Читать книгу The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu - Sax Rohmer - Страница 9

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We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but, screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match touched that other face.

“Oh, God!” whispered Smith.

A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.

In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so horrible. Forsyth’s livid face was streaked with tiny streams of blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye, and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.

Smith’s piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path and made my examination—an examination which that first glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless—a mere matter of form.

“He’s quite dead, Smith,” I said huskily. “It’s—unnatural—it—”

Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little, short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a car humming along the highroad, but I remained there on my knees staring dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a matter of minutes since had been that of a clean looking British seaman. I found myself contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed mustache with the bloated face above it, and counting the little drops of blood which trembled upon its edge. There were footsteps approaching. I stood up. The footsteps quickened; and I turned as a constable ran up.

“What’s this?” he demanded gruffly, and stood with his fists clenched, looking from Smith to me and down at that which lay between us. Then his hand flew to his breast; there was a silvern gleam and—

“Drop that whistle!” snapped Smith—and struck it from the man’s hand. “Where’s your lantern? Don’t ask questions!”

The constable started back and was evidently debating upon his chances with the two of us, when my friend pulled a letter from his pocket and thrust it under the man’s nose.

“Read that!” he directed harshly, “and then listen to my orders.”

There was something in his voice which changed the officer’s opinion of the situation. He directed the light of his lantern upon the open letter and seemed to be stricken with wonder.

“If you have any doubts,” continued Smith—“you may not be familiar with the Commissioner’s signature—you have only to ring up Scotland Yard from Dr. Petrie’s house, to which we shall now return, to disperse them.” He pointed to Forsyth. “Help us to carry him there. We must not be seen; this must be hushed up. You understand? It must not get into the press—”

The man saluted respectfully; and the three of us addressed ourselves to the mournful task. By slow stages we bore the dead man to the edge of the common, carried him across the road and into my house, without exciting attention even on the part of those vagrants who nightly slept out in the neighborhood.

We laid our burden upon the surgery table.

“You will want to make an examination, Petrie,” said Smith in his decisive way, “and the officer here might ‘phone for the ambulance. I have some investigations to make also. I must have the pocket lamp.”

He raced upstairs to his room, and an instant later came running down again. The front door banged.

“The telephone is in the hall,” I said to the constable.

“Thank you, sir.”

He went out of the surgery as I switched on the lamp over the table and began to examine the marks upon Forsyth’s skin. These, as I have said, were in groups and nearly all in the form of elongated punctures; a fairly deep incision with a pear-shaped and superficial scratch beneath it. One of the tiny wounds had penetrated the right eye.

The symptoms, or those which I had been enabled to observe as Forsyth had first staggered into view from among the elms, were most puzzling. Clearly enough, the muscles of articulation and the respiratory muscles had been affected; and now the livid face, dotted over with tiny wounds (they were also on the throat), set me mentally groping for a clue to the manner of his death.

No clue presented itself; and my detailed examination of the body availed me nothing. The gray herald of dawn was come when the police arrived with the ambulance and took Forsyth away.

I was just taking my cap from the rack when Nayland Smith returned.

“Smith!” I cried—“have you found anything?”

He stood there in the gray light of the hallway, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick of his.

The bronzed face looked very gaunt, I thought, and his eyes were bright with that febrile glitter which once I had disliked, but which I had learned from experience were due to tremendous nervous excitement. At such times he could act with icy coolness and his mental faculties seemed temporarily to acquire an abnormal keenness. He made no direct reply; but—

“Have you any milk?” he jerked abruptly.

So wholly unexpected was the question, that for a moment I failed to grasp it. Then—

“Milk!” I began.

“Exactly, Petrie! If you can find me some milk, I shall be obliged.”

I turned to descend to the kitchen, when—

“The remains of the turbot from dinner, Petrie, would also be welcome, and I think I should like a trowel.”

I stopped at the stairhead and faced him.

“I cannot suppose that you are joking, Smith,” I said, “but—”

He laughed dryly.

“Forgive me, old man,” he replied. “I was so preoccupied with my own train of thought that it never occurred to me how absurd my request must have sounded. I will explain my singular tastes later; at the moment, hustle is the watchword.”

Evidently he was in earnest, and I ran downstairs accordingly, returning with a garden trowel, a plate of cold fish and a glass of milk.

“Thanks, Petrie,” said Smith—“If you would put the milk in a jug—”

I was past wondering, so I simply went and fetched a jug, into which he poured the milk. Then, with the trowel in his pocket, the plate of cold turbot in one hand and the milk jug in the other, he made for the door. He had it open when another idea evidently occurred to him.

“I’ll trouble you for the pistol, Petrie.”

I handed him the pistol without a word.

“Don’t assume that I want to mystify you,” he added, “but the presence of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don’t expect to be long.”

The cold light of dawn flooded the hallway momentarily; then the door closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith as he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He was making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached them.

I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise. A policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated reveler in evening clothes. That sense of unreality assailed me again. Out there in the gray mists a man who was vested with powers which rendered him a law unto himself, who had the British Government behind him in all that he might choose to do, who had been summoned from Rangoon to London on singular and dangerous business, was employing himself with a plate of cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!

Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the common; then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its lights twinkled yellowly through the grayness, but I was less concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveler who had descended from it.

As the car went rocking by below me, I strained my eyes in an endeavor more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the highroad, had struck out across the common. It was that of a woman, who seemingly carried a bulky bag or parcel.

One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers in man which man, in modern times, neglects, or knows not how to develop. I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting this lonely traveler who traveled at an hour so strange. With no definite plan in mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from the rack, and walked briskly out of the house and across the common in a direction which I thought would enable me to head off the woman.

I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have it, and with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I came upon her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the bundle which had attracted my attention. I stopped and watched her.

She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a common black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that the dexterous hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white; and I perceived a pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf beside her. As she threw open the wrappings and lifted out something that looked like a small shrimping net, I stepped around the bush, crossed silently the intervening patch of grass, and stood beside her.

A faint breath of perfume reached me—of a perfume which, like the secret incense of Ancient Egypt, seemed to assail my soul. The glamour of the Orient was in that subtle essence; and I only knew one woman who used it. I bent over the kneeling figure.

“Good morning,” I said; “can I assist you in any way?”

She came to her feet like a startled deer, and flung away from me with the lithe movement of some Eastern dancing girl.

Now came the sun, and its heralding rays struck sparks from the jewels upon the white fingers of this woman who wore the garments of a mendicant. My heart gave a great leap. It was with difficulty that I controlled my voice.

“There is no cause for alarm,” I added.

She stood watching me; even through the coarse veil I could see how her eyes glittered. I stooped and picked up the net.

“Oh!” The whispered word was scarcely audible, but it was enough; I doubted no longer.

“This is a net for bird snaring,” I said. “What strange bird are you seeking—Karamaneh?”

With a passionate gesture Karamaneh snatched off the veil, and with it the ugly black hat. The cloud of wonderful, intractable hair came rumpling about her face, and her glorious eyes blazed out upon me. How beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an Egyptian night; how often had they looked into mine in dreams!

To labor against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one knows, upon evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be worthless—evil; is there any torture to which the soul of man is subject, more pitiless? Yet this was my lot, for what past sins assigned to me I was unable to conjecture; and this was the woman, this lovely slave of a monster, this creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

“I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!” I said harshly.

Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.

“It is very convenient to forget, sometimes,” I ran on bitterly, then checked myself; for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless desire to hear her defense, by a fool’s hope that it might be an acceptable one.

I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it had a strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously it was intended for snaring.

“What were you about to do?” I demanded sharply—but in my heart, poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of Karamaneh’s lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.

She spoke then.

“Dr. Petrie—”

“Well?”

“You seem to be—angry with me, not so much because of what I do, as because I do not remember you. Yet—”

“Kindly do not revert to the matter,” I interrupted. “You have chosen, very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please yourself. But answer my question.”

She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.

“Why do you treat me so!” she cried; she had the most fascinating accent imaginable. “Throw me into prison, kill me if you like, for what I have done!” She stamped her foot. “For what I have done! But do not torture me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches—that I forget you! I tell you—again I tell you—that until you came one night, last week, to rescue some one from—” There was the old trick of hesitating before the name of Fu-Manchu—“from him, I had never, never seen you!”

The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for belief—or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were against her.

“Such a declaration is worthless,” I said, as coldly as I could. “You are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you—”

“I am no traitress!” she blazed at me; her eyes were magnificent.

“This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your ‘slavery’—for I take it you are posing as a slave again—is evidently not very harsh. You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their destruction, and in return he loads you with jewels, lavishes gifts—”

“Ah! so!”

She sprang forward, raising flaming eyes to mine; her lips were slightly parted. With that wild abandon which betrayed the desert blood in her veins, she wrenched open the neck of her bodice and slipped a soft shoulder free of the garment. She twisted around, so that the white skin was but inches removed from me.

“These are some of the gifts that he lavishes upon me!”

I clenched my teeth. Insane thoughts flooded my mind. For that creamy skin was red with the marks of the lash!

She turned, quickly rearranging her dress, and watching me the while. I could not trust myself to speak for a moment, then:

“If I am a stranger to you, as you claim, why do you give me your confidence?” I asked.

“I have known you long enough to trust you!” she said simply, and turned her head aside.

“Then why do you serve this inhuman monster?”

She snapped her fingers oddly, and looked up at me from under her lashes. “Why do you question me if you think that everything I say is a lie?”

It was a lesson in logic—from a woman! I changed the subject.

“Tell me what you came here to do,” I demanded.

She pointed to the net in my hands.

“To catch birds; you have said so yourself.”

“What bird?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

And now a memory was born within my brain; it was that of the cry of the nighthawk which had harbingered the death of Forsyth! The net was a large and strong one; could it be that some horrible fowl of the air—some creature unknown to Western naturalists—had been released upon the common last night? I thought of the marks upon Forsyth’s face and throat; I thought of the profound knowledge of obscure and dreadful things possessed by the Chinaman.

The wrapping, in which the net had been, lay at my feet. I stooped and took out from it a wicker basket. Karamaneh stood watching me and biting her lip, but she made no move to check me. I opened the basket. It contained a large phial, the contents of which possessed a pungent and peculiar smell.

I was utterly mystified.

“You will have to accompany me to my house,” I said sternly.

Karamaneh upturned her great eyes to mine. They were wide with fear. She was on the point of speaking when I extended my hand to grasp her. At that, the look of fear was gone and one of rebellion held its place. Ere I had time to realize her purpose, she flung back from me with that wild grace which I had met with in no other woman, turned and ran!

Fatuously, net and basket in hand, I stood looking after her. The idea of pursuit came to me certainly; but I doubted if I could have outrun her. For Karamaneh ran, not like a girl used to town or even country life, but with the lightness and swiftness of a gazelle; ran like the daughter of the desert that she was.

Some two hundred yards she went, stopped, and looked back. It would seem that the sheer joy of physical effort had aroused the devil in her, the devil that must lie latent in every woman with eyes like the eyes of Karamaneh.

In the ever brightening sunlight I could see the lithe figure swaying; no rags imaginable could mask its beauty. I could see the red lips and gleaming teeth. Then—and it was music good to hear, despite its taunt—she laughed defiantly, turned, and ran again!

I resigned myself to defeat; I blush to add, gladly! Some evidences of a world awakening were perceptible about me now. Feathered choirs hailed the new day joyously. Carrying the mysterious contrivance which I had captured from the enemy, I set out in the direction of my house, my mind very busy with conjectures respecting the link between this bird snare and the cry like that of a nighthawk which we had heard at the moment of Forsyth’s death.

The path that I had chosen led me around the border of the Mound Pond—a small pool having an islet in the center. Lying at the margin of the pond I was amazed to see the plate and jug which Nayland Smith had borrowed recently!

Dropping my burden, I walked down to the edge of the water. I was filled with a sudden apprehension. Then, as I bent to pick up the now empty jug, came a hail:

“All right, Petrie! Shall join you in a moment!”

I started up, looked to right and left; but, although the voice had been that of Nayland Smith, no sign could I discern of his presence!

“Smith!” I cried—“Smith!”

“Coming!”

Seriously doubting my senses, I looked in the direction from which the voice had seemed to proceed—and there was Nayland Smith.

He stood on the islet in the center of the pond, and, as I perceived him, he walked down into the shallow water and waded across to me!

“Good heavens!” I began—

One of his rare laughs interrupted me.

“You must think me mad this morning, Petrie!” he said. “But I have made several discoveries. Do you know what that islet in the pond really is?”

“Merely an islet, I suppose—”

“Nothing of the kind; it is a burial mound, Petrie! It marks the site of one of the Plague Pits where victims were buried during the Great Plague of London. You will observe that, although you have seen it every morning for some years, it remains for a British Commissioner resident in Burma to acquaint you with its history! Hullo!”—the laughter was gone from his eyes, and they were steely hard again—“what the blazes have we here!”

He picked up the net. “What! a bird trap!”

“Exactly!” I said.

Smith turned his searching gaze upon me. “Where did you find it, Petrie?”

“I did not exactly find it,” I replied; and I related to him the circumstances of my meeting with Karamaneh.

He directed that cold stare upon me throughout the narrative, and when, with some embarrassment, I had told him of the girl’s escape—

“Petrie,” he said succinctly, “you are an imbecile!”

I flushed with anger, for not even from Nayland Smith, whom I esteemed above all other men, could I accept such words uttered as he had uttered them. We glared at one another.

“Karamaneh,” he continued coldly, “is a beautiful toy, I grant you; but so is a cobra. Neither is suitable for playful purposes.”

“Smith!” I cried hotly—“drop that! Adopt another tone or I cannot listen to you!”

“You must listen,” he said, squaring his lean jaw truculently. “You are playing, not only with a pretty girl who is the favorite of a Chinese Nero, but with my life! And I object, Petrie, on purely personal grounds!”

I felt my anger oozing from me; for this was strictly just. I had nothing to say, and Smith continued:

“You know that she is utterly false, yet a glance or two from those dark eyes of hers can make a fool of you! A woman made a fool of me, once; but I learned my lesson; you have failed to learn yours. If you are determined to go to pieces on the rock that broke up Adam, do so! But don’t involve me in the wreck, Petrie—for that might mean a yellow emperor of the world, and you know it!”

“Your words are unnecessarily brutal, Smith,” I said, feeling very crestfallen, “but there—perhaps I fully deserve them all.”

“You do!” he assured me, but he relaxed immediately. “A murderous attempt is made upon my life, resulting in the death of a perfectly innocent man in no way concerned. Along you come and let an accomplice, perhaps a participant, escape, merely, because she has a red mouth, or black lashes, or whatever it is that fascinates you so hopelessly!”

He opened the wicker basket, sniffing at the contents.

“Ah!” he snapped, “do you recognize this odor?”

“Certainly.”

“Then you have some idea respecting Karamaneh’s quarry?”

“Nothing of the kind!”

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

“Come along, Petrie,” he said, linking his arm in mine.

We proceeded. Many questions there were that I wanted to put to him, but one above all.

“Smith,” I said, “what, in Heaven’s name, were you doing on the mound? Digging something up?”

“No,” he replied, smiling dryly; “burying something!”