THE DEVIL DOCTOR. Sax Rohmer
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a jug of milk, and a
trowel!
Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the
common, then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its
lights twinkled yellowly through the greyness, but I was less
concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveller
who had descended from it.
As the car went rocking by below me I strained my eyes in an endeavour
more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the high-road, had
struck-out across the common. It was that of a woman, who seemingly
carried a bulky bag or parcel.
One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers
in man which man, in modern times, neglects or knows not how to
develop. I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting
this lonely traveller who travelled at an hour so strange. With no
definite plan in mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from the rack and
walked briskly out of the house and across the common in a direction
which I thought would enable me to head off the woman.
I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have it, and
with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I came upon
her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the bundle which had
attracted my attention. I stopped and watched her.
She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a common
black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that the
dexterous hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white, and I
perceived a pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf beside
her. As she threw open the wrappings and lifted out something that
looked like a small shrimping-net, I stepped around the bush, crossed
silently the intervening patch of grass and stood beside her.
A faint breath of perfume reached me--of a perfume which, like the
secret incense of Ancient Egypt, seemed to assail my soul. The glamour
of the Orient was in that subtle essence, and I only knew one woman
who used it. I bent over the kneeling figure.
"Good morning," I said; "can I assist you in any way?"
She came to her feet like a startled deer, and flung away from me with
the lithe movement of some Eastern dancing-girl.
Now came the sun, and its heralding rays struck sparks from the jewels
upon the white fingers of this woman who wore the garments of a
mendicant. My heart gave a great leap. It was with difficulty that I
controlled my voice.
"There is no cause for alarm," I added.
She stood watching me; even through the coarse veil I could see how
her eyes glittered. I stooped and picked up the net.
"Oh!" The whispered word was scarcely audible; but it was enough. I
doubted no longer.
"This is a net for bird-snaring," I said. "What strange bird are you
seeking, _Kâramanèh_?"
With a passionate gesture Kâramanèh snatched off the veil, and with it
the ugly black hat. The cloud of wonderful intractable hair came
rumpling about her face, and her glorious eyes blazed out upon me. How
beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an Egyptian night; how
often had they looked into mine in dreams!
To labour against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one knows, upon
evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be worthless--evil; is
there any torture to which the soul of man is subject, more pitiless?
Yet this was my lot, for what past sins assigned to me I was unable to
conjecture; and this was the woman, this lovely slave of a monster, this
creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!" I said harshly.
Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.
"It is very convenient to forget, sometimes," I ran on bitterly, then
checked myself, for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless
desire to hear her defence, by a fool's hope that it might be an
acceptable one. I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it
had a strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously
it was intended for snaring. "What were you about to do?" I demanded
sharply; but in my heart, poor fool that I was, I found admiration for
the exquisite arch of Kâramanèh's lips, and reproach because they were
so tremulous.
She spoke then.
"Dr. Petrie--"
"Well?"
"You seem to be--angry with me, not so much because--of what I do, as
because I do not remember you. Yet--"
"Kindly do not revert to the matter," I interrupted. "You have chosen,
very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please
yourself; but answer my question."
She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
"Why do you treat me so?" she cried. She had the most fascinating
accent imaginable. "Throw me into prison, kill me if you like for what
I have done!" She stamped her foot. "For what I have done! But do not
torture me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches--that I forget
you! I tell you--again I tell you--that until you came one night, last
week, to rescue some one from"--(there was the old trick of hesitating
before the name of Fu-Manchu)--"from _him_, I had never, never seen
you!"
The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for
belief--or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were
against her.
"Such a declaration is worthless," I said, as coldly as I could. "You
are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you--"
"I am no traitress!" she blazed at me. Her eyes were magnificent.
"This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve
Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your 'slavery'--for