Chapter 13 - The Black Shadow

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DAWN was very near when that odd party assembled in the room which we used as an office, the room in which Van Berg had died. Nayland Smith presided, looking haggardly tired after his exertions of the night. He paced up and down continuously. The chief stood near the door, shifting from foot to foot in his equally restless fashion. Rima sat in the one comfortable chair and I upon the arm of it.

A Persian police officer who spoke perfect English completed the party.

“Dr. Van Berg, as you know,” said Sir Denis, “died in this room. I have tried to explain how the murderer gained access. The room being higher than Sir Lionel’s, the line used was shorter, but the method was the same. I found fingerprints and footmarks on the roof of the mosque and also on the ledge below these shutters. A man stabbed as Van Berg was stabbed bleeds from the mouth; therefore I found no bloodstains. The Negro was swung across, not from a window, but from the roof of the mosque. He employed the same device, having quietly entered, of spraying the head of the sleeper with some drug which so far we haven’t been able to identify. It smells like mimosa. Fortunately, a portion remains in the spray upon the dead African, and analysis may enlighten us.”

“But Dr. Van Berg was stabbed, as I remember?” said the Persian official.

“Certainly!” Nayland Smith snapped. “He had a pair of Caspian kittens sleeping at the foot of his bed. The bed used to stand there, just where you are sitting. They awakened immediately and in turn awakened him. He must have realized what was afoot, and he sprang straight for the box. It was his first and only thought—for already he was under the influence of the drug. The Negro knifed him from behind.”

He pointed to a narrow-bladed knife which lay upon a small table.

“He came provided for a similar emergency to-night. . . . That unhappy mystery, I think, is solved.”

“I cannot doubt it,” the Persian admitted. “But the strength of this material,” touching a piece of the slender yellow-gray line, “is amazing. What is it?”

“It’s silkworm gut,” Sir Lionel shouted. “I recognized it at once. It’s the strongest animal substance known. It’s strong enough to land a shark, if he’s played properly.”

“I don’t agree with you, Barton,” Nayland Smith said quietly. “It certainly resembles silkworm gut, but it is infinitely stronger.”

Before the chief could reply:

“A very singular business, Sir Lionel,” the suave official murmured. “But I am happy to learn that no Persian subject is concerned in this murderous affair.”

There was a pause, and then: “A fourth man was concerned,” said Nayland Smith, speaking unusually slowly. “He, as well as the third Negro whom I wounded, has managed to get away. Probably there are exits from the mosque with which I am unacquainted?”

“You suggest that the fourth man concerned was one of our subjects?”

“I suggest nothing. I merely state that there was a fourth man. He was concealed in a window of the mosque.”

“Probably another of these Negroes—who are of a type quite unfamiliar to me. . . .”

“They are Ogboni!” shouted the chief. “They come from a district of the Slave Coast I know well! They’re members of a secret Voodoo society. You should read my book The Sorcerers of Dahomey. I spent a year in their territory. When I saw that bull-roarer there—” he pointed to the frontal bone with the twine attached, which also lay upon the small table—“it gave me the clue. I knew that these West African negroes were Ogboni. They’re active as cats and every bit as murderous. But I agree with Smith, that they were working under somebody else’s direction.”

The Persian official, a dignified and handsome man of forty-odd, wearing well tailored European clothes, raised his heavy brows and smiled slightly.

“Are you suggesting, Sir Lionel,” he asked, “that the religious trouble, which I fear you have brought about, is at the bottom of this?”

“I am,” the chief replied, glaring at him truculently.

“It’s beyond doubt,” said Nayland Smith. “The aim of the whole conspiracy was to gain possession of the green box.”

The Persian continued to smile. “And in this aim it would seem that the conspirators have been successful.”

“They certainly managed to smuggle the box out of the mosque,” Nayland Smith admitted grimly, “although one of the pair was wounded, as I know for a fact.”

Our visitor stood up. “Some sort of rough justice has been done,” he said. “The actual assassin of your poor friend Dr. Van Berg has met his deserts, as has his most active accomplice. The green box, I believe, contained valuable records of your recent inquiries in Khorassan. . . .”

His very intonation told me unmistakably that he believed nothing of the kind. . . .

“I feel, Sir Lionel, that this may represent a serious loss to Oriental students—nor can I imagine of what use these—records can be to those who have resorted to such dreadful measures to secure them.”

The chief clapped his hands, and Ali Mahmoud came in. The Persian official stooped and kissed Ramin’s fingers, shook hands with the rest of us, and went out. There was silence for a few moments, and then:

“You know, Barton,” said Nayland Smith, pacing up and down rapidly, “Ispahan, though quite civilized, is rather off the map; and frankly—local feeling is against you. I mean this Mokanna movement is going to play hell in Persia if it goes on. As you started it—you’re not popular.”

“Never have been,” growled the chief; “never expect to be.”

“Not the point,” rapped Smith. “There’s going to be worse to come—when they know.”

A silence followed which I can remember more vividly than many conversations. Ramin squeezed my arm and looked up at me in a troubled way. Sir Denis was not a man to panic. But he had made it perfectly clear that he took a grave view of the situation.

Sir Lionel had fenced with the local authorities throughout, knowing that they could have no official information regarding the relics—since, outside our own party (and now Captain Woodville and Stratton Jean), nobody but Amir Khan knew we had found them.

At the cost of one life in our camp and two in their own the enemy had secured the green box . . . but the green box was empty! I knew now why the chief had been so conscience-stricken by the death of Van Berg; I knew that the relics had never been where we all supposed them to be from the time that we came to Ispahan.

Van Berg had died defending an empty box. . . .

Sir Lionel began to laugh in his boisterous fashion.

“We’ve scored over them, Smith!” he shouted, and shook his clenched fist. “They had Van Berg—but we got a pair of the swine to-night! Topping it all—they’ve drawn a blank!”

His laughter ceased, and that wonderful, lined old face settled down again into the truculent mask which was the front Sir Lionel Barton showed to the world.

“It’s a poor triumph,” he added, “to pay for the loss of Van Berg.”

Nayland Smith ceased his promenade at the window and stood with his back to all of us, staring out.

“I don’t know where you’ve hidden the relics, Barton,” he said slowly, “but I may have to ask you to tell me. One thing I do know. This part of the East is no longer healthy for any of us. The second attempt has failed—but the third . . .”

“What are you suggesting?” Sir Lionel growled; “that I give ’em up? Suppose it came to that. Who am I dealing with?”

Nayland Smith did not turn. But: “I believe I can tell you,” he answered quietly.

“Then tell me! Don’t throw out hints. Speak up, man!”

At that, Nayland Smith turned and stared at the speaker, remaining silent for some moments. At last: “I flew here in a two-seater from Basra,” he replied. “There was no other aircraft available in the neighborhood. I have already made arrangements, however. Imperial Airways have lent us a taxi. You must realize, Barton, the position is serious.”

Something in his manner temporarily silenced the chief; until:

“I do realize it,” he admitted grudgingly. “Some organizer has got hold of this wave of fanaticism which my blowing up of El Mokanna’s tomb started, and he realizes—I suppose that’s what you’re driving at?—that production of the actual relics would clinch the matter. Am I right?”

“You are!” said Nayland Smith. “And I must ask you to consider one or two facts. The drug which was used in the case of Van Berg, and again last night, is, I admit, unfamiliar. But the method of employment is not. You see what I mean?”

Ramin’s grip on my arm tightened; and: “Shan,” he said, looking up at me, “it was what happened two years ago in England!”

The chief’s face was a study. Under tufted eyebrows he was positively glaring at Nayland Smith. The latter continued: “Ramin begins to realize what I mean. The device for passing from house to house without employing the usual method of descending to the street is also familiar to me. It was experience, and nothing else, that enabled me to deal with the affair of last night.”

He paused, and I found my mind working feverishly. Then, bringing that odd conversation to a dramatic head, came a husky query from Sir Lionel.

“Good God! Smith!” he said. “He can’t be behind this?”

The emphasis on “he” resolved my final doubt.

“You’re not suggesting, Sir Denis,” I asked, “that we are up against Dr. Fu Manchu?”

Ramin clutched me now convulsively. Once only had he met the stupendous genius, Dr. Fu Manchu, but the memory of that one interview would remain with him to the end of his days, as it would remain with me.

“If I had had any doubts, Barton,” said Nayland Smith, “your identification of the murderer and his accomplice would have settled them. They belong, you tell me, to a secret society on the Slave Coast.”

He paused, staring hard at Sir Lionel.

“I believe that there is no secret society of this character, however small or remote, which is not affiliated to the organization known as the Si-Fan. That natives of the Pacific Islands are indirectly controlled by this group, I know for a fact; why not Negroes of West Africa? Consider the matter from another angle. What are natives of the Slave Coast doing in Persia? Who has brought them here?

“They are instruments, Barton, in the hands of a master schemer. For what object they were originally imported, we shall probably never know, but their usefulness in the present case has been proved. There can be no association between this West African society and the survivors of the followers of El Mokanna. These Negroes are in the train of some directing personality.”

It was morning, and the East is early afoot. From a neighbouring market street came sounds of movement and discords human and animal. Suddenly Sir Denis spoke again.

“If any doubt had remained in my mind, Barton, it would have been removed last night. You may recall that just before the first signal came, someone passed slowly along the street below?”

“Yes! I heard him—but I couldn’t see him.”

“I heard him, too!” I cried. . . .

“I both heard and saw him,” Nayland Smith continued—“from my post on the minaret. Action was impossible—unfortunately—in the circumstances. But the man who walked along the street last night just before the second attempt on the green box . . . was Dr. Fu Manchu!”