But the voice of Damballa was the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu!
* * *
Three figures wearing hideous ritual masks and carrying torches came out from dense undergrowth on the left of the temple. Three others appeared on the right. Finally, stalking into torchlight from the direction of the barricade, there came a seventh, a herculean man, masked, robed, and carrying a glittering scimitar. The hush about us was electrical with suspense.
Although I knew that he hurt me unconsciously. Smith’s grip on my arm was as that of steel pincers.
‘Touch and go, Kerrigan!” he hissed in my ear.““We are spotted! Don’t fight. It’s hopeless.We can only trust —”
“The smelling-out begins!” cried that harsh voice. “Sons and daughters of Damballa, you are safe.”
This phrase was repeated in Haitian, then in that incomprehensible language, the Unknown Tongue. Urged to his task by the bodiless Voice, the giant Sword-Bearer began a sinister inspection. Frightened groups were huddled together within the stockade. I could hear chattering teeth. Other Masks had appeared at the entrance. Retreat was cut off.
Every face was scrutinized. The Voice seemed to speak from immediately beside the Sword Bearer. Korean! stood motionless as that ivory statue which she resembled.
Alternately sibilant and guttural, that uncanny voice muttered—muttered—in what language I could not make out. Then came one short, sharp command. The scimitar shot out and touched a cowering Haitian. He shrieked so wildly that I thought the blow had been a mortal one. But his shriek was of fear.One of the masked torchmen sprang forward, grasped the selected man and hurled him into the open space before the temple. He fell, and lay there quivering. A woman who had stood beside him moaned and collapsed.
So the “smelling-out” began, and so it went on, until ten victims, women as well as men, stood, knelt or lay in the open space. All about me were whispered prayers, and they were not Voodoo prayers. The children of Damballa who had called upon their black god now prayed to the God of the Christians to exorcise him!
Many devotees had fainted after the seekers had passed. But Korean!, proud, motionless, stood silent, her brilliant eyes widely opened.
The Sword Bearer drew near with his hideous company.
‘“Remember,” Smith whispered.
And now the muttering Voice began to speak in English!
“I smell other enemies. More light—more light!”
Torches were lifted before us.
“Ah—there!”
The scimitar flashed towards me. The voice of Dr. Fu Manchu had spoken from the left side of the Sword Bearer. And I succumbed to a mad impulse.
I side-stepped, hauled away, and drove a straight right at the spot where the head of the speaker should have been!
Amazing to relate, it
A wild cry, and a crushing weight which seemed to descend upon my skull . . .
CHAPTER XXXIII
DR. MARRIOT DOUGHTY
Of my awakening, or rather, my first awakening, I retain one vivid memory—a memory etched upon my brain. My head ached with a violence greater than I had ever experienced; coherent thought was impossible. I lay in a bunk in a small white cabin; and because of a gentle swaying sensation and of the silence, I thought that I must be afloat in an anchored ship. Every detail of my immediate surroundings was clearly discernible in moonlight which poured in at a long, low porthole directly above the bunk. I struggled to sit up. The effect upon my head was disastrous; but just before I fell back again into unconsciousness I had a glimpse of what lay beyond the porthole.
I looked down upon forest-clad mountain slopes, ravines and scattered dwellings; upon something resembling a coloured relief map—and a map that swept up and then receded at an incredible speed. Just ahead and not far beneath, I saw a mighty building crowning a dizzy crest, a giant’s castle, a fabulous structure towering up to the moon.
Almost as I saw it, I found myself over it; and it was gone! But I knew (hat it was the Citadel, the impregnable fortress built by King Christophe, now deserted, shunned, save by the uneasy spirit of the Negro king.
My second awakening afforded the discovery that the pain in my skull was almost gone and that a cool, wet bandage surrounded my forehead. I was in bed, wearing silk pyjamas which did not belong to me, in a scrupulously neat room—a room, as I determined after that first glance, in a hospital. No doubt that vision of the Citadel, of flying silently through space, had been delirium. I tried to reason out what had happened after I had struck— madly—at a Voice and had contacted flesh and bone. The rearguard for which Smith had arranged must have arrived ahead of time; so I reasoned.
I had just come to this conclusion when the door (it had neither handle nor keyhole) slid noiselessly open and a man came in who wore a long white linen coat; undoubtedly, a doctor.
He paused for a moment, smiling with satisfaction to see me awake.He was an elderly man, wearing a pointed, greyish beard; he had a fine brow and those penetrating eyes which mark the diagnostician. He was a Vandyke type, and for some reason I found his features familiar.
“Good morning, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said in a pleasant, light voice. “It would be superfluous to inquire if you feel better/’
“Quite, doctor. Except for a certain drumming in my skull, I never felt better in my life.”
“Well, you know”—he seated himself on the side of the bed, taking out a clinical thermometer from its case —”even a thick skull like yours is calculated to buzz a bit when struck hard with the flat of a heavy sword.”
He took my temperature and nodded.
“Normal,” he announced, as he went into an adjoining room which was evidently a bathroom.
I heard him rinsing the thermometer and all the time I was thinking furiously: where had I seen the doctor before? In some way the elusive memory was bound up with another, something to do with undergraduate days and also with the Royal Navy. It was as he came out again that I tied up the links—Peter Marriot Doughty, who was reading medicine and who had the rooms above mine; he was now in the Navy; I had seen him off before I left for Greece. His father, a celebrated Harley Street consultant, had once had tea with Doughty and myself.
Probably my change of expression was marked.
“Yes, Mr. Kerrigan—what is bothering you?”
“Am I addressingDr. Marriot Doughty?”
“John Marriot Doughty, M.D., at your service.”
Momentarily I closed my eyes, doubted my sanity. Clearly now I recalled the long obituary notices; remembered almost the exact words of my telegram of condolence to my friend. Marriot Doughty, his father, had died in the Spring of 1937—but this wasDr. Marriot Doughty who stood before me!
When I opened my eyes John Marriot Doughty was smiling again.
“You remember me, Mr. Kerrigan? I once had the pleasure of taking tea in your rooms with my son.”
Words failed me: I merely stared.
“Have you recent news of Peter?”
I reconquered control of my tongue.
“He is with the destroyers operating off Libya, doctor. I had word from him last some four weeks ago.”
The dead man who lived, nodded.
“Good. Peter was always best in action. I broke a long family tradition, Mr. Kerrigan, when I abandoned the sea for the surgery. Peter has gone back. I think his mother would have wished it so. And now, I am going to get you on your feet. To lie there any longer, sir, would be pure malingering.”
But nevertheless I lay there, watching him. My complaisant analysis of the situation had been grossly at fault. My heart was behaving erratically. The rearguard had
