The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu - Sax Rohmer (best ebook reader TXT) 📗

CHAPTER XVIII

TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task

at once useless and thankless. In its actual and in its dramatic

significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.

And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant

by “Sweet Sorrow.”

 

There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood,

a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.

Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was

the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh. I sought to forget her.

I sought to remember her. Indeed, in the latter task I found

one more congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas

which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.

 

East and West may not intermingle. As a student of

world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny,

that truth. Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited,

she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands

of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers;

had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?

With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such

things to have passed.

 

But if it were so?

 

At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal

power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth—closing my eyes

in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.

 

Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.

Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems

persistently haunted my mind. But, always, my heart had an answer.

And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!—

who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past

the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life

wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute

sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find—

no place—are excluded!

 

But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to

enlist sympathy for the recorder. The topic upon which, here,

I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me;

I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other.

Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let

us forget my brief digression.

 

It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.

Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned,

since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart

of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few;

places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.

 

Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes’ walk from

the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.

Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts

he paused and turned to me.

 

“Whatever you see or hear,” he cautioned, “express no surprise.”

 

A cab had dropped us at the corner. We both wore dark suits and fez

caps with black silk tassels. My complexion had been artificially

reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend’s. He rang

the bell beside the door.

 

Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman—gross, hideously ugly.

 

Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic. As a linguist his

attainments were a constant source of surprise. The jargons

of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.

The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us

into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.

Following this passage, and passing an inner door,

from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music,

we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting

for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor.

In a niche burned a common metal lamp.

 

The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man

with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy.

Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab—for such he appeared to be—

drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess. Placing his finger

upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.

 

We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us. The sounds of crude

music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter

aside I gave a start of surprise.

 

Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around

three of its walls. These divans were occupied by a motley company

of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.

Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.

A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying

the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon

a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their

hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.

 

Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated,

and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room.

A buzz of conversation arose.

 

“It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain

class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London,” Smith whispered.

“The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host.

I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank.”

 

He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.

 

“Whom do you expect to find here?” I asked.

 

“It is a recognized meeting-place,” said Smith in my ear.

“It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group

use it at times.”

 

Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spy-hole.

My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.

 

“Do you recognize anyone?” I whispered.

 

“S-sh!”

 

Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.

He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some

subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know

that a new arrival was entering. The hum of conversation died away,

and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies.

The newcomer was a woman, then. Fearful of making any noise I yet

managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.

 

A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor

and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.

She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across

her face. A momentary view I had of her—and wildly incongruous

she looked in that place—and she had disappeared from sight,

having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately

beneath our point of vantage.

 

From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she

was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly

surprising to those in the room as it was to me.

 

Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt—

who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity,

but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a

midnight expedition of so unusual a character?

 

I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.

His excitement was intense. Had his keener powers enabled him

to recognize the unknown?

 

A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume

which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.

Only one woman known to me used that perfume—Karamaneh.

 

Then it was she!

 

At last my friend’s vigilance had been rewarded. Eagerly I bent forward.

Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery. Again the strange

perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right

nor left, I saw Karamaneh—for that it was she I no longer doubted—

recross the room and disappear.

 

“The man she spoke to,” hissed Smith. “We must see him!

We must have him!”

 

He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.

It was empty. Down the passage he led, and we were almost come

to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came

rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him,

and was gone, slamming it fast.

 

I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained

the street it was empty. Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic.

A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.

 

“That is the girl,” rapped Smith; “but where in Heaven’s

name is the man to whom she brought the message?

I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot.

To think that we have had such an opportunity and have

thrown it away!”

 

Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction

of the crowded thoroughfare into which