CHAPTER SIX
That journey across the desert was strange in many ways— stranger and more horrible in its outcome than a merciful Providence allowed me to foresee. Nevertheless it aroused within me that sort of warning sixth sense which once before, on the train to Cairo, had advised me of the fact that I was spied upon. Possibly those religious fanatics guarding the extraordinary woman who called herself Madame Ingomar, and whom I knew claimed a sort of divine ordinance for their ghastly crimes, reacted upon me in some odd way. All I know is that I seemed to have developed a capacity for smelling them out; as will presently appear.
Weymouth, Petrie, and Nayland Smith rode in the back of the car, and I sat in front with Said. The starting place outside Esna had been cunningly chosen and we had every reason to believe that the outset of our journey had been managed without attracting attention.
Our disguises were passably good. Both Weymouth and Petrie were well sun-browned, and I had the complexion which comes with months of exposure to the weather. Petrie’s distinguished appearance was enhanced by a tarboosh and we had agreed to address him as “Bey.” Weymouth, his robes crowned by a small white turban, resembled a substantial village sheikh; and I knew I could pass anywhere for a working Arab. Nayland Smith had retained the dress he was wearing at our first meeting.
Clear of the cultivated land that borders the Nile, and well out upon that ancient route which once had known no passage more violent than that of the soft padding camels and the tinkling of the camel bells, we met never a soul for thirty miles.
An hour, and another hour, we carried on, over desolate, gravelly, boundless waste. The sun blazed down mercilessly although it was dipping to the western horizon. On we went, and on; until, having mounted a long slope, I saw a wâdi ahead.
Nothing moved within my view, although I searched the prospect carefully through Nayland Smith’s field-glasses. The ground was hard as nails. But at the bottom of this little valley, I spied a clump of palms and knew that there must be water.
A sentinel vulture floated high overhead.
We bumped on merrily across the wildest irregularities. In no sense was this a motor road. And, having carefully studied the map, I had serious doubts of its practicability beyond the site of some Roman ruins merely marked “el-Dêr.”
Down we swept into the wâdi, Said driving in that carefree manner which characterizes the native chauffeur for whom tires are things made to be burst, and engines, djinns or powerful spirits invulnerable to damage. However, we carried three spares and could only hope for the best.
I don’t know what it was, unless perhaps the smoother running of the car, which drew my attention to the path ahead. We were now in the cup of the valley and rapidly approaching that clump of palms which I had noted. Suddenly:
“Pull up,” rapped Nayland Smith.
His hand gripped my shoulder. Said pulled up.
“Look!”
We all stood and stared ahead. Nayland Smith pointed. The surface was comparatively soft here; and clearly discernible upon the road, crossing and recrossing, were many tire marks!
“Fah Lo Suee!” said Smith, as if answering my unspoken query. “You can set your mind at rest, Greville. The road to Khârga is practicable for driving.”
It was a curious discovery, and it set me thinking, hard. When Madame Ingomar had visited the camp, had she come all the way from the oasis, and had she returned there? Presumably, this was so. And, as always happened when my thoughts turned to this phenomenal woman, a very vivid mental picture presented itself before my mind. Her long, narrow, jade-green eyes seemed to be staring into mine. And I saw one of those small cigarettes which she loved, smouldering in a long engraved holder between delicate ivory fingers.
We passed the tree-shaded well, and mounted a stiff slope beyond. I cannot answer for the others, but, as I have indicated, my own thoughts were far away. It was just as we reached the crest, and saw a further prospect of boundless desert before us, that I became aware, or perhaps I should say conscious, of that old sense of espionage.
Nothing moved upon that desolate expanse, over which the air danced like running water. But a positive conviction seized me—a conviction that news of our journey had reached the enemy, or would shortly reach the enemy. I began to think about that solitary Pharaoh’s Chicken—that sentinel vulture—floating high above the palms…
“Stop!” I said.
“What is it?” snapped Nayland Smith.
“May be nothing,” I replied, “but I want to walk back to the brow of the hill and take a good look at the wâdi through which we have just come.”
“Good!” He nodded. “I should have thought of it myself.”
I got out the glasses, slung them across my shoulder, and walked rapidly back. At a point which I remembered, because a great blackened boulder lying straight across the road had nearly brought us to grief, I stooped and went forward more slowly. This boulder, I reflected, might provide just the cover I required. Lying flat down beside the stone, to the great alarm of a number of lizards who fled rapidly to right and left, I focused my glasses upon the clump of trees below me.
At first I could see nothing unusual. But the vulture still floated in the sky and the significance of his presence had become unmistakable… Some living thing was hidden in the grove!
Adjusting the sights to a nicety, I watched, I waited. And presently my patience was rewarded.
A figure came out of the clump of trees!
I could see him clearly and only hoped that he could not see me. He might have passed muster, except for his tightly knotted blue turban. Emphatically, he was not an Egyptian. Standing beside the irregularly marked path, he placed a box upon the ground. I studied his movements with growing wonderment.
What could he be about? He seemed to be fumbling in the box.
Then suddenly he withdrew his hand, raised it high above his head—and a gray pigeon swept low over the desert, rose up and up, higher and higher! It circled once, twice, three times. Then, straight as an arrow it set out… undoubtedly bound for the Oasis of Khârgal.
“Very clever,” said Nayland Smith grimly. “We shall therefore be expected. I might have guessed she wouldn’t be taken unawares. But it confirms my theory.”
“What theory?” Petrie asked.
“That tonight is a very special occasion at the house of the Sheikh Ismail!”
“We’re running into a trap,” said Weymouth. “Now that we know beyond any doubt that we’re expected, what are our chances? It’s true there’s a railway to this place—but it’s rarely used. The people of the oases have never been trustworthy—so that our nearest help will be a hundred and fifty miles off!”
Smith nodded. He got out and joined me where I stood beside the car; loading and lighting his pipe. He began to walk up and down, glancing alternately at me, at Weymouth, and at Dr. Petrie. I knew what he was thinking and I didn’t interrupt him. He was wondering if he was justified in risking our lives on so desperate a venture; weighing the chances of what success might mean to the world against our chances of coming out of the job alive. Suddenly:
“What’s the alternative?” he snapped, peering at Weymouth.
“There isn’t one that I can think of.”
“What do you say, Petrie?”
Petrie shrugged his shoulders.
“I hadn’t foreseen this,” he confessed. “But now that it’s happened…”
He left the sentence unfinished.
“Get the map out, Greville,” Nayland Smith rapped… “Here, on the ground.”
I dived into the front of the car and pulled out the big map. This we spread on the gravelly path, keeping it flat by placing stones on its corners. Weymouth and Petrie alighted; and the four of us bent over the map.
“Ah!” Nayland Smith exclaimed and rested his finger on a certain spot. “That’s the danger area, isn’t it, Greville? That’s where we might crash?”
“We might!” I replied grimly. “It’s a series of hairpin bends and sheer precipices, at some points fourteen hundred feet up…”
“That’s where they’ll be waiting for us!” said Nayland Smith.
“Good God!” Petrie exclaimed.
I exchanged glances with Weymouth. The expression in his blue eyes was enigmatical.
“Do you agree with me?” rapped Smith.
“Entirely.”
“In short, gentlemen,” he went on, “if we pursue our present route it’s certain we shall never reach el-Khârga.”
There was an interval of silence; then:
“We might easily break down before we get to the hills,” I said slowly. “No one at the other end would be the wiser, except that we should never enter the danger zone. Now”—I bent and moved my finger over the map—“at this point as you see, the old caravan road from Dongola to Egypt is only about thirty miles off. It’s the Path of the Forty, formerly used by slave caravans from Central Africa. If we could find our way across to it, we might approach Khârga from the south, below the village marked Bûlag—it means a detour of forty or fifty miles, even if we can do it. But…”
Nayland Smith clapped me on the shoulder.
“You’ve solved the problem, Greville!” he said. “Nothing like knowledge of the geography of a district when one’s in difficulties. We’re in luck if we make it before dusk. But how shall we recognize the Path of the Forty?”
“By the bleached bones,” I replied.
Sunset dropped its thousand veils over the desert. The hills and wâdis of its desolate expanse passed from a glow of gold through innumerable phases of red. We saw crags that looked yellow under a sky of green: we saw a violet desert across which the ancient route of the slave traders stretched like a long-healed scar. There were moments when all the visible world resembled the heart of a tulip. But at last came true dusk with those scattered battalions of stars set like pearls in a deep, velvet-lined casket.
Wonderful to relate, we had forced the groaning Buick over trackless miles southwest of the road, had found a path through the hills and had struck the Darfûr caravan route some twenty miles below el-Khârga. A difference in the quality of the landscape, a freshening and a cleanness in the air, spoke of the near oasis. Then, on a gentle slope:
“A light ahead!” Weymouth cried.
I checked Said. We all stood up and looked.
“That must be Bûlag,” said Nayland Smith. “The house of the sheikh lies somewhere between there and el-Khârga.”
“It’s a straight road now,” Petrie broke in. “Thank heaven, there’s plenty of light. I’m all for blazing through the village as hard as we can go and then finding some parking place outside the town.”
“Pray heaven the old bus can stand it!” Weymouth murmured devoutly.
And so, headed north, we set out. The road was abominable, but fairly wide where it traversed the village. Nayland Smith had relieved Said at the wheel and the scene as he coaxed a way through that miniature bazaar was one I can never forget. Every man, woman, child, and dog had turned out…
“They may send the news to el-Khârga,” said Smith, as we finally shook off the last pair of staring-eyed Arab boys who ran after us, “but we’ve got to chance it.”
We parked the doughty Buick in a grove of date-palms just south of the town. Weymouth seemed to anticipate trouble with Said, but I knew the man and had never doubted that he would consent to stand by. We left him a charged repeater and spare shells, and there were ample rations aboard to sustain him during the time he might have to mount guard. We marked an hour on the clock when, failing our reappearance, he was to push on with all possible speed to the post office at el-Khârga and communicate with Fletcher. How he carried out these orders will appear later.
As the four of us walked from the palm grove:
“It’s a good many years,” said Weymouth, “since I disguised myself!”
I looked at him in the moonlight, and I thought that he made a satisfactory and most impressive sheikh. True, his Arabic was bad, but so far as his appearance went, he was above criticism. Dr. Petrie was a safe bet; and Sir Denis, as I knew, could have walked about Mecca unchallenged. For my own part I felt fairly confident, for I knew the ways of the desert Arabs well enough to be capable of passing for one.
“We may be too late,” said Nayland Smith; “but I feel disposed, Greville, to make straight for the town; otherwise we might lose ourselves. Then, you acting as spokesman, since you speak the best Arabic, we can inquire our direction boldly.”
“I agree,” said I.
And so it was settled.
El-Khârga, as I vaguely remembered, though a considerable town of some seven or eight thousand inhabitants, consisted largely of a sort of maze of narrow streets roofed over with palm trunks so as to resemble tunnels at night. We penetrated, and presently found our way to the centre of the place. A mosque and two public buildings attracted my attention; and:
“Down here,” I said, “there’s a café, where we shall learn all we want to know.”
Two minutes later we were grouped around a table in a smokeladen room.
“Look about,” said Nayland Smith. “Kismet is with us. Whatever is going on in el-Khârga is being discussed here, tonight.”
“I told you this was the place,” said I.
But I looked about as he had directed. Certainly we had discovered the one and only house of entertainment in el-Khârga… Little did I realize, as I considered our neighbours, where my next awakening would be!
Here were obvious townspeople, prosperous date-merchants, rice growers, petty officials and others, smoking their pipes in evening contentment. A definite odour of hashîsh pervaded the café. But the scene looked typical enough, until:.
“Those fellows in the corner don’t seem quite in the picture,” said Weymouth.
I followed the direction of his glance. Two men were bending over a little round table. They smoked cigarettes, and a pot of coffee stood between them. In type, they were unfamiliar; unfamiliar in the sense that one didn’t expect to come across them in an outpost of Egypt. In Cairo, they might have passed unnoticed, but their presence in el-Khârga was extraordinary. I turned to Nayland Smith, who was glancing in the same direction; and:
“What are they?” I asked.
“Afghans,” he replied. “The great brotherhood of Kâli is well represented there.”
“Remarkable,” I said. “There can be few relations between Afghanistan and this obscure spot.”
“None whatever!” Weymouth broke in. “And now, Greville, follow the direction in which my cigarette is pointing.”
Endeavouring not to betray myself, I did as he suggested.
“A group of three,” he added for my guidance.
I saw the group. I might have failed to identify them, but my memory was painfully fresh in regard to that dead man in the Tomb of the Black Ape. They wore their turbans in such a manner that the mark on the brow could not be distinguished. But I knew them for Burmans; and I did not doubt that they belonged to the mysterious fraternity of the Dacoits! At which moment:
“Don’t turn around until I give the signal,” Nayland Smith rapped—“but just behind us.”
I watched him as he glanced about, apparently in search of a waiter, then caught his signal. I looked swiftly into an alcove under the stairs… and then turned aside, as the gaze of a pair of fierce, wild-animal eyes became focused upon mine. The waiter arrived and Nayland Smith ordered more coffee. As the man departed to execute the order:
“Thugs!” he whispered. He bent over the table. “There are representatives of at least three religious fanatical sects in this place tonight. Dacoity is represented, also Thugee. The two gentlemen from Kandahar are phansigars, or religious stranglers!” He stared at Weymouth.
“Does this suggest anything to you?”
Weymouth’s blue eyes were fixed on me; and:
“I confess, Greville,” he said, “that I feel as you do… And I can see that you’re puzzled.”
“I am,” I agreed.
Nayland Smith raised his hand irritably and tugged at the lobe of his left ear; then:
“You understand, Petrie?” he jerked.
I looked at Dr. Petrie and it was unnecessary for him to reply. I saw that he did understand.
“Any doubt I may have had, Smith,” he said, “regarding the purpose of this expedition, is washed out. In some miraculous way you have brought us to what seems to be the focus of all the dangerous fanatics of the Eastern world!”
“I don’t claim all the credit,” Smith replied; “but I admit that the facts confirm my theory.”
“And what was your theory?” I asked.
“My theory,” Smith replied, “based on the latest information to hand, and, as Weymouth here knows, almost hourly reports from police headquarters as widely divided as Pekin and Berlin, was this: That some attempt was being made to coordinate the dangerous religious sects of the East together with their sympathizers in the West. In short that the organization once known as the Si-Fan—you, alone, Greville,” he turned to me, “fail to appreciate the significance of this—is in process of reconstruction! Something vital to the scheme was hidden in the Tomb of the Black Ape. This—and I can only blame myself—was removed under my very nose. The centre of the conspiracy is Fah Lo Suee—Dr. Fu-Manchu’s daughter, whose temporary headquarters I know to be here. Tonight, at least, I am justified. Look around.”
He bent over the table and we all did likewise, so that our four heads came very closely together; then:
“We are not too late,” he said earnestly. “A meeting has been called… and we must be present!”
The two Indians in the alcove stood up and went towards the door. As the pair disappeared:
“They lead, and we follow!” said Nayland Smith. “Go ahead, Weymouth, and act as connecting link.”
He stood up, clapping his hands for the waiter. Weymouth had his meaning in a moment, nodded, and went out.
“Follow him, Greville!”
I grasped the scheme and went out behind the superintendent. The spirit of the thing was beginning to get me. Truly this was a desperate adventure… for the stakes were life or death!
We were dealing with savagely dangerous characters who were, moreover, expert assassins to a man. Possibly those we had actually identified in the cafe represented only a small proportion of the murderous fanatics assembled that night in el-Khârga…
Weymouth led and I followed. I had grasped Nayland Smith’s routine—and I knew that Petrie would be behind me. The score discharged, Smith would track Petrie.
I saw the bulky form of the superintendent at the far side of the square. By a narrow street he paused, peered ahead, and then glanced back.
I raised my hand. Weymouth disappeared.
Reaching the street in turn, I looked along it. I saw a sheer tunnel, but recognized it for that by which we had reached the square. There was an open space at the further end; and I saw Weymouth standing there in the moonlight and knew that I must be visible to him—as a silhouette.
He raised his arm. I replied. Then I looked back.
Dr. Petrie was crossing the square!
We exchanged signals and I followed Weymouth. The chain was complete.
For a time I thought that the house of the Sheikh Ismail might be somewhere on the road we had pursued from the palm grove to the town. But it was not so. Weymouth, ahead of me, paused, and gave the signal: left.
A narrow path through rice fields, with scanty cover other than that of an occasional tree, proved to be the route. If the men walking a few hundred yards ahead of Weymouth looked around, they could scarcely fail to see him! I only prayed, should they do so, that they would take it for granted he was bound upon business similar to their own.
Where an acacia drooped over a dome, very white in the moonlight, which marked the resting place of some holy man, the path seemed to end. So also did the cultivated land. Beyond stretched the desert, away to the distant hills.
By the shrine Weymouth paused, turned, and signaled. I looked back. Petrie was not in sight. I waited, anxiously… and then I saw him, just entering the rice field.
We exchanged signs and I pressed on.
Left of the cultivated land, and invisible from the rice, was a close grove of dôm palms. As I cautiously circled around the shrine and saw nothing but desert before me, instinctively I looked to right and left. And there was Weymouth, not fifty yards away!
I joined him, and:
“The house is just, beyond the trees,” he said. “There’s a high wall all around it. The two Indians have gone in.”
We waited for Petrie. Then Nayland Smith joined us. He turned and stared back along the path. Evidently no other party was on the way yet. The track through the rice field was empty as far as the eye could see.
“What next?” said Smith. “I’m afraid I’ve left too much to chance. We should have visited the mudîr. The thing begins to crystallize. I know, now, what to expect.”
He turned, and:
“Weymouth,” he said, “do you remember the raid on the house in London in 1917?”
“By God!” cried Weymouth. “You mean the meeting of the Council of Seven?”
“Exactly!” Smith rapped.
“Probably the last.”
“In England, certainly.”
“The Council of Seven?” I said. “What is the Council of Seven?”
“It’s the Si-Fan!” Petrie replied, without adding to my information.
But the tone of his voice turned me cold in spite of the warmth of the night.
“The Council of Seven,” Weymouth explained, in his kindly way, “was an organization with headquarters in China…”
“In Honan,” Smith jerked.
“The president, or so we always believed,” Weymouth continued, “was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Its objects we never learned except in a general way.”
“World domination,” Petrie suggested.
“Well, that’s about it, I suppose. Their methods, Greville, included wholesale robbery and murder. Everybody in their path they removed. Poison was their favourite method, animal or vegetable, and they apparently controlled in their campaign the underworlds of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. They made the mistake of meeting in London, and”—his tone grew very grim—“we got a few of them.”
“But not all,” Nayland Smith added. He suddenly grasped my shoulder, and: “Are you beginning to understand,” he asked, “what was hidden in the Tomb of the Black Ape?”
I looked at him in blank surprise.
“I can see no connection,” I confessed.
“Something,” he went on tensely, “which has enabled the woman you know as Madame Ingomar after an interval of thirteen years, to summon the Council of Seven!”
In the shadow cast by a lebbekh tree we all crouched, Nayland Smith having his glasses focused upon the door in a long high wall.
The two Afghans had approached and now stood before this door. So silent was the night that we distinctly heard one of them beat on the panels. He knocked seven times…
I saw the door open. Faintly to my ears came the sound of a strange word. It was repeated—by another voice. The murderous Asiatics were admitted. The door was closed again.
“Representatives of at least two murder societies have arrived,” said Smith, dropping the glasses and turning. “We are learning something, but not enough. In short, how the devil are we going to get into that house?”
There was a pause and then:
“Personally,” said Dr. Petrie, “I think it would be deliberate suicide to attempt to do so. We have not notified the officials of el-Khârga of our presence or our business; and as it would appear that the most dangerous criminal group in the world is assembling here tonight, what could we hope to do, and what would our chances be?”
“Sanity, Petrie, sanity!” Nayland Smith admitted. But the man’s impatience, his over-brimming vitality, sounded in his quivering voice. “I’ve bungled this business—but how could I know?… I was guessing, largely.”
He stood up and began to pace about in the shadow, carefully avoiding exposing himself to the light of the moon; then:
“Yes,” he murmured. “We must establish contact with el-Khârga. Damnable!—because it means splitting the party… Hello!”
A group of three appeared, moving like silhouettes against the high, mud-brick wall—for the moon was behind us. Nayland Smith dropped prone again and focused the glasses…
“The Burmans,” he reported. “Dacoity has arrived.”
In tense silence we watched this second party receive admittance as the first had done. And now I recognized the word. It was Si-Fan!… Again the great iron-studded door was closed.
“We don’t know how many may be there already,” said Petrie. “Possibly those people we saw in the café—”
“Silence!” Smith snapped.
As he spoke, a tall man dressed in European clothes but wearing no hat appeared around the corner of the wall and approached the door. He had a lithe, swinging carriage.
“This one comes alone,” Nayland Smith murmured. He studied him through the glasses. “Unplaceable. But strangely like a Turk…”
The tall man was admitted—and the iron-studded door closed once more.
Nayland Smith stood up again and began beating his fist into the palm of his hand, walking up and down in a state of tremendous excitement.
“We must do something!” he said in a low voice—“we must do something! Hell is going to be let loose on the world. Tonight, we could nip this poisonous thing in the bud, if only…” he paused. Then: “Weymouth,” he rapped, “you have official prestige. Go back to el-Khârga—make yourself known to the mudîr and force him to raise a sufficient body of men to surround this house! You can’t go alone, therefore Dr. Petrie will go with you…”
“But, Smith!…”
“My dear fellow,”—Nayland Smith’s voice altered entirely— “there’s no room for sentiment! We’re not individuals tonight, but representatives of sanity opposed to a dreadful madness. Greville here has a peculiarly intimate knowledge of Arab life. He speaks the language better than any of us. This you will both admit. I must keep him by me, because my job may prove to be the harder. Off you go, Weymouth! I’m in charge. Get down the dip behind us and circle round the way we came. Don’t lose a moment!”
There was some further argument between these old friends, but finally the dominating personality of Nayland Smith prevailed; and Weymouth and Dr. Petrie set out. As they disappeared into the hollow behind us:
“Heaven grant I haven’t bungled this thing!” said Nayland Smith and gripped my arm fiercely. “But I’ve stage-managed it like an amateur. Only sheer luck can save us now!”
He turned aside and focused his glasses on the distant angle of the wall. A minute passed—two—three—four. Then came a sudden outcry, muffled, but unmistakable.
“My God!” Smith’s voice was tragic. ‘They’ve run into another party! Come on, Greville!”
Breaking cover we hurried across in the moonlight. Regardless of any watcher who might be concealed behind that iron-studded door in the long wall, we raced head-long to the corner. I was hard and fit; but, amazing to relate, I had all I could do to keep pace with Nayland Smith. He seemed to be a man who held not sluggish human blood but electricity in his veins.
Around the corner we plunged… and almost fell head-long over a vague tangle of struggling figures!
“Petrie!” Nayland Smith cried. “Are you there?”
“Yes, by the grace of God!” came pantingly…
“Weymouth?”
“All clear!”
Dense shadow masked the combatants; and risking everything, I dragged out my torch and switched on the light.
Dr. Petrie, rather dishevelled and, lacking his tarboosh, was just standing up. A forbidding figure, muffled in a shapeless camel-hair garment, lay near. Weymouth was resting his bulk upon a second.
“Light out!” snapped Nayland Smith.
I obeyed. Weymouth’s voice came through the darkness.
“Do you remember, Sir Denis, that other meeting in London? There was only one Lama monk there. There are two here!”
His words explained a mystery which had baffled me. These were Tibetan monks!
“They must have heard us approaching,” Petrie went on. “They were hiding in the shadows. And as we climbed up onto the path, they attacked us. I may add that they were men of their hands. Personally I’m by no means undamaged, but by sheer luck I managed to knock my man out.”
“I think I’ve strangled mine!” said Weymouth grimly. “He was gouging my eye,” he added.
“Petrie!” said Nayland Smith. “We’re going to win! This is the hand of Providence!”
For one tense moment none of us grasped his meaning; then:
“By heavens, no. It’s too damned dangerous,” Weymouth exclaimed. “For God’s sake don’t risk it!”
“I’m going to risk it!” Smith snapped. “There’s too much at stake to hesitate. If they were in our place, there’d be two swift executions. We can’t stoop to that. Gags we can improvise. But how the devil are we going to tie them up?”
At which moment the man on whose body Weymouth was kneeling uttered a loud cry. The cry ceased with significant suddenness; and:
“Two of us wear turbans,” said Weymouth: “that’s twelve feet of stout linen. What more do we want?”
We gagged and bound the sturdy Tibetans, using torchlight sparingly. One of them struggled a lot; but the other was still. Petrie seemed to have achieved a classic knockout. Then we dragged our captives down into the shadow of the hollow; and Nayland Smith and I clothed ourselves in those hot, stuffy, camel-hair garments.
“Remember the sign,” he rapped—“Si-Fan!… then the formal Moslem salute.”
“Good enough! But these fellows probably talked Chinese…”
“So do I!” he rapped. “Leave that to me.” He turned to Weymouth. “Your job is to raise a party inside half an hour. Off you go! Good luck, Petrie. I count on you, Weymouth.”
But when a thousand and one other things are effaced—including that difficult parting—I shall always retain my memories of the moment, when Nayland Smith and I, wearing the cowled robes of the monks, approached that iron-studded door.
My companion was a host in himself; his splendid audacity stimulated. I thought, as he raised his fist and beat seven times upon the sun-bleached wood, that even if this adventure should conclude the short tale of my life, yet it would not have been ill-spent since I had met and been judged worthy to work with Sir Denis Nayland Smith.