I bent forward to inspect the fastenings which confined my ankles... I was checked.
In the mad fantasies attendant upon my recovering from the effects of hashish, and afterwards under the evil thrall of Fah Lo Suee, I had failed to note a significant fact.
A rope was around my waist, binding me to the heavy chair!
True, my hands were free, but I could neither reach my ankles nor the knots fastening the line about my body, which were somewhere under the back of the chair.
A coffee-table on which were whisky and soda and cigarettes stood conveniently near. I was about to take a cigarette... when I hesi- tated. Reaching to my pocket I took out my own case and with a lighter which lay on the table started a cigarette.
At all costs I must keep my head. Upon me, alone, rested the fate of Nayland Smith-- perhaps the fate of a million more!
I smoked awhile, sitting deliberately relaxed, and thinking... thinking. My bonds occasioned me no inconvenience provided I remained inactive. Short of a painful, tortoise-like progress across the room, drag- ging the heavy chair with me, it became increasingly clear that to move was a physical impossibility.
The house was silent--very silent. Those heavy gold draperies seemed to exclude all sound.
For a long time I sat there smoking cigarette after cigarette. Then I heard something.
One of the two doors opened.
The huge Nubian came in, carrying a tray upon which were sandwiches and fruit. He set the tray on the table beside me. His girth of shoulder was amazing; and as he stooped he gave me a wicked glance of his small, sunken, bloodshot eyes. Without a word, he went out again, quietly closing the door. Was I being watched? Having avoided the cigarettes and the whisky, was this a further attempt to dope me? I considered the facts....
What had they to gain? I was utterly at their mercy. Secret poisoning was unnecessary.
I ate a sandwich and drank a glass of whisky and soda. Silence....
The figure of Kali on the lacquer cabinet engaged my attention. I found myself studying it closely--so closely that I began to imagine it was moving....
Kali--symbol of this hellish organisation, the Si Fan into whose power I had fallen....
The door opened, and Fah Lo Suee came in.
"I am glad to see that you have called on your philosophy," she said. "You will need it. Unless you are prepared to face another injection of F. Katalepsis you must give me your parole for half an hour...."
She stood in the open doorway, one slender hand, its polished nails gleaming like gems, resting on her hip. Her eyes were mercilessly hard.
I can't say what it was in her bearing that told me; but I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all was not going smoothly with Madame Ingomar.
"Naturally, I must decline. "
"You mean it? "
"Definitely."
She smiled. Her passionate lips betrayed a weakness which was not to be read in those jade-green eyes. She clapped her hands. The big emerald which she wore on an index finger glittered evilly.
The huge Nubian entered. Fah Lo Suee spoke rapidly, and he crossed to me.
"Don't resist," she said softly. "It would be merely melodrama. He could strangle you with one hand. Do as I ask. I am being merciful."
My wrists were firmly knotted behind me. Those lashings which held me to the heavy chair were cast off. Then the black picked me up as one might raise a child and carried me out of the room!
"In half an hour," said Fah Lo Suee, "I will free you again-- and we will talk."
Clenching my teeth grimly--for curses, execrations, torrents of poisonous, futile words, bubbled up in me--I was borne across an elegantly furnished lobby. Everywhere I detected an ultra-modem note, in spite of the presence of old Oriental pieces.
Upstairs I was carried, and into a dark little room opening off the first floor landing. I was laid down, prone, on a narrow settee. The Nubian went out and locked the door....
Trussed as I found myself, it was no easy matter to regain my feet. But I managed it, and stood staring around me in semi-dark- ness. The only light, I saw, came through a window which, on the outside, was reinforced with iron bars. And this light was the light of the moon.
The place seemed to be a small writing- room. There was a bureau at the end near the window, closed, a square Cubist-looking chair before it. The black-and-gold walls were bare. There was a closed bookcase, a low stool of Arab workmanship, and the narrow settee upon which I had been placed.
I contrived to get to the window.
It overlooked a neglected garden... and at the end of the garden I saw the Canal! Dropping into the chair, I began to taste that most bitter of all draughts which poor humanity knows--despair. I remembered Nayland Smith's story of the house at el- Kharga:... "A Buddhist-like resignation was threatening me more and more...."
Nayland Smith!
Whilst I sat here, a fiery furnace raging within, but nevertheless useless as any snared rabbit, he was walking into a death trap! She would have no mercy. I had seen how she dealt with those who crossed her: I had read his sentence in her glittering eyes. This time, there would be no "sporting gesture." And I... I should awake somewhere in China, as a male concubine of this Eastern Circe! I bent down, resting my throbbing head on the bureau....
Then came sounds.
Somewhere a bell rang. There were voices. I heard movements--I divined that some heavy burden had been carried in.
The sounds died away. Silence fell again.
How long I sat there, in a dreadful apathy, I had no means of judging. But suddenly the door was unlocked, and I started up.
Fah Lo Suee came in, carrying a long- bladed knife.
6
She stood watching me.
"Well?" I said. "What are you waiting for?"
She smiled, that one-sided voluptuous smile which was never reflected in her eyes; then:
"I am waiting," she replied--her bell-like voice very soft-- "to try to guess what you will do when I release you."
She came forward, bent so that her small, shapely head almost rested on my shoulder, and cut the lashings which confined my wrists. Her left hand grasped my arm as she stooped. Dropping to her knees, with two strokes of the keen blade she cut away the ropes binding my ankles.
Then she stood upright, very near to me, and met my stare challengingly.
"Well?" she said in mockery.
My first impulse--for I had been thinking about Nayland Smith almost continuously-- was to be read in my glance.
"It can never happen twice to me, Shan," said Fah Lo Suee.
She called a name.
The door opened--and I saw the giant Nubian looking in.
Fah Lo Suee gave a brief order. The Negro retired, closing the door.
"Does no more subtle method occur to you?" she asked, her voice softer than ever. "I am as ready to be lied to as any other woman, Shan--by the right man--if he only tells his lies sweetly."
And, face to face with this evilly beautiful woman, know ing, as I knew too well, that my own life was at stake, that possibly I could even bargain for that of Nayland Smith, I asked myself--why not? With her own lips she had reminded me of that old adage, "all's fair in love and war." With her it was love-- or the only sort of love she knew; with me it was war. Perhaps, on a scruple, hung the fate of nations!
She drew a step nearer. The perfumed aura of her personality began to envelop me. Choice was being filched from the bargain. Those mad urgings which I had known in the green-gold room in Limehouse began to beat upon my brain.
I clenched my fists. I could possibly but the safety of the Western world with a kiss!
Tensed fingers relaxed. In another instant my arms would have been around that slender, yielding body; when:
"Greville!" came a distant cry. "Greuille!"
And I knew the voice! I sprang back from Fah Lo Suee as from a poised cobra. Her face changed. It was as though a mask had been dropped. I saw Kali --the patronne of assassins....