Anew disease had appeared in the world. Yes; of this, I had had painful evidence. It was possibly due, according to Sir Denis, to the presence in France of an unfamiliar fly—what he had called a genus-hybrid.
So much I was prepared to admit.
But how could any man be responsible for the appearance of such an insect, anywhere and at any time; much less in such widely separated places as those which had been visited by the epidemic?
The Purple Shadow...
I had nearly reached the end of the rock cutting. There was a dangerous comer just ahead; and I had allowed my thoughts to wander rather wide of the job in hand. A big car, a Rolls-Royce, appeared suddenly. The driver—some kind of African, as I saw—was taking so much of the road on the bend that no room was left for me.
Jamming on the brakes, I pulled close in against the wall of the tunnel...and I acted only just in time.
The driver of the Rolls checked slightly and swept right— missing me by six inches or less!
I had a clear, momentary view of the occupants of the car which had so nearly terminated my immediate interest in affairs....
How long I stayed there after the beautiful black-and-silver thing had purred away into the darkness, I don’t know. But I remember turning round and staring over the folded, dusty hood in a vain attempt to read the number.
The car had two occupants.
In regard to one of those occupants I wondered if the wild driving of the Negro chauffeur and my preoccupation with the other had led me to form a false impression. Because, when the Rolls had swept on its lordly way, I realised that my memory retained an image of something not entirely human.
A yellow face buried in the wings of an upturned fur collar I had certainly seen: a keen wind from the Alps made the night bitingly cold. The man wore a fur cap pulled down nearly to his brows, creating a curious mediaeval effect. But this face had a placid, almost godlike immobility, gaunt, dreadful, yet sealed with power like the features of a dead Pharoah.
Some chance trick of the lighting might have produced the illusion (its reality I could not admit); but about the second traveller I had no doubts whatever.
Her charming head framed—as that other skull-like head was framed—in the upturned collar of a fur coat...I saw Fleurette!
And I thought of a moss-rose....
I turned to the wheel again.
Fleurette!
She had not seen me, had not suspected that I was there. Probably, I reflected, it would not have interested her to know.
But her companion? I tested the starter, wondering if it would function after the shock. I was relieved to find that it did. The Rolls was miles away, now, unless the furious driving of the African chauffeur had led to disaster....That yellow face and those glittering green eyes—I asked myself the question: Could this be Mahdi Bey?
Somehow I could not believe the man with Fleurette to be an Egyptian. Yet, I reflected, driving on, there had been that about him which had conjured an image to my mind...the image of Seti the First—that King of Egypt whose majesty had survived three thousand years....
chapter eleventh
AT THE VILLA JASMIN
the car in which Nayland Smith had come from Cannes was standing just where the steep descent to the little garage made a hairpin bend. I supposed that the man had decided to park there for the night. But I was compelled to pull in behind, as it was impossible to pass.
I walked on beyond the bend to the back of the bungalow. A path to the left led around the building to the little verandah;
one to the right fell away in stepped terraces, skirting the garden and terminating at the laboratory.
My mind, from the time of that near crash with the Rolls up to this present moment, had been preoccupied. The mystery of Fleurette had usurped my thoughts. Fleurette—her charming little bronzed face enveloped in fur; a wave of her hair gleaming like polished mahogany. Now, as I started down the slope, a warning instinct spoke to me. I found myself snatched back to dangerous reality.
I pulled up, listening; but I could not detect the Kohler engine.
Some nocturnal flying thing hovered near me; I could hear the humming of its wings. Vividly, horribly, I visualised that hairy insect with its glossy back, and almost involuntarily, victim of a swift, overmastering and sickly terror, I began striking out right and left in the darkness....
Self-contempt came to my aid. I stood still again.
The insect, probably some sort of small beetle, was no longer audible. I thought of the fly-haunted swamps I had known, and grew hot with embarrassment. The Purple Shadow was a ghastly death; but Petrie had faced it unflinchingly....
Natural courage returned. A too vivid imagination had betrayed me.
I reached the laboratory and found it dark and silent. This was not unexpected. I supposed that the man had turned in on the couch. He was a tough type who had served in the French mercantile marine; I doubted if he were ever troubled by imagination. He had been given to understand, since this was the story we had told to Mme Dubonnet, that Petrie was suffering from influenza. He had accepted without demur Dr. Cartier’s assurance that there was no danger of infection.
Walking around to the door I rapped sharply.
There was no reply.
Far below I could see red roofs peeping out of purplish shadow, and, beyond, the sea gleaming under the moon; but by reason of its position the laboratory lay in darkness.
Having rapped several times without result, I began to wish that I had brought a torch, for I thought that then I could have looked in at the window. But even as the idea crossed my mind I remembered that the iron shutters were drawn.
Thus far, stupidly, I had taken it for granted that the door was locked. But failing to get a response from the man inside, I now tried the handle and found, to my great surprise, that the door was unlocked.
I opened it. The laboratory was pitch black and reeked of the smell of mimosa.
“Hullo, there!” I cried. “Are you asleep?”
There was no reply, but I detected a sound of heavy breathing as I groped for the switch. When I found it, the lamps came up very brightly, dipped, and then settled down.
“My God!” I groaned. The man from Cannes lay face downward on the couch!
I ran across, and tried to move him. He was a big, heavy fellow, and one limply down-stretched arm, the fingers touching the floor, told me that this was no natural repose. Indeed, the state of the place had prepared me for this.
It was not merely in disorder—it had been stripped. Petrie’s specimen slides and all the documents which were kept in the laboratory had been removed!
The smell of mimosa was everywhere; it was getting me by the throat.
I rolled the man over on his back. My first impression, that he had been drinking heavily, was immediately dispelled. He was insensible but breathing stertorously. I shouted and shook him, but without avail. My Colt automatic, which I had lent him, lay upon the floor some distance away.
“Good heavens!” I whispered, and stood there, listening.
Except for the hum of the engine in its shed near by, and the thick breathing of the man on the couch, I could hear nothing. I stared at the chauffeur’s flushed features.
Was it...the Purple Shadow?
My medical knowledge was not great enough to tell me. The man might have been stunned by a blow or be suffering from the effects of an anaesthetic. Certainly, I could find no evidence of injury.
It was only reasonable to suppose that whatever the marauders had come to look for, they had found. I decided to raise the metal shutters and open a window. That stifling perfume, for which I was wholly at a loss to account, threatened to overpower me. I wondered if the searchers had upset a jar of some queer preparation of Petrie’s.