CHAPTER XIX
I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
"This is absolutely incredible!" he said. "There's only one door toyour chambers. We found it bolted from the inside."
"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead. "I bolted itmyself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."
"No human being could climb up or down to your windows. The plans ofthe aero-torpedo were inside a safe."
"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the WarOffice, and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in andbolted the door. I returned them to the safe and locked it. That itwas still locked you saw for yourselves, and no one else in the worldknows the combination."
"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth. "It's magic! How was itdone? What happened last night, sir? What did you mean when you rangus up?"
Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room. Heturned abruptly to the aviator.
"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely; "andbe as brief as you possibly can."
"I came in, as I said," explained West, "about eleven o'clock andhaving made some notes relating to an interview arranged for thismorning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."
"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.
"There was not," replied West. "I looked. I invariably do. Almostimmediately, I went to sleep."
"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.
Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
"You're cute, Doctor," he said. "I took two. It's a bad habit, but Ican't sleep without. They are specially made up for me by a firm inPhiladelphia."
"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams, andwhen those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--shall never know,I suppose. But out of the dreamless void a face came tome--closer--closer--and peered into mine.
"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows that one is dreamingand seeks to awaken--to escape. But a nightmare-like oppression heldme. So I must lie and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung overme, for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized scarrunning from the left ear to the corner of the mouth, and drawing upthe lip like the lip of a snarling cur. I could look into themalignant, jaundiced eyes; I could hear the dim whispering of thedistorted mouth--whispering that seemed to counsel something--somethingevil. That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive. Then thewicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede until it becameas a pin's head in the darkness far above me--almost like a glutinous,liquid thing.
"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreamingended and reality began. Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went madlast night, but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the bloodthrobbing through my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. Istarted laughing. The laughter issued from my lips with a shrillwhistling sound that pierced me with physical pain and seemed to wakethe echoes of the whole block. I thought myself I was going mad, and Itried to command my will--to break the power of the chloral--for Iconcluded that I had accidentally taken an overdose.
"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I stoodholding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a doll's cot, inthe middle of a room like Trafalgar Square! That window yonder wassuch a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just detect aChinaman--the owner of the evil yellow face--creeping through it. Hewas followed by another, who was enormously tall--so tall that, as theycame towards me (and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hourto cross this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinamanseemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face. Mr. Smith,whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw lastnight--or did I see it? God knows! The pointed chin, the great domeof a forehead, and the eyes--heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingledexpression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be bursting mybody; the room kept expanding and contracting. One time the ceilingwould be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamen--sometimes Ithought there were two of them, sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; thenext instant it shot up like the roof of a cathedral.
"'Can I be awake,' I whispered, 'or am I dreaming?'
"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lostin the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
"'You are dreaming--yes.' It was the Chinaman with the green eyes whowas addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to occupy animmeasurable time in the utterance. 'But at will I can render thesubjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singularwords, gentlemen.
"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes. Imade no attempt to move. They seemed to be draining me of somethingvital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power. The whole nightmareroom grew green, and I felt that I was being absorbed into itsgreenness.
"I can see what you think. And even in my delirium--if it wasdelirium--I thought the same. Now comes the climax of myexperience--my vision--I don't know what to call it. I SAW some WORDSissuing from my own mouth!"
Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly. Smith whisked round upon him.
"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least. Iknow to what the experience was due."
Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truthwas come to me, too.
"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply tell you Isaw it. Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--given something away."
"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
But West went on hoarsely:
"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes. It was'Bayard Taylor.'"
At that I interrupted West.
"I understand!" I cried. "I understand! Another name has justoccurred to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
"You have solved the mystery," said Smith. "It was natural Mr. Westshould have thought of the American traveler, Bayard Taylor, though.Moreau's book is purely scientific. He has probably never read it."
"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantasticthings through which I moved. It seemed to me that the room was emptyagain. I made for the hall, for the telephone. I could scarcely dragmy feet along. It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there. Iremember calling up Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
There was a short, tense interval.
In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think InspectorWeymouth considered West insane. Smith, his hands locked behind hisback, stared out of the window.
"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly. "Weymouth, when is the first trainto Tilbury?"
"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland Yard manpromptly.
"Too late!" rapped my friend. "Jump in a taxi and pick up two good mento leave for China at once! Then go and charter a special to Tilburyto leave in twenty-five minutes. Order another cab to wait outside forme."
Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative. TheInspector departed hastily.
I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what does yourexperience remind you? The errors of perception regarding time; theidea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion that the room alternatelyincreased and diminished in size; your fit of laughter, and therecollection of the name Bayard Taylor. Since e
vidently you arefamiliar with that author's work--'The Land of the Saracen,' is itnot?--these symptoms of the attack should be familiar, I think."
Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully. "Yes! . . . I know of what mybrain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience underhashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
Smith nodded grimly.
"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp. That is what you were druggedwith. I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea andintense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West, lookinginto his dulled eyes.
"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly, "and foryour chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish, or perhapsnot pure hashish. Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
Norris West started.
"Someone substituted--" he began.
"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was hereyesterday. Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
West hesitated. "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said, seeminglyspeaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
"A lady?" jerked Smith. "I suggest that it was a lady."
West nodded.
"You're quite right," he admitted. "I don't know how you arrived atthe conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--aforeign lady."
"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--knowingthis to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from amysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross. She saidhe was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait herewhilst I went and sent him about his business."
He laughed shortly.
"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman. You spoke just nowof someone called Fu-Manchu. Is that the crook I'm indebted to for theloss of my plans? I've had attempts made by agents of two Europeangovernments, but a Chinaman is a novelty."
"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of hisage. You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"
"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel with portions ofMoreau's book on 'Hashish Hallucinations.' Only Fu-Manchu, I think,would have thought of employing Indian hemp. I doubt, though, if itwas pure Cannabis indica. At any rate, it acted as an opiate--"
"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enableFu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject for theDoctor's influence. It is difficult in this case to separatehallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu musthave exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain. We haveevidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
"God knows we have!" said West. "But who is this Fu-Manchu, andhow--how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
Smith pulled out his watch. "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot delayto explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans. Come along,Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour. There is just a barechance."