Читать книгу Fu Manchu's Bride - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 6
ОглавлениеSQUINTING EYES
I spent the latter part of the afternoon delving in works of reference which I had not consulted for many months, in an endeavour to identify more exactly the leaves so mysteriously found by Petrie.
To an accompaniment of clattering pans, old Mme Dubonnet was preparing our evening meal in the kitchen and humming some melancholy tune very cheerily.
Petrie was a source of great anxiety. I had considered ’phoning for Dr. Cartier, but finally had dismissed the idea. That my friend was ill he had been unable to disguise; but he was a Doctor of Medicine, and I was not. Furthermore, he was my host.
That he was worried about his wife in Cairo, I knew. Only the day before he had said, “I hope she doesn’t take it into her head to come over—much as I should like to see her.” Now, I shared that hope. His present appearance would shock the woman who loved him.
Fleurette—Fleurette of the dimpled chin—more than once intruded her image between me and the printed page. I tried to push these memories aside.
Fleurette was the mistress of a wealthy Egyptian. Despite her name, she was not French. She was, perhaps, an actress. Why had I not thought of that before? Her beautifully modulated voice—her composure. “Think of me as Derceto....”
“In Byblis gigantea, according to Zopf, insect-catching is merely incipient,” I read....
She could be no older than eighteen—indeed, she might be younger than that....
And so the afternoon wore on.
Faint buzzing of the Kohler engine, and a sudden shaft of light across the slopes below, first drew my attention to approaching dusk. Petrie had turned up the laboratory lamps.
I was deep in a German work which promised information, and now, mechanically, I switched on the table lamp. Hundreds of grasshoppers were chirping in the garden; I could hear the purr of a speedboat. Mme Dubonnet continued to sing. It was a typical Riviera evening.
The shadow of that great crag which almost overhung the Villa Jasmin lay across part of the kitchen garden visible from my window, and soon would claim all our tiny domain. I continued my studies, jumping from reference to reference and constantly consulting the index. I believed I was at last on the right track.
How long a time elapsed between the moment when I saw light turned up in the laboratory and the interruption, I found great difficulty in determining afterwards. But the interruption was uncanny.
Mme Dubonnet, working in the kitchen, French fashion, with windows hermetically sealed, noticed nothing.
Already, on this momentous day, I had heard a sound baffling description; and it was written—for the day was one never to be forgotten—that I should hear another.
As I paused to light a fresh cigarette, from somewhere outside—I thought from the Corniche road above—came a cry, very low, but penetrating. ...
It possessed a quality of fear which chilled me like a sudden menace. It was a sort of mournful wail on three minor notes. But a shot at close quarters could not have been more electrical in its effect.
I dropped my cigarette and jumped up.
What was it?
It was unlike anything I had ever heard. But there was danger in it, creeping peril. I leaned upon the table, staring from the window upward, in the direction from which the cry seemed to have come.
And as I did so, I saw something.
I have explained that a beam of light from the laboratory window cut across the shadow below. On the edge of this light something moved for a moment—for no more than a moment—but instantly drew my glance downward.
I looked....
A pair of sunken, squinting eyes, set in a yellow face so evilly hideous that I was tempted then, and for some time later, to doubt the evidence of my senses, watched me!
Of the body belonging to this head I could see nothing; it was enveloped in shadow. I saw just that evil mask watching me; then—it was gone!
As I stood staring from the window, stupid with a kind of horrified amazement, I heard footsteps racing down the path from the road which led to the door of Villa Jasmin.
Turning, I ran out onto the verandah.
I reached it at the same moment as the new arrival—a tall, lean man with iron-grey, crisply virile hair, and keen, eager eyes. He had the sort of skin which tells of years spent in the tropics. He wore no hat, but a heavy topcoat was thrown across his shoulders, cloakwise. Above all, he radiated a kind of vital energy which was intensely stimulating.
“Quick,” he said—his mode of address reminded me of a machine gun—“where is Dr. Petrie? My name is Nayland Smith.”
“I’m glad you have come, Sir Denis,” I replied; and indeed I spoke sincerely. “The doctor referred to you only to-day. My name is Alan Sterling.”
“I know it is,” he said, and shook hands briskly; then:
“Where is Petrie?” he repeated. “Is he with you?”
“He is in the laboratory, Sir Denis. I’ll show you the way.”
Sir Denis nodded, and we stepped off the verandah.
“Did you hear that awful cry?” I added.
He stopped. We had just begun to descend the slope.
“You heard it?” he rapped in his staccato fashion.
“I did. I have never heard anything like it in my life!”
“I have! Let’s hurry.”
There was something very strange in his manner, something which I ascribed to that wailing sound which had electrified me. Definitely, Sir Denis Nayland Smith was not a man susceptible to panic, but some fearful urgency drove him to-night.
I was about to speak of that malignant yellow face when, as we came in sight of the lighted windows of the laboratory:
“How long has Petrie been in there?” Nayland Smith asked.
“All the afternoon. He’s up to his eyes in work on these mysterious cases—about which, perhaps, you know?”
“I do,” he replied. “Wait a moment....”
He grasped my arm and pulled me up just at the edge of the patch of shadow. He stood still, and I could tell that he was listening intently.
“Where’s the door?” he asked suddenly.
“At the farther end.”
“Right.”
He set off at a run, and I followed past the lighted window. Petrie was not at the table nor at the bench. I was puzzled to account for this, and already vaguely fearful. A premonition gripped me, a premonition of something horrible. Then, I had my hand on the door and had thrown it open. I entered, Sir Denis close behind me.
“Good God! Petrie! ... Petrie, old man ...”
Nayland Smith had sprung in and was already on his knees beside the doctor.
Petrie lay in the shadow of his working bench, in fact, half under it, one outstretched hand still convulsively gripping its edge!
I saw that the apparently rigid fingers grasped a hypodermic syringe. Near to his upraised hand was a vessel containing a small quantity of some milky fluid; and the tube of white powder which he had shown to me lay splintered, broken by his fall, on the floor a foot away.
In those few fleeting seconds I saw Sir Denis Nayland Smith, for the first and last time in my knowledge of him, fighting to subdue his emotions. His head dropped into his upraised hands, his fingers clutched his hair.
Then he had conquered. He stood up.
“Lift him!” he said hoarsely—“out here, into the light.”
I was half stunned. Horror and sorrow had me by the throat. But I helped to move Petrie farther into the middle of the floor, where a central light shone down upon him. One glance told me the truth—if I had ever doubted it.
A sort of cloud was creeping from his disordered hair, down over his brow.
“Heaven help him!” I whispered. “Look—look! ... the purple shadow!”
