Each foot he moved he half expected to feel the prick of a death dart, or see a man with a knife leap toward him. Would his desperate disguise work?
The starlight shone through the branches on his brown-skinned face, revealing its Malaysian contours. His eyes probed the darkness ahead. Then he made a discovery. The building in the island’s center was no barn. It was an old storage warehouse, built at the time of the war, taken over now by a man who was a vicious enemy of society.
A dark figure moved suddenly at “X’s” left. He waited, pulses hammering, felt eyes upon him. One of the Malay killers came slowly up. Then he saw others, coming in from different angles. And suddenly his body grew rigid. For out of the darkness ahead came the faint, mysterious note of a deep-toned gong. It seemed to be a signal, summoning the dread clan together, and Agent “X” moved forward — into the very citadel of terror.
Chapter XV
HIS pulses raced as he crept close to that great gloomy building. His daring disguise had worked so far. He had not been questioned. He had been accepted as one of this poisonous Malay horde. But what of the gong? What did it signify? And where was Betty Dale?
There was one small door in the building ahead. Agent “X” entered this along with other of the brown-skinned men. A dim oil lamp burned at the end of a long passage. Boarding clattered underfoot, rousing ghostly echoes in this shadowed corridor. The odor of some strange incense deepened in the air as he neared the light ahead. Then the gong’s note sounded once more, closer this time, and the faces of the Malays around him seemed to change. They contracted into masklike immobility, eyes glittering strangely, heads stiffly held.
There was a doorway to the right of the dim lamp. One of the brown men opened this. A heavy curtain showed, with the glint of more light beyond.
Before entering this curtained chamber the Malay lifted a mask of carved wood from a peg and placed it over his features. These were the masks the torturers had worn when Saunders had been slain. They hung like grinning skulls upon the wall. Agent “X” took his.
Then the man ahead thrust the curtain aside. Agent “X” followed him, and felt a sudden pulse-beat of excitement.
In those few steps along that dark corridor and through this curtained doorway, he seemed to have been transported to a world fantastic as a nightmare. It seemed impossible that he was within a few miles of Washington, D.C., America’s capital.
For the scene before him was barbaric, amazing. The room, one of the ground-floor chambers of the old warehouse, was hung with the skins of animals and bright, Oriental tapestries.
Oil lights flamed and flickered around the walls. At the end of the big room, on some sort of wooden base, a hideous idol rose grotesquely. From its flaring nostrils streams of incense vapor rolled in slow spirals to the ceiling, as though the idol were breathing fire. It had huge, batlike ears, a long nose, wide-open, staring eyes.
Before it was an altar made of a slab of stone, and upon this a live sheep was tied. The note of the gong sounded again, muffled, mysterious, seeming to come from the idol’s very mouth.
The Malays, moving forward in the manner of sleepwalkers now, arranged themselves before the idol in a worshipful semicircle. There was a pungent odor mixed with the incense. Agent “X” recognized it as Bhang, or hashish. The leader of the Malay group passed cigarettes filled with the same drug. The men began to smoke, their eyes glazing as they puffed.
The frightened sheep at the altar let out one quavering baaa. In that high-ceilinged room echoes came back like a fiend’s insane laughter.
Then suddenly the Malays commenced to chant. A strange, barbaric, age-old song of the jungle — a devil song that the high priests or bomors of Kelantan had handed down from father to son through the centuries. Brown arms and bodies swayed; the pulse-beat of savage rhythm rippled muscles like serpents’ coils.
Agent “X,” drawing sparingly on the hashish cigarette that had been handed him, watched the ceremony tensely behind his mask. The Malays seemed to be working themselves up to a pitch of ecstasy. Their chant rose in volume. Suddenly, at its height, the gong sounded still again, and the chanting ended in a long-drawn sigh. Then they prostrated themselves, arms stretched out, heads on the floor, and “X” from the corner of his eye saw why.
A trapdoor opened beside the idol. A tall figure appeared. A man with a weird headdress, ornamented with green plumes, and a robe of the same hue. A man with a mask more hideously wrought than any of the others.
He mounted a flight of steps slowly, seeming to rise out of the very earth, and not until he had reached the altar before the idol, did the Malays lift their heads. They gazed raptly then. The masked bomor addressed the evil spirits, turning first to the hideous idol, then to the men before him, then to the tethered sheep. Again the animal bleated, pulling back with braced hoofs against the rope that held it.
The bomor spoke in words that Agent “X” could understand.
“You have done well, O men of Kelantan,” he intoned. “The great god, Tuan, is pleased. You have taken jewels from the white devils. You have laid them at the feet of Tuan. You have killed white devils, and this also pleases Tuan. Soon we shall take a boat across the water. Soon we shall return Tuan to his native land and he will reward you for the precious things you have so graciously laid at his feet.”
The green-robed priest then walked slowly toward the idol, lifting a cloth pouch from his belt. He thrust his hand into this, drew forth a glittering collection of jewels, and solemnly dropped them at the idol’s feet. A few sparkling necklaces he slipped over the idol’s upraised arms.
THE Malays around “X” chanted again, strange words that formed a jewel song. The eyes of Agent “X” gleamed behind his mask. Here, apparently, were the jewels stolen in Washington over a period of weeks.
His eyes riveted once more on the high priest. The man’s mask hid his face, but Agent “X” was certain that this was the one who had ordered Saunders’ death, the man who had killed Peters — and captured Betty Dale.
When the green-masked priest had finished decorating the idol, he turned and walked toward the tethered sheep. The creature was to be a living sacrifice. A strange chill of horror filled Agent “X” as the bomor stood above the animal, knife gleaming in his hand.
The song of the Malays to their devil god rose again, pulsed in the incense-heavy air with the slow, insistent beat of jungle tom-toms. At intervals the bomor’s hollow voice gave answer to the chorus.
The frightened sheep repeated its trembling cry, but was silenced by a thrust of the high priest’s knife. Briefly it struggled, then lay still. Crimson from its slashed throat stained the altar stone.
The ghastly ceremony was completed. Leaving the idol still glittering with jewels, the green-masked bomor backed slowly away. As he did so he committed the slain sheep into the hands of the Malays. The earth seemed to open up and swallow him. He disappeared as he had come — through the hidden trapdoor. The hideous idol had taken the sheep’s soul. Its worshipers had been given the animal’s flesh.
But the brown men were still under the influence of hashish. For nearly an hour they chanted. “X” had to remain. His thoughts were with Betty Dale — but to break that strange half-circle would have meant rousing suspicion.