Читать книгу Daughter of Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 12

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I might have thought, during that strange conference in the hut, that life had nothing more unexpected to offer me. Little I knew what Fate held in store. This was only the beginning. Dawn was close upon us. Yet before the sun came blushing over the Nile Valley I was destined to face stranger experiences.

I went with Rima from the hut to the tent. All our old sense of security was gone. No one knew what to expect now that the shadow of Fu Manchu had fallen upon us.

“Imagine a person tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan ... long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green ...”

Petrie’s description stuck in my memory; especially “tall, lean, and feline ... eyes of the true cat-green ...”

A lamp was lighted in Rima’s tent, and she hastily collected some of her photographic gear and rejoined me as Ali came up shouldering his rifle.

“Anything to report, Ali Mahmoud?”

“Nothing, Effendim.”

When we got back to the hut I could see how eagerly we were awaited. A delicious shyness which I loved—for few girls are shy—descended upon Rima when she realized how we were all awaiting what she had to say. She was so charmingly petite, so vividly alive, that the deep note which came into her voice in moments of earnestness had seemed, when I heard it first, alien to her real personality. Her steady gray eyes, though, belonged to the real Rima—the shy Rima.

“Please don’t expect too much of me,” she said, glancing round quickly. “But I think perhaps I may be able to help. I wasn’t really qualified for my job here, but ... Uncle Lionel was awfully kind; and I wanted to come. Really all I’ve done is wild-life photography—before, I mean.”

She bent and opened a paper folder which she had put on the table; then:

“I used to lay traps,” she went on, “for all sorts of birds and animals.”

“What do you mean by ‘traps,’ Miss Barton?” Weymouth asked.

“Oh, perhaps you don’t know. Well, there’s a bait—and the bait is attached to the trigger of the camera.”

“Perfectly clear. You need not explain further.”

“For night things, it’s more complicated; because the act of taking the bait has to touch off a charge of flash powder as well as expose the film. It doesn’t work very often. But I had set a trap—with the camera most cunningly concealed—on the plateau just by the entrance to the old shaft.”

“Lafleur’s Shaft!” I exclaimed.

“Yes. There was a track there which I thought might mean jackal—and I have never got a close-up of a jackal. The night before I went to Luxor something fell into my trap! I was rather puzzled, because the bait didn’t seem to have been touched. It looked as though someone might have stumbled over it. But I never imagined that anyone would pass that way at night—or at any other time, really.”

She stopped, looking at Weymouth. Then:

“I took the film to Luxor,” she said. “But I didn’t develop it until to-day. When I saw what it was, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I have made a print of it. Look!”

Rima laid a photographic print on the table and we all bent over it.

“To have touched off the trigger and yet got in focus,” she said, “they must have been actually coming out of the shaft. I simply can’t imagine why they left the camera undisturbed. Unless they failed to find it or the flash scared them!”

I stared dazedly at the print.

It represented three faces—one indistinguishably foggy, in semi-profile. That nearest to the camera was quite unmistakable. It was a photograph of the cross-eyed man who had followed me to Cairo!

This was startling enough. But the second face—that of someone directly behind him—literally defeated me. It was the face of a woman—wearing a black native veil but held aside so that her clear-cut features were reproduced sharply....

Brilliant, indeterminably oblique eyes ... a strictly chiselled nose, somewhat too large for classic beauty ... full lips, slightly parted ... a long oval contour. ...

“That’s a Dacoit!” came Petrie’s voice. “Miss Barton, this is amazing! See the mark on his forehead!”

“I have seen it,” Rima replied, “although I didn’t know what it meant.”

“But,” I interrupted excitedly, as:

“Greville,” Forester cried, “do you see!”

“I see very plainly,” said I. “Weymouth—the woman in this photograph is Madame Ingomar!”