I could see all the objects there very clearly. The window at the further end, that overlooking the street and the side of the mosque, had the shutters closed but not latched. Through the slit between them I could see reflected light on the ancient wall beyond.
The bed, which jutted out along to my left, showed the outline of a heavy body under its sheet. A gray army blanket was rolled across the foot in accordance with Sir Lionel’s custom— a provision against the chill of early morning; and the sheet was pulled up right over the pillow so as entirely to conceal the head of the sleeper—another characteristic trick of the chiefs in insect-infested countries.
That mound of odds and ends still remained upon the big table, and garments were littered about the floor. On a low stool at the foot of the bed, an object now associated in my mind with murder, stood the long green box. A pistol lay beside me, and I had an electric torch in my pocket.
I anticipated a dreary vigil, nor was I by any means satisfied that the enemy would fall into the trap laid for him by Nayland Smith. Our preparations for departure in the early morning had been almost too ostentatious, in my opinion.
The room was silent as a tomb.
Ali Mahmoud, in the lobby below, would be watching the street intently through the iron-barred grill of the house door. Rima was in one of the rooms above, from which she also commanded a view of the street. Of Sir Denis’s position I remained in ignorance, except that definitely he was not in the house....
Time wore on. I grew very restless and cramped. Smoking was prohibited, as well as the making of the slightest sound.
I watched the shutters of the window above the cupboard so long and so intently that my sight became blurred. This, I felt assured, would be the point of attack. I formed dreadful mental pictures of the creature heard many nights ago by poor Van Berg—the thing which had alighted with a sound resembling that caused by the alighting of a heavy bird—in his own words.
What could it be—this flying thing? I conceived horrors transcending the imagination of the most morbid story-tellers.
For the keen weapon which had pierced through Van Berg’s back and reached his heart, I substituted a dreadful kind of beak—the beak of a thing not of this world; a flying horror, such as the Arab romancers have conjured up—a ghoulish creature haunting the ancient cemetery just beyond the city walls....
It was the cry of this creature, I told myself, that moaning, wailing cry, which had given rise to the legend of the Ghost Mosque, which had led to this little street becoming deserted, and had made the house in which we lived uninhabitable for so many years.
At which point in my grisly reflections a sound caused me to draw a sharp breath. I crouched, listening intently.
Footsteps!
Someone was walking along the street below. The regular, measured steps paused at a point which I estimated to be somewhere just in front of the door of the house. I anticipated a challenge from Ali Mahmoud, but recalled that Sir Denis’s instructions on this point had been implicit.
There was no challenge. The footsteps sounded again, echoing hollowly now, so that I knew the walker to be passing that outjutting wall of the mosque and approaching the dark, tunnel-like archway and the three steps leading to the narrow lane which skirted the base of the minaret.
I heard him mount the three steps; then again he paused....
What would I not have given for a glimpse of him! A pass-er-by was a phenomenon in that street at night. I dared not move, however. The footsteps continued—and presently died away altogether.
Silence descended again upon this uncanny quarter.
How long elapsed I had no means of judging; probably only a few minutes. But I had begun to induce a sort of hypnosis by my concentrated staring at the slit between the shutters, when—from high up and a long way off, I heard the sound....
It brought my mind back in a flash to those horrible imaginings which had absorbed me at the moment that footsteps had broken the stillness. It was coming!...The flying death!
A sort of horrible expectancy claimed me, as, pistol in hand, I watched the opening between the shutters.
Silence fell again. I could detect no sound either within the house or outside.
Whereupon it happened—the thing I had been waiting for;
a thing seemingly beyond human explanation.
There came a faint pattering sound on the narrow ledge outside and below the shutters. A dull impact and a faint creaking of woodwork told of a weight imposed upon the projecting window. Something began to move upward—a dim shadow behind the slats—upward and inward—towards the opening....
The tension of watching and waiting grew almost too keen to tolerate. But my orders were definite, and wait I must.
Beyond that faint straining of woodwork, no sound whatever was occasioned by the intruder. No sign came from below to indicate that Ali Mahmoud had seen anything of this apparition, which indeed, since it had apparently flown through the air, was not remarkable.
Then—the shutters began very silently to open....
CHAPTER TENTH
I SEE THE SLAYER
The shutter opened so silently and so slowly that only by the closest watching could I detect the movement. There was absolutely no creaking.
A window of the Ghost Mosque on the opposite side of the street, looking like a black smudge on a dirty yellow canvas, came just in line with the edge of the left-hand shutter. And only by the ever increasing gap of yellow between the woodwork and the smudge of shadow, could I tell what was happening.
The effect was slowly to add to the light in the room. So accustomed had I become to the dimness that I felt myself shrinking back farther into my hiding place; although in actual fact the access of light was less, I suppose, than would have been gained by the introduction of a solitary candle.
My ghoulish imaginings came to a head.
Some vampire creature from the ancient cemetery was about to spring in. More than once since the relics of El Mokanna had come into our possession I had laughed at Rima’s superstitious terrors, but at this moment I admit frankly that I shared them.
Ispahan lay around me, silent as a city of the past. I might have been alone in Persia. And always the fear was with me that Nayland Smith, for all his peculiar genius, had misjudged the circumstances which had led to the death of Van Berg; that I was about to be subjected to a test greater perhaps than my spiritual strength could cope with.
What I should have done at this moment had I been a free agent, I cannot even guess. But I doubt it I could have remained there silent and watching.
Fortunately, I was under orders. I meant to carry those orders out to the letter. But in honesty I must record that during the interminable moments which elapsed from the time that some incredible creature had alighted outside the win dow, to the moment that the shutters became fully opened. I doubted the wisdom of Nayland Smith...:
A vague mass rose inch by inch over the window ledge;
grew higher—denser, as it seemed to me; and, with a wriggling movement indescribably horrible, reached the top of that low cupboard which extended below the window—and crouched or lay there.
I had formed absolutely no conception of outline. The entrance of the nocturnal creature had been effected in such a manner that definition was impossible. This was the point, I think, at which my courage almost touched vanishing point.
What was the thing on top of the cupboard? Something which could fly—something which had no determinate shape....
I knew that the visitor was inspecting the room keenly. To me, as I have said, it seemed to have become brightly illuminated. Colt in hand, I shrank farther and farther away from the narrow opening through which I was peering, until my back was flat against the wall.