“Which they put down to the influence of El Mokanna?”
“Oh, what nonsense!” Rima laughed.
But Humphreys nodded grimly, and:
“Exactly,” he returned. “I’m told that a religious revival is overdue among the Moslems, and this business may fill the bill. You ought to know as well as I do, Greville, that superstition is never very far below the surface in even the most cultured Oriental. And these waves of fanaticism are really incalculable. It’s a kind of mass hypnotism, and we know the creative power of thought.”
I stared at the speaker with a new curiosity. He was revealing a side of his nature which I had not supposed to exist. Rima, too, had grown thoughtful.
“Someone would have to lead this movement,” she suggested. “How could there be followers of a Veiled Prophet if there were no Veiled Prophet?”
“I’m told that up at El Azhar,” Humphreys replied seriously, “they are proclaiming that there is a Veiled Prophet—or, rather, a Masked Prophet. He’s supposed to be moving down through Persia.”
“But it’s simply preposterous!” Rima declared.
“It’s likely to be infernally dangerous,” he returned dryly. “However,” brightening up, “I notice you’re devoid of evening kit, Miss Barton, same as Greville. But as I’m attired with proper respectability, I know of no reason why we shouldn’t dance out here. The band’s just starting again.”
Rima consented with a complete return of gaiety. And as her petite figure moved off beside that of the burly airman, I lighted a cigarette and looked around me. I was glad she had found a partner to distract her thoughts from the depression which lay upon all of us. And, anyway, I’m not much of a dancing man myself at the best of times.
Up under the leaves of the tall palms little coloured electric lamps were set, resembling fiery fruit. Japanese lanterns formed lighted festoons from trunk to trunk. In the moonlight, the water of the central fountain looked like an endless cascade of diamonds. The sky above was blue-black, and the stars larger and brighter than I remembered ever to have seen them.
Crunching of numberless feet I heard on the sanded paths;
a constant murmur of voices; peals of laughter rising sometimes above it all—and now the music of a military band.
There were few fancy costumes, and those chiefly of the stock order. But there was a profusion of confetti —which seems to be regarded as indispensable on such occasions, but which I personally look upon as a definite irritant. To shed little disks of coloured paper from one’s clothing, cigarette case, and tobacco pouch wherever one goes for a week after visiting a fete of this kind is a test of good-humour which the Southern races possibly survive better than I do.
I strolled round towards the left of the garden—that part farthest from the band and the dancers—intending to slip into the hotel for a drink before rejoining Rima and Humphreys.
Two or three confetti fiends had pot shots at me, but I did not find their attentions stimulating. In fact, I may as well confess that this more or less artificial gaiety, far from assisting me to banish those evil thoughts which claimed my mind, seemed to focus them more sharply.
Sir Denis and the chief, when I had left them, were still pacing up and down in the latter’s room, arguing hotly; and poor Dr. Petrie was trying to keep the peace. That Sir Lionel had smuggled the Mokanna relics out of Persian territory he did not deny, nor was this by any means the first time he had indulged in similar acts of piracy. Nayland Smith was for lodging them in the vault of the Museum: Sir Lionel declined to allow them out of his possession.
He had a queer look in his deep-set eyes which I knew betokened mischief. Sir Denis knew too, and the knowledge taxed him almost to the limit of endurance, that the chief was keeping something back.
A sudden barrage of confetti made me change my mind about going in. Try how I would, I could not force myself into gala humour, and I walked all around the border of the garden, along a path which seemed to be deserted and only imperfectly lighted.
Practically everybody was on the other side, where the band was playing—either dancing or watching the dancing. The greater number of the guests were in the ballroom, however, preferring jazz and a polished floor to military brass and al fresco discomfort. I had lost my last cigarette under the confetti bombardment, and now, taking out my pipe, I stood still and began to fill it.
Dr. Fu Manchu!
Nayland Smith believed that agents of Dr. Fu Manchu had been responsible for the death of Van Berg and for the theft of the green box. This, I reflected, could mean only one thing.
Dr. Fu Manchu was responsible for the wave of fanaticism sweeping throughout the East, for that singular rumour that a prophet was reborn, which, if Humphreys and Petrie were to be believed. El Azhar already proclaimed.
My pipe filled, I put my hand in my pocket in search of matches, when—a tall, slender figure crossed the path a few yards ahead of me.
My hand came out of my pocket, I took the unlighted pipe from between my teeth, and stared...stared!
The woman, who wore a green, sheath-like dress and gold shoes, had a delicate indolence of carriage, wholly Oriental. About one bare ivory arm, extending from just below the elbow to the wrist, she wore a massive jade bangle in six or seven loops. A golden girdle not unlike a sword belt was about her waist, and a tight green turban on her head.
Her appearance, then, was sufficiently remarkable. But that which crowned the queemess of this slender, graceful figure, was the fact that she wore a small half-mask; and this half-mask was apparently of gold!
That the costume was designed to represent El Mokanna there could be no doubt. This in itself was extraordinary, but might have been explained by that queer wave of native opinion which was being talked about everywhere. It was such an illconsidered jest as would commend itself to a crazy member of the younger set.
But there was something else....
Either I had become the victim of an optical delusion, traceable to events of the past few days, or the woman in the gold mask was Fu Manchu’s daughter!
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH
THE MOSQUE OF MUAYYAD
Normally the air would have been growing chilly by now, but on the contrary a sort of oppressive heat seemed to be increasing. As the alluring figure crossed diagonally and disappeared into a side path, I glanced upward.
The change was startling.
Whereas but a few minutes before the stars had been notably bright, now not a star was visible. A dense black cloud hung overhead, and, as the band stopped, I noted a quality of stillness in the atmosphere such as often precedes a storm.
These things, however, I observed almost subconsciously. I was determined to overtake the wearer of the gold mask; I was determined to establish her identity. All those doubts and fears which I had with difficulty kept at bay seemed to swoop down upon me as if from the brooding sky.
An imperfect glimpse only I had had of long, tapering ivory fingers. But I believed there was only one woman in the world who possessed such hands—the woman known as Fan Lo Suee, the fascinating but witch-like daughter of the Chinese doctor.
Slipping my pipe back into my pocket, I stepped forward quickly, turning right, into a narrow path. Owing, I suppose, to the threatening skies, a general exodus from the garden had commenced, and since I was walking away from the hotel and not towards it, I met with no other guests.
