Brood of the Witch-Queen, Sax Rohmer [books to read for beginners txt] 📗

one end and was otherwise scantily furnished, in the Eastern manner. A silver incense-burner smoked upon a large praying-carpet, and by it stood the man in the crocodile mask. An Arab girl, fantastically attired, who had evidently just opened the shutters, was now helping him to remove the hideous headdress.

She presently untied the last of the fastenings and lifted the thing from the man’s shoulders, moving away with the gliding step of the Oriental, and leaving him standing there in his short white tunic, barelegged and sandalled.

The smoke of the incense curled upward and played around the straight, slim figure, drew vaporous lines about the still, ivory face⁠—the handsome, sinister face, sometimes partly veiling the long black eyes and sometimes showing them in all their unnatural brightness. So the man stood, looking towards the barred window.

It was Antony Ferrara!

“Ah, dear Cairn⁠—” the husky musical voice smote upon Cairn’s ears as the most hated sound in nature⁠—“you have followed me. Not content with driving me from London, you would also render Cairo⁠—my dear Cairo⁠—untenable for me.”

Cairn clutched the bars but was silent.

“How wrong of you, Cairn!” the soft voice mocked. “This attention is so harmful⁠—to you. Do you know, Cairn, the Sudanese formed the extraordinary opinion that I was an efreet, and this strange reputation has followed me right down the Nile. Your father, my dear friend, has studied these odd matters, and he would tell you that there is no power, in Nature, higher than the human will. Actually, Cairn, they have ascribed to me the direction of the khamsin, and so many worthy Egyptians have made up their minds that I travel with the storm⁠—or that the storm follows me⁠—that something of the kind has really come to pass! Or is it merely coincidence, Cairn? Who can say?”

Motionless, immobile, save for a slow smile, Antony Ferrara stood, and Cairn kept his eyes upon the evil face, and with trembling hands clutched the bars.

“It is certainly odd, is it not,” resumed the taunting voice, “that khamsin, so violent, too, should thus descend upon the Cairene season? I only arrived from the Fayûm this evening, Cairn, and, do you know, they have the pestilence there! I trust the hot wind does not carry it to Cairo; there are so many distinguished European and American visitors here. It would be a thousand pities!”

Cairn released his grip of the bars, raised his clenched fists above his head, and in a voice and with a maniacal fury that were neither his own, cursed the man who stood there mocking him. Then he reeled, fell, and remembered no more.

“All right, old man⁠—you’ll do quite nicely now.”

It was Sime speaking.

Cairn struggled upright⁠ ⁠… and found himself in bed! Sime was seated beside him.

“Don’t talk!” said Sime, “you’re in hospital! I’ll do the talking; you listen. I saw you bolt out of Shepheard’s last night⁠—shut up! I followed, but lost you. We got up a search party, and with the aid of the man who had driven you, ran you to earth in a dirty alley behind the mosque of El-Azhar. Four kindly mendicants, who reside upon the steps of the establishment, had been awakened by your blundering in among them. They were holding you⁠—yes, you were raving pretty badly. You are a lucky man, Cairn. You were inoculated before you left home?”

Cairn nodded weakly.

“Saved you. Be all right in a couple of days. That damned khamsin has brought a whiff of the plague from somewhere! Curiously enough, over fifty percent of the cases spotted so far are people who were at the carnival! Some of them, Cairn⁠—but we won’t discuss that now. I was afraid of it, last night. That’s why I kept my eye on you. My boy, you were delirious when you bolted out of the hotel!”

“Was I?” said Cairn wearily, and lay back on the pillow. “Perhaps I was.”

XIV Dr. Cairn Arrives

Dr. Bruce Cairn stepped into the boat which was to take him ashore, and as it swung away from the side of the liner sought to divert his thoughts by a contemplation of the weird scene. Amid the smoky flare of many lights, amid rising clouds of dust, a line of laden toilers was crawling ant-like from the lighters into the bowels of the big ship; and a second line, unladen, was descending by another gangway. Above, the jewelled velvet of the sky swept in a glorious arc; beyond, the lights of Port Said broke through the black curtain of the night, and the moving ray from the lighthouse intermittently swept the harbour waters; whilst, amid the indescribable clamour, the grimily picturesque turmoil, so characteristic of the place, the liner took in coal for her run to Rangoon.

Dodging this way and that, rounding the sterns of big ships, and disputing the waterway with lesser craft, the boat made for shore.

The usual delay at the Custom House, the usual soothing of the excited officials in the usual way, and his arabîyeh was jolting Dr. Cairn through the noise and the smell of those rambling streets, a noise and a smell entirely peculiar to this clearing-house of the Near East.

He accepted the room which was offered to him at the hotel, without troubling to inspect it, and having left instructions that he was to be called in time for the early train to Cairo, he swallowed a whisky and soda at the buffet, and wearily ascended the stairs. There were tourists in the hotel, English and American, marked by a gaping wonderment, and loud with plans of sightseeing; but Port Said, nay all Egypt, had nothing of novelty to offer Dr. Cairn. He was there at great inconvenience; a practitioner of his repute may not easily arrange to quit London at a moment’s notice. But the business upon which he was come was imperative. For him the charm of the place had not existence, but somewhere in Egypt his son stood in deadly peril, and Dr. Cairn counted the hours that yet