CHAPTER XXXI. "MY SHADOW LIES UPON YOU"
I suppose I did not awake very readily. Following the nervous vigilanceof the past six months, my tired nerves, in the enjoyment of thisrelaxation, were rapidly recuperating. I no longer feared to awake tofind a knife at my throat, no longer dreaded the darkness as a foe.
So that the voice may have been calling (indeed, had been calling) forsome time, and of this I had been hazily conscious before finally Iawoke. Then, ere the new sense of security came to reassure me, the oldsense of impending harm set my heart leaping nervously. There is alwaysa certain physical panic attendant upon such awakening in the stillof night, especially in novel surroundings. Now, I sat up abruptly,clutching at the rail of my berth and listening.
There was a soft thudding on my cabin door, and a voice, low and urgent,was crying my name.
Through the open porthole the moonlight streamed into my room, and savefor a remote and soothing throb, inseparable from the progress of agreat steamship, nothing else disturbed the stillness; I might havefloated lonely upon the bosom of the Mediterranean. But there was thedrumming on the door again, and the urgent appeal:
"Dr. Petrie! Dr. Petrie!"
I threw off the bedclothes and stepped on to the floor of the cabin,fumbling hastily for my slippers. A fear that something was amiss, thatsome aftermath, some wraith of the dread Chinaman, was yet to come todisturb our premature peace, began to haunt me. I threw open the door.
Upon the gleaming deck, blackly outlined against a wondrous sky, stooda man who wore a blue greatcoat over his pyjamas, and whose unstockingedfeet were thrust into red slippers. It was Platts, the Marconi operator.
"I'm awfully sorry to disturb you, Dr. Petrie," he said, "and I was evenless anxious to arouse your neighbor; but somebody seems to be trying toget a message, presumably urgent, through to you."
"To me!" I cried.
"I cannot make it out," admitted Platts, running his fingers throughdisheveled hair, "but I thought it better to arouse you. Will you comeup?"
I turned without a word, slipped into my dressing-gown, and with Plattspassed aft along the deserted deck. The sea was as calm as a greatlake. Ahead, on the port bow, an angry flambeau burned redly beneath thepeaceful vault of the heavens. Platts nodded absently in the directionof the weird flames.
"Stromboli," he said; "we shall be nearly through the Straits bybreakfast-time."
We mounted the narrow stair to the Marconi deck. At the table satPlatts' assistant with the Marconi attachment upon his head--anapparatus which always set me thinking of the electric chair.
"Have you got it?" demanded my companion as we entered the room.
"It's still coming through," replied the other without moving, "but inthe same jerky fashion. Every time I get it, it seems to have gone backto the beginning--just Dr. Petrie--Dr. Petrie."
He began to listen again for the elusive message. I turned to Platts.
"Where is it being sent from?" I asked.
Platts shook his head.
"That's the mystery," he declared. "Look!"--and he pointed to the table;"according to the Marconi chart, there's a Messagerie boat due westbetween us and Marseilles, and the homeward-bound P. & O. which wepassed this morning must be getting on that way also, by now. The Isisis somewhere ahead, but I've spoken to all these, and the message comesfrom none of them."
"Then it may come from Messina."
"It doesn't come from Messina," replied the man at the table, beginningto write rapidly.
Platts stepped forward and bent over the message which the other waswriting.
"Here it is!" he cried, excitedly; "we're getting it."
Stepping in turn to the table, I leaned over between the two and readthese words as the operator wrote them down:
Dr. Petrie--my shadow...
I drew a quick breath and gripped Platts' shoulder harshly. Hisassistant began fingering the instrument with irritation.
"Lost it again!" he muttered.
"This message," I began...
But again the pencil was traveling over the paper:--lies upon youall... end of message.
The operator stood up and unclasped the receivers from his ears. There,high above the sleeping ship's company, with the carpet of the blueMediterranean stretched indefinitely about us, we three stood looking atone another. By virtue of a miracle of modern science, some one, dividedfrom me by mile upon mile of boundless ocean, had spoken--and had beenheard.
"Is there no means of learning," I said, "from whence this messageemanated?"
Platts shook his head, perplexedly.
"They gave no code word," he said. "God knows who they were. It's astrange business and a strange message. Have you any sort of idea, Dr.Petrie, respecting the identity of the sender?"
I stared him hard in the face; an idea had mechanically entered my mind,but one of which I did not choose to speak, since it was opposed tohuman possibility.
But, had I not seen with my own eyes the bloody streak across hisforehead as the shot fired by Karamaneh entered his high skull, had Inot known, so certainly as it is given to man to know, that the giantintellect was no more, the mighty will impotent, I should have replied:
"The message is from Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
My reflections were rudely terminated and my sinister thoughts given newstimulus, by a loud though muffled cry which reached me from somewherein the ship, below. Both my companions started as violently as I,whereby I knew that the mystery of the wireless message had not beenwithout its effect upon their minds also. But whereas they paused indoubt, I leaped from the room and almost threw myself down the ladder.
It was Karamaneh who had uttered that cry of fear and horror!
Although I could perceive no connection betwixt the strange message andthe cry in the night, intuitively I linked them, intuitively I knew thatmy fears had been well-grounded; that the shadow of Fu-Manchu still layupon us.
Karamaneh occupied a large stateroom aft on the main deck; so that I hadto descend from the upper deck on which my own room was situated to thepromenade deck, again to the main deck and thence proceed nearly thewhole length of the alleyway.
Karamaneh and her brother, Aziz, who occupied a neighboring room, metme, near the library. Karamaneh's eyes were wide with fear; her peerlesscoloring had fled, and she was white to the lips. Aziz, who worea dressing-gown thrown hastily over his night attire, had his armprotectively about the girl's shoulders.
"The mummy!" she whispered tremulously--"the mummy!"
There came a sound of opening doors, and several passengers, whomKaramaneh cries had alarmed, appeared in various stages of undress. Astewardess came running from the far end of the alleyway, and I foundtime to wonder at my own speed; for, starting from the distant Marconideck, yet I had been the first to arrive upon the scene.
Stacey, the ship's doctor, was quartered at no great distance fromthe spot, and he now joined the group. Anticipating the question whichtrembled upon the lips of several of those about me:
"Come to Dr. Stacey's room," I said, taking Karamaneh arm; "we willgive you something to enable you to sleep." I turned to the group. "Mypatient has had severe nerve trouble," I explained, "and has developedsomnambulistic tendencies."
I declined the stewardess' offer of assistance, with a slight shake ofthe head, and shortly the four of us entered the doctor's cabin, onthe deck above. Stacey carefully closed the door. He was an oldfellow student of mine, and already he knew much of the history of thebeautiful Eastern girl and her brother Aziz.
"I fear there's mischief afoot, Petrie," he said.
"Thanks to your presence of mind, the ship's gossips need know nothingof it."
I glanced at Karamaneh who, since the moment of my arrival had neveronce removed her gaze from me; she remained in that state of passivefear in which I had found her, the lovely face pallid; and she stared atme fixedly in a childish, expressionless way which made me fear that theshock to which she had been subjected, whatever its nature, had causeda relapse into that
strange condition of forgetfulness from which aprevious shock had aroused her. I could see that Stacey shared my view,for:
"Something has frightened you," he said gently, seating himself on thearm of Karamaneh's chair and patting her hand as if to reassure her."Tell us all about it."
For the first time since our meeting that night, the girl turned hereyes from me and glanced up at Stacey, a sudden warm blush stealing overher face and throat and as quickly departing, to leave her even morepale than before. She grasped Stacey's hand in both her own--and lookedagain at me.
"Send for Mr. Nayland Smith without delay!" she said, and her sweetvoice was slightly tremulous. "He must be put on his guard!"
I started up.
"Why?" I said. "For God's sake tell us what has happened!"
Aziz who evidently was as anxious as myself for information, and who nowknelt at his sister's feet looking at her with that strange love, whichwas almost adoration, in his eyes, glanced back at me and nodded hishead rapidly.
"Something"--Karamaneh paused, shuddering violently--"some dreadfulthing, like a mummy escaped from its tomb, came into my room to-nightthrough the porthole..."
"Through the porthole?" echoed Stacey, amazedly.
"Yes, yes, through the porthole! A creature tall and very, very thin. Hewore wrappings--yellow wrappings--swathed about his head, so that onlyhis eyes, his evil gleaming eyes, were visible.... From waist to kneeshe was covered, also, but his body, his feet, and his legs were bare..."
"Was he--?" I began...
"He was a brown man, yes,"--Karamaneh divining my question, nodded, andthe shimmering cloud of her wonderful hair, hastily confined, burstfree and rippled about her shoulders. "A gaunt, fleshless brown man, whobent, and writhed bony fingers--so!"
"A thug!" I cried.
"He--it--the mummy thing--would have strangled me if I had slept, for hecrouched over the berth--seeking--seeking..."
I clenched my teeth convulsively.
"But I was sitting up--"
"With the light on?" interrupted Stacey in surprise.
"No," added Karamaneh; "the light was out." She turned her eyes towardme, as the wonderful blush overspread her face once more. "I was sittingthinking. It all happened within a few seconds, and quite silently. Asthe mummy crouched over the berth, I unlocked the door and leaped outinto the passage. I think I screamed; I did not mean to. Oh, Dr.Stacey, there is not a moment to spare! Mr. Nayland Smith must be warnedimmediately. Some horrible servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu is on the ship!"