Nude in Mink, Sax Rohmer [free children's ebooks pdf TXT] 📗

before Maitland’s story drew to an end. There were many interruptions, too. Telephone reports concerning the mysterious Embassy, and one visit.

Thomson, the police driver, came in to give a personal account of what happened after he had left Ives and Donovan near Marble Arch. The wanted car was speeding along Bayswater Road when he sighted it next, and before he could overtake, its driver swung dangerously off the main road and headed for Westbourne Terrace. Thomson shot past. But he came round fairly smartly and followed.

They had tricked him. He found the car abandoned, empty. But the driver, the other passenger, and the luggage had vanished.

Thomson jumped out and scouted around for a long time. He had no luck. The fugitives might have gone into any one of a dozen houses or blocks of flats in that neighbourhood. He could pick up no trace of them, and there was no passer-by to help him…

Steel Maitland related how he had set out to find Lady Orpsley’s address in Switzerland. He took steps to get in touch with her at the earliest possible moment, then, later, went along to the autopsy on the body of Sir Miles Tristram.

This appalling incident, so far, had merely been reported as a sudden death. The full facts had not been divulged to the newspapers, nor was it intended, at any rate at present, that they should be. Maitland was able to offer valuable information to the Home Office pathologist, who confessed himself utterly at a loss to account for the condition of Tristram’s body. No case of rigor Kubus had, hitherto, come under his notice.

A large green sapphire was clenched in his hand …

Maitland had been delayed in one way and another, and had arrived, as they both knew, at Donovan’s flat during the time that Donovan was in Shepherd Market. Of the fight on the landing he gave same graphic details …

“But just what happened next?” Ives asked.

Steel Maitland ran his hand through his thick black hair and smiled wryly. He had lost the pallor which had alarmed Donovan so much, and was again, so far as manner and appearance went, his normal self.

“A simple question, Inspector, but a hard one to answer. Quite briefly, I don’t know!”

“You mean,” Inspector Ives suggested, “that there’s a gap in your recollection?”

“There are many gaps, which together must have covered a longish period, as I realise now. It’s clear to me that you and Donovan have a strange tale to tell as well, and it may have some bearing on mine. This is so queer that I hardly expect you to believe it.”

“I am prepared to believe anything,” Ives declared, “since what happened to Mr. Donovan. So you may go ahead.”

“Well, here goes. I passed out, there on the stairhead, but recovered to find myself alone in a small room with which I was entirely unfamiliar. There was nothing distinctive about it, except perhaps a piece of Chinese tapestry which hung on one wall—”

“Phew!” Donovan ejaculated. “This is uncanny! I thought I had dreamed about that tapestry! But don’t let me interrupt.”

“As, apart from a rather swimmy head, I felt quite restored, I decided to try the door. I was flat out to make a run for it. The room was curiously silent, and it appeared to have no windows. It was lighted by a shaded lamp on a bookcase. But there was nothing in any way alarming about it otherwise. I tried to do as I have stated. The word is tried.”

Maitland paused, and a memory of what Donovan and Ives knew, later, to have been a moment of stark horror, evidently claimed his mind. His whole expression changed.

“I could not stir a limb! As I lay, on my side, and facing the tapestried wall, so I was forced to remain. I learned that I could not reclose my eyes. I could not move a muscle! Even now, at this moment, the mere recollection has covered me with perspiration. I did not, could not, doubt that I was in the second stage of rigor Kubus!”

Ives moved uneasily in his chair, glancing aside at Donovan.

“Help yourself, Inspector,” Donovan said. “We could do with drinks all round, if you don’t mind.”

He stood up.

“I don’t like the smell of this case,” he declared. “I saw Sir Miles Tristram, too.”

“However,” Maitland went on, “as I lay there fighting against mad panic, the Chinese tapestry was drawn aside and a woman came out into the room, and stood there watching me. She wore a dark cape of some smooth, glossy fur over what I took to be a white evening frock. There were gold sandals on her bare feet, and there was a scarf of Indian silk with a design worked in gold thread, tied over her hair. She was smiling, and her eyes shone like jewels. Even before she spoke, I knew… that this was Sumuru!”

“One glimpse would be enough,” Donovan whispered.

“Donovan, you will confirm what I am going to say. I didn’t believe there was a human being anywhere in the world, who radiated such force! Her spirit so transfigured her flesh, seeming to shine through like a white fire through delicate porcelain, that I lost all awareness of the woman and was conscious of nothing but of the appalling power of her mind. Not that she tried to impress me with pompous words, but simply that I experienced a sensation or being in the presence of something unique, dynamic, dangerous.”

Donovan nodded, but did not interrupt again.

“Her first words were, ‘You have no one but yourself to thank for this, Dr. Maitland.’ And although her speech seemed effortless. I knew that I listened to a very rare thing: perfect diction. Every word that she spoke registered. ‘But I have no wish to torture you. The muscular paralysis will pass. You are not suffering from rigor Kubus.’ I hardly expect to be believed—” Maitland looked at Ives and then at Donovan, almost appealingly— “but I never doubted her word.”

“I was about to say,” Ives interrupted, as he served drinks, “that I should like to meet the lady. But on second thoughts, I’m not so sure!”

“She told me very quietly, in that beautiful voice, that I had been closely covered for some months past. They had quite made up their minds that Tristram and I must never compare notes. Tristram, it appears, had got hold of evidence to prove the real identity of Sumuru. By the way, I was wrong about her nationality. Whatever country she belongs to, it isn’t Japan. She made no bones about the murder. There are others,’ she said, ‘who might dream of interfering with me. And, however you may try to hush up the facts, the truth will leak out. No one cares to die of rigor Kubus. Sir Miles’s death will serve as a sharp object lesson’.”

“It has!” Donovan remarked, and took a gulp of whisky.

“Sumuru informed me that she had seen Tristram, personally, and that she had outlined the object of her campaign. She described this as the suppression of ugliness. Al-thought she didn’t actually say so, I believe, as I suspected, that it was Sumuru who brought the sapphire to Charles Street and who put the poison spores into Tristram’s snuffbox. He recognised his visitor, perhaps, and made the mistake of trying to blackmail her. We all know what his terms for silence would be. We have seen how Sumuru replied.”

Apparently, this singular woman insisted that she, alone, could save the world from a Third World War, which would destroy civilisation. She had the financial resources and was building up the necessary organisation for her reign of beauty. It was not and would never be a reign of terror. But she would brook no interference.

“‘You have accumulated a quantity of material,’ she said, ‘which, although it could not bring me within reach of your absurd law—I am above the law—might inconvenience me if you placed it before the authorities. Claudette, who is here with me, and your friend, Mr. Donovan, are in great danger whilst this material remains in his charge …’”

Those were the last words spoken at this interview which Maitland remembered.

“I had an impression that Sumuru was disappearing like something vaporous. At last, all that I could see of her was her eyes. It’s humiliating to confess that one has been hypnotised by a woman, but I believe this is what happened —not only then, but again later. As for my own part in all that followed, I simply can’t help you at all. There are a number of hazy memories and others that are crystal clear. Time ceased to exist. I occupied a small but well-appointed suite and was waited upon by some sort of Eurasian butler, wearing Arab dress: a fellow who eternally smiled. On one occasion I was taken to a waiting-room… and Donovan was brought in!”

Maitland paused, looking bewildered, and then went on:

“I believe that everything I touched was drugged—even the water. Looking back, I realise there are so many gaps. Then comes a clear memory—my meeting with a dark and powerful rascal who said his name was Dr. Worthington.”

“I’ll get that bird one day!” growled Donovan.

“Oh! you know him? Well—I wish you luck? He spliced me up in a large and first class laboratory, forced an injection into my spine, and I was hustled into a room like a Roman atrium. I remembered that I had been there before. But I simply couldn’t recall (and can’t recall now) what had taken place on the earlier occasion …”

Maitland described his last interview with Sumuru.

“What happened next I cannot say. In a dim way, I seem to remember being here, in this flat, and of looking for a key. Dr. Worthington shares in those memories, too…”

“I believe he was the other passenger in the car,” said Ives savagely.

“It’s quite possible. But I have no recollection of being in a car at all. My next, clear memory is one of finding myself lying on the ground in Hyde Park and of hearing your voice, Donovan!”

2

That they were opposed to an enemy who used strange weapons was a thing beyond dispute. To what extent unfamiliar drugs played a part in Sumuru’s campaign and how much of those experiences shared by Maitland and Donovan must be counted due to this woman’s personal magnetism, was a problem they found hard to solve. Ives remained obstinately sceptical concerning her hypnotic powers.

“Unless you had been drugged she could have done nothing,” was his verdict.

But there was another queer thing. Maitland and Donovan were unanimous on the point of Sumuru’s remarkable beauty. But neither could tell Ives the colour of her eyes or of her hair! Maitland was quite unable to hide the fact that he regarded her with something approaching awe.

“She may be the World’s Desire, Donovan; every man’s ideal.”

Ives scratched his head. “I suppose you mean Helen of Troy. That would make her something past middle-aged, wouldn’t it?” he inquired dryly.

“There’s another very queer thing,” Maitland added. “I am positive on one point: At some time, somewhere, I have seen this woman before …”

Nevertheless, since none of them had any idea of her real identity, speculation alone remained. Ives suggested, ironically, that supposing he were lucky enough to “bring her in,” as he phrased it, neither would be able to identify her.

“On the contrary,” Maitland assured him, “I could identify her in a million. She is absolutely unmistakable.”

“Yet you can’t describe her.”

Maitland smiled wanly, and lighted one of his odorous cheroots. “A fact which, of itself, is somewhat extraordinary …”

3

Donovan’s frame of mind during those days he found it hard