|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 90
She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
"You are a doctor," she said. "I want you to come and see him now."
"What! Is he in London?"
"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
"And you would have me--"
"Accompany me there, yes."
Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against
trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.
Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling
eastward in a closed cab. Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I
turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression
in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there
was something else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.
The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,
the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about
the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.
In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world
of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.
I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared
the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,
and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down
a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,
hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.
But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze
of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,
so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this
girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character
was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask
the cunning of a serpent.
I spoke to her.
"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through
a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.
The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.
I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow
of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.
For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors
of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume
which now I had come to associate with her. Absolute darkness
was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she,
was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led
along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.
A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely
furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp
which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean
of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow
richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood
listening intently for a moment.
The silence was unbroken.
Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two
tiny bright eyes looked up at me. Peering closely, I succeeded
in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset. "This way," whispered Karamaneh.
Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more
unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration
of prudence could now be of avail.
The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted. Following the direction
of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend
as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.
Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked
down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist
within many a mile of that district.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|