XXXI
MUSK AND ROSES
It is time to rejoin M. Gaston Max in the catacombs of Ho-Pin. Havingprepared himself for drugged repose in the small but luxurious apartmentto which he had been conducted by the Chinaman, he awaited with interestthe next development. This took the form of the arrival of an Egyptianattendant, white-robed, red-slippered, and wearing the inevitabletarboosh. Upon the brass tray which he carried were arranged thenecessities of the opium smoker. Placing the tray upon a little tablebeside the bed, he extracted from the lacquered box a piece of gummysubstance upon the end of a long needle. This he twisted around,skilfully, in the lamp flame until it acquired a blue spirituous flameof its own. He dropped it into the bowl of the carven pipe and silentlyplaced the pipe in M. Max's hand.
Max, with simulated eagerness, rested the mouthpiece between his lipsand EXHALED rapturously.
Said stood watching him, without the slightest expression of interestbeing perceptible upon his immobile face. For some time the Frenchmanmade pretense of inhaling, gently, the potent vapor, lying propped uponone elbow; then, allowing his head gradually to droop, he closed hiseyes and lay back upon the silken pillow.
Once more he exhaled feebly ere permitting the pipe to drop from hislistless grasp. The mouthpiece yet rested between his lips, but thelower lip was beginning to drop. Finally, the pipe slipped through hisfingers on to the rich carpet, and he lay inert, head thrown back, andrevealing his lower teeth. The nauseating fumes of opium loaded theatmosphere.
Said silently picked up the pipe, placed it upon the tray and retired,closing the door in the same noiseless manner that characterized all hismovements.
For a time, M. Max lay inert, glancing about the place through the veilof his lashes. He perceived no evidence of surveillance, therefore heventured fully to open his eyes; but he did not move his head.
With the skill in summarizing detail at a glance which contributedlargely to make him the great criminal investigator that he was, henoted those particulars which at an earlier time had occasioned theastonishment of Soames.
M. Max was too deeply versed in his art to attempt any furtherinvestigations, yet; he contented himself with learning as much as waspossible without moving in any way; and whilst he lay there awaitingwhatever might come, the door opened noiselessly--to admit Ho-Pin.
He was about to be submitted to a supreme test, for which, however, hewas not unprepared. He lay with closed eyes, breathing nasally.
Ho-Pin, his face a smiling, mirthless mask, bent over the bed. Adeptly,he seized the right eyelid of M. Max, and rolled it back over hisforefinger, disclosing the eyeball. M. Max, anticipating this test ofthe genuineness of his coma, had rolled up his eyes at the moment ofHo-Pin's approach, so that now only the white of the sclerotic showed.His trained nerves did not betray him. He lay like a dead man, neverflinching.
Ho-Pin, releasing the eyelid, muttered something gutturally, and stoleaway from the bed as silently as he had approached it. Very methodicallyhe commenced to search through M. Max's effects, commencing with thediscarded garments. He examined the maker's marks upon these, andscrutinized the buttons closely. He turned out all the pockets, countedthe contents of the purse, and of the notecase, examined the name insideM. Max's hat, and explored the lining in a manner which aroused thedetective's professional admiration. Watch and pocket-knife, Ho-Pininspected with interest. The little hand-bag which M. Max hadbrought with him, containing a few toilet necessaries, was overhauledreligiously. So much the detective observed through his lowered lashes.
Then Ho-Pin again approached the bed and M. Max became again a dead man.
The silken pyjamas which the detective wore were subjected to gentleexamination by the sensitive fingers of the Chinaman, and those samefingers crept beetle-like beneath the pillow.
Silently, Ho-Pin stole from the room and silently closed the door.
M. Max permitted himself a long breath of relief. It was an ordealthrough which few men could have passed triumphant.
The SILENCE of the place next attracted the inquirer's attention. He hadnoted this silence at the moment that he entered the cave of the goldendragon, but here it was even more marked; so that he divined, evenbefore he had examined the walls, that the apartment was renderedsound-proof in the manner of a public telephone cabinet. It was asignificant circumstance to which he allotted its full value.
But the question uppermost in his mind at the moment was this: Was thetime come yet to commence his explorations?
Patience was included in his complement, and, knowing that he hadthe night before him, he preferred to wait. In this he did well.Considerable time elapsed, possibly half-an-hour... and again the dooropened.
M. Max was conscious of a momentary nervous tremor; for now a WOMANstood regarding him. She wore a Chinese costume; a huge red poppy wasin her hair. Her beauty was magnificently evil; she had the grace of agazelle and the eyes of a sorceress. He had deceived Ho-Pin, but couldhe deceive this Eurasian with the witch-eyes wherein burnt ancientwisdom?
He felt rather than saw her approach; for now he ventured to peepno more. She touched him lightly upon the mouth with her fingers andlaughed a little low, rippling laugh, the sound of which seemedto trickle along his sensory nerves, icily. She bent overhim--lower--lower--and lower yet; until, above the nauseating odor ofthe place he could smell the musk perfume of her hair. Yet lowershe bent; with every nerve in his body he could feel her nearingpresence....
She kissed him on the lips.
Again she laughed, in that wicked, eerie glee.
M. Max was conscious of the most singular, the maddest impulses; it wasone of the supreme moments of his life. He knew that all dependedupon his absolute immobility; yet something in his brain was promptinghim--prompting him--to gather the witch to his breast; to return thatpoisonous, that vampirish kiss, and then to crush out life from thesmall lithe body.
Sternly he fought down these strange promptings, which he knew toemanate hypnotically from the brain of the creature bending over him.
"Oh, my beautiful dead-baby," she said, softly, and her voice was low,and weirdly sweet. "Oh, my new baby, how I love you, my dead one!" Againshe laughed, a musical peal. "I will creep to you in the poppyland whereyou go... and you shall twine your fingers in my hair and pull my redmouth down to you, kissing me... kissing me, until you stifle and youdie of my love.... Oh! my beautiful mummy-baby... my baby."...
The witch-crooning died away into a murmur; and the Frenchman becameconscious of the withdrawal of that presence from the room. No soundcame to tell of the reclosing of the door; but the obsession wasremoved, the spell raised.
Again he inhaled deeply the tainted air, and again he opened his eyes.
He had no warranty to suppose that he should remain unmolested duringthe remainder of the night. The strange words of the Eurasian he did notconstrue literally; yet could he be certain that he was secure?... Nay!he could be certain that he was NOT!
The shaded lamp was swung in such a position that most of the light wasdirected upon him where he lay, whilst the walls of the room were bathedin a purple shadow. Behind him and above him, directly over the head ofthe bunk, a faint sound--a sound inaudible except in such a dead silenceas that prevailing--told of some shutter being raised or opened. He hadtrained himself to watch beneath lowered lids without betraying that hewas doing so by the slightest nervous twitching. Now, as he watched thepurple shaded lamp above him, he observed that it was swaying and movingvery gently, whereas hitherto it had floated motionless in the stillair.
No other sound came to guide him, and to have glanced upward would havebeen to betray all.
For the second time that night he became aware of one who watched him,became conscious of observation without the guaranty of his physicalsenses. And beneath this new surveillance, there grew up such arevulsion of his inner being as he had rarely experienced. The perfumeof ROSES became perceptible; and for some occult reason, its fragranceDISGUSTED.
It was as though a faint dr
aught from the opened shutter poured into theapartment an impalpable cloud of evil; the very soul of the Eurasian,had it taken vapory form and enveloped him, could not have created agreater turmoil of his senses than this!
Some sinister and definitely malignant intelligence was focussed uponhim; or was this a chimera of his imagination? Could it be that now hewas become en rapport with the thought-forms created in that chamber byits successive occupants?
Scores, perhaps hundreds of brains had there partaken of the unholysacrament of opium; thousands, millions of evil carnivals had trailed inimpish procession about that bed. He knew enough of the creative powerof thought to be aware that a sensitive mind coming into contact withsuch an atmosphere could not fail to respond in some degree to thesuggestions, to the elemental hypnosis, of the place.
Was he, owing to his self-induced receptivity of mind, redreaming theevil dreams of those who had occupied that bed before him?
It might be so, but, whatever the explanation, he found himself unableto shake off that uncanny sensation of being watched, studied, by apowerful and inimical intelligence.
Mr. King!... Mr. King was watching him!
The director of that group, whose structure was founded upon thewreckage of human souls, was watching him! Because of a certainsympathy which existed between his present emotions and those which hadthreatened to obsess him whilst the Eurasian was in the room, he halfbelieved that it was she who peered down at him, now... or she, andanother.
The lamp swung gently to and fro, turning slowly to the right andthen revolving again to the left, giving life in its gyrations tothe intermingled figures on the walls. The atmosphere of the room wasnauseating; it was beginning to overpower him....
Creative power of thought... what startling possibilities it openedup. Almost it seemed, if Sir Brian Malpas were to be credited, thatthe collective mind-force of a group of opium smokers had created the"glamor" of a woman--an Oriental woman--who visited them regularly intheir trances. Or had that vision a prototype in the flesh--whom he hadseen?...
Creative power of thought... MR. KING! He was pursuing Mr. King; whilstMr. King might be nothing more than a thought-form--a creation ofcumulative thought--an elemental spirit which became visible to hissubjects, his victims, which had power over them; which could slaythem as the "shell" slew Frankenstein, his creator; which couldmaterialize:... Mr. King might be the Spirit of Opium....
The faint clicking sound was repeated.
Beads of perspiration stood upon M. Max's forehead; his imagination hadbeen running away with him. God! this was a house of fear! He controlledhimself, but only by dint of a tremendous effort of will.
Stealthily watching the lamp, he saw that the arc described by itsgyrations was diminishing with each successive swing, and, as hewatched, its movements grew slighter and slighter, until finally itbecame quite stationary again, floating, purple and motionless, upon thestagnant air.
Very slowly, he ventured to change his position, for his long ordeal wasbeginning to induce cramp. The faint creaking of the metal bunk seemed,in the dead stillness and to his highly-tensed senses, like the rattlingof castanets.
For ten minutes he lay in his new position; then moved slightly againand waited for fully three-quarters of an hour. Nothing happened, and henow determined to proceed with his inquiries.
Sitting upon the edge of the bunk, he looked about him, first directinghis attention to that portion of the wall immediately above. Socunningly was the trap contrived that he could find no trace of itsexistence. Carefully balancing himself upon the rails on either side ofthe bunk, he stood up, and peered closely about that part of the wallfrom which the sound had seemed to come. He even ran his fingers lightlyover the paper, up as high as he could reach; but not the slightestcrevice was perceptible. He began to doubt the evidence of his ownsenses.
Unless his accursed imagination had been playing him tricks, a trap ofsome kind had been opened above his head and someone had looked in athim; yet--and his fingers were trained to such work--he was preparedto swear that the surface of the Chinese paper covering the wall wasperfectly continuous. He drummed upon it lightly with his finger-tips,here and there over the surface above the bed. And in this fashion hebecame enlightened.
A portion, roughly a foot in height and two feet long, yielded aslightly different note to his drumming; whereby he knew that that partof the paper was not ATTACHED to the wall. He perceived the truth. Thetrap, when closed, fitted flush with the back of the wall-paper, andthis paper (although when pasted upon the walls it showed no evidence ofthe fact) must be TRANSPARENT.
From some dark place beyond, it was possible to peer in THROUGH therectangular patch of paper as through a window, at the occupant of thebunk below, upon whom the shaded lamp directly poured its rays!
He examined more closely a lower part of the wall, which did not fallwithin the shadow of the purple lamp-shade; for he was thinking of thedraught which had followed the opening of the trap. By this examinationhe learnt two things: The explanation of the draught, and that of apeculiar property possessed by the mural decorations. These (as Soameshad observed before him) assumed a new form if one stared at themclosely; other figures, figures human and animal, seemed to takeshape and to peer out from BEHIND the more obvious designs which wereperceptible at a glance. The longer and the closer one studied thesesingular walls, the more evident the UNDER design became, until itusurped the field of vision entirely. It was a bewildering delusion; butM. Max had solved the mystery.
There were TWO designs; the first, an intricate Chinese pattern,was painted or printed upon material like the finest gauze. Thiswas attached over a second and vividly colored pattern upon thickparchment-like paper--as he learnt by the application of the point ofhis pocket-knife.
The observation trap was covered with this paper, and fitted so nicelyin the opening that his fingers had failed to detect, through thesuperimposed gauze, the slightest irregularity there. But, the trapopened, a perfectly clear view of the room could be obtained through thegauze, which, by reason of its texture, also admitted a current of air.
This matter settled, M. Max proceeded carefully to examine the entireroom foot by foot. Opening the door in one corner, he entered thebathroom, in which, as in the outer apartment, an electric lightwas burning. No window was discoverable, and not even an opening forventilation purposes. The latter fact he might have deduced from thestagnation of the atmosphere.
Half an hour or more he spent in this fashion, without having discoveredanything beyond the secret of the observation trap. Again he took outhis pocket-knife, which was a large one with a handsome mother-o'-pearlhandle. Although Mr. Ho-Pin had examined this carefully, he had solvedonly half of its secrets. M. Max extracted a little pair of tweezersfrom the slot in which they were lodged--as Ho-Pin had not neglectedto do; but Ho-Pin, having looked at the tweezers, had returned them totheir place: M. Max did not do so. He opened the entire knife as thoughit had been a box, and revealed within it a tiny set of appliancesdesigned principally for the desecration of locks!
Selecting one of these, he took up his watch from the table upon whichit lay, and approached the door. It possessed a lever handle of theContinental pattern, and M. Max silently prayed that this might not bea snare and a delusion, but that the lock below might be of the samemanufacture.
In order to settle the point, he held the face of his watch close tothe keyhole, wound its knob in the wrong direction, and lo! it became anelectric lamp!
One glance he cast into the tiny cavity, then dropped back upon thebunk, twisting his mobile mouth in that half smile at once humorous anddespairful.
"Nom d'un p'tit bonhomme!--a Yale!" he muttered. "To open that withoutnoise is impossible! Damn!"
M. Max threw himself back upon the pillow, and for an hour afterward laydeep in silent reflection.
He had cigarettes in his case and should have liked to smoke, but fearedto take the risk of scenting the air with a perfume so unorthodox.
He had gained som
ething by his exploit, but not all that he had hopedfor; clearly his part now was to await what the morning should bring.