Читать книгу The Mask of Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 7
ОглавлениеNayland Smith Takes Charge
“Someone to see you, Greville Effendim.”
I raised my eyes from the notes which I had been studying but did not look around. Through the open window in front of the table at which I had been working I could see on the opposite side of the narrow street the sun-bathed wall of that deserted mosque of unpleasant history.
A window almost on a level with that through which I was looking was heavily outlined on one side and at the top by dense shadows. Only that morning I had explored the mosque—penetrating to the gallery behind that window. What I had hoped to find I really don’t know. Actually, I had found nothing.
“Show him in, Ali Mahmoud.”
I pushed the notes aside and turned, as footsteps on the landing outside told me that my visitor had arrived.
Then I sprang swiftly to my feet....
Something I had vaguely prayed for, something I had not dared to expect, had actually happened! A tall, lean man, with clean-shaven face so sun-baked as to resemble that of an Arab, stood in the doorway.
“Sir Denis! Sir Denis!” I cried. “This is almost too wonderful!”
It was Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, one of my chief’s oldest friends, and the one man in the world whom I would have chosen to be with us now. But the mystery of his appearance had knocked me sideways; and, as he grasped my hand, that lean, tired face relaxed in the boyish smile that I knew and loved; and:
“A surprise?” he snapped in his queer, staccato fashion. “It was a surprise to me too, Greville. If anybody had offered me a hundred to one, three days ago, that I should be in Ispahan now, I should have taken him.”
“But ...” I looked him up and down.
He wore a leather overcoat over a very dilapidated flannel suit, and, since he was hatless, I saw that his crisp, wavy hair, more heavily silvered in the interval since our last meeting, was disordered.
“But where does Scotland Yard come in?”
“It doesn’t come in at all,” he returned. “I resigned from Scotland Yard six months ago, Greville. I have been on a sort of secret mission to southern India. I came back via Basra intending to return overland and by air. There is no time to waste, you understand. But at Basra I had news.”
“News of what?” I asked, my brain in somewhat of a whirl.
“News that changed my plans,” he returned gravely, and his piercing glance fixed me for a moment. “Excuse me if I seem eccentric, but would you mind stepping around the table, Greville, and looking out of the window. I should be glad to know if there is anyone in the street.”
Too surprised to reply, I did as he asked. The narrow street was empty as far as I could see it to the left. To the right, where it lay in deep shadow and climbed upward under the lee of the deserted mosque, I could not be so sure that someone, or something, a vague figure, was not lurking. However, after watching for some moments, I determined that the figure existed only in my imagination.
“Nobody,” I reported.
“Ah! I hope you’re right—but I doubt it.”
Nayland Smith had shed his leather coat and was engaged in loading one of those large, cracked briars that I had known so well, with the peculiar cross-cut mixture which he favored, and which he kept in a pouch at least as dilapidated as his pipe.
The room, which we used as an office, was in better order than during poor Van Berg’s time. The bed in which our late colleague had slept had been removed, and I had reduced the place to something like order.
I went to a side table, pouring out a drink. Nayland Smith’s eyes were more than normally bright, and his features, I thought, looked almost haggard. He had dropped into an armchair. He took the glass which I handed to him, but set it down in the arm rest, its contents untasted; and:
“Greville,” he said, “the hand of destiny may clearly be seen in all this. Where is Barton?”
“I expected him back by now,” I replied. “Rima is with him. Do you know what’s happened, Sir Denis? Is that why you’re here?”
“I know that Dr. Van Berg has been murdered,” he returned grimly. “But that isn’t why I’m here.”
He lighted his pipe absent-mindedly, three matches being used before he was satisfied; then:
“I am here,” he went on, “because there is a dangerous movement on the Afghan border, and creeping south day by day. Definite orders reached me at Basra. That’s why I’m here, Greville. Heaven knows we had enough trouble before, but now that the tribes are rising in response to a mad rumor that El Mokanna, the Masked Prophet, has come out of his tomb to lead them, I don’t know where my duty lies.”
He had picked up his glass, but he set it down again and fixed me with a steady glance of his steel-gray eyes.
“I suspect that it lies here!” he snapped. “Some madness of Barton’s is at the bottom of this superstitious rumor, which by now has swept all over the East—Near and Far.”
I sustained that stare with great difficulty, and presently:
“You are right, Sir Denis,” I admitted. “The truth of the matter I don’t know, and I don’t think the chief knows it—but I have every reason to believe that poor Van Berg met his death at the hands of some fanatic inspired by this rumor. He died in this room. And the manner of his death remains a mystery to this present hour.”
“Barton is mad,” said Nayland Smith definitely. “His investigations have caused nearly as much trouble as the zeal of the most earnest missionaries.”
He stood up and began to pace the long, narrow room in his restless fashion. In this trick, which betrayed the intense pent-up vitality of the man, he reminded me of the chief. Together, the pair of them emitted almost visible sparks of force.
“Be as brief as you can,” he directed. “The clue to the trouble lies here—obscured by now, probably. I have Captain Woodville’s report—but it omits almost every essential point. Give me your own story of the death of Van Berg.” He stared at me intently. “The peace of the world, Greville, may rest upon your accuracy.”
