The Mask of Fu-Manchu Read Online Free

chief turned and stared at the last speaker.
    “That is so,” he agreed. They exchanged a glance of understanding. “You know all the facts. Don’t deny it!”
    Captain Woodville smiled slightly, glancing aside at Stratton Jean; then:
    “I know most of them,” he admitted, “but the details can only be known to you. As a matter of fact, I’m here today because some tragedy of this kind had been rather foreseen. Quite frankly, although I don’t suppose I’m telling you anything that you don’t know already, you have stirred up a lot of trouble.”
    Rima squeezed my hand furtively. It was nothing new for her distinguished uncle to stir up trouble. His singular investigations had more than once imperiled international amity.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE VEILED PROPHET
    “Y ou have said, Mr. Jean,” said Sir Lionel, “that my particular studies are outside your province, but my interests were shared by Dr. Van Berg. Already he occupied a chair of Oriental literature, but, if he had lived, his name would have ranked high as any. Very well.”
    He paced up and down in silence for a while, hands locked behind him. The two Persian officials had gone. Those queer discords characteristic of an Eastern city rose to us through the open window: cries of street hawkers, of carriage drivers; even the jangle of camel bells. And there were flies, myriads of flies…
    “It was Van Berg who got the clue which set us off upon this expedition—the expedition which was to be his last. Down on the borders of Arabia he picked up a man, an Afghan, as a matter of fact, named Amir Khan. This man told him the story of the spot known locally as the Place of the Great Magician. It’s in the No Man’s Land between Khorassan and Afghanistan.
    “Van Berg, with whom I had been in correspondence for some years, although we had never met, learned that I was in Iraq. He was a Persian scholar, and he knew parts of the country well. But of Khorassan and Afghanistan he knew nothing. He got into communication with me. He asked me to share the enterprise. I accepted—as you know, Greville—“he darted one of his quick glances in my direction—”and we moved down and joined Van Berg, who was waiting for us on the Persian border.
    “I interviewed the man Amir Khan. I could talk his lingo and so get nearer to the truth than Van Berg had succeeded in doing—”
    “I never trusted Amir Khan!” I broke in. “His story was true, and he did his job, but—”
    “Amir Khan was a thug ,” the chief continued quietly; “I always knew it. But servants of Kali have no respect for Mohammed; therefore I was prepared to trust him with regard to the matter in hand. He advanced arguments strong enough to induce me, in conjunction with Van Berg, to proceed with a party, who had been in my employ for more than a year, northeast of Persia. In brief, gentlemen, we went to look for the burial place of El Mokanna, the Hidden One, sometimes called the Veiled Prophet, but, as Captain Woodville has pointed out, more properly the Masked Prophet…”
    This was “shop” and overfamiliar. I turned my head and stared from the open window towards a corresponding, ruinous, window of the mosque opposite. The deserted building certainly had a sinister reputation, being known locally as the Ghost Mosque. If this circumstance, together with that eerie sound which had heralded poor Van Berg’s death, were responsible, I cannot say. But I became the victim of a queer delusion…
    “Mokanna, Mr. Jean,” the chief was saying, “about 770 A.D., set himself up as an incarnation of God, and drew to his new sect many thousands of followers. He revised the Koran. His power became so great that the Caliph Al Mahdi was forced to move against him with a considerable army. Mokanna was a hideous creature. His features were so mutilated as to be horrible to see…”
    Brilliant green eyes were fixed upon me from the shadow of the ruined window!...
    “But he was a man. He and the whole of