The Mask of Fu-Manchu (19 page)

“Who is it?” he asked impatiently.

“Enderby, Sir Denis. You met me at headquarters today.”

“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 tonight. 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 Superintendent 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 tonight 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.”

“He’s spotted the cordon,” Sir Lionel growled, “and he’s called his men off.”

“We have stuck strictly to the terms of the understanding. He must have anticipated that we should do our utmost to arrest his agents immediately the ten-minute truce ended.”

“Then he finds he can’t cope with the situation. He’s backed out—”

“My God!” I groaned, “where’s Rima? She can’t possibly be here!”

“Wait and see!” snapped Nayland Smith.

His words were spoken so savagely that I recognized the tension under which he was labouring and regretted my emotional outburst.

“I’m sorry, Sir Denis,” I said. “It’s vital to me, and—”

“It’s equally vital to
me
! I’m not risking Rima’s life for any pet theory, Greville. I’m doing my damnest to make sure she’s returned safely.”

His words made me rather ashamed of myself.

“I know,” I replied. “I’m terribly worked up.”

“Barton,” came a tense order, “get in touch with Hewlett, and stand by, here. You too, Petrie.”

“I hate you for this,” said the chief violently. “Hate on! You are too damned impetuous for the job before us…”

Together, he and I set out.

I glanced back once, and Sir Lionel and Dr. Petrie presented a spectacle which might have been funny had my sense of humour been properly alert. Dimly visible, for the night was velvety dark, they stood looking after us like schoolboys left outside a circus...

And presently I found myself alone with Nayland Smith at the foot of that vast, mysterious building which has defied the researches of Egyptologists and exercised the imaginations of millions who have never seen it. Personally, I had lived down that sense of mystery which claims any man of average intelligence when first he confronts this architectural miracle.

Sir Lionel had carried out an inquiry here in 1930, just prior to our excavations on the site of Nineveh. I knew the Great Pyramid inside out, remembering the job more vividly because Rima had been absent in England during the time, the chief having given her leave of absence which he refused to grant to me.

We had reached the steps which led to the opening; and:

“You’re in charge now,” said Nayland Smith. “Lead, and I’ll follow. Give me the case.”

I
n that little bay in the masonry which communicates with the entrance we stood and, turning, looked back.

Sixty men surrounded us; but not one of them was in sight. At some point there in the darkness, Sir Lionel and Dr. Petrie were probably watching. But in the absence of moonlight we must have been very shadowy figures, if visible at all. I looked down upon the mounds and hollows of the desert, and I could discern away to the left those streets of tombs whose excavation had added so little to our knowledge. There were two or three lighted windows in Mena House...

“Go ahead, Greville,” said Nayland Smith. “From this point onward I am absolutely in your hands.”

I turned, switching on the flash lamp which I carried, and began to walk down that narrow passage, blocked at its lower end, which leads to the only known entrance to the interior chambers. Familiar enough it was, because of the weeks I had spent there taking complicated measurements under Sir Lionel’s direction— measurements which had led to no definite results.

We came to the end where the old and new passages meet. Our footsteps in the silence of that densely enclosed place aroused most eerie echoes; and in the flattened V where the ascent begins:

“Stand still, Greville,” Sir Denis directed.

I obeyed. My light already was shining up the slope ahead. In silence we stood, for fully half a minute.

“What,” I asked, are you listening for?”

“For anything,” he replied in a low voice. “If I had not spoken to Dr. Fu-Manchu in person on the telephone today, Greville, I should be prepared to swear that you and I were alone in this place tonight.”

“I have no reason to suppose otherwise,” I replied. “The pickets have seen no one enter. What have we to hope for?”

“Nothing is impossible—particularly to Dr. Fu-Manchu. He accepted my terms and the meeting place. In short he declared himself. And, though contrary to normal evidence, I shall be greatly surprised if when we reach the King’s Chamber, we do not find his representatives there with Rima.”

I could not trust myself to reply, but led on, up the long, sloping, narrow way which communicates with the Great Hall, that inexplicable, mighty corridor leading to the cramped portals of the so-called King’s Chamber. At the mouth of that opening beyond which the Queen’s Chamber lies, Nayland Smith, following, grasped my arm and brought me to a halt.

“Wait,” he said; “listen again.”

I stood still. Some bats, disturbed by our lights, circled above us. My impatience was indescribable. I imagined Rima, a captive, being dragged along these gloomy corridors. I could not conceive it; I did not believe she was in the place.

But until I had reached that dead end which is the King’s Chamber, my doubts could not be resolved; and this delay imposed by Nayland Smith was all but intolerable, the more so since I could not fathom its purpose.

I have never known a silence so complete as that which reigns inside the Great Pyramid. No cavern of nature has ever known it, for subterraneously there is always the trickle of water, some evidence of nature at work. Here, in this vast monument, no such sounds intrude.

And so, as we stood there listening, save for the whirl of bat wings, we stood in a silence so complete that I could hear myself breathing. When Nayland Smith spoke, although he spoke in a whisper, his voice broke that utter stillness like the blow of a hammer.

“Listen! Listen, Greville! Do you hear it?”

V
ery dimly it came to my ears. From whence it proceeded I could not even imagine... In those surroundings, at that hour, it possessed a quality of weirdness which was chilling:

The dim note of a gong!

Its effect was indescribably uncanny; its purpose incomprehensible. In the harsh light of the flash lamps I saw Nayland Smith’s features set grimly.

“For heaven’s sake, what’s that?” I whispered.

“A signal,” he replied in a low voice, “to advise
someone
we are here. God knows how any of them got in, but you see, Greville, I was right. We are not alone!”

“There’s something horrible about it,” I said uneasily.

I glanced upward into the darkness we must explore.

“There is,” Nayland Smith agreed quietly. “But it has a good as well as a bad aspect. The good that it seems to imply ignorance of our cordon; the bad, that it proves certain persons to have entered the Pyramid tonight unseen by the pickets.”

Silence, that dead silence which is characteristic of the place, had fallen about us again like a cloak. Honestly, I believe it was only the thought of Rima which sustained me. It was at this moment that the foolhardiness of our project presented itself starkly to my mind.

“Aren’t you walking into a trap, Sir Denis?” I said. “
I
don’t count from the point of view of Dr. Fu-Manchu, but—?”

“But,” he took me up, “as an expert, can you tell me how Dr. Fu-Manchu’s agents, having disposed of me here—which admittedly might be convenient—could hope to profit? At the moment, six men are watching the entrance. A further sixty are available if anything in the nature of an Arab raid should be attempted.”

“I agree. But the
gong
! If they got in unseen, surely they can get out?”

He stared at me; his eyes were steely in that cold light.

“I had hoped you might have overlooked this fact,” he said, “because it reduces us to our only real safeguard: the word of Fu-Manchu! In all the years that I have fought for his destruction, Greville, I have never known him to break it. We shall go unmolested for ten minutes after Rima is restored to us! Then—unleash the dogs of war! Carry on.”

“Ten minutes after Rima is returned to us!”… Did the light of his faith in the word of Fu-Manchu truly burn so bright?

I led on and upward—and presently we found ourselves in that awe-inspiring black corridor which communicates with the short passage leading to the room called the King’s Chamber, but which (as Sir Lionel has always maintained) in its very form destroys at a blow the accepted theory, buttressed by famous names, that this majestic pile was raised as the tomb of Khufu.

Automatically, I directed the light of my lamp farther upward. The vast, mysterious causeway was empty, as far as the feeble rays could penetrate.