them too.

  One of the men reported in a panic.

  ‘M’lady, something strange has happened again. One of the dolls is missing. It was there when I took off the clothes and collected the jewels a moment ago, but when I looked just now, the girl, you know the one that’s lying down… she’s missing.’

  But the woman in black was already aware of this.

  ‘Did you look inside the cage? Was Sanae still there?’

  ‘No, there’s just the man. Didn’t Jun-chan throw Sanae-san into the tank?’

  ‘Well, something was slung in, but not Sanae-san. Here, look closely. It’s the stuffed figure you lot are searching for!’

  The men peered into the tank. Indeed, the object there in the water was definitely the mannequin that had disappeared.

  ‘That’s queer! Who’s gone and done that?!’

  ‘Jun-chan. Have you lot seen Jun-chan? He was here just a minute ago.’

  ‘We haven’t seen him. He’s been very irritable today. It was as though we were hindering him somehow: he kept telling us to get out of the way.’

  ‘Mmn. This is peculiar. But where did he go? He couldn’t have gone outside so I want you all to search thoroughly for him. If you find him, tell him to come straight to me.’

  After the men had withdrawn, the woman in black seemed somewhat concerned for she stared into space pondering.

  What could this all be about? The ship’s stoker goes missing. Then something strange happens to the mounted
figures. Now the woman that should have been Sanae-san is suddenly transformed into one of the mannequins. Could there be some connection between these uncanny events? It all seemed a little too coincidental.

  She felt that an awesome power beyond human abilities was at work. Just what could that be? But wait! What if…? No, that was too silly to fit in. There was absolutely no way it could be that.

  The woman in black did her best to repress the overwhelming ghostly presentiment that rose up within her breast. Yet woman thief though she was, so great was her fear that cold clammy sweat drenched her entire body.

  After a while, she made to sit down in a nearby chair, when she noticed a sheet of newspaper lying on the seat. This was the sheet that Amamiya Jun’ichi had earlier unfolded and placed there for some reason.

  At first, she looked at the newspaper article without much interest, but soon her expression became very intent and her eyes were drawn to it.

  ‘Super-sleuth Akechi’s victory – Iwase Sanae returns home safe – Family of jewel king rejoices’

  The lady thief’s attention was captured by the unbelievable message splashed out in large headlines across three columns. Hurriedly, she picked up the newspaper, sat down and began to read the article avidly. The outline of the article was as follows.

  ‘On the afternoon of the 7th, Iwase Sanae, beloved daughter of jewel “king” Iwase Shōbei, returned to the family residence after apparently having been abducted by that bizarre villain the Black Lizard. As our enquiries suggested that Mr Iwase had delivered a magnificent gem known as the Star of Egypt to the thief in ransom for his daughter, we believed that the criminal had kept her promise and sent back Miss Iwase. This was your correspondent’s understanding when he interviewed Mr Iwase and his daughter. However, both these persons state that it was entirely due to the efforts of private detective Akechi Kogorō and that the criminal had definitely not honoured the agreement. Somewhat unusually, we were asked to refrain from probing too deeply because of certain circumstances that apparently make it impossible to provide details. Where can that villain the Black Lizard be hiding? The detective in question, Mr Akechi, is now in lone pursuit of the Black Lizard and his whereabouts are unknown. Who, we wonder, will emerge victorious from the combat now taking place between the famous detective and the master thief? Will the magnificent Star of Egypt return to the possession of Mr Iwase? We wait with the utmost concern for the next piece of news.’

  There was also a large photograph captioned ‘Father and Daughter Rejoice’, which clearly showed the smiling Iwase and Sanae sitting on a sofa in a drawing room.

  After the woman thief had read this newspaper article – as improbable as a ghost story – and looked at the photograph, a rare expression of surprise crossed her beautiful face. More than surprise, it was a look of indefinable fear. This was a major Osaka newspaper marked with yesterday’s date. The ‘7th’ mentioned in the article was two days ago, the day when the Black Lizard’s steamer travelled across Osaka Bay. On that day, Sanae was in the ship. And yesterday and today – right up to a little while ago – she had been trembling inside the cage.

  What was this all about? Surely a leading newspaper like this would not print a mistaken article. And more convincing than anything was the photograph. How could Sanae have been laughing in a seat at the Iwase home in an Osaka suburb when she was supposed to be a captive on the ship?

  Not even the wily woman in black could solve this bizarre mystery. For the first time in her life, she found herself crushed by an unnameable fear. Her face was pale as death and her brow sopping with beads of clammy sweat.

  For some reason the disquieting word doppelgänger floated into her head. The improbable tradition went that one person could become two and the two could act independently. She remembered reading about it somewhere on a candy wrapper. And she had seen it in an overseas magazine on the paranormal. The practical woman in black was definitely not a believer in supernatural phenomena, but now she seemed to have no option but to believe in the unbelievable.

  At that moment the men who had been searching for Jun’ichi came thronging back to report that they had not found him.

  ‘Who’s on guard duty at the entrance now?’

  The woman in black’s voice lacked power.

  ‘Kitamura. He says no one has passed him. And he can be trusted.’

  ‘All right. So he’s got to be inside then. He can’t have just disappeared in a puff of smoke. I want you to search once more very carefully. And for Sanae too. If this thing in the tank isn’t her, then she has to be hiding somewhere.’

  Although the men stared uneasily at the pale face of their chieftainess, they grumblingly made to withdraw down the passage.

  ‘Hang on! Two of you stay here and get that doll out of the tank. I want you to search it thoroughly just in case.’

  The two men who stayed behind climbed the ladder, took the mannequin from the water and lowered it down to the floor where they laid it out at full length. However, although they checked the limp doll very carefully, they could find no clue to the mystery other than that it was not Sanae.

  The woman in black strutted about angrily, then sat down on the chair again and started to read the newspaper story once more. As many times as she read it, the result was the same. Sanae had split in two. There was no doubting that it was Sanae’s face in the photograph.

  Suddenly, from behind her seat, a voice said ‘My Lady.’

  The woman in black looked back in surprise, but when she saw the man she said, scolding, ‘Oh, Jun-chan. Where have you been? And how do you explain this business? Throwing in a doll instead of Sanae-san! I think your prank has gone a little too far, don’t you?’

  But Jun’ichi just stood there stock-still without saying a word. He looked at the woman in black with a teasing smile on his face.

  ‘Why don’t you speak? Something’s happened hasn’t it? You seem different. What’s wrong? Or are you rebelling against me?’

  In response to Jun’ichi’s extremely bold manner, the woman in black unconsciously raised her voice. Or perhaps it was because she had finally lost her temper due to the numberless odd things that had happened up to now.

  ‘Where is Sanae-san? Or are you going to tell me that you don’t know?’

  ‘That’s right. I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d guess she’d be in the cage, wouldn’t she?’

  At last, Jun-chan had answered. But his manner of speaking was very unfriendly.

  ‘In the cage? But you took her out, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that. What say we have a look?’

  Having flung out this remark, Jun’ichi nonchalantly strolled off. It seemed as though he really intended to check the cage. Had he taken leave of his senses? Perhaps there was another reason. Very worried now, the woman in black followed Jun-chan, monitoring his behaviour all the while.

  When they came before the iron bars of the cage, they saw that the key had been left in the lock.

  ‘You left the key in the lock! There’s really something strange going on with you today.’

  While muttering this, she peered into the gloomy cage.

  ‘Look! She’s not here is she!’

  There was just the naked man squatting in the far corner. For some reason, he seemed completely listless today, his head limply drooping. Maybe he was sleeping.

  As if talking to himself, Jun-chan said ‘Let’s ask him,’ pulled open the iron-barred gate and walked into the cage. It really seemed that everything he did was out of the ordinary.

  ‘Hey, Kagawa-san, do you know where Sanae-san is?’

  The handsome youth in the cage was called Kagawa.

  ‘Hey there, Kagawa-san! Are you asleep? Wake up would you?’

  As he made no reply to these questions, Jun’ichi put his hand on the well-formed youth’s shoulder and shook him. But Kagawa’s bod
y just wobbled back and forth without the least resistance.

  ‘This is very strange my lady. I wonder if he’s dead.’

  The woman in black was transfixed by an alarming presentiment. What on earth had happened?

  ‘Surely he hasn’t killed himself, has he?’

  She entered the cage and approached Kagawa.

  ‘Lift up his face and let me see.’

  ‘Like this, you mean?’

  Jun-chan put his hand on the handsome youth’s jaw and swivelled up the drooping face.

  ‘Aa–! The face!’

  Not even the Black Lizard could prevent herself from letting out a scream and stumbling back.

  A nightmare. She must be having a nightmare.

  The man squatting in the corner was not the handsome young Kagawa. Yet again, a person had been ‘replaced’ in an inexplicable manner. So, who exactly was this?

  The woman in black was beset with a maddening disquiet. If there was some psychological malaise that made one person appear to be two, then perhaps she was affected by this condition.

  The face that Jun’ichi had swivelled upward was the face of – Jun’ichi! Jun-chan had doubled. There was the completely naked Jun-chan and the Jun-chan dressed in a workman’s clothes and wearing a beard. There was no other explanation than that a fantastic invisible mirror was reflecting one person as two. But which was the real body and which the reflection?

  But which was the real body and which the reflection?

  Sanae-san had ‘split’ into two earlier with the newspaper photograph. This time it was an actual body. And the faces of the two Jun-chans were right before her.

  Such a crazy thing could not really have happened. There must be some prodigious trick lurking here. But who on earth could have conceived of this incredible trick? And to what purpose?

  Infuriatingly, the Jun-chan with the bushy beard was smiling derisively at the bewildered woman in black like some apparition. What was he laughing at? Should he not be shocked himself? But he was uncaringly leering away as if he had lost his senses.