Читать книгу The Sinister Dr Wong - Robert Wallace - Страница 4

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Fog enveloped the night in a cloak of dully grey gloom. The street lamps shone like pale gobs of phosphorus through the misty veil that hung in draperied festoons, swirling fitfully in the drafts that whispered about the dirty corners where streets that were alleys tangled with one another in the heart of the city's Chinatown.

Soft-slippered feet shuffled amid the drifting, ghostly fog like the padding of velvet-sheathed claws of jungle beasts hunting the night for prey. Under the spell of the dreary gloom there seemed to stalk at large the very spirit of some evil monster; some hissing, many-headed dragon whose giant body lurked behind, secure in its darkened den, where the bones of its victims crunched beneath its horny saber-shod claws.

Chinatown!

Tonight it pulsed with the very throb of the evil power that crouched beneath its mantle of serenity, for a great force had come to take possession of the quarter, a force masterful enough to command, to move a finger at which the yellow horde would cringe and bow low to the earth. Doctor Wong!

Wedged snugly between two dirty, ill-smelling tenements, where the lodgers were crowded like vermin in foul, dark dungeon rooms, stood a bleak-fronted building that had one day been the home of a merchant prince. Rusting elaborate fire-escapes clung like rotting skeletons to its front. The windows, streaked and crusted with the dirt of years, stared like the sightless eyes of a blind man into the thickening fog. There was no outward sign of life about the building; no sound filtered from the windows and the door.

Yet here was hidden Doctor Wong.

Back of these musty, dank walls he had established his headquarters, and here he waited, like a spider squatting in a web.

And along the Chinatown street a figure shuffled. Nearer and nearer to this house it came like a fluttering phantom, until, at last, with furtive glances behind through the mist it darted into the solemn, darker shadow that was the doorway.

A yellow, wiry hand snaked out from beneath the voluminous folds of a huge sleeve and one long thin finger moved unerringly to a signal bell hidden cleverly in the pattern of the wall.

Quickly and without a word the caller stepped inside. To the casual passerby this house was a forlorn, drab face of brick with dead eyes. Inside—a palace. As the muffled visitor shuffled along the hall, his slippered feet deep in the soft luxury of priceless Oriental rugs, his slant eyes glittered in full appreciation of the richness of the furnishings, the gorgeous beauty of the hangings, the splendor of the polished teakwood and ivory.

The man in the great hall breathed a prayer to his ancestors as he halted before a portal of polished ebony.

Once again his finger was pressed to an electric button, a signal bell fixed cleverly in the eye of a dragon whose sinuous body glittered with jewels.

This time, from somewhere beyond, in the depths of the building there was heard the resonant clang of a brass gong. The huge panel of ebony slid silently into the wall, revealing a broad, sumptuous chamber into which the visitor stepped.

One step he took, a single move that carried him across the groove where the massive ebony panel slid, and here he halted while the door itself closed swiftly behind him.

"Greetings, most high-born prince, from the humble slave Ho Lee," bowed the newcomer, his tone filled with reverence, his body almost doubled in his salutation.

From a dais at the far end of the room, a handsomely gowned yellow man stared at his guest with eyes that were motionless. Like a figure carved from ivory and yellowed with age it gazed down from a veritable throne, stiffly, emotionless; while on either side of him stood six towering giants, armed with heavy Oriental two-handed swords, their only sign of life a slow blinking of beady black eyes.

Ho Lee waited with proper respect for the majestic figure on the throne to reply, to recognize him. It was like waiting in a tomb for a mummy to arise from a sarcophagus. He heard the breathing of the huge guards flanking the figure on the throne, and saw that their bodies were stripped to the waist, smooth and hairless in the soft light that seemed to sift through the room from nowhere.

But his eyes could not remain long from the imposing occupant of the throne. Ho Lee, expressionless, immovable, saw the eyes of the other yellow man. They were hungry eyes, lustful, set in a tight-skinned mask of parchment shade, behind which a fiend might have watched, seeking his chance to kill, to reek a bitter hatred on all of the world.

Then Ho Lee saw a finger move and his eyes were drawn to the hands. They were slim as a woman's with long tapering fingers that might have been the steel-sharp claws of a tiger. And yet these fingers were graceful; the beauty of the gem-studded rings that adorned them swept away all suggestion of force, of the surging power that smoldered in the man's eyes, until one let his gaze rest on the hideous nails which were protected by jeweled guards.

Ho Lee saw but he did not tremble. It was not good for one to tremble within sight of—but lo, silence. The lips of the man on the dais were about to move. "Ho Lee," the lips intoned. "You have come, and it is well. You bring me the word as I wish it? Speak!" Shuffling forward three steps nearer, Ho Lee prostrated himself, and rising, began in a sing-song:

"Ahn Wong—the celestial born—the king of kings! This miserable slave cherishes the honor of serving. He comes to report that Ahn Wong's well-conceived plans are carried out. The guards will be at the house of the infidel Raynor at midnight. All is well."

Wong stared at Ho Lee, and his slant eyes narrowed until they were slits that blended with the crow's feet in his polished skin.

"Ho Lee is wrong," snarled Wong, leaning a trifle forward on his perch, his rich satin garments rustling with the movement. "All is not well, my slave!"

Lee lifted his suddenly frightened eyes to those of his master. What he saw there caused a chill to clutch at his heart. His bland face lengthened in a terrified start.

"But master," he pleaded. "What is it that I have done. I only—"

"Hold your tongue! You know what you have done. You administered the potion of the living death to the infidel, Naylor, did you not? Confess this to me. Speak!"

Ho Lee cringed. He seemed hypnotized by the dominating stare of Ahn Wong, who shouted:

"Answer me, you fool with the eyes of a fish. Confess!"

Ho Lee fought with his throat, tore at it with his hands, slid his parched tongue over his lips.

"Yes, master," he managed to blurt, "but—"

"Enough!" thundered Ahn Wong, his wrath giving him the look of a demon aflame. "He is dead. You gave him too much. Our friend Naylor was a most valuable—yea, priceless plaything—alive. He is nothing dead. Your stupidity has cost me the price of the earth's ransom. And you—will feel the same death!"

A cry of terror escaped Ho Lee's dry lips. Ahn Wong drew a deep breath. The tortures of seven devils made Ho Lee writhe in agony at the fate that had been spoken for him. He threw out his hands in suppliance, pleading with his clutching fingers, his staring eyes and his speechless but moving lips. The same death!

Ahn Wong was unmoved. The block of yellow marble that was his head, turned toward the giant guards at his left side. Wong's snake-eyes fastened on the leader.

"You have heard me," Wong's words were scarcely whispers. "He dies the same death. Take him!"

Like great trained beasts the huge half naked guards strode forward, jerked the inert body of Ho Lee from the floor. The sudden clutch of powerful hands snapped Lee into semi-consciousness, a scream struggled from his lips, and a big hand was slapped over his mouth. Ahn Wong's slave was doomed.

Then came a lifted sword, flashing in the softened lights like the under-wing of a vulture in the blazing sun. Strong hands gripped the helpless Ho Lee while the cruel knife point of the blade was jabbed deep into his arm.

Ahn Wong watched silently, his metallic eyes alight with a fiendish pleasure, as another guard produced a vial and bit out the stopper. A liquid of the same color as the fingers that poured it splashed over the wound.

Drop. Drop. Drop.

Blood and poison. Swift and deadly the potion did its work. The man held in the viselike grip of the mammoth guards jerked, stiffened. His eyes visible above the monster's hand that was clasped across his mouth, bulged in agony.

"Fool," grunted Ahn Wong, with a grin that was his first facial expression.

Blood dripped from the wound to the richly hued rug beneath him. Ho Lee tried to struggle once more, spasmodically. His face and body began to change color. Spots of rusty ochre spread around his eyes, appeared on his throat. His eyes grew dull, lusterless. A tremor convulsed his whole frame. And then he went limp.

The guard whose hand had been clamped on Ho Lee's mouth stepped away and bowed low to Ahn Wong. He made no sound, but the man above him on the dais motioned with one jeweled finger.

"Take him away," he ordered.

As the Manchu giants carried the limp corpse off, Ahn Wong mumbled softly to himself. It was well. Blood had been shed this night. But this was only a moistening of the finger tips to the gory trail he planned for his triumphal march to the throne of the world. Blood would run in rivers, but Ahn Wong was destined to flood the earth in a sea of crimson.