Читать книгу The Mask of Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 6
ОглавлениеThe Veiled Prophet
“You have said, Mr. Jean,” said Sir Lionel, “that my particular studies are outside your province, but my interests were shared by Dr. Van Berg. Already he occupied a chair of Oriental literature, but, if he had lived, his name would have ranked high as any. Very well.”
He paced up and down in silence for a while, hands locked behind him. The two Persian officials had gone. Those queer discords characteristic of an Eastern city rose to us through the open window: cries of street hawkers, of carriage drivers; even the jangle of camel bells. And there were flies, myriads of flies....
“It was Van Berg who got the clue which set us off upon this expedition—the expedition which was to be his last. Down on the borders of Arabia he picked up a man, an Afghan, as a matter of fact, named Amir Khan. This man told him the story of the spot known locally as the Place of the Great Magician. It’s in the No Man’s Land between Khorassan and Afghanistan.
“Van Berg, with whom I had been in correspondence for some years, although we had never met, learned that I was in Irak. He was a Persian scholar, and he knew parts of the country well. But of Khorassan and Afghanistan he knew nothing. He got into communication with me. He asked me to share the enterprise. I accepted—as you know, Greville—” he darted one of his quick glances in my direction—“and we moved down and joined Van Berg, who was waiting for us on the Persian border.
“I interviewed the man Amir Khan. I could talk his lingo and so get nearer to the truth than Van Berg had succeeded in doing——”
“I never trusted Amir Khan!” I broke in. “His story was true, and he did his job, but——”
“Amir Khan was a thug,” the chief continued quietly; “I always knew it. But servants of Kali have no respect for Mohammed; therefore I was prepared to trust him with regard to the matter in hand. He advanced arguments strong enough to induce me, in conjunction with Van Berg, to proceed with a party, who had been in my employ for more than a year, northeast of Persia. In brief, gentlemen, we went to look for the burial place of El Mokanna, the Hidden One, sometimes called the Veiled Prophet, but, as Captain Woodville has pointed out, more properly the Masked Prophet....”
This was “shop” and overfamiliar. I turned my head and stared from the open window towards a corresponding, ruinous, window of the mosque opposite. The deserted building certainly had a sinister reputation, being known locally as the Ghost Mosque. If this circumstance, together with that eerie sound which had heralded poor Van Berg’s death, were responsible, I cannot say. But I became the victim of a queer delusion....
“Mokanna, Mr. Jean,” the chief was saying, “about 770 A. D., set himself up as an incarnation of God, and drew to his new sect many thousands of followers. He revised the Koran. His power became so great that the Caliph Al Mahdi was forced to move against him with a considerable army. Mokanna was a hideous creature. His features were so mutilated as to be horrible to see....”
Brilliant green eyes were fixed upon me from the shadow of the ruined window! ...
“But he was a man. He and the whole of his staff poisoned themselves in the hour of defeat. From that day to this, no one has known where he was buried. His sword, which he wore on ceremonial occasions, and which he called the Sword of God, forged to conquer the world, his New Creed graved upon golden plates, and the mask of gold with which he concealed his mutilated features, disappeared at the time of his death and were supposed to be lost.”
I shifted uneasily in my chair. The startling apparition had vanished as suddenly as it had come. Above all things I wanted to avoid alarming Rima. Already I suspected sleepless nights; I realized that she could know no peace in the shadow of the Ghost Mosque with its unholy reputation.
The apparition did not reappear, however; and I turned, looking swiftly at Rima.
She was watching the chief. Clearly, she had seen nothing.
Walking up and down while speaking, in that manner of a caged-bear, Sir Lionel had paused now and was staring at the ominous green box.
“Amir Khan did not lie,” he went on. “The tomb-masque that contained the ashes of the prophet is a mere mound of dust to-day; what it concealed was never more than a legend. Its site, though, is strictly avoided—supposed to be haunted by djinns and known as the Place of the Great Magician. We camped there, and our excavations were carried out secretly. Few pass that desolate place on the edge of the desert. We found—what we had come to find.”
“Is that a fact?” said Stratton Jean in an odd voice.
Sir Lionel nodded, smiling grimly.
“The prophet was dust,” he added; “but we found his gold mask, his New Creed engraved upon plates of gold, and his sword, a magnificent blade with a jeweled hilt. There were other fragments—but these were the most important.”
He paused and pointed to the green box.
“Those two Persian birds were mighty keen to know what was in this box. I told them it contained priceless records. They pretended to be satisfied. But they weren’t. It’s a heavy thing to travel—but as strong as a safe.”
He began to pace up and down again.
“I left the Place of the Great Magician, taking the relics of El Mokanna away in that box! Van Berg and I had a conference before we left; Greville, here, was present. In spite of our precautions, there were rumors flying about, and it was becoming fairly clear that some sort of small but fanatical sect still existed who held the name of El Mokanna in reverence. The desertion of our Afghan guide, Amir Khan, was very significant—wasn’t it, Greville?”
“It was,” I agreed.
At the chief’s words I lived again in memory, instantaneously, through those days and nights in that lonely camp, with Rima’s presence to add to my anxieties. I knew that we were hundreds of miles from any useful help, and I knew that in some mysterious way the influence of the Veiled Prophet lived, was active, although the Hidden One himself was dead; that if the truth should leak out, if it should become known that the sacred relics were in our possession, our lives would not be worth a grain of sand!
Almost, in those anxious days and nights, I had come to hate Van Berg, who was the instigator of the expedition, and to distrust Sir Lionel, whose zeal for knowledge had induced him to lead Rima into such peril. His scientific ardor brooked no obstacle. She was a brilliantly clever photographer, and there was a portfolio, now, on poor Van Berg’s table, which in the absence of the actual relics constituted a perfect record of our discoveries.
“I improvised a bomb,” Sir Lionel went on, “to which I attached a time fuse. We were headed south for Ispahan when all that remained of the tomb-mosque of El Mokanna went up in a cloud of dust.”
That wild light, which was more than half mischief, leapt into his eyes as he spoke.
“Although I had covered my tracks, there were consequences which I hadn’t counted on. Most of the work had been done at night, but it appears that travelers from a distance had seen our lights. The legendary site of the place was more widely known than we had realized. And when, some time after our departure, which took place after dusk, there was a great explosion and a bright glare in the sky, the result was something totally unforeseen....”
“If I may interrupt you, Sir Lionel,” said Captain Woodville quietly, “from this point I can carry on the story. An outcry—‘Mokanna has arisen’—swept through Afghanistan. That was the spot at which I came into the matter. You had been even more successful than you seem to appreciate. None of the tribesmen who, as you suspect, and rightly, still hold the Mokanna tradition had any idea that you or any human influence had been concerned in the eruption which reduced a lonely ruined shrine to a dusty hollow. A certain fanatical imam took upon himself the duties of a sort of Eastern Peter the Hermit.”
The speaker paused, taking a cigarette from his case and tapping it thoughtfully upon his thumb nail. I glanced swiftly over my shoulder. But the cavernous window of the mosque showed as an unbroken patch of shadow....
“He declared that the Masked Prophet had been reborn and that with the Sword of God he would carry the New Creed throughout the East, sweeping the Infidel before him. That movement is gathering strength, Sir Lionel, and I need not tell you what such a movement means to the Indian government, and what it may come to mean for Arabia, Palestine, and possibly Egypt, unless it can be checked.”
There came a moment of silence, broken only by the striking of a match and the heavy footsteps of the chief as he restlessly paced up and down—up and down. At last:
“Such a movement would call for a strong leader,” said Rima.
Captain Woodville extinguished the match and turned to her gravely.
“We have reason to fear, Miss Barton,” he replied, “that such a leader has been found. I suspect also, Sir Lionel—” glancing at the chief—“that he wants what you have found and will stick at nothing to get it....”
