Читать книгу Trail of Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 12
ОглавлениеTHE MARK OF KALI
“Shall I lock the door?” Inspector Gallaho inquired, jangling the keys.
Nayland Smith had been last to leave the tomb of the Demurases. That great fog which with brief intervals was destined to prevail for many days, already had claimed this city of the dead. They were a phantom company enveloped in a mist which might have been smoke of the Ultimate Valley. Alan Sterling was restraining an intense excitement.
Mr. Roberts, the Home Office representative, loomed up out of darkness.
“I understand that the shell was empty, Sir Denis?”
Nayland Smith came down the three steps.
“Not empty,” he replied. “It was weighted with a head-stone stolen from near by!”
The old guardian of sepulchres stood by the open door. Bewilderment had lent that grey and sorrowful face a haunted expression, which might have belonged to the spirit of some early Demuras disturbed in the mausoleum.
Thereupon, Nayland Smith did a very odd thing. He stooped and began to remove his shoes!
“I say, Sir Denis——”
An upraised hand checked Alan Sterling at those first few words.
“Shut up, Sterling!” Sir Denis snapped. “Listen, everybody.” He discarded his leather coat. “I am going back down there.”
“Alone?” Gallaho asked.
“Yes.”
“Good God!”
“As soon as I’ve slipped in, partly close the door. Sing out in a loud voice, ‘Here are the keys, Sir Denis’, or anything you like to convey the idea that I am with you. Understand?”
“Yes,” Gallaho answered gruffly. “But if you suspect there’s anybody hidden there, it’s rather a mad move, isn’t it, sir?”
“I can think of no other. Don’t really lock the door,” said Nayland Smith in a low voice. “Turn the key, but leave the door slightly ajar——”
“Very good, sir.”
Soft-footed, Nayland Smith re-entered the tomb, turned and signalled with his hand. Gallaho began to close the heavy teak door.
“This is ghastly,” Mr. Roberts muttered. “What does he expect to find?”
Gallaho rattled the keys, and:
“Shall I lock up, Sir Denis?” he said in his deep, gruff voice, paused a moment, and then: “Very good, sir. You go ahead; I’ll follow.”
He shot the lock noisily. The door was not more than an inch ajar.
“Silence!” he whispered. “Everybody stand by.”
Beyond that ghostly door, guarded by sentinel cypresses, Nayland Smith was creeping down the stone steps, silently, stealthily. Gallaho had played his part well. All too familiar with red tape, Smith knew that short of sand-bagging the man from the Home Office, to have attempted to disturb the repose of another Demuras would have resulted in an adjournment of the investigation. Alone, and uninterrupted, he must convince himself that that queer impression of something which lived and moved in an ancient shell in a stone niche, must be confirmed or disproved by himself alone.
He reached the vault without having made a sound. His feet were chilled by the stone paving. Imagination charged the fog-laden atmosphere with odours of mortal decay. The darkness was intense. Looking up the steps down which he had come, no more than a vague blur indicated the presence of the stained glass windows. On hands and knees he moved cautiously, right, and then crouched down against the wall and directly beneath the niche which contained the mortal remains of Isobel Demuras—or so the inscription stated.
Complete silence prevailed for fully a minute. He could detect no repetition of that furtive movement which he had heard, or imagined he had heard. Turning slowly and cautiously, he looked up ...
He saw a thing which for a moment touched him with awe.
The stone recess above had become vaguely illuminated, as if some spiritual light were thrown out from the shell of Isobel Demuras!
There came a vague shuffling—the same which he had detected when, last to leave, he had paused for a moment at the foot of the steps. Then ... a ray of light shot across the vault, touching the further wall, where it rested upon a brass plate. The inscription upon this he remembered to have read: here lay Tristan Demuras, founder of the English branch of the family.
The noise above became louder. To it was added a squeaking sound. The ray disappeared from the opposite wall, but the niche above became more brightly illuminated. Nayland Smith on hands and knees crept to the corner of the vault. He had not vacated his former position more than three seconds when light poured down upon the pavement. He was just outside its radius.
The light disappeared; complete darkness fell. There came a renewed and a louder creaking, then a soft thud upon the floor beside him.
In that instant Nayland Smith sprang....
“Gallaho!” he shouted. “Sterling!”
The teak door was opened with a crash. Gallaho shining his torch ahead of him came cluttering down the steps, Sterling close behind.
“The light ... here, Gallaho—quick!” Nayland Smith spoke hoarsely. “Get his knife!”
“My God!”
Sterling sprang forward.
A lithe yellow man, his eyes on fire with venomous hatred, was struggling in Nayland Smith’s grasp! Sir Denis had him by the throat, but with his left hand he clutched the man’s lean, muscular wrist. A knife, having a short, curved blade, was grasped in the sinewy fingers. For all Nayland Smith’s efforts, its point was creeping nearer and nearer, driven by the maniacal strength which animated the tigerish body. The left arm of the yellow man was thrown around his captor, seeking to drag him down upon the quivering blade ...
Gallaho twisted the weapon from the man’s grasp, and Nayland Smith stood up, breathing heavily. Two constables had joined them now, their lamps reinforcing the illumination.
“Who’s got bracelets?” growled Gallaho.
None of the party had handcuffs, but Constable Dorchester, of the spiky red hair, grabbed the prisoner and ran him up the steps.
Outside, held by Dorchester and another, his back against the teak door, he grinned fiendishly, but uttered no word whilst Nayland Smith resumed his shoes and put on his leather overcoat. Gallaho shone the light of a torch on to the face of the captive.
The man wore a soft shirt and no tie; a cheap flannel suit; his ankles were bare, and his lean feet were encased in rubber-soled shoes. His teeth gleamed in that fixed grin of hatred; his sunken eyes held a reddish, smouldering fire. Disordered oily black hair hung down over his forehead. He was panting and wet with perspiration.
Nayland Smith raised the damp hair from the man’s brow, revealing a small mark upon parchment-like skin.
“The mark of Kali,” he said. “I thought so ... One of the Doctor’s religious assassins.”
“What ever is the meaning of all this?” Mr. Roberts demanded in a high, quavering voice.
Nayland Smith turned in the speaker’s direction, so that from Sterling’s point of view, the keen, angular profile was clearly visible against the light of a lamp held by one of the constables.
“It means,” Sir Denis began ...
Something hummed like a giant insect past Sterling’s ear, missed Nayland Smith by less than an inch as he sprang back, fists clenched, glittered evilly in the lantern light, and ... the man whose brow was branded with the mark of Kali gurgled, and became limp in the grip of his two big captors.
A bloody foam appeared upon his lips.
He was pinned to the door by a long, narrow-bladed knife, which had completely pierced his throat and had penetrated nearly an inch into the teak against which he stood!
