The Mask of Fu Manchu

“I suppose,” I added, “Miss Barton is in her room?” Hewlett bit his lip and glanced swiftly aside. He was a man

suddenly and deeply embarrassed. In a grave voice which he

tried to make sympathetic:

“It’s hard to have to tell you, Mr. Greville,” he replied, “but it’s for Miss Barton we are searching.” “What!”

I had turned, already heading for the door, when those words fell upon my ears. I grasped the speaker by both shoulders and, staring into his eyes like a madman, I suppose:

“Miss Barton! What do you mean? What do you mean?” I demanded.

“Go steady, Mr. Greville,” said Hewlett, and gripped my forearms tightly, reassuringly. “Above all things, keep your nerve.”

“But—” my voice shook almost hysterically—”she was with Reggie Humphreys, the Airways pilot...I left her dancing with him!”

“That was a long time ago, Mr. Greville,” was the reply, spoken gently. “Half an hour after the time you mention, there was a perfect hue and cry because you had disappeared. The hotel was searched, and finally Sir Denis got through to my office. Then the cabman turned up reporting your disappearance and where it had taken place. He reported to the central police station, first, and then came on here.”

“But,” I began, “but when——”

“I know what you’re going to ask, but I can’t answer you, because nobody seems to know. There’s only one scrap of evidence. An Egyptian chauffeur brought a note to one of the servants here and requested him to give it to Miss Barton. He telephoned to her room, found her there, and she immediately came down. From that moment the man (I have examined him closely) lost sight of her. But his impression, unconfirmed, is that she ran out onto the terrace. From which moment, Mr. Greville, I regret to say, nothing has been seen or heard of her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD

AMNESIA

My frame of mind when the new day broke, is better left to the imagination. I was convinced that my brain could not long sustain such stress. Maltreated already by an administration of some damnable drug, this further imposition was too great. I sat in the chiefs room in the light of early morning. Birds were flying from tree to tree outside in the garden; and I could hear the sound of a broom as a man below swept the sanded path.

Sir Lionel had gone to his room to rest, and Dr. Petrie had been recalled to his house by professional duties. Nayland Smith walked up and down in front of the open window. He looked haggard—a sick man; and his eyes were burning feverishly. Suddenly he stopped, turned, and stared at me very hard. “Look at me, Greville,” he said, “and listen closely.” His words were spoken with such a note of authority that I was startled out of my misery. I met that steady glance, as:

“He will be crowned in Damascus,” said Nayland Smith distinctly.

I felt my eyes opening more widely as if under the influence of that compelling stare. Even as I realised that this was a shot at random, and grasped the purpose of the experiment, it succeeded—in a measure.

For one incalculable instant I saw with my mind’s eye an incredibly dirty old beggarman, hobbling along on a crutch. My expression must have given the clue, for:

“Quick!” rapped Nayland Smith; “what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking,” I replied in a flat, toneless voice, which during these last agonising hours I had come to recognise as my own, “that those words were spoken by a very old man, having one leg and carrying a crutch.”

“Keep your mind on that figure, Greville,” Nayland Smith ordered; “don’t lose it, but don’t get excited. You are sure it was a crutch—not a stick?”

I shook my head sadly. I thought I knew what he was driving at. Dr. Fu Manchu, on the one occasion (so far as I remem bered) that I had ever set eyes on him, had supported his weight upon a heavy stick.

“It was a crutch,” I replied. “I can hear the tap of it, now.”

“Did it crunch? Was the man walking on gravel—or sand?”

“No, a clear tap. It must have been on stone.”

“Did he speak in English?”

“Yes. I am almost sure the words were spoken in English.”

“Did he say ‘Damas’ or ‘Damascus’?”

“Damascus.”

“Anything else?”

“No—it’s all gone again.”

I dropped my head into my hands as Nayland Smith began to walk up and down before the window.

“Do you know, Greville,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, “that your memory of those words—for I am perfectly convinced that you really heard them—relieves my mind of a certain anxiety in regard to Rima.”

I looked up.

“What ever do you mean?”

“It confirms my first opinion that her disappearance was arranged, and arranged with fiendish ingenuity, by the Fu Manchu group. This can only mean one thing, Greville. She has been abducted for a definite purpose. Had it been otherwise, in these rather disturbed times, I should have feared that her abduction had been undertaken for personal reasons. You understand what I mean?”

I nodded miserably.

Nayland Smith stepped across and laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Buck up, old chap. I think I know how you feel. But there’s nothing to despair about. Take my word for it: we shall have news other before noon.”

Hoping, doubting, I looked up at the speaker.

“You don’t say that just to try to ease my mind?”

“To do so would be false kindness. I say it because I believe it.

“You mean...?”

“I mean that Rima is to be used as an instrument to bring Sir Lionel to reason.”

“By heavens!” I sprang up, hope reborn in my heart. “Of course! Of course! It will be a case of ransom!”

“Rima’s life against the relics of the Prophet,” Nayland Smith returned dryly. He begun to walk up and down again. “And this time, Greville, the enemy will score. Not even Barton could hesitate.”

“Hesitate!” I cried. “Why, if he has to be forced to give them up at the point of a gun—give them up he shall!”

“I don’t think such persuasion will be necessary, Greville. Barton is a monument of selfishness where his professional enthusiasms are concerned, but he has a heart, and a big one at that.”

I dropped back into my seat again. A flood of relief had swept over me, for I believed Nayland Smith’s solution of the mystery to be the correct one. Truth to tell, I was physically tired to the point of exhaustion; yet sleep, I knew, was utterly impossible. And I sat there, watching that apparently tireless man; haggard, but alert, bright-eyed, pacing up and down—up and down—his brain as clear and his nerves as cool as if he were fresh from his morning bath. Even the chief, who had the constitution of a healthy ox, had collapsed some time before and was now sleeping like a log.

I was conscious of an acute pain in the tendon behind my left ankle, and stooping, I began to rub it. As I did so:

“What’s the matter?” Nayland Smith asked sharply. “I don’t know,” I replied, and lifting my foot I rolled my sock down and examined the painful spot.