“I cannot explain to you, Brian. What was told to me was told—in confidence. For your sake I speak. If it is found out——”
“Well, Zoe dear, what then?”
“It could be terrible. But you can do nothing about it. Only one thing, to give me peace of mind about you ... Do as I ask. Do not stay here one hour longer than you can help!”
“But, Zoe. I don’t know, and I’m not going to worry you to tell me, where you got hold of the idea that I’m in danger, but isn’t it possible you’re letting yourself get all het up for nothing?”
She turned, and her eyes challenged him. “It is not for nothing! Could it be for nothing that I beg you to go away when I want you to stay with me? How can you think this!”
Brian realized, at last, that Zoe was in a state of tremendous nervous tension. His well-meant but perhaps clumsy attempt to soothe her fears had only increased this. He must change his tactics. The situation was utterly fantastic. But he knew that the danger was real enough.
“I guess you’d like to get back.” He spoke uneasily. “I’ll try to contact Sir Denis.”
“It will be no use,” Zoe whispered. “But—yes—let us go, Brian.”
There was a note of such black despair in her voice that he felt chilled. A cloud seemed to darken the Egyptian sunshine. He stood up, walked around and rested his hands on Zoe’s bowed shoulders.
“Don’t let it get you down, Zoe. I’ll go in and order a car right away to take us back to Cairo.”
She reached up and held both his hands. “Not to Cairo, Brian—to Port Said where we can find a ship! Do this and I will come with you. Leave all you have. It will be better—for you and for me. I am not mad. I know what I say. Do it—do it, Brian!”
“But, Zoe, dear, tonight——”
“Tonight is too late. It is now or never! . . . Oh! It is hopeless!” She thrust his hands away. “I can never make you understand! Go, then. I will wait here.”
His brain behaving like a carousel, Brian went into the hotel and arranged for a car. He could no longer delude himself. The ragged old ruffian he had found seated in the road was a spy. And he was there to listen to their conversation. Zoe knew this, and her pitiable panic was clear enough evidence of the menace overhanging them.
He toyed longingly with the temptation to accept her warning. She had become more than ever desirable. She was beautiful, and a delightful companion, responding to all his moods, equally prepared to dance, to swim or to ride as the humour moved him. And in all they did together she was graceful and efficient.
But it was morally unthinkable that he should break his contract with Sir Denis—particularly now, when Nayland Smith needed him.
He walked slowly back to the garden and along to their table.
But Zoe wasn’t there!
Brian felt his heart jump and then seem to stop for a moment. He sat down, looking at the empty chair. And by degrees he recovered himself. He, too, was giving way to panic. No doubt she had merely gone into the hotel to prepare herself for the drive.
This theory kept him quiet for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Then he decided that it was wrong.
He went in to make inquiries. But no one had seen her. He went back to the deserted table . . . and it was still deserted.
A boy walked down the path, and Brian jumped up expectantly.
“Your car is waiting, sir. . . .”
Chapter
7
Dr. Fu Manchu, seated on a divan in the saloon of the old house near the Mosque of El-Ashraf, gazed straight before him as a man in a trance. A sickly smell of opium hung in the still air. The long, hypnotic eyes were narrowed. Sometimes a sort of film seemed to pass across them and was gone, leaving them brilliantly green.
He aroused himself; struck a small gong which stood on a table beside him. And immediately, like a djinn answering a magic summons, a stocky Burmese with a caste-mark on his forehead, came in and saluted deeply. Fu Manchu spoke to him in his own language:
“Is Zobeida here?”
“She is here, Master.”
“Send her in to me.”
So soon after the man went out as to suggest that the girl had been waiting in some adjoining room, Zoe came in. She was dressed as she had been dressed at Mena House, except that she no longer wore her sun-hat. Although pale, she was quite composed. It was the composure of resignation.
Without attempting to meet the glance which Fu Manchu fixed upon her, she dropped to her knees and lowered her head. There was a long silence in the saloon. Sounds from the street outside sometimes penetrated dimly, but no word was spoken, unticlass="underline"
“Look up,” Dr. Fu Manchu commanded harshly, now using Arabic. “Look up! Speak!”
Zoe, known here as Zobeida, looked up.
“I have nothing to say, Master.” She lowered her head again.
“To me you mean, little serpent! ButAbdul al-Taleb (‘Abdul the Fox’) reports that you had much, too much, to say to Mr. Brian Merrick. Be so good as to tell me with what object you tried deliberately to disturb my plans.”
“I was sorry for him.”
Dr. Fu Manchu took a pinch of snuff from a little silver box, but never once ceased to watch the kneeling girl.
“There is no room for these moods of compassion in those who work for the Si-Fan. I bought you in an Arabian slave-market. I bought you for your beauty. A beautiful woman is a valuable weapon. But the blade must be true. You were trained to take your place in any walk of society. You have all the necessary accomplishments. Neither time nor money was spared in perfecting you for my purpose. Yet, like another I trained and trusted, your Arab blood betrayed you—and betrayed me!”
Fu Manchu’s strange voice rose to a hissing falsetto on the last word. Zoe raised her hands to her face, and seemed to droop like a fading flower.
“Whispered words,” the remorseless voice went on, “a man’s caresses, and those years of patient training became wasted years in as many minutes. Yet, Zobeida, this was not by any means the first assignment you have carried out. You have passed through those fires unscathed—as you were taught to do. Tell me, Zobeida, are you afflicted by the delusion miscalled love?”
He gave to “love” so scornful an intonation that Zoe shrank even lower. She was trembling, now. Her answer was a whisper:
“This one is young, and without experience, Master. He is not like—those others.”
Dr. Fu Manchu considered her silently for a moment.
“Had you spoken the unforgivable words, ‘I love him’, I should have sent for whips. It would have meant that you were of no future use, and therefore lash marks on your smooth skin would no longer have concerned me. But—you have betrayed the plans of the Si-Fan.”
Zoe looked up. “I have not! He knows nothing of your plans, for even had I wanted to, I could have told him nothing. He knows that I think he is in danger, that he should go away——”
“With you, unless I misunderstood Abdul, who was listening.”
Zoe dropped her head again. “I would not have gone, Master, farther than Port Said. I dare not have gone. I thought, if I said this, he might be tempted to listen to me.”
Another silence fell—a long silence, and then: “Your desire to guide this attractive young man into the straight and narrow path is most touchng. Fortunately, I was able to take instant steps to check further confidences.” Fu Manchu spoke softly. “Go to your room. You will not be returning to the hotel. . . .”
* * *
A faint hope that Zoe, piqued by his refusal to take her strange advice, might have found an empty cab at Mena House and returned alone to Cairo was disappointed when he got back to his hotel. She had not come in.