The Mask of Fu-Manchu (31 page)

“Ah! you see, eh?” said the German.

And while I stared with horrified eyes at the blade, the inlay, the hilt, he had darted to the table, almost immediately to return with one of the gold plates. Relieving me of the sword, he placed the inscribed tablet in my hands.

“It is beautifully done!” He almost whispered the words, very close to my ear; “and rubbed down very fine. But look...”

He held a glass before my eye—one of those which I had provided for this very purpose.

I looked—and I knew!

Tossing the plate down, I faced the three men around the table. Professor Eisner remained beside me.

“Gentlemen,” I said—“my apologies. I can only ask you to remain silent until this mystery has been cleared up. I will try, to the best of my ability, to explain.”

The sword, the plates, and the mask, which I had exhibited to these four experts, were, beyond any shadow of doubt,
the duplicates made by Solomon Ishak…

T
hanks to Rima’s photographs, I proved my case. The blade of the sword, as I realised, had been provided by Soloman Ishak. It closely resembled the sword of the prophet, but differed in several essential particulars.

The stones in the hilt (the hilt had been reproduced exactly) were genuine and must have cost the chief some hundreds of pounds; but they were much smaller than those shown in the photograph; and some of them badly flawed.

Under a powerful lens the plates shrieked forgery aloud. I learned later that they had been photographed from Rima’s negatives onto the gold and then engraved by Solomon’s workmen. Closely examined, the newly cut gold betrayed the secret.

The mask was the most perfect duplicate I have ever handled; but the two large jewels were reconstructed; and the delicate engravery, magnified, betrayed itself in the same way as that upon the plates.

However, a friendly atmosphere was re-established before the party broke up. I had admitted—could see no alternative—that Sir Lionel had a duplicate set made in Persia. And it was obvious that this was the set which now lay upon the table.

When and where the substitution had taken place, I left to the imagination of my visitors. They were sympathetic in a way, but the Englishmen were laughing at me; and the Frenchman, who had come from Paris especially to view the relics, was very plainly annoyed.

Professor Eisner alone seemed to understand and to sympathise. He was the last to leave, and:

“Mr. Greville,” he said in parting, “Sir Lionel Barton has touched deep, secret influences in this matter. He has been clever—very clever; but they have been more clever still. Eh? You will find out one day when this trick was done.”

But as from the window I watched him swinging down Bruton Street with the walk of a dragoon, I knew that I had nothing to find out. I already knew where dreaming had ended and reality had begun. And I knew why Fah Lo Suee had whispered: “You will live to hate me…”

I was still trying to get a call through to the chief, whose Norfolk number was a private extension, when Betts came in and announced:

“Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, sir.”

I hung up the receiver and positively sprang to meet them. They were waiting for me in the room on the left of the lobby, the room in which I had received my learned visitors that morning. I suppose my expression must have betrayed me, for I saw, as I ran in, that both had sensed the fact that there was something wrong.

“What is it, Greville?” snapped Nayland Smith—“Barton? Rima?”

“Both safe,” I replied. “This is a delightful surprise! You are a whole day ahead of your schedule!”

“Flew from Marseilles,” said Sir Denis.

“But something is wrong with you,” Dr. Petrie declared, holding onto my hand and looking at me searchingly.

I nodded, smiling, although I was far from mirthful.

“Suppose you prescribe a drink, Doctor!” I suggested; “I feel badly shot away. Then I will try to explain the position.”

It occupied me longer than I could have supposed; involving as it did an account of what had happened since I had parted from my friend on the previous night, right up to my recent interview with the four experts.

Long before I had reached the end of it, Nayland Smith was pacing up and down the room in his restless fashion, having relighted his pipe three or four times. But at last, when that strange story was ended:

“Amazing,” he snapped, “but ghastly.” He turned to Petrie. “I told you that Fu-Manchu would be in England ahead of us.”

“You did,” the doctor agreed.

“He is here?” I exclaimed.

“Undoubtedly, Greville. He keeps a close watch upon his beautiful daughter! Your dream, as it seemed to you, was of course no dream at all. You were subjected last night, in the basement of the adjoining house, to the treatment referred to by Dr. Fu-Manchu; an injection in your arm. Petrie can probably discover the mark. Eh, Petrie?”

“Possibly,” the doctor replied guardedly. “But I can make an examination later, Smith. Please carry on.”

“Very well. Later, you were given that ‘simple antidote’ which he mentioned. You remember now those lost hours in Cairo. And some of your memories, Greville, are most illuminating. I can see Hewlett and myself searching the Sukkariya quarter, when actually the house for which we were looking was somewhere out at Gizeh!

“The drug used by Fu-Manchu (obviously that mentioned by McGovem) renders the subject peculiarly susceptible to suggestion. I suppose you appreciate that you had your instructions from Fah Lo Suee, who was awaiting your return in the adjoining empty house, to open the door for her at a specified time?”

“I
must
have opened it,” I returned blankly; “for, otherwise, how did she get in?”

“You certainly
did
open it; just as certainly as you once aided in the abduction of Rima from Shepheard’s in Cairo!

“She substituted the duplicates, which of course she had brought with her, for the real relics, and presumably handed the latter to an accomplice in waiting. The phase which followed, Greville—” he smiled that inimitable smile—“is one which I prefer to forget.”

“Let’s all agree to forget it,” said Petrie.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu is the greatest master of drugs this old world of ours has ever known. His daughter is an apt pupil. I believe she has a sincere affection for you, Greville—God knows why! But, since you did not dream, we have the word of Fu-Manchu that no harm will come to you. Frankly, I think Barton has got off lightly—”

“So do I!” Petrie interrupted again.

“After all, even in this stage of laxity, there are things which are not done. The word of a prison governor to a convict is as sacred as any man’s word to any other man; and according to my view, which may be peculiar, Barton doubled on Dr. Fu-Manchu. I believe that super-devil to be too great a character to waste a moment upon revenge. But in the circumstances, Greville, if you don’t mind, I should like to get through to Sir Lionel—and there’s someone there whom Petrie is dying to speak to…”

U
pon the events of the next few days I prefer not to dwell. At my first interview with Sir Lionel following the loss of the relics of the Masked Prophet, I believed for one hectic moment that he would attempt to strangle me with his own hands.

Perhaps it was the presence of Nayland Smith, alone, which prevented him from making an assault. I can see him now, pacing up and down the Museum Room, clenching and relaxing his big fists, and looking murder from underneath tufted eyebrows.

“No possible blame attaches to Greville,” said Sir Denis.

The chief growled inarticulately.

“And I would remind you that in somewhat similar circumstances, and not long ago, you personally assisted the same lady to open the Tomb of the Black Ape, in the Valley of the Kings, and to walk away with its contents. Rather a good parallel, I think?”

Sir Lionel stood still, staring hard at the speaker, then:

“Damn it!” he admitted—“you’re right!”

He transferred his stare to Petrie, and finally to me.

“Forget my somewhat harsh criticisms, Greville,” he said. “Unlike Smith, I often say more than I mean. But this cancellation of my address to the Royal Society is going to set poisoned tongues wagging.”

This was true enough. Not only had he been deprived of that hour of triumph in anticipation of which he had lived for many months past, but unpleasant whispers were going around the more scholarly clubs. Scotland Yard, working secretly, had put its vast machinery in motion in an endeavour to trace Fah Lo Suee.

They failed, as indeed we all knew they must fail. Servants of Dr. Fu-Manchu perused secret avenues of travel upon which the Customs and the police apparently had no check. There was theory held at Scotland Yard, and shared, I believe, by our old friend Weymouth, that the Chinese doctor worked in concert with what is known as the “underworld”.

This theory Nayland Smith declined to entertain.

“His organisation is infinitely superior to anything established among the criminal classes,” he declared. “He would not stoop to use such instruments.”

However, the chief’s resiliency of character was not the least amazing of his attributes; and within forty-eight hours he was deep in a book dealing with the Masked Prophet, of which he designed to publish a limited edition, illustrated by selected photographs of Rima’s.

“I don’t know why I allow you to issue your rotten accounts of my expeditions, Greville!” he shouted one day, when I entered the library and found him at work.

He was surrounded by masses of records and untidy heaps of manuscript notes, portfolios, and what-not. Two shorthand typists were in attendance.

“Their scientific value is nil, and they depict me personally as a cross between a large ape and a human half-wit…”

In the meantime he had relaxed no jot of his publicity campaign upon my wedding, to which an added piquancy was given by what happened at the Athenaeum Club.

Following a heated argument there with Sir Wallace Syms, the chief challenged him to a duel within hearing of fully twelve members!

This resulted in a crop of spicy paragraphs, practically all of which included a reference to the forthcoming ceremony at St. Margaret’s. My horror of this ceremony grew with almost every passing hour.

I had been pestered by interviewers and gossip writers for particulars of my family history, my interests in sport, and other purely personal matters, until I was reduced to a state of nerves as bad as anything I had known in the most evil times of the past.

A popular debutante two years before, Rima had spent one hectic season in London under the wing of Lady Ettrington, Sir Lionel’s younger sister and a chip of the old block whom I wholeheartedly detested.

Rima’s decision to abandon society and to join her eccentric uncle in the capacity of photographer had bought down upon her head the wrath of Lady Ettrington. Her later decision to marry me, instead of some society idler, had resulted in my name being written in large letters in her ladyship’s Black Book.

The apartment once known as the breakfast room at Bruton Street, but which the chief had had converted into a sort of overflow library, was rapidly filling up with wedding presents. Rima’s waking hours were distributed between hat shops, hairdressing establishments, and modistes.

Sometimes she would meet me for lunch, at other times she was too busy. Women, however, never seem to tire under this particular kind of stress. One such day would have exhausted me. Of presents to the bridegroom there were notably few. Such friends as I had were distributed all over the world.

Among all this fuss and bother and the twittering of Rima’s bridesmaids (only two of whom I had ever met before), I felt a good deal of an outsider. To me the whole thing was unspeakably idiotic—a waste of time and as utterly undignified an exhibition as only a spectacular wedding can offer.

The chief, however, was enjoying himself to the top of his bent, sparing no expense to make the entertainment a popular one. The number of people who had accepted invitations appalled me.