CHAPTER XXXII. THE TRAGEDY
Nayland Smith leaned against the edge of the dressing-table, attired inpyjamas. The little stateroom was hazy with smoke, and my friend grippedthe charred briar between his teeth and watched the blue-gray cloudsarising from the bowl, in an abstracted way. I knew that he was thinkinghard, and from the fact that he had exhibited no surprise when I hadrelated to him the particular's of the attack upon Karamaneh I judgedthat he had half anticipated something of the kind. Suddenly he stoodup, staring at me fixedly.
"Your tact has saved the situation, Petrie," he snapped. "It failed youmomentarily, though, when you proposed to me just now that we shouldmuster the lascars for inspection. Our game is to pretend that we knownothing--that we believe Karamaneh to have had a bad dream."
"But, Smith," I began--
"It would be useless, Petrie," he interrupted me. "You cannot supposethat I overlooked the possibility of some creature of the doctor's beingamong the lascars. I can assure you that not one of them answers to thedescription of the midnight assailant. From the girl's account we haveto look (discarding the idea of a revivified mummy) for a man of unusualheight--and there's no lascar of unusual height on board; and from thevisible evidence, that he entered the stateroom through the porthole, wehave to look for a man more than normally thin. In a word, the servantof Dr. Fu-Manchu who attempted the life of Karamaneh is either in hidingon the ship, or, if visible, is disguised."
With his usual clarity of vision, Nayland Smith had visualized the factsof the case; I passed in mental survey each one of the passengers, andthose of the crew whose appearances were familiar to me, with the resultthat I had to admit the justice of my friend's conclusions. Smith beganto pace the narrow strip of carpet between the dressing-table and thedoor. Suddenly he began again. "From our knowledge of Fu-Manchu and ofthe group surrounding him (and, don't forget, surviving him)--we mayfurther assume that the wireless message was no gratuitous piece ofmelodrama, but that it was directed to a definite end. Let us endeavorto link up the chain a little. You occupy an upper deck berth; so doI. Experience of the Chinaman has formed a habit in both of us; that ofsleeping with closed windows. Your port was fastened and so was my own.Karamaneh is quartered on the main deck, and her brother's stateroomopens into the same alleyway. Since the ship is in the Straits ofMessina, and the glass set fair, the stewards have not closed theportholes nightly at present. We know that that of Karamaneh's stateroomwas open. Therefore, in any attempt upon our quartet, Karamaneh wouldautomatically be selected for the victim, since failing you or myselfshe may be regarded as being the most obnoxious to Dr. Fu-Manchu."
I nodded comprehendingly. Smith's capacity for throwing the white lightof reason into the darkest places often amazed me.
"You may have noticed," he continued, "that Karamaneh's room is directlybelow your own. In the event of any outcry, you would be sooner upon thescene than I should, for instance, because I sleep on the oppositeside of the ship. This circumstance I take to be the explanation of thewireless message, which, because of its hesitancy (a piece of ingenuityvery characteristic of the group), led to your being awakened andinvited up to the Marconi deck; in short, it gave the would-be assassina better chance of escaping before your arrival."
I watched my friend in growing wonder. The strange events, seeminglyhaving no link, took their places in the drama, and became well-orderedepisodes in a plot that only a criminal genius could have devised. AsI studied the keen, bronzed face, I realized to the full the stupendousmental power of Dr. Fu-Manchu, measuring it by the criterion of NaylandSmith's. For the cunning Chinaman, in a sense, had foiled this brilliantman before me, whereby, if by nought else, I might know him a master ofhis evil art.
"I regard the episode," continued Smith, "as a posthumous attempt ofthe doctor's; a legacy of hate which may prove more disastrous than anyattempt made upon us by Fu-Manchu in life. Some fiendish member of themurder group is on board the ship. We must, as always, meet guile withguile. There must be no appeal to the captain, no public examination ofpassengers and crew. One attempt has failed; I do not doubt thatothers will be made. At present, you will enact the role ofphysician-in-attendance upon Karamaneh, and will put it about for whomit may interest that a slight return of her nervous trouble is causingher to pass uneasy nights. I can safely leave this part of the case toyou, I think?"
I nodded rapidly.
"I haven't troubled to make inquiries," added Smith, "but I think itprobable that the regulation respecting closed ports will come intooperation immediately we have passed the Straits, or at any rateimmediately there is any likelihood of bad weather."
"You mean--"
"I mean that no alteration should be made in our habits. A secondattempt along similar lines is to be apprehended--to-night. After thatwe may begin to look out for a new danger."
"I pray we may avoid it," I said fervently.
As I entered the saloon for breakfast in the morning, I was subjected tosolicitous inquiries from Mrs. Prior, the gossip of the ship. Her roomadjoined Karamaneh's and she had been one of the passengers aroused bythe girl's cries in the night. Strictly adhering to my role, I explainedthat my patient was threatened with a second nervous breakdown, and wassubject to vivid and disturbing dreams. One or two other inquiries I metin the same way, ere escaping to the corner table reserved to us.
That iron-bound code of conduct which rules the Anglo-Indian, in thefirst days of the voyage had threatened to ostracize Karamaneh and Aziz,by reason of the Eastern blood to which their brilliant but peculiartype of beauty bore witness. Smith's attitude, however--and, in aBurmese commissioner, it constituted something of a law--had done muchto break down the barriers; the extraordinary beauty of the girl haddone the rest. So that now, far from finding themselves shunned, thesociety of Karamaneh and her romantic-looking brother was universallycourted. The last inquiry that morning, respecting my interestingpatient, came from the bishop of Damascus, a benevolent old gentlemanwhose ancestry was not wholly innocent of Oriental strains, and who satat a table immediately behind me. As I settled down to my porridge, heturned his chair slightly and bent to my ear.
"Mrs. Prior tells me that your charming friend was disturbed lastnight," he whispered. "She seems rather pale this morning; I sincerelytrust that she is suffering no ill-effect."
I swung around, with a smile. Owing to my carelessness, there was aslight collision, and the poor bishop, who had been invalided to Englandafter typhoid, in order to undergo special treatment, suppressed anexclamation of pain, although his fine dark eyes gleamed kindly upon methrough the pebbles of his gold-rimmed pince-nez.
Indeed, despite his Eastern blood, he might have posed for a Sadlerpicture, his small and refined features seeming out of place above thebulky body.
"Can you forgive my clumsiness," I began--
But the bishop raised his small, slim fingered hand of old ivory hue,deprecatingly.
His system was supercharged with typhoid bacilli, and, as sometimesoccurs, the superfluous "bugs" had sought exit. He could only walk withthe aid of two stout sticks, and bent very much at that. His left leghad been surgically scraped to the bone, and I appreciated the exquisitetorture to which my awkwardness had subjected him. But he wouldentertain no apologies, pressing his inquiry respecting Karamaneh in thekindly manner which had made him so deservedly popular on board.
"Many thanks for your solicitude," I said; "I have promised her soundrepose to-night, and since my professional reputation is at stake, Ishall see that she secures it."
In short, we were in pleasant company, and the day passed happily enoughand without notable event. Smith spent some considerable time with thechief officer, wandering about unfrequented parts of the ship. I learnedlater that he had explored the lascars' quarters, the forecastle, theengine-room, and had even descended to the stokehold; but this was doneso unostentatiously that it occasioned no comment.
With the approach of evening, in place of that physical contentmentwhich usually heralds the dinner-hour
, at sea, I experienced a fit ofthe seemingly causeless apprehension which too often in the past hadharbingered the coming of grim events; which I had learnt to associatewith the nearing presence of one of Fu-Manchu's death-agents. In view ofthe facts, as I afterwards knew them to be, I cannot account for this.
Yet, in an unexpected manner, my forebodings were realized. That night Iwas destined to meet a sorrow surpassing any which my troubled life hadknown. Even now I experience great difficulty in relating the matterswhich befell, in speaking of the sense of irrevocable loss which came tome. Briefly, then, at about ten minutes before the dining hour, whilstall the passengers, myself included, were below, dressing, a faint cryarose from somewhere aft on the upper deck--a cry which was swiftlytaken up by other voices, so that presently a deck steward echoed itimmediately outside my own stateroom:
"Man overboard! Man overboard!"
All my premonitions rallying in that one sickening moment, I sprangout on the deck, half dressed as I was, and leaping past the boat whichswung nearly opposite my door, craned over the rail, looking astern.
For a long time I could detect nothing unusual. The engine-roomtelegraph was ringing--and the motion of the screws momentarily ceased;then, in response to further ringing, recommenced, but so as to jarthe whole structure of the vessel; whereby I knew that the engines werereversed. Peering intently into the wake of the ship, I was but dimlyaware of the ever growing turmoil around me, of the swift mustering of aboat's crew, of the shouted orders of the third-officer. Suddenly I sawit--the sight which was to haunt me for succeeding days and nights.
Half in the streak of the wake and half out of it, I perceived thesleeve of a white jacket, and, near to it, a soft felt hat. The sleeverose up once into clear view, seemed to describe a half-circle in theair then sink back again into the glassy swell of the water. Only thehat remained floating upon the surface.
By the evidence of the white sleeve alone I might have remainedunconvinced, although upon the voyage I had become familiar enough withthe drill shooting-jacket, but the presence of the gray felt hat wasalmost conclusive.
The man overboard was Nayland Smith!
I cannot hope, writing now, to convey in any words at my command, asense, even remote, of the utter loneliness which in that dreadfulmoment closed coldly down upon me.
To spring overboard to the rescue was a natural impulse, but to haveobeyed it would have been worse than quixotic. In the first place, thedrowning man was close upon half a mile astern; in the second place,others had seen the hat and the white coat as clearly as I; among themthe third-officer, standing upright in the stern of the boat--which,with commendable promptitude had already been swung into the water. Thesteamer was being put about, describing a wide arc around the littleboat dancing on the deep blue rollers....
Of the next hour, I cannot bear to write at all. Long as I had knownhim, I was ignorant of my friend's powers as a swimmer, but I judgedthat he must have been a poor one from the fact that he had sunkso rapidly in a calm sea. Except the hat, no trace of Nayland Smithremained when the boat got to the spot.