She continued to smile--and she continued to watch me. I tried to conquer my wandering ideas. I tried to hate her. But her eyes caressed me, and I was afraid--horribly afraid of this witch-woman who had the uncanny power which Homer gave to Circe, of stealing men's souls.
If I could trust Li King Su, Nayland Smith was coming here--to this house-- where death awaited!
And now I was powerless to stop him! 'Li King Su was a traitor.' Through the beats of a sort of drumming which had started in my brain I heard the bell-like voice. 'No doubt he counted on a great reward.'
She ceased speaking and clapped her hands sharply. That gigantic Negro who had been the door-keeper in el-Kharga, and who had overpowered me at the meeting of the Seven, came in!
Fah Lo Suee addressed him rapidly. She spoke in a sort of bastard Arabic--the Nubian dialect; and I found time for wonder. I knew North Africa from the inside; but I had never learned that queer lingo of the Nubians. Yet this woman--who was Chinese--used it familiarly!
The Nubian went out. Fah Lo Suee removed the stump of a yellow cigarette from her long holder, selected a fresh one from a cloisonne box, and fitted it into place. She ignited it with an enamelled lighter.
A dragging sound came.
I saw the Nubian pulling a heavy trunk through the door and across the carpet. This trunk was vaguely familiar. Then, on top, I saw white painted initials: L.K.S.
The Negro removed the straps and threw the lid back.
'Look,' said Fah Lo Suee. 'He was a traitor.'
Li King Su lay in his own trunk--dead!
5
Not until I found myself aloud could I think my own thoughts, uninfluenced by the promptings of those jade- green eyes. But when the door closed behind Fah Lo Suee, I began desperately to weigh my chances.
Nayland Smith was doomed! This was the thought which came uppermost in my mind. The clue upon which he was working, and which would lead him that night to this house, was a false clue--a bait! And that our enemies did not spare those who crossed their path I had learned.
The trunk had been dragged from the room.... But I could still see, in imagination, that strangled grin on the dead man's face.
I tried to reconstruct the details of our interview in Babylon House. Had I detected, or only deluded myself that I had detected, a swift exchange of signs between Li King Su and someone concealed in an inner room? Had I merely imagined the presence of this other?... Or had I been right in supposing someone to be there but wrong in my natural deduction that he was a friend of the Chinese doctor?
Had the hidden man murdered Li King Su and caused his body to be removed in the big trunk?...
'The garden of this house adjoins the Regent Canal,' he had said.
The Regent Canal! A gloomy whispering waterway, now little used, and entering a long tunnel somewhere near this very spot where I found myself a prisoner!
I bent forward to inspect the fastenings which confined my ankles... I was checked.
In the mad fantasies attendant upon my recovering from the effects of hashish, and afterwards under the evil thrall of Fah Lo Suee, I had failed to note a significant fact.
A rope was around my waist, binding me to the heavy chair!
True, my hands were free, but I could neither reach my ankles nor the knots fastening the line about my body, which were somewhere under the back of the chair.
A coffee-table on which were whisky and soda and cigarettes stood conveniently near. I was about to take a cigarette... when I hesi- tated. Reaching to my pocket I took out my own case and with a lighter which lay on the table started a cigarette.
At all costs I must keep my head. Upon me, alone, rested the fate of Nayland Smith-- perhaps the fate of a million more!
I smoked awhile, sitting deliberately relaxed, and thinking... thinking. My bonds occasioned me no inconvenience provided I remained inactive. Short of a painful, tortoise-like progress across the room, drag- ging the heavy chair with me, it became increasingly clear that to move was a physical impossibility.
The house was silent--very silent. Those heavy gold draperies seemed to exclude all sound.
For a long time I sat there smoking cigarette after cigarette. Then I heard something.
One of the two doors opened.
The huge Nubian came in, carrying a tray upon which were sandwiches and fruit. He set the tray on the table beside me. His girth of shoulder was amazing; and as he stooped he gave me a wicked glance of his small, sunken, bloodshot eyes. Without a word, he went out again, quietly closing the door. Was I being watched? Having avoided the cigarettes and the whisky, was this a further attempt to dope me? I considered the facts....
What had they to gain? I was utterly at their mercy. Secret poisoning was unnecessary.
I ate a sandwich and drank a glass of whisky and soda. Silence....
The figure of Kali on the lacquer cabinet engaged my attention. I found myself studying it closely--so closely that I began to imagine it was moving....
Kali--symbol of this hellish organisation, the Si Fan into whose power I had fallen....
The door opened, and Fah Lo Suee came in.
'I am glad to see that you have called on your philosophy,' she said. 'You will need it. Unless you are prepared to face another injection of F. Katalepsis you must give me your parole for half an hour....'
She stood in the open doorway, one slender hand, its polished nails gleaming like gems, resting on her hip. Her eyes were mercilessly hard.
I can't say what it was in her bearing that told me; but I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all was not going smoothly with Madame Ingomar.
'Naturally, I must decline. '
'You mean it? '
'Definitely.'
She smiled. Her passionate lips betrayed a weakness which was not to be read in those jade-green eyes. She clapped her hands. The big emerald which she wore on an index finger glittered evilly.
The huge Nubian entered. Fah Lo Suee spoke rapidly, and he crossed to me.
'Don't resist,' she said softly. 'It would be merely melodrama. He could strangle you with one hand. Do as I ask. I am being merciful.'
My wrists were firmly knotted behind me. Those lashings which held me to the heavy chair were cast off. Then the black picked me up as one might raise a child and carried me out of the room!
'In half an hour,' said Fah Lo Suee, 'I will free you again-- and we will talk.'
Clenching my teeth grimly--for curses, execrations, torrents of poisonous, futile words, bubbled up in me--I was borne across an elegantly furnished lobby. Everywhere I detected an ultra-modem note, in spite of the presence of old Oriental pieces.
Upstairs I was carried, and into a dark little room opening off the first floor landing. I was laid down, prone, on a narrow settee. The Nubian went out and locked the door....
Trussed as I found myself, it was no easy matter to regain my feet. But I managed it, and stood staring around me in semi-dark- ness. The only light, I saw, came through a window which, on the outside, was reinforced with iron bars. And this light was the light of the moon.
The place seemed to be a small writing- room. There was a bureau at the end near the window, closed, a square Cubist-looking chair before it. The black-and-gold walls were bare. There was a closed bookcase, a low stool of Arab workmanship, and the narrow settee upon which I had been placed.
I contrived to get to the window.
It overlooked a neglected garden... and at the end of the garden I saw the Canal! Dropping into the chair, I began to taste that most bitter of all draughts which poor humanity knows--despair. I remembered Nayland Smith's story of the house at el- Kharga:... 'A Buddhist-like resignation was threatening me more and more....'
Nayland Smith!
Whilst I sat here, a fiery furnace raging within, but nevertheless useless as any snared rabbit, he was walking into a death trap! She would have no mercy. I had seen how she dealt with those who crossed her: I had read his sentence in her glittering eyes. This time, there would be no 'sporting gesture.' And I... I should awake somewhere in China, as a male concubine of this Eastern Circe! I bent down, resting my throbbing head on the bureau....
