Re-enter Fu-Manchu (5 page)

And presently he found it. The hall porter had advised him, if he wished to make any purchases, to consult a certain Achmed es-Salah, whose shop anyone would point out. (“He sells very good cigarettes.”) It proved to resemble nothing so much as an artificial cave. The venerable Achmed sat in the entrance smoking, and at sight of the card that Brian had brought along he waved him to a chair and offered coffee and cigarettes.

Brian had a low opinion of the sirupy Arab coffee, but he found the Egyptian cigarettes, with their unfamiliar aroma, a pleasant change from the American variety. He asked if he could buy some.

Achmed reached behind him, opened a drawer, and produced a flat tin box containing a hundred. Smilingly he began to explain that only from him could these cigarettes be obtained. But his customer’s attention was wandering. Farther back in the shadows of the shop a female figure was vaguely visible to Brian—a girl who held a veil around the lower part of her face. She appeared to be watching him. He glanced away again.

“I’ll take the cigarettes,” he told Achmed. “If I want more I’ll write and send dollars, as you suggest.”

“I supply them to many American gentlemen,” Achmed declared, accepting the ten dollars that he claimed to be their price.

Brian concluded that many American gentlemen who visited Cairo must be wealthy American gentlemen. Achmed, indicating those shops that were in sight, told him where amber goods, silk robes, authentic antique pieces might be bought cheaply. Brian thanked him and stood up to go.

Glancing once more into the shadows, he saw that the girl’s remarkable eyes—they were amber eyes—seemed to be fixed upon him…

He looked in briefly at some of the shops Achmed had recommended, but bought nothing. Coming out of the last one, which stocked scimitars, Saracen daggers, and other queer Oriental weapons, he found himself staring into a shady alley nearly opposite. He had caught a glimpse of lustrous amber eyes!

The girl from Achmed’s had followed him. Why? Was she a prostitute, or had she some other purpose? Perhaps she was a member of Achmed’s household, instructed to find out if he did any business upon which Achmed could claim a commission.

He strode off at a pace that gave many of the leisurely Egyptians a jolt and called down on him dreadful curses, which, fortunately, he didn’t understand. He recovered his good humor in a street that seemed to lead to a city gate, turned right into another, now hopelessly lost, and saw the minaret of a mosque right ahead. He glanced back quickly. There was no sign of the Arab girl.

But from behind came shouts and a sound of many running feet. The sound drew nearer. Brian wondered if he had started a riot. The word
“Inglizi”
sometimes rose above the roar of voices.
He
might be the person referred to!

He put on a spurt, passed the mosque, and, looking back, saw the head of what was evidently an excited mob pouring around the corner.

Just as he was clear of the mosque, out from its courtyard spurted a party of Egyptian police. He noticed an open doorway almost beside him, darted in, and found it led to nowhere but a rickety staircase. He heard wild shouting and the sounds of fighting outside, then a shot.

Brian started upstairs, as the tumult suggested that the police were being pushed back. On the first dark landing he nearly knocked over a water jar that stood near the head of the stairs. But the house seemed to be inhabited only by a variety of stenches. He mounted higher. The battle now was raging immediately outside the door below. Went up another flight, and found himself on the flat roof. He saw all sorts of pans, jars, and indescribable litter lying about, but nobody was up there. Brian crouched and looked over the low parapet down into the street.

The rioters had been rounded up by the armed police. They were all young, wild-eyed, typical tinder for a rabble-rouser. They were falling back, three of them carrying a wounded comrade. Brian could see a second group of police extended in line before the mosque. The rioters were trapped.

He sighed with relief. Slightly raising his head, he looked across the street to find out if he had been observed from there. He saw something that staggered him.

A heavy iron gate in a high wall that he remembered having noticed as he ran into the doorway below opened on the tree-shaded courtyard of a fine old Arab house. Mushrabîyeh windows overhung the courtyard on one side, but directly facing Brian were two large barred windows. Evidently there must be another that he couldn’t see, for the room was well lighted. And in this room, pacing restlessly about, he saw a tall, lean man who smoked a pipe, and who seemed, to be talking angrily to someone else who wasn’t visible from Brian’s viewpoint.

The shouts below had merged into sullen murmurs as the young rowdies were taken in charge by the police and marched off. Brian scarcely noticed them now. He was watching. And at last he was sure.

The man in the barred room was Nayland Smith.

* * *

Dr. Fu Manchu sat on a divan in the saloon of the old house near the Mosque of El Ashraf. On an ivory and mother-of-pearl coffee table a long-stemmed pipe with a tiny jade bowl lay beside the other equipment of an opium smoker. Before him a girl was kneeling on a rug, her long, lustrous amber eyes raised anxiously to the wonderful but evil face. She wore native dress, but no longer concealed her features with a veil.

“It was the disturbance made by the students from El Azhar, Master. I lost sight of him and could not get through.”

“I heard the young fools. Shouting phrases coined by aliens who are planning their destruction. Such half-molded brains are fertile soil for the seeds of violence. All the same, you have failed me. The point at which he disappeared is one dangerously near us.”

“Master, I—”

“You shall have one more opportunity. Change into European dress. Go to Brian Merrick’s hotel and make his acquaintance. He will be lonely. Attach yourself to him.”

He said no more, but watched her go out, then stood up slowly and walked along the saloon to a door, opened it, and went into another lofty room furnished as a studio.

On a wooden pedestal was a life-sized head of a man modeled in clay. A number of sketches and photographs of the same subject were pinned to the walls. It would appear that the sculptor had worked from these, and not from the living model. It was a fine, virile portrait of a masterful character.

Dr. Fu Manchu appeared to be particularly interested in the shape of the molded nose. He surveyed it from every side, the all-seeing gaze of green eyes absorbed in the finer lines of the nostrils, the straight bridge. He compared the clay model with the photographs, and at last seemed to be satisfied.

He passed on. He went down a short stair and entered a fully equipped surgery filled with a nauseating odor of anaesthetics. A patient lay on an operating table, two surgeons bending over him. They sprang upright as Fu Manchu appeared. He ignored them, stooped, studied the face of the man who lay there, and then turned blazing eyes upon the surgeons, one of whom was Matsukata.

“Who operated?” he demanded.

The taller surgeon turned a white, nervous face to Dr. Fu Manchu.

“I operated, Master.” He spoke in French.

“I thought better of Paris surgery,” Fu Manchu told him, speaking the same language sibilantly. “There will be a scar!”

“I assure you—”

‘There will be a scar—and there is no time to rectify the error. The consequences of this may be grave for me—and also for you…”

T
he moment the narrow street was cleared of police and rioters, Brian crept downstairs unobserved, looked cautiously left and right, and then started out to try to retrace his route. At the courtyard gate of the old house in which he had seen Nayland Smith he hesitated for a moment, then hurried on. He considered it a stroke of luck that the inhabitants of the ramshackle tenement in which he had sheltered were apparently otherwise engaged.

More by luck than by good navigation he presently found himself once more in the street leading to the Khan Khalil. He looked around for a stray cab, for he was impatient to solve the mystery of Sir Denis’ presence in Cairo when Mr. Ahmed said he had not yet arrived, and in a house in the heart of the native quarter. What in the name of sanity did it mean?

He could not very well be wrong about the identity of the man in the room with barred windows. Nayland Smith’s personality was unmistakable, although Brian hadn’t seen him for two years. He had recognized some of his curious mannerisms: the way he held his briar pipe clenched between his teeth; a trick of pulling at the lobe of his ear as he talked.

Getting back at last, hot, tired, and dusty, he paused in the lobby of the hotel to talk to the all-knowing hall porter. He had consulted him on many matters and tipped him liberally. He described his unpleasant experience with the rioters.

The uniformed Egyptian smiled. “You should take a good dragoman with you, sir. He would see to it that you avoided such things!”

“Very likely,” Brian agreed. “Maybe I’m too independent. But perhaps you can tell me something. I got lost, and wandered on into another quarter, ‘way beyond the Khân Khalîl. It wasn’t far from a city gate, and there was mosque.”

“There are many.”

“It was near a street where they sold cotton goods and pottery and that sort of thing.”

“Ah, that would be the Ghurîyeh.”

“Well, in a narrow street leading into what you call the Ghurîyeh there’s a fine old mansion with a high wall around it. Most unlikely spot for such a house. There’s a courtyard, and—”

“I know what you have seen, sir. It is the house of the Sherîf Mohammed Ibn el-Ashraf.”

“And who is he?”

“A very holy man, sir. A descendant of the Prophet, and the greatest physician in Cairo. Or he was; he is retired from practice now.”

Brian was more mystified than ever. What possible connection could there be between Sir Denis and the Sherîf Mohammed?

He called Mr. Ahmad’s number, but failed to get a reply.

What to do next was the problem. But the more he thought about it, the more completely it baffled him.

He went into the cocktail bar fairly early in the evening, and saw that he had it to himself. He had made several further attempts to call Mr. Ahmad, but could get no reply. He ordered Scotch on the rocks and sat there sipping his drink and feeling very puzzled and very lonely.

It was a perfect night, a half-moon sailing in a jeweled sky, and he would have liked to go somewhere, do something; get away from himself.

He smoked two cigarettes and then ordered another drink. He had made up his mind to take it out onto the terrace. When the bartender served it, Brian picked up the glass, slipped down from the high stool, and turned to go.

How it happened he could never quite make out. He had heard no sound, had no idea anybody was there. But a girl wearing a strapless gown that displayed her creamy arms and shoulders had apparently been standing just behind him. She raised her hand too late. He had spilled most of the whisky and some of the ice all over her.

She stifled a squeal. Reproachful eyes were raised to his. Brian grew hot all over. He called to the bartender: “Quick! A napkin or something!”

A napkin was produced. The girl took it from his hand, looking aside, and began to dab at her dress and her bare shoulders.

“What can I say?” he fumbled. “Of course I shall replace your dress, which I’m afraid is ruined. But there’s no excuse for my clumsiness.”

She glanced at him. “Oh, I doubt that the dress is ruined.” She had a quaint, fascinating accent. “And truly I think I was to blame. I was looking for someone, and how could you know I was right behind you?”

“I should have looked. It was entirely my fault. You must let me drive you to wherever you live, so you can change.” He detected the dawning of a smile stealing across her face. “I suppose you must have a dinner date, but please allow me to see you tomorrow and fix everything up for a new dress.”

“I live in this hotel. I arrived only today. I can go to my room and change my dress. It will clean quite well. But it is very sweet of you to offer to buy another.”

“That isn’t an offer. It’s a promise!”

She really smiled now; and Brian realized with a sort of shock that she was a very pretty girl indeed.

“Perhaps I won’t hold you to it.” She spoke softly. “It would not be fair.”

“We’ll leave that for the moment. Maybe, when you’re changed, you’ll find time to have a cocktail with me before you go?”’

“Thank you. I am going nowhere. I meant to dine here in the hotel.”

“Then you’ll dine with me?”

“Yes—if you really want it so.”

When she had gone, Brian had his glass refilled.

“Do you know that lady’s name?” he asked the barman.

“No, sir. I never see her before.” He displayed perfect white teeth. “She is a beautiful young lady.”

Brian sipped his whisky, lighted another cigarette. He was trying to figure out why her wonderful eyes seemed to awaken a memory.

She returned much sooner than he had expected. She wore now a green dress that sheathed her lithe figure to the hips like a second skin.