CHAPTER XIV

THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,

and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold. I confess

that I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in

the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had

devoted his intellect to crime. I knew that the enormous wealth of the

political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe

and to America greater than that of the plague. He was a scientist

trained at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had

gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man. His

mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--from the path of

that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East. Smith and

I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his

command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the

subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?

Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling

towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be

preparing to drop from the roof! Fu-Manchu might have released a

serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome

disease!

"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear this

suspense. He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"

"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."

"You mean--?"

"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"

"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"

Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar

about his neck.

"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but we

must neglect no minor chance. Try with your pocket-knife if you can

force the lock. I am trying to break this one."

Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I

immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with the

small blade of my knife. I was so engaged, and, having snapped one

blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me. It came

from beneath my feet.

"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"

The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.

Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.

Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar. I held my

breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.

A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay. It

widened--became an oblong. A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me,

there rose a dimly seen head. Horror I had expected--and death, or

worse. Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of

curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm

clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.

The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone

floor. In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision,

with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet

encased in little red slippers. In short, this was the houri of my

vision, materialized. It was difficult to believe that we were in

modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of

a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.

"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly. "She has come to save

YOU."

"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely,

fearfully. "A sound and he will kill us all."

She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my

penknife--and the collar was off. As I rose to my feet the girl turned

and released Smith. She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed

to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.

"Your knife," she whispered to me. "Leave it on the floor. He will

think you forced the locks. Down! Quickly!"

Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness. I

rapidly followed. Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band

about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she

carried. We stood in a low-arched passage.

"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,"

she ordered.

Neither of us hesitated to obey her. Blind-folded, I allowed her to

lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder. In that order we

proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.

"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper. "There is danger on

the right."

With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed

forward. The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was

steamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life. But a

faint animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued

stir about me, infinitely suggestive--mysterious.

Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.

A gong sounded. We stopped.

The din of distant drumming came to my ears.

"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear; "that is a

tom-tom!"

"S-sh! S-sh!"

The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously. We were near a door

or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air; and it

reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was now

leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her own lips, had

told me that she was his slave. Through the horrible phantasmagoria

she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing out

richly in its black setting of murder and devilry. Not once, but a

thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature of the tie which

bound her to the sinister Doctor.

Silence fell.

"Quick! This way!"

Down a thickly carpeted stair we went. Our guide opened a door, and

led us along a passage. Another door was opened; and we were in the

open air. But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled

path, with a fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until,

unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank. Now, planking creaked to

our tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw the

gleam of water beneath my feet.

"Be careful!" I was warned, and found myself stepping into a narrow

boat--a punt.

Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled out

into the stream.

"Don't speak!" she directed.

My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or if

the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar and this

silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guide

who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights" were

fantasy--the mockery of sleep.

Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,

whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,

or the Styx.

The punt touched a bank.

"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes," said the girl, with

her soft, charming accent, "but I rely upon your honor not to remove

the handkerchiefs until then. You owe me this."

"We do!" said Smith fervently.

I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand was

placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma. Arrived on

the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.

"You must not go back," I whispered. "We will take care of you. You

must not return to that place."

"Let me go!" she said. "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,

you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police

protection! You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me

betray him! For what? For what?" She wrenched herself free. "How

little you understand me. Never mind. Perhaps one day you will know!

Until the clock strikes!"

She was gone. I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water

from the pole. Fainter it grew, and fainter.

"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me. "Why does she cling

to that monster?"

The distant sound died away entirely. A clock began to strike; it

struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off, and so was

Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left the moon shone

upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.

It was Windsor Castle.

"Half-past ten," cried Smith. "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"

We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train to

Waterloo; and we caught it. But I sank into a corner of the

compartment in a state bordering upon collapse. Neither of us, I

think, could have managed another twenty yards. With a lesser stake

than a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have attempted that

dash to Windsor station.

"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith. "That gives us

thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side of the river and reach his

hotel."

"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated? Did we come up or down

stream?"

"I couldn't determine. But at any rate, it stands close to the

riverside. It should be merely a question of time to identify it. I

shall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for

nothing. Our escape will warn him."

I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from my

forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar with the

broadcut Latakia mixture.

"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard, and

what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon? I noticed how it

affected you."

My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.

"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909," he

replied: "an utterly mysterious epidemic. And this beastly wailing

was associated with it."

"In what way? And what do you mean by an epidemic?"

"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.

A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on

business connected with some new iron buildings. One night he went to

his room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the

courtyard. Broke his neck, of course."

"Suicide?"

"Apparently. But there were singular features in the case. For

instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"

"In the courtyard?"

"In the courtyard!"

"Was it murder by any chance?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."

"But the wailing business?"

"That began later, or was only noticed later. A French doctor, named

Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."

"At the same place?"

"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room. Here is the

extraordinary part of the affair: a friend shared the room with him,

and actually saw him go!"

"Saw him leap from the window?"

"Yes. The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.

I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of

Lafitte than of that of the American. I spoke to the man about it

personally. He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told

me that the cry seemed to come from above him."

"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."

"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--the sort of

moonlight you get in Burma. Lafitte, for some reason, had just gone to

the window. His friend saw him look out. The next moment with a

dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--and crashed down into the

courtyard!"

"What then?"

"Martin ran to the window and looked down. Lafitte's scream had

aroused the place, of course. But there was absolutely nothing to

account for the occurrence. There was no balcony, no ledge, by means

of which anyone could reach the window."

"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"

"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this

uncanny howling aroused me. I heard it quite distinctly, and am never

likely to forget it. It was followed by a hoarse yell. The man in the

next room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"

"Did you change your quarters?"

"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class

establishment--several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in

Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein. A story got about the native

quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was

reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story,

which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District

Superintendent no end of trouble."

"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"

"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been

strangled! The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though

it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be

the five heads of Siva."

"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"

"Oh, no. Several Burmans and others died in the same way. At first

there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and

committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.

The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."

"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"

"Yes. I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night,

and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from the top deck of the steamer

aboard which I was traveling! My God! to think that the fiend

Fu-Manchu has brought That to England!"

"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity. "What has he

brought? An evil spirit? A mental disease? What is it? What CAN it

be?"

"A new agent of death, Petrie! Something born in a plague-spot of

Burma--the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.

Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."