Fu-Manchu - The Mask of Fu-Manchu E-Book

Sax Rohmer

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 350

Beschreibung

"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan…". London, 1933—the era of World War II and global chaos. A time of shadows, secret societies, and dens filled with opium addicts. Into this world comes the most fantastic emissary of evil society has ever known… Fu-Manchu. A mysterious epidemic appears on the French Riviera. When the French authorities call upon Dr. Petrie, his discoveries cause him to summon Sir Denis Nayland-Smith. For their eternal foe, Dr. Fu-Manchu, is now trafficking in the deadliest form of biological warfare.summoned to help stop his arch-foe before he can succeed in spreading his plague across Europe.

Leseprobe

“Without Fu-Manchu we wouldn’t have Dr. No, Doctor Doom or Dr. Evil. Sax Rohmer created the first truly great evil mastermind. Devious, inventive, complex, and fascinating. These novels inspired a century of great thrillers!”

Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Assassin’s Code and Patient Zero

“The true king of the pulp mystery is Sax Rohmer—and the shining ruby in his crown is without a doubt his Fu-Manchu stories.”

James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Colony

“Fu-Manchu remains the definitive diabolical mastermind of the 20th Century. Though the arch-villain is ‘the Yellow Peril incarnate,’ Rohmer shows an interest in other cultures and allows his protagonist a complex set of motivations and a code of honor which often make him seem a better man than his Western antagonists. At their best, these books are very superior pulp fiction… at their worst, they’re still gruesomely readable.”

Kim Newman, award-winning author of Anno Dracula

“Sax Rohmer is one of the great thriller writers of all time! Rohmer created in Fu-Manchu the model for the super-villains of James Bond, and his hero Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are worthy stand-ins for Holmes and Watson… though Fu-Manchu makes Professor Moriarty seem an under-achiever.”

Max Allan Collins, New York Times bestselling author of The Road to Perdition

“I grew up reading Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu novels, in cheap paperback editions with appropriately lurid covers. They completely entranced me with their vision of a world constantly simmering with intrigue and wildly overheated ambitions. Even without all the exotic detail supplied by Rohmer’s imagination, I knew full well that world wasn’t the same as the one I lived in… For that alone, I’m grateful for all the hours I spent chasing around with Nayland Smith and his stalwart associates, though really my heart was always on their intimidating opponent’s side.”

K. W. Jeter, acclaimed author of Infernal Devices

“A sterling example of the classic adventure story, full of excitement and intrigue. Fu-Manchu is up there with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Zorro—or more precisely with Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Darth Vader, and Lex Luthor—in the imaginations of generations of readers and moviegoers.”

Charles Ardai, award-winning novelist and founder of Hard Case Crime

“I love Fu-Manchu, the way you can only love the really GREAT villains. Though I read these books years ago he is still with me, living somewhere deep down in my guts, between Professor Moriarty and Dracula, plotting some wonderfully hideous revenge against an unsuspecting mankind.”

Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy

“Fu-Manchu is one of the great villains in pop culture history, insidious and brilliant. Discover him if you dare!”

Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling co-author of Baltimore: The Plague Ships

THE COMPLETE FU-MANCHU SERIES

BY SAX ROHMER

Available now from Titan Books:

THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE HAND OF DR. FU-MANCHU

DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU

Coming soon from Titan Books:

THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU

THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU

PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU

THE DRUMS OF FU-MANCHU

THE ISLAND OF FU-MANCHU

THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU

RE-ENTER FU-MANCHU

EMPEROR FU-MANCHU

THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU

THE MASK OFFU-MANCHU

SAX ROHMER

TITAN BOOKS

THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU

Print edition ISBN: 9780857686077

E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686732

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: March 2013

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First published as a novel in the UK by Cassell and Co. Ltd, 1933

First published as a novel in the US by Doubleday, Doran, 1932

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2013 The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors

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Frontispiece illustration: a movie theater premium based on a design by W. T. Benda, acclaimed mask maker from the early twentieth century, and illustrator of the cover for the May 7, 1932 issue of Collier’s magazine. Special thanks to Dr. Lawrence Knapp for the illustration from “The Page of Fu Manchu,” http://www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Contents

Chapter One: One Night in Ispahan

Chapter Two: Wailing in the Air

Chapter Three: The Green Box

Chapter Four: The Veiled Prophet

Chapter Five: Nayland Smith Takes Charge

Chapter Six: Perfume Of Mimosa

Chapter Seven: Rima And I

Chapter Eight: “El Mokanna!”

Chapter Nine: The Flying Death

Chapter Ten: I See the Slayer

Chapter Eleven: The Man on the Minaret

Chapter Twelve: In the Ghost Mosque

Chapter Thirteen: The Black Shadow

Chapter Fourteen: Road to Cairo

Chapter Fifteen: Road to Cairo (Continued)

Chapter Sixteen: A Masked Woman

Chapter Seventeen: The Mosque of Muayyad

Chapter Eighteen: Dr. Fu-Manchu

Chapter Nineteen: Formula Elixir Vitae

Chapter Twenty: The Master Mind

Chapter Twenty-One: “He Will be Crowned in Damascus”

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Hand of Fu-Manchu

Chapter Twenty-Three: Amnesia

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Messenger

Chapter Twenty-Five: Mr. Aden’s Proposal

Chapter Twenty-Six: A Strange Rendezvous

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Great Pyramid

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Inside the Great Pyramid

Chapter Twenty-Nine: We Enter the King’s Chamber

Chapter Thirty: Dr. Fu-Manchu Keeps His Word

Chapter Thirty-One: The Trap is Laid

Chapter Thirty-Two: I See El Mokanna

Chapter Thirty-Three: Facts and Rumours

Chapter Thirty-Four: Rima’s Story

Chapter Thirty-Five: Ordered Home

Chapter Thirty-Six: Nayland Smith Comes Aboard

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Relics of the Prophet

Chapter Thirty-Eight: “The Sword of God”

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Flight from Egypt

Chapter Forty: The Seaplane

Chapter Forty-One: A Rubber Ball

Chapter Forty-Two: The Purser’s Safe

Chapter Forty-Three: The Voice in Bruton Street

Chapter Forty-Four: “This Was the Only Way…”

Chapter Forty-Five: Memory Returns

Chapter Forty-Six: Fah Lo Suee

Chapter Forty-Seven: Ivory Hands

Chapter Forty-Eight: I Really Awaken

Chapter Forty-Nine: A Committee of Experts

Chapter Fifty: Dr. Fu-Manchu Triumphs

Chapter Fifty-One: Wedding Morning

Chapter Fifty-Two: Dr. Fu-Manchu Bows

About the Author

Appreciating Doctor Fu-Manchu

This cardboard mask, handed out by theaters to promote the 1932 movie The Mask of Fu Manchu (starring Boris Karloff), was based on a design by artist W. T. Benda for the Rohmer serialization in Collier’s magazine.

CHAPTER ONE

ONE NIGHT IN ISPAHAN

“Shan! Shan!”

Someone calling my name persistently. The voice was faint. I had been asleep, but dreaming hard, an evil from which ordinarily I don’t suffer. The voice fitted into my dream uncannily…

I had dreamed I was asleep in my tent in that desolate spot on the Khorassan border, not a hundred yards from the valley called the Place of the Great Magician. No expedition of Sir Lionel’s in which I had been employed had so completely got on my nerves as this one.

Persia was new territory for me. And the chief’s sense of the dramatic, his innate showmanship (a trait which had done him endless damage in the eyes of the learned societies) had resulted in my being more or less in the dark as to the real object of our journey.

Perhaps, when names now famous are forgotten, that of Sir Lionel Barton will be remembered; he will be measured at his true stature—as the greatest Orientalist of his century. But, big, lovable, generous, I must nevertheless state quite definitely that he was next to impossible to work with.

When he made that historic discovery, when I realised what we had come for and what we had found, I experienced an attack of cold feet from which up to the moment of this queer awakening I had never wholly recovered.

It’s a poor joke to dig up a Moslem saint, even if he happens to have been really a heretic. I never remembered to have welcomed anything more than Sir Lionel’s decision to trek swiftly south-west to Ispahan…

“Shan! Shan!”

That voice again—and yet I could not escape from my dream. I thought that only two stretches of canvas separated me from the long green box, the iron casket containing those strange fruits of our discovery.

Sir Lionel’s party was not a large one, but I felt that the Moslems were not to be relied upon. It is one thing to excavate the tombs of the Pharaohs; it is a totally different thing in the eyes of an Arab to desecrate the resting place of a true believer, or even of a near-true believer.

To Ali Mahmoud, the headman, I would have trusted my life in Mecca; but the six Egyptians, who, together with Rima, Dr. Van Berg, Sir Lionel, and myself made up the party, although staunch enough ordinarily, had occasioned me grave doubts almost from the moment we had entered Persian territory.

As for the Afghan, Amir Khan…

“Shan!”

I threw off the coil of dreams. I opened my eyes to utter darkness. My right hand automatically reached out for the torch—and in the physical movement came recognition of my true surroundings.

Khorassan? I was not in Khorassan. Nor was I under canvas—had not been under canvas for more than a week. I was in a house in Ispahan, and someone was calling me!

I grasped the torch, pressed the button, and looked about.

A scantily furnished room, I saw, its door of unpainted teak, as were the beams supporting its ceiling. I saw a rug of very good quality upon an otherwise uncarpeted floor, a large table littered with papers, photographs, books, and other odds and ends, and, from where I lay in bed, very little else.

My dream slipped into the background. The doubtful loyalty of our Moslem Egyptian workers counted for nothing, since by now they were probably back in Egypt, having been paid off a week before.

But—the green box! The green box was in Van Berg’s room, on the floor above... and the door directly facing my bed was opening!

I reached down with my left hand. A Colt repeater hung from a nail there. Sir Lionel had taught me this trick. To place a pistol openly beside one’s bed is to arm the enemy; to put it under the pillow is simply stupid. In doubtful environment, the chief invariably used a nail or hook, whichever was practicable, between his bed and the wall.

Directing the ray of my torch upon the moving doors, I waited. As I did so, the door was flung open fully. Light shone upon tousled mahogany-coloured curls and wide-open, startled gray eyes; upon a slim, silk-clad figure!

“Turn the light out, Shan—quick!”

It was Rima who stood in the open doorway.

I switched off the light; but in the instant of pressing the switch I glanced at my watch. The hour was 2 A.M.

CHAPTER TWO

WAILING IN THE AIR

It was one of those situations to which at times I thought the dear old chief took a delight in exposing me. His humour inclined to the sardonic, and in electing, when we left Nineveh, to start off without a break or any leave east into Persia and right up to the Afghan border, he had seriously upset my plans.

Rima, his niece, and I were to have been married on our return to England after the Syrian job. Sir Lionel’s change of plan had scotched that scheme. There was laughter in his twinkling eyes when he had notified me of the fact that information just received demanded our immediate presence in Khorassan.

“But what about the wedding. Chief?” I remember saying.

“Well, what about it, Greville?”

“There are plenty of padres in these parts, and the engagement has been overlong. Besides, after all, Rima and I are wandering about in camp together, from spot to spot…”

“Greville,” he interrupted me, “when you marry Rima, you’re going to be married from my town house. The ceremony will take place at St. Margaret’s, and I shall give the bride away. I don’t care a hoot about the proprieties, Greville. You ought to know that by now. We’re setting out for Khorassan tomorrow morning. Rima is a brilliant photographer, and I want her to come with us. But if she prefers to go back to England—she can go.”

This was the situation in which my brilliant but erratic chief had involved me. And now, at 2 A.M., Rima, with whom I was hungrily in love, had burst into my room in that queer house in Ispahan, and already in the darkness was beside me.

I wonder, indeed I have often wondered, if my make-up is different from that of other men: definitely I am no squire of dames. But, further, I have sometimes thought that although ardour has by no means been left out of me, I have inherited from somewhere an overweight of the practical; so that at any time, and however deeply my affections might be engaged, the job would come before the woman.

So it was now; for, my arm about Rima’s slim, silky waist, her first whispered words in the darkness made me forget how desirable she was and how I longed for the end of this strange interlude, for the breaking down of that barrier unnaturally raised by my erratic chief.

“Shan!” She bent close to my ear. “There was a most awful cry from Dr. Van Berg’s room a few minutes ago!”

I jumped up, still holding her. She was trembling slightly.

“I opened my window and listened. His room is almost right over mine, and I felt certain that was where the cry had come from. But I couldn’t hear anything.”

“Was the voice Van Berg’s?”

“I couldn’t tell, dear. It was a kind of—scream. Then, as I hurried along to wake you, I heard something else—”

She clung to me tightly.

“What, darling?”

“I don’t know!” She shuddered violently. “A sort of dreadful wailing... Shan! I believe it came from the mosque!”

“Then you called out?”

“I didn’t call out till I got right to your door and had it open.”

I understood then that I had confused dreaming with reality. The distant voice, as it had seemed to me, had been that of Rima urgently calling at the opened door.

“It’s the green box!” she whispered, in an even lower tone. “Shan, I’m terrified! You know what happened on Thursday night! It must have been the same sound…”

That thought was on my own mind. Van Berg had been disturbed on Thursday night by an inexplicable happening, an outstanding feature of which had been a strange moaning sound. The chief had declined to take it seriously; but I knew our American colleague for a man of sound common sense not addicted to nervous imaginings.

And the green box was in his room...

Barefooted, I stepped towards the door, releasing Rima, whom I had been holding tightly.

“Stay here, darling,” I said, “unless I call you.”

I crept out into the corridor. It was dimly lighted a few paces along by a high, barred window. Almost opposite in the narrow street stood a deserted mosque, its minaret, from the balcony of which no mueddin had called for many years, overlooking the roof of our temporary residence. Moonlight, reflected from the dingy yellow wall of this mosque, vaguely illuminated the passage ahead of me.

The once holy building had a horrible history, and I knew that Rima associated the sound she had heard with the legend of the mosque.

Stock still I stood for a moment, listening.

The house was silent as a vault. It possessed three floors. The rooms beneath on the ground floor contained the stored furniture—or part of it—of the owner from whom Sir Lionel had leased the place. The ground-floor windows were heavily barred, and Ali Mahmoud slept in the lobby; so that none could enter without arousing him.

There were four rooms above, two of them unoccupied. Locked in one were a pair of Caspian kittens, beautiful little creatures with fur like finest silk, destined for the chief’s private menagerie, practical zoology being one of his hobbies. In the end, or southeast, room, Dr. Van Berg was quartered. Our records, the bulk of our photographs, and other valuables were in his charge as well as the green box.

No sound disturbed the silence.

I advanced cautiously in the direction of the staircase. The widely open door of Rima’s room was on my left. Moonlight poured in upon the polished uncarpeted floor. Her shutters were open.

Pausing for a moment, puzzled, I suddenly remembered that she had opened them when that cry in the night had disturbed her.

Personally, I kept mine religiously closed against the incursions of nocturnal insects, since we were near the bank of the river and no great distance from a fruit market. I had switched off my torch, the reflected light through the high window being sufficient for my purpose. I passed Rima’s door—then pulled up short, my nerves jangling.

From somewhere, outside the house, and high up, came a singular sound.

It was a sort of whistle in a minor key, resembling nothing so much as a human imitation of a police whistle. It changed, passing from a moan to an indescribable wail... and dying away.

“Shan, did you hear it? That’s the sound!” Rima’s voice reached me in a quavering whisper, and:

“I heard it,” I answered in a low voice. “For God’s sake, stay where you are.”

The chief’s door was ahead of me, in comparative shadow there at the end of the passage. I could see that it was closed: a teak door, ornamented with iron scrollwork. Sir Lionel was a heavy sleeper. A narrow stair opened on the right and led down to the lobby. No sound reached me from beneath. Evidently Ali Mahmoud had not been aroused.

On my left was a stair to the floor above. I crept up.

My nerves were badly jangled, and creaking of the ancient woodwork sounded in my ears like pistol shots. I gained the top corridor. Two windows faced west, commanding a view of low, flat roofs stretching away to a distant prospect of the river. The moonlight was dazzling. In contrast to the passage below it was like stepping from midnight into high noon.

I paused again for a moment, listening intently.

A sound of scurrying movement reached my ears from beyond Van Berg’s closed door. I took a step forward and paused again. Then, my hand on the clumsy native latch:

“Van Berg!” I said softly.

The only reply was a queer soft, plaintive howl.

Let me confess that this nearly unnerved me. A vague but unmistakable menace had been overhanging us from the hour of our momentous discovery in Khorassan. Now, awakened as I had been, my memory repeating over and over again that weird, wailing sound, I recognized that I was by no means at my best.

Clenching my teeth, I raised the latch...

I peered along the narrow room. It extended from the corridor to the opposite side of the house. I saw that the shutters were open in the deep, recessed window. Moonlight reflected from the wall of the mosque afforded scanty illumination.

A sickly sweet perfume hung in the air, strongly resembling that of mimosa, but having a pungency which gripped me by the throat. I pressed the button of my torch.

Some vague thing, indeterminate, streaky, leapt towards me. I shrank back, pistol levelled… And for the second time I heard the sound.

Perhaps I have never been nearer to true panic in my life. That moaning wail seemed to come from outside the house—and from high above. It seemed to vibrate throughout my entire nervous system. It was the most utterly damnable sound to which I had ever listened.

Only my sudden recognition of one of the facts saved me. The Caspian kittens were in the room! I remembered, and gasped in my relief, that the doctor was extremely fond of them. The little creatures, who were very tame, crouched at my feel, looking up at me with their big eyes, appealingly, as it seemed.

A vague stirring came from the depths of the house. The smell of mimosa was overpowering... Probably Rima had run down and aroused Ali Mahmoud.

These ideas, chaotically, with others too numerous to record, flashed through my mind at the same moment that, stricken motionless with horror, I stood staring down upon Dr. Van Berg, where he lay under the light of my torch.

His heavy body was huddled in so strange a position that, what with anger, regret, fear and other unnameable emotions, I could not at first realise what had happened. He was clothed in silk pajamas of an extravagant pattern which he affected, and his fair hair, which he wore long, hung down over his forehead so that it touched the floor.

He was lying across the green box.

He lay in such a way that his big body almost obscured the box from my view. But now I saw that his powerful arms were outstretched, and that his fingers were locked in a death grip upon the handles at either end.

That long moment of horrified inertia passed.

I sprang forward and dropped upon one knee. I tried to speak, but only a husky murmur came. There was blood on the lid of the box, and a pool was gathering upon the floor beside it. I put my hand under Van Berg’s chin and lifted his face. Then I stood upright, feeling very ill.

What I had seen had wiped the slate of consciousness clear of all but one thing. My fingers quivered on the Colt repeater. I wanted the life of the cowardly assassin who had done Van Berg to death— big, gentle, fearless Van Berg. For here was murder—cold-blooded murder!

A sort of buzzing in my ears died away and left me perfectly cool, with just that one desire for retribution burning in my brain. I heard footsteps—muffled voices. I didn’t heed them.

I was staring about the room. Staring at the open window trying to recall details of Van Berg’s story of what had happened on the Thursday night. In the room there was no hiding place, and the window was thirty feet above street level. The mystery of the thing was taking hold of me.

“Greville Effendim,” I heard.

I glanced back over by shoulder. Ali Mahmoud stood in the open doorway—and I saw Rima’s pale face behind him.

“Don’t come in, Rima!” I said hastily. “For God’s sake, don’t come in. Go down and wake the chief.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE GREEN BOX

Upon the horror of that murder in the night, I prefer not to dwell. The mystery of Van Berg’s death defied solution. As I recall the tragic event, I can recapture a sharp picture of Sir Lionel Barton arrayed in neutral-coloured pyjamas and an old dressing gown, his mane of gray hair disordered, his deep-set eyes two danger signals, standing massive, stricken, over the dead man.

The bed had been slept in—so much was evident; and about it the strange odour of mimosa clung more persistently than elsewhere.

There was no stranger on the premises. Of this we had assured ourselves. And for a thirty-foot ladder to have been reared against the window of the room and removed without our knowledge, was a sheer impossibility.

Yet Van Berg had been stabbed to the heart from behind— palpably in an attempt to defend the green box: an attempt which had been successful. But, except that his shutters were open, there was no clue to the identity of his assassin, nor to the means of the latter’s entrance and exit.

“I didn’t hear a sound!” I remember the chief murmuring, looking at me haggard eyed. “I didn’t hear that damnable wailing— it might have told me something. Anyhow, Greville, he died doing his job, and so he’s gone wherever good men go. His death is on my conscience.”

“Why, Chief?”

But he had turned away…

We conformed to the requirements of the fussy local authorities, but got no help from them; and shortly after noon, Mr. Stratton Jean, of the American Legation at Teheran, arrived by air, accompanied by Captain Woodville, a British intelligence officer.

I reflected, when they came in from the alighting ground just outside the ancient city, that the caravan route is nearly two hundred and forty miles long, and that in former days a week was allowed for the journey.

It was a strange interview, being in part an inquest upon the dead man. It took place in poor Van Berg’s room, which had always served as a sort of office during the time that we had occupied this house in Ispahan.

There was a big table in the corner near the window laden with indescribable fragments, ranging from Davidian armour to portfolios of photographs and fossilised skulls. There was a rather fine scent bottle, too, of blue glass dating from the reign of Haroun-er-Raschid, and a number of good glazed tiles. A fine illuminated manuscript, very early, of part of the Diwan of Hafiz, one of Sir Lionel’s more recently acquired treasures, lay still open upon the table, for Van Berg had been busy making notes upon the text up to within a few hours of his death.

The doctor’s kit, his riding boots, and other intimate reminders of his genial presence lay littered about the floor; for, apart from the removal of the body, nothing had been disturbed.

That fatal green box, upon which the bloodstains had dried, stood upon the spot where I had found it. The floor was still stained…

Mr. Stratton Jean was a lean Bostonian, gray haired, sallow complexioned, and as expressionless as a Sioux Indian. Captain Woodville was a pretty typical British army officer of thirty-five or so, except for a disconcerting side-glance which I detected once or twice, and which alone revealed—to me, at least, for he had the traditional bored manner—that he was a man of very keen mind.

Mr. Stratton Jean quite definitely adopted the attitude of a coroner, and under his treatment the chief grew notably restive, striding up and down the long, narrow room in a manner reminiscent of a caged polar bear.

Rima, who sat beside me, squeezed my hand nervously, glancing alternately at the two Persian officials who were present, and at her famous uncle. She knew that a storm was brewing, and so did Captain Woodville, for twice I detected him hiding a smile. At last, in reply to some question:

“One moment, Mr. Jean,” said Sir Lionel, turning and facing his interrogator. “If Van Berg was a fellow citizen of yours, he was a friend and colleague of mine. You are doing your duty, and I honour you for it. But I don’t like the way you do it.”

“I just want the facts,” said Stratton Jean, dryly.

I saw the colour welling up into Sir Lionel’s face and feared an outburst. It was avoided by the intervention of Captain Woodville.

“Thing is, Jean,” he drawled lazily, “Sir Lionel isn’t used to being court-martialed. He’s rather outside your province. But apart from a distinguished military career, he happens to be the greatest Orientalist in Europe.”

I waited with some anxiety for the American official’s reaction to this rebuke, for it was nothing less than a rebuke. It took the form of a smile, but a very sad smile, breaking through the mask-like immobility of those sallow features.

“You mean, Woodville,” he said, “I’m being too darned official for words?”

“Perhaps a trifle stiff, Jean, for a man of Sir Lionel’s temperament.”

Mr. Stratton Jean nodded, and I saw a new expression in his eyes, yellowed from long residence in the East. He looked at the chief.

“If I’ve ruffled you, Sir Lionel,” he said, “please excuse me. This inquiry is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to undertake. You see, Van Berg and I were at Harvard together. It’s been a bad shock.”

That was straight talking, and in two seconds the chief had Jean’s hand in his bear-like grip and had hauled him out of the chair.

“Why in hell didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. “We worked together for only two months, but I’d sell my last chance of salvation to get the swine who murdered him.”

The air was cleared, and Rima’s nervous grip upon my hand relaxed. And that which had begun so formally, was now carried on in a spirit of friendship. But when every possible witness had been called and examined, we remained at a deadlock.

It was Captain Woodville who broached the subject which I knew, sooner or later, must be brought up.

“It is quite clear. Sir Lionel,” he said in his drawling way, “that your friend died in endeavouring to protect this iron box.

He pointed to the long green chest upon which the white initials L.B. were painted. Sir Lionel ground his teeth audibly together and began to pace up and down the room.

“I know,” he said. That’s why I told you, Greville”—turning to me—“that I was responsible for his death.”

“I can’t agree with you,” Stratton Jean interrupted. “So far as my information goes (Captain Woodville, I believe, is better informed), you were engaged with the late Dr. Van Berg in an attempt to discover the burial place of El Mokanna, sometimes called the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.”

“Veiled Prophet,” Woodville interjected, “is rather a misnomer. Actually, Mokanna wore a mask. Isn’t that so. Sir Lionel?”

The chief turned and stared at the last speaker.

“That is so,” he agreed. They exchanged a glance of understanding. “You know all the facts. Don’t deny it!”

Captain Woodville smiled slightly, glancing aside at Stratton Jean; then:

“I know most of them,” he admitted, “but the details can only be known to you. As a matter of fact, I’m here today because some tragedy of this kind had been rather foreseen. Quite frankly, although I don’t suppose I’m telling you anything that you don’t know already, you have stirred up a lot of trouble.”

Rima squeezed my hand furtively. It was nothing new for her distinguished uncle to stir up trouble. His singular investigations had more than once imperiled international amity.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE VEILED PROPHET

“You have said, Mr. Jean,” said Sir Lionel, “that my particular studies are outside your province, but my interests were shared by Dr. Van Berg. Already he occupied a chair of Oriental literature, but, if he had lived, his name would have ranked high as any. Very well.”

He paced up and down in silence for a while, hands locked behind him. The two Persian officials had gone. Those queer discords characteristic of an Eastern city rose to us through the open window: cries of street hawkers, of carriage drivers; even the jangle of camel bells. And there were flies, myriads of flies…

“It was Van Berg who got the clue which set us off upon this expedition—the expedition which was to be his last. Down on the borders of Arabia he picked up a man, an Afghan, as a matter of fact, named Amir Khan. This man told him the story of the spot known locally as the Place of the Great Magician. It’s in the No Man’s Land between Khorassan and Afghanistan.

“Van Berg, with whom I had been in correspondence for some years, although we had never met, learned that I was in Iraq. He was a Persian scholar, and he knew parts of the country well. But of Khorassan and Afghanistan he knew nothing. He got into communication with me. He asked me to share the enterprise. I accepted—as you know, Greville—“he darted one of his quick glances in my direction—”and we moved down and joined Van Berg, who was waiting for us on the Persian border.

“I interviewed the man Amir Khan. I could talk his lingo and so get nearer to the truth than Van Berg had succeeded in doing—”

“I never trusted Amir Khan!” I broke in. “His story was true, and he did his job, but—”

“Amir Khan was a thug,” the chief continued quietly; “I always knew it. But servants of Kali have no respect for Mohammed; therefore I was prepared to trust him with regard to the matter in hand. He advanced arguments strong enough to induce me, in conjunction with Van Berg, to proceed with a party, who had been in my employ for more than a year, northeast of Persia. In brief, gentlemen, we went to look for the burial place of El Mokanna, the Hidden One, sometimes called the Veiled Prophet, but, as Captain Woodville has pointed out, more properly the Masked Prophet…”

This was “shop” and overfamiliar. I turned my head and stared from the open window towards a corresponding, ruinous, window of the mosque opposite. The deserted building certainly had a sinister reputation, being known locally as the Ghost Mosque. If this circumstance, together with that eerie sound which had heralded poor Van Berg’s death, were responsible, I cannot say. But I became the victim of a queer delusion…

“Mokanna, Mr. Jean,” the chief was saying, “about 770 A.D., set himself up as an incarnation of God, and drew to his new sect many thousands of followers. He revised the Koran. His power became so great that the Caliph Al Mahdi was forced to move against him with a considerable army. Mokanna was a hideous creature. His features were so mutilated as to be horrible to see…”

Brilliant green eyes were fixed upon me from the shadow of the ruined window!...

“But he was a man. He and the whole of his staff poisoned themselves in the hour of defeat. From that day to this, no one has known where he was buried. His sword, which he wore on ceremonial occasions, and which he called the Sword of God, forged to conquer the world, his New Creed graved upon golden plates, and the mask of gold with which he concealed his mutilated features, disappeared at the time of his death and were supposed to be lost.”

I shifted uneasily in my chair. The startling apparition had vanished as suddenly as it had come. Above all things I wanted to avoid alarming Rima. Already I suspected sleepless nights; I realised that she could know no peace in the shadow of the Ghost Mosque with its unholy reputation.

The apparition did not reappear, however; and I turned, looking swiftly at Rima.

She was watching the chief. Clearly, she had seen nothing.

Walking up and down while speaking, in that manner of a caged bear, Sir Lionel had paused now and was staring at the ominous green box.

“Amir Khan did not lie,” he went on. “The tomb-mosque that contained the ashes of the prophet is a mere mound of dust today; what it concealed was never more than a legend. Its site, though, is strictly avoided—supposed to be haunted by djinns and known as the Place of the Great Magician. We camped there, and our excavations were carried out secretly. Few pass that desolate place on the edge of the desert. We found—what we had come to find.”

“Is that a fact?” said Stratton Jean in an odd voice.

Sir Lionel nodded, smiling grimly.

The prophet was dust,” he added; “but we found his gold mask, his New Creed engraved upon plates of gold, and his sword, a magnificent blade with a jewelled hilt. There were other fragments— but these were the most important.”

He paused and pointed to the green box.

“Those two Persian birds were mighty keen to know what was in this box. I told them it contained priceless records. They pretended to be satisfied, But they weren’t. It’s a heavy thing to travel—but strong as a safe.”

He began to pace up and down again.

“I left the Place of the Great Magician, taking the relics of El Mokanna away in that box! Van Berg and I had a conference before we left; Greville, here, was present. In spite of our precautions, there were rumours flying about, and it was becoming fairly clear that some sort of small but fanatical sect still existed who held the name of El Mokanna in reverence. The desertion of our Afghan guide, Amir Khan, was very significant—wasn’t it Greville?”

“It was,” I agreed.

At the chief’s words I lived again in memory, instantaneously, through those days and nights in that lonely camp, with Rima’s presence to add to my anxieties. I knew that we were hundreds of miles from any useful help, and I knew that in some mysterious way the influence of the Veiled Prophet lived, was active, although the Hidden One himself was dead; that if the truth should leak out, if it should become known that the sacred relics were in our possession, our lives would not be worth a grain of sand!

Almost, in those anxious days and nights, I had come to hate Van Berg, who was the instigator of the expedition, and to distrust Sir Lionel, whose zeal for knowledge had induced him to lead Rima into such peril. His scientific ardour brooked no obstacle. She was a brilliantly clever photographer, and there was a portfolio, now, on poor Van Berg’s table, which in the absence of the actual relics constituted a perfect record of our discoveries.

“I improvised a bomb,” Sir Lionel went on, “to which I attached a time fuse. We were headed south for Ispahan when all that remained of the tomb-mosque of El Mokanna went up in a cloud of dust.”

That wild light, which was more than half mischief, leapt into his eyes as he spoke.

“Although I had covered my tracks, there were consequences which I hadn’t counted on. Most of the work had been done at night, but it appears that travellers from a distance had seen our lights. The legendary site of the place was more widely known than we had realised. And when, some time after our departure, which took place after dusk, there was a great explosion and a bright glare in the sky, the result was something totally unforeseen…”

“If I may interrupt you, Sir Lionel,” said Captain Woodville quietly, “from this point I can carry on the story. An outcry— ‘Mokanna has arisen’—swept through Afghanistan. That was the spot at which I came into the matter. You had been even more successful than you seem to appreciate. None of the tribesmen who, as you suspect, and rightly, still hold the Mokanna tradition had any idea that you or any human influence had been concerned with the eruption which reduced a lonely ruined shrine to a dusty hollow. A certain fanatical imam took upon himself the duties of a sort of Eastern Peter the Hermit.”

The speaker paused, taking a cigarette from his case and tapping it thoughtfully upon his thumb nail. I glanced swiftly over my shoulder. But the cavernous window of the mosque showed as an unbroken patch of shadow...

“He declared that the Masked Prophet had been reborn and that with the Sword of God he would carry the New Creed throughout the East, sweeping the Infidel before him. That movement is gathering strength. Sir Lionel, and I need not tell you what such a movement means to the Indian government, and what it may come to mean for Arabia, Palestine, and possibly Egypt, unless it can be checked.”

There came a moment of silence, broken only by the striking of a match and the heavy footsteps of the chief as he restlessly paced up and down—up and down. At last:

“Such a movement would call for a strong leader,” said Rima.

Captain Woodville extinguished the match and turned to her gravely.

“We have reason to fear, Miss Barton,” he replied, “that such a leader has been found. I suspect also, Sir Lionel—” glancing at the chief—“that he wants what you have found and will stick at nothing to get it…”

CHAPTER FIVE

NAYLAND SMITH TAKES CHARGE

“Someone to see you, Greville Effendim.”

I raised my eyes from the notes which I had been studying but did not look around. Through the open window in front of the table at which I had been working I could see on the opposite side of the narrow street the sun-bathed wall of that deserted mosque of unpleasant history.

A window almost on a level with that through which I was looking was heavily outlined on one side and at the top by dense shadows. Only that morning I had explored the mosque—penetrating to the gallery behind that window. What I had hoped to find I really don’t know. Actually, I had found nothing.

“Show him in, Ali Mahmoud.”

I pushed the notes aside and turned, as footsteps on the landing outside told me that my visitor had arrived.

Then I sprang swiftly to my feet…