passenger; but now his sallow features imprinted themselves upon my passive brain with medal-like accuracy. He had removed the wide-brimmed hat and lay back in the shadow of the hood; but I knew him, knew him for a spy— for the man who had followed me as I left Zazima’s shop.
More, that fugitive memory was trapped. He was the man who had been with Ardatha in the foyer of the Regal Athenian!
The carriage clattered past at some little distance from the cafe, and turned into a side street just beyond an ancient church whose huge iron-studded doors probably dated back to the days when Drake met the Spaniards in Nombre de Dios Bay.
I was closely covered. What was the purpose of this espionage?
The link with Ardatha was established; its implications horrified me. My anxiety to examine the head grew so intense that for a moment I thought of hiring a room in the restaurant merely for that purpose.
Sergeant Abdy’s reappearance induced wiser councils. He dropped down on a chair facing me.
“Checked up on Zazima,” he reported. “Nothing against him. He has contacts in the Chinese quarter, and it’s suspected some of his stock is stolen and the rest smuggled. If so, he’s clever. But he’s never given any trouble . . .”
* * *
Both Nayland Smith and Sir Lionel were out when I returned, but Smith had left a message which read: “Back for late dinner. Don’t go out until I join you.”
I passed through the foyer with its arcades and lighted show cases, and for all my distracted frame of mind could not fail to notice that I was an object of interest to a number of visitors lounging about in a seemingly aimless fashion. Indeed, it did not call for a newspaper training to see, as Smith had seen, that Colon was a hotbed of foreign agents, each watching the other, but all bent upon some common purpose.
What was the purpose?
I wondered if this gateway of a sea lane which joined two oceans was normally beset by spies. That remark of Smith’s, “The Panama Canal has two ends,” recurred to me again and again.
One graceful brunette seemed bent on making my acquaintance: she was tall, slender, but despite her light brown skin, the colour of which might have been due to sun-bathing, she had that swaying carriage which betrays African ancestry. Her brilliant amber eyes, shaded by long curling lashes, fixed upon me, she conveyed so frank an invitation that I found it embarrassing. As I stepped into the elevator: “Who is that dark girl?” I asked the man.
“Oh, that’s Flammario, the dancer from the Passion Fruit Tree.”
“Does she live here?”
“No, sir; and if you think she’s man-hunting—you’re wrong. Did you check up on the emeralds? That girl is a good little business woman. I guess she owns about half the town.”
This information made Flammario’s behaviour even more hard to understand. But by the time that I reached the apartment, I had dismissed her from my mind: someone else occupied it exclusively.
I set the carved wooden box on the table in the sitting-room and stared through the glass at that dreadful exhibit.
Who had he been, this old man who had met death by decapitation? What tragedy of the Peruvian woods was locked up in my strange possession, and, paramount thought, why had Zazima forced the thing upon me?
The idea that this fragment of dreadful mortality formed a link with Ardatha was one I was anxious to dispel; yet I clung to it. Lighting a cigarette, I considered the relic, and suddenly an idea occurred to me. I wondered that it had not occurred to me before.
The reason for so roundabout a method was not clear, but Zazima may have known himself to be spied upon. That someone else had been concealed at the back of his shop I had felt quite certain, some servant of Fu Manchu—possibly the Doctor himself. I must suppose that the hidden watcher had good reason for remaining hidden. The answer to the problem must be that vital information of some sort was hidden in the box!
I anticipated no difficulty in opening it; the front was secured by a catch similar to that of a clock face. Yet, I hesitated; I loathed the idea of touching that little shrivelled head mounted upon a block of some hard black wood. I peered in through the glass, expecting to find a note there. But I could see nothing. The box was decorated with carving, some kind of native work, and I thought it possible, noting the thickness of the wood, that part of the base might conceal a secret drawer. Another possibility was that the head was hollow; that if I took it out I should find something hidden inside.
Conquering revulsion, I was about to open the glass front and examine that shrivelled fragment of a long- dead man when abruptly I desisted.
I had heard a rap, short but imperative, at the outer door!
Hastily I placed the shrivelled head with its mahogany casket in a bureau. I was anxious that none of the staff should see it: I mistrusted everyone where Dr. Fu Manchu was concerned. As I locked the bureau and slipped the key into my pocket, the rapping on the outer door was repeated, this time more insistently. I thought it might be Barton, but I could not imagine why he did not ring the bell.
Swift dusk was falling; and as I opened the door the lights in the passage outside had not yet been switched up.
A woman stood here.
Because of the darkness, because she was graceful and slender, a pang of joy stabbed me. For a moment I thought . . . Ardatha. Then, the visitor spoke: “I have come because I want to help you—I
It was Flammario the dancer!
* * *
Brilliant amber eyes looked into mine; they were beautiful; but their beauty was of the jungle.
“Please, no, do not turn up the light. I promise you, I declare to you, that I am here to be of help. It is that your interests are mine. I know that you—look for someone.”
She preceded me into the rapidly-darkening room, for dusk falls swiftly in the Tropics, and seated herself in an armchair, not far from the door. Her movements had a wild animal grace, which might have been a product of her profession or have been hereditary. She was very magnetic; an oddly disturbing figure. I was far from trusting her. And now (she had a velvety, caressing voice): “Will you please promise me something?” s” asked.
“What is it?”
“There are two other ways out of here. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“If Sir Denis Nayland Smith comes, or Sir Lionel Barton, will you help me escape?”
I hesitated. My thirst for knowledge, knowledge that might lead me to Ardatha, prompted me to accept almost any terms, and Flammario had said, “I know that you look for someone.” Yet I distrusted her. I suspected her to be a servant of Dr. Fu Manchu, an instrument, a mouthpiece; otherwise from what source had she gained her knowledge of my companions? But my longing for news of Ardatha tipped the balance.
“Yes, I will do my best. But why are you afraid of them; and how do you come to know their names?”
“I had a friend—he is now my enemy”—the huskily musical voice came to me from a shadowy figure. “He, my friend, is a member of a secret society called the Si-Fan. You know it, eh?”
“Yes. I know it.”
“He told me much about it—far more than he should have told to anyone. And because I seem to know about the Si-Fan, I think that those others might—”
“Might hold you as a suspect?” I suggested.
“Yes.” The word came in a whisper. “It would not be fair. And so”—she had the quaintest accent—”will you promise me that I am not arrested?”
A moment longer I hesitated, and then: “Yes,” I said.
She laughed softly, a trilling, musical laugh.
“You Englishmen are so sweet to women—so are American men. It is foolish; but sometimes it pays.”
She was now a dim shape in the armchair.
“You mean until we have been tricked we expect women to play the game?”
