The Mask of Fu-Manchu Read Online Free Page B

seen our lights. The legendary site of the place was more widely known than we had realised. And when, some time after our departure, which took place after dusk, there was a great explosion and a bright glare in the sky, the result was something totally unforeseen…”
    “If I may interrupt you, Sir Lionel,” said Captain Woodville quietly, “from this point I can carry on the story. An outcry— ‘Mokanna has arisen’—swept through Afghanistan. That was the spot at which I came into the matter. You had been even more successful than you seem to appreciate. None of the tribesmen who, as you suspect, and rightly, still hold the Mokanna tradition had any idea that you or any human influence had been concerned with the eruption which reduced a lonely ruined shrine to a dusty hollow. A certain fanatical imam took upon himself the duties of a sort of Eastern Peter the Hermit.”
    The speaker paused, taking a cigarette from his case and tapping it thoughtfully upon his thumb nail. I glanced swiftly over my shoulder. But the cavernous window of the mosque showed as an unbroken patch of shadow...
    “He declared that the Masked Prophet had been reborn and that with the Sword of God he would carry the New Creed throughout the East, sweeping the Infidel before him. That movement is gathering strength. Sir Lionel, and I need not tell you what such a movement means to the Indian government, and what it may come to mean for Arabia, Palestine, and possibly Egypt, unless it can be checked.”
    There came a moment of silence, broken only by the striking of a match and the heavy footsteps of the chief as he restlessly paced up and down—up and down. At last:
    “Such a movement would call for a strong leader,” said Rima.
    Captain Woodville extinguished the match and turned to her gravely.
    “We have reason to fear, Miss Barton,” he replied, “that such a leader has been found. I suspect also, Sir Lionel—” glancing at the chief—“that he wants what you have found and will stick at nothing to get it…”

CHAPTER FIVE

NAYLAND SMITH TAKES CHARGE
    “S omeone to see you, Greville Effendim.”
    I raised my eyes from the notes which I had been studying but did not look around. Through the open window in front of the table at which I had been working I could see on the opposite side of the narrow street the sun-bathed wall of that deserted mosque of unpleasant history.
    A window almost on a level with that through which I was looking was heavily outlined on one side and at the top by dense shadows. Only that morning I had explored the mosque—penetrating to the gallery behind that window. What I had hoped to find I really don’t know. Actually, I had found nothing.
    “Show him in, Ali Mahmoud.”
    I pushed the notes aside and turned, as footsteps on the landing outside told me that my visitor had arrived.
    Then I sprang swiftly to my feet…
    Something I had vaguely prayed for, something I had not dared to expect, had actually happened! A tall, lean man, with clean-shaven face so sunbaked as to resemble that of an Arab, stood in the doorway.
    “Sir Denis! Sir Denis!” I cried. This is almost too wonderful!”
    It was Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, one of my chief’s oldest friends, and the one man in the world whom I would have chosen to be with us now. But the mystery of his appearance had knocked me sideways; and, as he grasped my hand, that lean, tired face relaxed in the boyish smile that I knew and loved; and:
    “A surprise?” he snapped in his queer, staccato fashion. “It was a surprise to me too, Greville. If anybody had offered me a hundred to one, three days ago, that I should be in Ispahan now, I should have taken him.”
    “But…” I looked him up and down.
    He wore a leather overcoat over a very dilapidated flannel suit, and, since he was hatless, I saw that his crisp, wavy hair, more heavily silvered in the interval since our last meeting, was disordered.
    “But