Came a flash of inspiration—Alan Sterling understood.
Fleurette was the victim of some devilish device of the Chinese physician. He had induced in her either by drugs or suggestion, a complete revulsion of feeling in regard to those she had formerly loved. But because of some subtlety of the human brain which he had over-looked, although, as in some cases of amnesia, she could not express her real thoughts in words, she could express them in writing!
“My darling!”
Sterling bent forward and tore the page from the writing-block.
Whereupon Fleurette turned, her face contorted.
“Don’t touch me! I detest you!”—she glared at him venomously; “I detest you!”
Sterling stooped, threw his left arm around her waist and his right under her knees. He lifted her. She screamed wildly and struck at him.
He forced her head down upon his shoulder to stifle her cries, and carried her towards the open window. . . .
CHAPTER 24
THE LACQUER ROOM
Gallaho by now very breathless pulled up, watching the porch of Rowan House.
The front door was open; this dimly, he could divine; but there seemed to be no light in the entrance hall.
The head lamps of Sir Bertram’s Rolls gleamed dimly but the inside lights were turned off. Evidently, Sir Bertram was leaving—after a very brief visit.
Why was there no light in the entrance hall?
Gallaho’s bewilderment was growing by leaps and bounds. To the problems of the scream, the broken window and Sterling’s absence now was added that of Sir Denis’s disappearance. Gallaho’s own inclination, for he was a man of forthright action, was to run up the drive quite openly to the porch, and to demand to see the occupier of the house.
But Sir Denis was in charge to-night. He could not act without his authority, and his last instruction had been:
“Do nothing, until I give the word.”
Between them, Gallaho thought bitterly, they were likely to make a mess of things.
A muted bang told him that the door of Sir Bertram’s car had been closed. Who had entered it he didn’t know. Suddenly the head lights cleaved a lane through darkness, illuminating the gravel drive, depicting trees of elfin shapes in silhouette, goblin trees. The entrance to Rowan House was transformed magically into a haunted forest.
The Rolls moved off, turned, and entered the drive. Gallaho darted half right into the shrubbery, crouched down, and watched. . . .
Someone was seated beside the chauffeur. The fleeting impression which Gallaho derived conveyed to his mind the idea of a native servant of some kind. This surely meant that Sir Bertram was not returning home, but was proceeding elsewhere?
And there was no means of following! The Flying Squad car was presumably at the local police station, picking up a party of men to raid Rowan House!
The Rolls purred swiftly by. Of its occupants, Gallaho had never a glimpse. But as it passed he sprang to his feet and stepped out on to the drive.
“Where in hell has everybody got to?” he growled.
The door of the house was open. He could see the black gap which it made in the dingy grey frontage of the pillared porch. Something very strange was happening here—had already happened; and now:
“Gallaho!” came a distant voice, “Gallaho!”
It was Nayland Smith!
“Where are you, sir?” Gallaho shouted.
He raced towards the porch of the house from which the cry had seemed to come, throwing precaution to the winds now, for there was urgency in Nayland Smith’s voice.
And as he reached the steps he saw him. . . .
Sir Denis was standing in the open doorway, the lobby behind him in darkness.
“He’s slipped us, I think, Gallaho. We’re too late. But my main concern at the moment is not with him. . . . show a light here. I am looking for the switch.”
Gallaho’s torch flashed in the darkness of that strange Assyrian hall.
“There it is, sir.”
The lights were switched on. It was a queer looking place, of pillars and bas-reliefs, a freak of the former eccentric owner of Rowan House. There was no sound. They might have been alone in the building.
“What the devil has become of Mr. Sterling?”
Gallaho’s face looked very lined and grim. “And I thought I heard a woman scream.”
“I did hear a woman scream,” snapped Smith. “I started around the house in the direction you had taken. Did you notice a door in a sort of archway which opens into the stable yard?”
“Yes, it was locked.”
“Not when I reached it,” Smith replied grimly. “I went in, venturing to use my torch. It communicated with an absolutely unfurnished passage, which I followed, and found myself here, looking out of the open front door—just as Sir Bertram’s car disappeared down the drive. Ssh! What’s that?”
From somewhere within the recesses of the silent house, a faint sound of movement had come. . . .
Slowly and with extreme caution, in order not to rattle the rings, Inspector Gallaho drew aside a curiously patterned curtain which hung in one of the square openings of the Assyrian hall. It was from behind this curtain that the slight sound had come.
A thickly carpeted passage appeared, dimly lighted. There was a door at the further end immediately facing them and one to the right. That at the further end—apparently a sliding door-was ajar . . . and light shone out from the room beyond.
Nayland Smith exchanged a significant glance with the detective, and the two tip-toed along the corridor. Their footsteps made next to no sound upon the thick carpet. Outside the door, both paused, listening.
In the room beyond, someone was walking up and down, restlessly, ceaselessly.
Gallaho displayed an automatic in his open palm. Smith nodded, and drew the door open.
He found himself in a fairly large room which was a combination of a library and a laboratory. It was a type of room with which he had become familiar during the long years that he had battled with Dr. Fu Manchu. There were preserved snakes and reptiles in jars upon a high shelf. Many queer looking volumes in orderly rows appeared behind a big table upon which, in addition to evidences of literary activity, there was a certain amount of chemical paraphernalia. Lacquer was the dominant note.
At the moment of Nayland Smith’s entrance, the man who had been promenading the room turned, startled, and stared at the intuders.
It was Sir Bertram Morgan, Governor of the Bank of England.
“Well I’m damned!”—the growling words came from Gallaho.
“Sir Bertram!” Nayland Smith exclaimed.
Sir Bertram Morgan experienced a not unnatural difficulty in recognizing Smith, whom he had met socially, in his present attire; but at last: “Sir Denis Nayland Smith, I believe?” he replied.
The financier had quite recovered his poise. He was a man of remarkably cool nerve. “The Marquis Chang Hu did not inform me that I should have the pleasure of meeting you here to-night.”
Gallaho exchanged glances with Sir Denis and then stood by the open door, listening—listening for the Scotland Yard car and the raiding party. Sir Denis twitched at the lobe of his ear, staring all about him, and then:
“I fear, Sir Bertram,” he said, “that you have been decoyed here under false pretences.
“Decoyed . . . ?”
Sir Bertram assumed his well-known expression which has appeared in so many Press photographs, his bushy eyebrows slightly raised in the centre.
“I said ‘decoyed’ advisedly. You came with a woman. She is half Chinese. By what name you know her I cannot say. I have known her by several.”
“Indeed! You probably refer to Madame Ingomar?”
Nayland Smith smiled, but without mirth.
“Fah Lo Suee’s invention is failing her,” he murmured;