"Thank you very much," said the laden lady. "Will you be so kind as to hand it in to me?"
She entered the car. I followed with the dropped package and bent forward into the dark interior. Through the opposite windows I saw the sign above a popular restaurant suddenly become illuminated. I detected a damnably familiar perfume....
I was enveloped. I felt a sudden paralysing pressure in my spine--a muscular arm levered me into the car... and I realized that I had been garroted in Piccadilly, amid hundreds of passers-by and in sight of my hotel!
4
I shot up from green depths in which I had been submerged for an immeasurable time. I had dived into a deep lake, I thought, and had become entangled in clinging weeds which sprang from its bed. I could not free my limbs; I knew that I was drowning--that never again should I see the sun and the blue sky above....
Then, the clasp of those octopus tentacles was relaxed. And I shot to the surface like a cork....
Green!... Everything about me was green! What had happened? Where was I?
Great heavens! I was back in Limehouse! ... But no--this place was green and gold, but smaller--much smaller than the room of my long captivity.
It was a miniature room--something was radically wrong with it. There were tow windows, draped in those heavy gold curtains which I remembered; a tracing of green figures was brushed across the gold. There was a tall lacquer cabinet and upon it stood a jade image of Kali... tiny, minute. There were flat green doors and a green carpet; golden rugs. An amber lamp gave green light. Upon a black divan was a second, larger figure of Kali... as large as a carnival doll.
But, no! This figure resembled Kali only in her features:
she wore a green robe and high-heeled black shoes. In one slender hand, a soft hand nurtured in luxury, was a long cigarette holder. I could see the smoke from the burning cigarette.... A doll--but a living doll! The picture grew smaller yet. The doll became so tiny that I could no longer discern her features. I was a giant in a microscopic room!
And then--the colours became audible! "I am green" said the carpet. "We are gold," the miniature curtains replied....
Raising both hands I clutched my head! I was mad! I knew it--because I wanted to laugh!
The room began to increase in size! From the dimensions of a doll's house fashioned by gnomes it swelled to those of a gigantic palace!... I was a mere fly in an apartment which could scarcely have found ground space in Trafalgar Square!
But, now--I recognized that green- draped figure on the black divan. It was Fah Lo Suee!
The mighty roof, higher than that of any mosque, of any cathedral in the world, began to descend: the walls closed in... huge pieces of furniture were pushed towards me. Fah Lo Suee towered above my shrinking body, her monstrous cigarette sending up a column of smoke like that of a sacrifice....
I cried out... and saw the cry!
"God help me!"
It issued from my lips in squat green letters! I closed my eyes, and:
"So you are awake, Shan?" said a bell-like voice.
But I was afraid to raise my eyelids.
"Look at me. You are all right now...."
I looked.
My head was swimming and every muscle in my body ached--but the room had taken on normal proportions. It was a large room, filled with modern furniture, except that its scheme was severely green and gold and that there were Oriental pieces placed about.
Fah Lo Suee watched me... but the jade- green eyes were hard.
"You are better," she continued. "Cannabis indica produces strange delusions-- but as we use it, there is no drug so swift to serve our purpose."
I considered the situation. I was seated in a big armchair facing the divan upon which Fah Lo Suee reclined indolently watching me. The damnable fumes of the drug began to leave my brain. Fah Lo Suee, slender, sinuous, insolent, was a woman--but a deadly enemy. I knew what Nayland Smith would have done!
Preparatory to a spring, I drew my feet together... a certain distance. Then-- My ankles were fastened to the chair! Fah Lo Suee dropped ash from her yellow cigarette into a copper bowl upon the low table beside her. I watched the elegant, voluptuous movements of that feline hand with a queer sense of novelty. What a tigress she was!
"The chief purpose of my visit to England," she said, speaking as though nothing unusual existed between hostess and visitor, "was defeated by Sir Denis Nayland Smith. My further plans are in abeyance-- pending his suppression."
My head ached as though my brain were on fire, but:
"He is by way of being rather a nuisance?" I suggested viciously.
Fah Lo Suee smiled, a smile of contempt.
"I could have dealt with him--alone. But one of my own people proved treacherous. In your pocket, Shan, you had two addresses. One was that of Dr. Murray--in whose home your brilliant friend is hiding; the other was that of this house."
She continued to smile--and she continued to watch me. I tried to conquer my wandering ideas. I tried to hate her. But her eyes caressed me, and I was afraid--horribly afraid of this witch-woman who had the uncanny power which Homer gave to Circe, of stealing men's souls.
If I could trust Li King Su, Nayland Smith was coming here--to this house-- where death awaited!
And now I was powerless to stop him! "Li King Su was a traitor." Through the beats of a sort of drumming which had started in my brain I heard the bell-like voice. "No doubt he counted on a great reward."
She ceased speaking and clapped her hands sharply. That gigantic Negro who had been the door-keeper in el-Kharga, and who had overpowered me at the meeting of the Seven, came in!
Fah Lo Suee addressed him rapidly. She spoke in a sort of bastard Arabic--the Nubian dialect; and I found time for wonder. I knew North Africa from the inside; but I had never learned that queer lingo of the Nubians. Yet this woman--who was Chinese--used it familiarly!
The Nubian went out. Fah Lo Suee removed the stump of a yellow cigarette from her long holder, selected a fresh one from a cloisonne box, and fitted it into place. She ignited it with an enamelled lighter.
A dragging sound came.
I saw the Nubian pulling a heavy trunk through the door and across the carpet. This trunk was vaguely familiar. Then, on top, I saw white painted initials: L.K.S.
The Negro removed the straps and threw the lid back.
"Look," said Fah Lo Suee. "He was a traitor."
Li King Su lay in his own trunk--dead!
5
Not until I found myself aloud could I think my own thoughts, uninfluenced by the promptings of those jade-green eyes. But when the door closed behind Fah Lo Suee, I began desperately to weigh my chances.
Nayland Smith was doomed! This was the thought which came uppermost in my mind. The clue upon which he was working, and which would lead him that night to this house, was a false clue--a bait! And that our enemies did not spare those who crossed their path I had learned.
The trunk had been dragged from the room.... But I could still see, in imagination, that strangled grin on the dead man's face.
I tried to reconstruct the details of our interview in Babylon House. Had I detected, or only deluded myself that I had detected, a swift exchange of signs between Li King Su and someone concealed in an inner room? Had I merely imagined the presence of this other?... Or had I been right in supposing someone to be there but wrong in my natural deduction that he was a friend of the Chinese doctor?
Had the hidden man murdered Li King Su and caused his body to be removed in the big trunk?...
"The garden of this house adjoins the Regent Canal," he had said.
The Regent Canal! A gloomy whispering waterway, now little used, and entering a long tunnel somewhere near this very spot where I found myself a prisoner!