Then came sounds.
Somewhere a bell rang. There were voices. I heard movements--I divined that some heavy burden had been carried in.
The sounds died away. Silence fell again.
How long I sat there, in a dreadful apathy, I had no means of judging. But suddenly the door was unlocked, and I started up.
Fah Lo Suee came in, carrying a long- bladed knife.
6
She stood watching me.
'Well?' I said. 'What are you waiting for?'
She smiled, that one-sided voluptuous smile which was never reflected in her eyes; then:
'I am waiting,' she replied--her bell-like voice very soft-- 'to try to guess what you will do when I release you.'
She came forward, bent so that her small, shapely head almost rested on my shoulder, and cut the lashings which confined my wrists. Her left hand grasped my arm as she stooped. Dropping to her knees, with two strokes of the keen blade she cut away the ropes binding my ankles.
Then she stood upright, very near to me, and met my stare challengingly.
'Well?' she said in mockery.
My first impulse--for I had been thinking about Nayland Smith almost continuously-- was to be read in my glance.
'It can never happen twice to me, Shan,' said Fah Lo Suee.
She called a name.
The door opened--and I saw the giant Nubian looking in.
Fah Lo Suee gave a brief order. The Negro retired, closing the door.
'Does no more subtle method occur to you?' she asked, her voice softer than ever. 'I am as ready to be lied to as any other woman, Shan--by the right man--if he only tells his lies sweetly.'
And, face to face with this evilly beautiful woman, know ing, as I knew too well, that my own life was at stake, that possibly I could even bargain for that of Nayland Smith, I asked myself--why not? With her own lips she had reminded me of that old adage, 'all's fair in love and war.' With her it was love-- or the only sort of love she knew; with me it was war. Perhaps, on a scruple, hung the fate of nations!
She drew a step nearer. The perfumed aura of her personality began to envelop me. Choice was being filched from the bargain. Those mad urgings which I had known in the green-gold room in Limehouse began to beat upon my brain.
I clenched my fists. I could possibly but the safety of the Western world with a kiss!
Tensed fingers relaxed. In another instant my arms would have been around that slender, yielding body; when:
'Greville!' came a distant cry. 'Greuille!'
And I knew the voice! I sprang back from Fah Lo Suee as from a poised cobra. Her face changed. It was as though a mask had been dropped. I saw Kali --the patronne of assassins....
She snapped her fingers.
Before I could move further, collect my scattered thoughts, the Nubian was on me! I got in one straight right, perfectly timed. It didn't even check him....
As his Herculean grip deprived me of all power of movement, Fah Lo Suee turned and went out. She hissed an order.
The Nubian threw me face downward on the settee. Never, in the whole of my experi- ence of rough-houses, had I been so handled. I was helpless as a rat in the grip of a bull terrier. My knowledge of boxing as well as a smattering of jiu-jitsu were about as useful as botany!
I honestly believe he could have broken any normally strong man across his knee.
One of the ghastly Burmans, with the mark of Kali on his. forehead, came to assist. I was trussed up like a chicken, tossed on to the Negro's mighty shoulder, and carried from the room.
This was the end.
I had played my hand badly. On me the ultimate issue had rested... and I had failed. That swift revulsion, at the sound of my name--that sudden, irrational reversion to type--had sealed the doom of... how many?
Helpless, a mere inanimate bundle, I was carried down to the room where the image of Kali sat on a lacquer cabinet.
The Nubian threw me roughly on the divan, so that I had no view beyond that of the lacquer cabinet and the wall against which it stood. He withdrew. I heard the closing of a door.
I turned....
In the big, carved chair which formerly I had occupied. Nayland Smith was firmly lashed! There were bloodstains on his collar.
'Sir Denis! How did you know I was here?'
He glanced down at the coffee-table.
'You left you cigarette case!' he replied. 'I shouted for you--but a dacoif--he indi- cated the bloodstains--'silenced me.'
I stared at him. No words came.
'Weymouth and Yale,' he went on, and the tone of his voice struck the death-knell of lingering hope, 'are watching the wrong house. I have made my last mistake, Greville.'
Chapter Twelfth
LORD OF THE SI FAN
'I thought I had found a secret base of operations,' said Nayland Smith. 'It's one I have used before--the house of Dr. Murray who bought Petrie's practice years ago. Evidently it's been known for some time past that I employed it in this way. I discovered-- too late--that a parlour maid in Murray's service is a spy. She doesn't know the real identity other employers, but she has been none the less useful to them....'
As he spoke, he was studying every detail of the room in which we lay trapped. Appar- ently he had accepted his fastenings as immovable; and evidently divining my thoughts:
'These lashings are the work of a Sea- Dyak,' he explained-- 'palpably a specialist. Though seemingly simple, no one except the late Houdini could hope to escape from them. '
'A fellow with the mark on his forehead? He tied me up! I mistook him for Burmese!'
Nayland Smith shook his head irritably.
'A member of the murder group--yes. But no Burman. He belongs to Borneo..... The story of my stupidity, Greville, for which so many may be called upon to pay a ghastly price, is a short one. Yale brought me a clue to-day. Its history doesn't matter--now. It was a fake. But it consisted of fragments of tom-up correspondence written in Chinese and a few cipher notes in another hand. I grappled with it: no easy task. But by about four o'clock I saw daylight. I phoned Weymouth to stand by between six and seven. '
'He told me so. '
'Yale also was in touch. At six o'clock I had got all the facts--including an address in Finchley Road; and at six-thirty I called Weymouth at the Park Avenue giving him full instructions. I arranged to meet him outside Lord's at half-past nine to-night.
'By sheer accident, ten minutes later, I caught Palmer, the parlourmaid, at the tele- phone. Murray was in his consulting-room, and there was nothing in itself remarkable about the girl's presence at the phone. She makes appointments and receives patients.
'But I heard my own name mentioned! 'I taxed her--and she got muddled. She was clever enough to wriggle out of the diffi- culty, verbally; but I had become gravely suspicious. Bearing this in mind, Greville, it's all the less
