Chapter Ninth
THE MAN FROM EL-KHAEGA
With one significant gesture, Nayland Smith silenced the words on my lips. He took a quick step forward into the corridor and I saw that he was barefooted. Then, his lips very close to my ear:
"Lucky I heard you," he whispered. "One ring would have ruined everything! Come in. Be silent.... Whatever happens, do nothing."
He stepped back, pointing urgently to my slippers. I removed them and tiptoed into the lobby. Nayland Smith reclosed the front door without making a sound and led me into the principal bedroom. Except for a faint streak of light coming through the curtains, the room was in darkness. He pushed me down into a corner near the foot of the bed and disappeared.
To say that I was astounded would be to labour the obvious. I actually questioned my sanity That Nayland Smith was alive made me want to shout with joy. But what in heav- en's name was he doing in Swazi Pasha's apartments? Where had be been and why had he failed to notify us of his escape? Finally, what was it that I had nearly ruined by my unexpected appearance and for what was he waiting in the dark?
Where Smith had gone and why we were concealing ourselves, I simply couldn't imagine; but, my eyes growing used to the gloom, I peered carefully about the bedroom without moving from the position in which he had placed me. I could see no one, hear nothing.
Then all my senses became keyed up-- alert. I had detected a sound of soft footsteps in the corridor outside! I waited--listening to it drawing nearer and nearer. The walker had reached the door, I thought.... But he did not pause, but passed on. The sound of footsteps grew faint--and finally died away.
Silence fell again. The window behind those drawn curtains was open at the top, and sometimes faint street noises reached my ears: the hooting of a passing taxi, the deeper note of a private car; and once, rumbling of what I judged to be a string of heavy lorries. But in the building about me, complete silence prevailed. I found myself looking across an eiderdown bedspread in the direction of the fireplace. Except that it was more ornate, it closely resembled that in my own room. The shock of meeting Smith, the present horrible mystery, keyed up my already wide-awake brain. I began to form a theory....
At which moment, as if to confirm it, came a faint sound. Something was shuffling lightly behind the electric radiator! This was backed by green tiles, or imita- tion tiles which I judged to be stamped on metal. The deep recess which they lined resembled a black cavity from where I crouched. I could just detect one spot of light on the metal hood of the radiator.
Following some moments of tense silence, came a second sound. And this... I recognized.
It was the same subdued, metallic clang which had arrested my attention in the room above!
I thought that the darkness behind the radiator had grown even denser. I scarcely breathed. Fists clenched, I watched, preparing to duck if any light should come in, since my discovery was clearly the last thing Nayland Smith desired.
The spot of high light on the hood moved outwards, towards me. I was afraid to trust my sight--until a very soft padding on the carpet provided an explanation of this phenomenon.
Someone had opened the back of the fire- place and now was lifting the radiator out bodily....
Who, or what, had crept out into the room?
Nothing moved again, but I thought a figure stood between me and the recess. Whatever it might be, it remained motion- less, so that, after I had concentrated my gaze, it presently took shape in the dusk--but such horrible shape, that, divided only by the width of the bed from it, I shrank involun- tarily.
It was a spiritual as well as a physical shrinking, such as I had experienced in that room in Limehouse, when, on the night of horror which had led to my release, a ghastly yellow dwarf had crossed my room, carrying a lantern. Of the fate of that misshapen thing I had seen bloody evidence. This figure now standing silent in the darkness--standing so near to me--was another of the malignant killers; one of those Arabian abominations attached to the Old Man of the Mountain... he whose blazing eyes, as he sprang up from his mattress when the Mandarin Ki Ming denounced us, formed my last memory of the Council of Seven....
A sickly sweet exotic perfume stole to my nostrils.... I knew it!
To crouch there inactive, with definite terror beginning to claim me, was next to impossible, and I wondered why Nayland Smith had imposed so appalling a task. I wondered if he had seen what I could see-- knew what I knew.
The answer came swiftly, almost silently. I heard a dull, nauseating thud, followed by a second, heavier thud on the carpet. Nayland Smith's voice came in a tense whisper:
"Don't stir, Greville."
My heart was beating like a sledge- hammer.
2
I began to count the seconds.... Fully a minute passed in absolutely unbroken silence.
Nayland Smith, I realized now, had been concealed in one of two recesses flanking the projecting fireplace. This same formation occurred in my own room, and might betoken a girder or platform, or possible a flue. Formerly, the Park Avenue had been fitted with open coal-fires.
Another minute passed. Nothing happened. The suspense began to grow intol- erable. A third minute commenced--then a sound broke that electric stillness; a soft shuffling sound, like that which had heralded the approach of the Arabian dwarf. It was all the more obvious now since the back of the fireplace had been displaced, and it resembled that of a heavy body moving in a narrow space.
Sounds of movement grew suddenly louder and then ceased altogether.
Silence fell again. This, I believe, was the least endurable moment of all. Every sense told me that someone was peering out into the room. But I hadn't the slightest idea what to expect--nor, if attack were coming, what form it would take! Soft padding. Silence. A whispered phrase came like a hiss out of the darkness:
"Enta raih fen?" (Where has he gone?) The words were Arab--but not spoken by an Arab!
Yet I gathered that the speaker, in what I judged to be a state of excitement, had aban- doned his own tongue in favour of that of the murderous dwarf, whose absence clearly puzzled him. But I had little time for thought.
There came a rush, and a crash which shook the room... a shot!-- a flash of dim light and the tinkle of broken glass! The bullet had shattered the window above my head.... Then:
"The switch, Greville!" came Nayland Smith's voice. "Over the bed!"
I sprang up as well as my cramped limbs would permit, jumped onto the bed, and groped for the pendant switch.
A sound of panting and gurgling came from somewhere down on the carpet between the bed and the fireplace; loud banging on the floor. Presently I found the switch, and was dazzled when the room became flooded with light. I jumped across to the other side of the bed. I could hear racing footsteps in the corridor outside, excited voices, move- ment all about....
At my feet sprawled a man in pyjamas, his head thrown back and his eyes staring upward, almost starting from their sockets. Nayland Smith knelt upon him, his right hand clutching the throat of the prostrate man, his left pressing to the floor sinewy brown fingers in which a pistol was gripped.
"Get his gun!" he snapped, without releasing that stranglehold.
I slipped around the combatants and snatched the pistol from that virile grasp. As I stooped, I had my first proper view of the captive.... He was the man I had seen in the corridor-- Mr. Solkel!
A bell was ringing furiously. Someone was banging on the outer door. "Open!" Smith panted. Half under the bed lay the hideous dwarf, motionless.