He paused, and now we were all watching him intently.
“Apart from the condition that we shall be represented by no more than two persons at the meeting place, there is no clause in the agreement prohibiting our being covered by as many persons as we care to assemble!
“Police headquarters are advised. To-night at twelve o’clock Gizeh will be deserted; there’s no moon. A cordon will be drawn around the Pyramid. Nothing in my agreement with Mr. Aden prohibits this. When Rima is brought there from whatever place they have her in hiding, the fact will be reported to me.”
“By heaven!” cried the chief, and banged the table so violently that Petrie’s glass was upset; but, as if not noticing the fact. “By heaven! This is sheer genius. Smith. Your pickets will get her on the way?”
“It’s possible.”
Sir Lionel laughed boisterously and clapped his hands for a waiter.
“They won’t even get——” he began—and then paused.
I saw Sir Denis watching him, and I realised that he, as well as I, had noticed that schoolboy furtiveness creeping over Sir Lionel’s face. The arrival of the waiter interrupted us temporarily, but then:
“You see, Greville,” said Sir Denis, turning to me eagerly, “even if they slip past the pickets,and we have to enter the Pyramid, those inside will be at our mercy. Because the police will close around the entrance behind us, and——”
“And there’s only one entrance!” I concluded. “I see it all! We can’t fail to regain the relics?”
“This would be playing into our hands,” cried the chief, “if Fu Manchu agreed to it. We began cheering too soon! I admit the brilliancy of the scheme, Smith; I can see your point, now. But when a meeting place half a mile from any inhabited dwelling was suggested, Fu Manchu hadn’t thought about the Great Pyramid! He’s a devil incarnate and could probably work conjuring tricks almost anywhere else within the terms of the agreement. But the Pyramid! He’ll veto the whole thing when the slimy Aden reports.”
“I had fully anticipated it,” Nayland Smith admitted, “but only ten minutes ago, just before I joined you, the arrangement was confirmed on the telephone.”
“By whom!” I asked.
“By the only voice of its kind in the world—by the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu.”
“Good God!” I exclaimed—”then he’s here, in Cairo!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH
THE GREAT PYRAMID
We set out at eleven-thirty in Petrie’s car.
I suppose, of all the dark hours I have known, this was as black as any. I rested upon Sir Denis Nayland Smith as upon a rock....If he should fail me—all was lost.
That his singular plan was a good one I had accepted as a fact; failing this acceptance, I should have been in despair. Perhaps it was the aftermath of drugs to the influence of which I had been subjected; but I was in an oddly muted frame of mind. Frenzy had given place to a sort of Moslem-like resignation; a fatalistic, deadening recognition of the fact that if Rima, who was really all that mattered to me in the world, should have come to harm, life was ended.
At the village, where few lights were burning when we passed, a British policeman was on duty. Nayland Smith checked Petrie, and leaning out of the car:
“Anything passed?” he asked rapidly.
“Nothing much, sir. Two or three hotel parties. I’ve noticed a lot of funny-looking Bedouins about here to-night, but I suppose that’s nothing to do with the matter.”
“Making for Gizeh?”
“No, sir. They all went that way—into the village.”
“Go ahead, Petrie.”
As we swung around onto that long, straight tree-lined avenue which leads to the Plateau of Gizeh, I counted three cars which passed us, bound towards Cairo. There was nothing ahead, and nobody seemed to be following. As the hotel came into view:
“We have time in hand,” said Petrie, “shall I drive right ahead?”
“Pull up,” Nayland Smith directed sharply.
An Egyptian, who might have been a dragoman, had sprung from the shadow of the wall bordering the gardens of Mena House, where during the day a line of cars and camels may be seen. Nayland Smith craned out.
“Who is it?” he asked impatiently.
“Enderby, Sir Denis. You met me at headquarters to-day.” “Right! What have you to report?”
“Not a thing! I have four smart gyppies watching with me, and we have checked everybody. There’s absolutely nothing to report.”
“Leave the car here, Petrie,” said Nayland Smith, “we have time to walk. It may be better.”
Petrie backed the car in against the wall, and we all got out. The “Arab” whose name was Enderby, and whom I took to be a secret service agent, conversed aside with Sir Denis for some time. Then, saluting in the native manner, he withdrew and disappeared into the shadows again.
“Queer business,” said Nayland Smith, pulling the lobe of his ear. “A gathering of the heads of the many orders of dervishes is taking place in the Village to-night. As a rule they don’t mix...And why at Gizeh?”
“Don’t like the sound of it myself,” the chief growled; but:
“D’you mind grabbing the case, Greville?” said Nayland Smith tersely.
With ill-concealed reluctance, Sir Lionel passed his leather suitcase into my possession; and we started up the sandy slope. I had abandoned speculation—almost abandoned hope;
having, in fact, achieved acceptance of the worst. Diamond stars gleamed in an ebony sky. The Great Pyramid, most wonderful, perhaps, of the structures of man, blotted out a triangle of the heavens. Our feet crunched on the sandy way. We were sombrely silent.
At one point, as we turned the bend at the top of the road, I remember that I wondered, momentarily, what the others were thinking about; and particularly if Sir Denis’s confidence remained unimpaired. My own, alas, had long since deserted me....
And dervishes were assembling at Gizeh. That certainly was odd. Why, as Nayland Smith had asked, at Gizeh?
Just as we were topping the slope a man appeared, apparently from nowhere, and so suddenly that I was startled out of my confused reverie. Petrie, who was beside me, grabbed my arm; and then:
“You’re early. Sir Denis,” said a voice. I knew it at once: it was that of Hewlett, Acting Super intendent of Police.
“Not so loud,” snapped Nayland Smith. “What’s the news?”
“None, I regret to say, sir.”
“You mean no one has entered The Pyramid?”
“Not a soul—if I can rely on my men!”
My heart sank—went down to zero. The scheme, the fantastic scheme, had failed. He was dealing with a super-mind, and Fu Manchu was laughing at him. It was unthinkable that the Chinese doctor should have exposed any of his agents to a danger so obvious.
“How many men have you here?”
“Sixty. The place is entirely surrounded.”
“What does this mean, Smith?” Petrie asked urgently. He turned to Hewlett, whom he evidently knew well, and: “How long have you been covering the Pyramid?” he added.
“Since the guides knocked off,” was the reply. “If anybody’s smuggled through in the interval, he must have been invisible.”
“It’s a booby trap,” said the chief shortly. “You’ve ruled me out, Smith, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. But, by heaven——”
“Disappear, Hewlett,” Nayland Smith directed tersely; and as Hewlett obediently merged into the shadows: “I don’t know what this means, Petrie,” he went on, “any more than you do. From the evidence, and I count it pretty sound, nobody has gone into the place to-night since sunset. But three of us have signed an agreement with an enemy I would strangle with my own hands if I had the opportunity, but with an enemy who has one redeeming virtue: he always keeps his word. We must keep ours.”