I listened intently.
Short, regular breathing almost in my ear warned me that the slightest sound on my part would result in that strangle grip being renewed.
Yes! It was the police! There were heavy footsteps in the lobby above--deep voices.
Those sounds died away.
I told myself that the search party had gone up to explore the higher floors--and I wondered who was posing as owner of the house--and what had been done with the body of Li King Su.
The cellar in which I lay possessed drum- like properties. I distinctly heard heavy foot- steps on the stairs--descending.
Perhaps the searchers had been unsatis- fied! Perhaps they were about to go! Then I heard, and recognized, a deep voice--
Weymouth!
At that, I determined to risk all.
A significant choking sound which came from the darkness behind might have warned me--for, even as I opened my mouth, a lean, oily smelling hand covered it--a steely grip was on my throat!...
"I trust you are satisfied, Inspector?" I heard, in a quavering female voice. "If there is anything else-- "
"Nothing further, madam, thank you!"... Weymouth!... "Evidently she didn't come here. I can only apologise for troubling you."
Receding footsteps... murmurs of conver- sation.
The bang of a street door! My head dropped back limply as the deathly grip was removed; a whisper came out of the darkness:
"A divine accident--wasted!"
Nayland Smith was the speaker... and I knew that that indomitable spirit was very near to despair.
What possibly could have led Weymouth here? Clearly he had no information to justify a detailed search; no warrant. "Evidently she didn't come here...." In those words the clue lay. And who was the old woman of the quavering voice?
Rapidly, these reflections flashed through my mind--but uppermost was a sense of such bitter, hopeless disappointment as I had never known before.
Truly, it was Fate.
Perhaps, as Fah Lo Suee believed, as Li King Su had believed, the day of the West was ended; perhaps we were obstacles in the way of some cataclysmic change, ordained, inevitable--and so must be brushed aside.
When presently we found ourselves back in that room where the figure of Kali sat, immutable, on a lacquer dias, I told myself that nothing which could happen now could stir me from this dreadful apathy into which I was fallen. And, as had been the case so often in my dealings with this fiendish group, I was wrong.
From my place on the divan I stared across at Nayland Smith where he sat limply in the armchair. Then I looked quickly around.
Some time before I had suspected the tall lacquer cabinet-- because of its resemblance to one I remembered at Abbots Hold--of being a concealed door. I had imagined that the figure of Kali which surmounted it was moving. I had been right.
The masked door opened and Fah Lo Suee came in.
She wore black gloves, carried a white silk shawl, a lace cap, and a pair of spectacles!... Her smile was mocking.
I might have known--from her uncanny power of mastering languages and dialects-- who the "old woman" had been!
"A difficult moment, Shan," she said composedly. "Something I had not foreseen or provided for. A keener brain--such as yours, Sir Denis--might have challenged the gloves, even in the case of a very eccentric old lady!"
She began to pull them off, revealing those beautiful, long, feline hands.
"But my hands are rather memorable," she added without hint of vanity and simply as a statement of fact. "A late but expected guest was traced here. Fortunately, the taxi- driver upon whose evidence the visit was made was uncertain of the number. But it was very clever of the superintendent--following a telephone call from the lady's last address-- to find the man who had driven her from the station."
She turned her long, arrow eyes in Nayland Smith's direction... and I saw his jaw harden as he clenched his teeth. I know, now, that already he understood.
"I respect you so much. Sir Denis," she went on, "that I know your removal is vital to my council. But I promise you it shall be swift."
Nayland Smith remained silent.
"A traitor has already paid the price which we demanded. When Li King Su and yourself are found together--the inference will be obvious. And I have arranged for you to be found at the Limehouse end of the Canal. "
"Congratulations," he said. "You wear the cloak of your lamented father gracefully."
Perhaps some shade of emotion passed swiftly across the impassive face of Fah Lo Suee; perhaps I only imagined it. But she continued without pause:
"For you, Shan, I have pleasant duties in China--where I must return immediately, my work here undone." Again she stared at Nayland Smith. "But I am not greedy, Shan, and you shall not be lonely."
She clapped her hands.
The door from the lobby opened....
And Rima was pushed into the room by the Nubian!
3
Over those first few moments that followed, I must leave a veil. Exactly what took place I shall never know. The shock of it stupefied me.
".... They said you were ill, Shan.... I came right away without waiting to speak to a soul...."
Those words reached me through a sort of drumming in my head. Now I saw Rima's grave eyes turn to Fah Lo Suee in such a look of loathing horror as I had never seen in them before.
But Fah Lo Suee met that glance without animosity. In her own strange eyes of jade green there was no glint of feminine triumph, no mockery. Only a calm consideration. She had mocked Nayland Smith, she had mocked me: we were her active potent enemies, and she had outwitted us. Rima she regarded with something strangely like a cold compassion.
That God had ever given life to a woman so far above the weaknesses of her sex as Fah Lo Suee was something I could never have believed without convincing evidence. Even her curious infatuation for myself was a mere feline fancy, ordered and contained. She would have sacrificed nothing to it; nor would it long outlast its realisation.
"Shan!" Rima's voice suddenly rose to a high emotional note; she moved forward. "Tell me-- "
"Be silent, child," said Fah Lo Suee. "Sit there,"
She indicated an arm-chair. Rima's despairing glance met mine; then she obeyed that quiet, imperious command. Fah Lo Suee signalled to the Nubian to go. He withdrew, not wholly closing the door.
"Shan attracts me," Fah Lo Suee went on. "Apart from which he has qualities which will prove useful when we move in Egypt. But I don't want to steal him from you"--she glanced at Rima--"and he would be unhappy without you."
We were all watching her. There was absolute silence in the room when she ceased speaking. Of the many violent scenes I had known from that dark hour when Sir Lionel's voice--or so I had supposed at the time-- called out to me in the wadi where we were camped, this quiet, deadly interlude before the amazement to come recurs most frequently in my memory.
"It is very simple, Shan"--she turned to me. "Sir Denis has checked me--would always check me. He knows too much of our plans. So do you. The others can wait. If Superintendent Weymouth had come here alone--he would have remained.... After you have gone... he will become dangerous. But he must wait.
"His arrival here to-night was an unfortunate accident-- due to my consideration of your happiness."
I met the steady gaze of those enthralling eyes.... "Your happiness...." As though, unwittingly, she had communicated her secret thoughts to me, I grasped the truth; I saw the part that Rima was to play. I, alone, might prove difficult. Rima, helpless in the power of Fah Lo Suee, would make me a pliant slave! Suddenly:
"More and more," said Nayland Smith, "I regret the absence of Dr. Fu Manchu. I would rather deal with him than with his daughter!"
Fah Lo Suee turned, suddenly.