Desde las costas brumosas de Galicia, donde el Atlántico se encuentra con el espíritu de un pueblo indómito, hasta los venerables páramos de Inglaterra, cuna del fútbol y de epopeyas deportivas, emprendimos un viaje que trasciende lo meramente físico. No era un simple desplazamiento, sino un acto casi ritual: un enfrentamiento entre dos culturas, dos formas de entender el juego y, quizás, la vida misma.
La travesía no era solo geográfica, sino histórica y simbólica. Galicia, con su espíritu marinero y su imborrable conexión con lo celta, se disponía a cruzar el mar como en las antiguas gestas, llevando consigo no solo las botas de fútbol, sino también el orgullo de toda una nación. Inglaterra, tierra de estadios míticos y leyendas inmortales, nos esperaba con su hierba impoluta y su densa atmósfera impregnada de tradición.
En ese partido, bajo el cielo ceniciento que ambos pueblos compartimos, no solo rodaría un balón: se medirían el ímpetu gallego y la flema inglesa, la improvisación frente a la disciplina. Y allí, en un epicentro de emociones que solo el deporte puede provocarr, buscaríamos algo más que la victoria: el honor de representar a nuestra tierra más allá de sus límites..
El partido se saldó con una contundente victoria por parte de los gallegos, quienes ofrecieron un espectáculo antológico, casi místico diría, y, por supuesto, inolvidable e irrepetible. Una vez terminada la batalla, y bajo una espesa lluvia que te calaba hasta los huesos, los dos pueblos se dirigieron a un céntrico pub, donde les esperaba un suculento festín y litros y litros de néctar lupulado. Y es que incluso en el corazón de Albión no llueve eternamente.
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Dr. Fu Manchu
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 18:21
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Dr. Fu Manchu
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 18:24
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The bunker was a fallout shelter designed to protect officials in the event of an atomic bomb and features over four miles of tunnels. The media were banned from revealing the bunker's existence until 1967 and it was built by Polish workers who could not speak English.
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 18:28
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傅滿洲/福滿洲
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 18:29
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Mr X
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 19:13
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el Monte Análogo de Daumal
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 20:07
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Salvatore Quasimodo
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 20:27
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Chove cervexa
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 20:30
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año veinte de Shôwa
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 20:38
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Total Comments: 78000
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 20:52
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Sanglier
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 22:45
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Mike Barja
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31 de xaneiro de 2025, 23:47
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X. Moldes
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1 de febreiro de 2025, 10:22
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turrones, mazapanes, alfajores, polvorones y almendrados.
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1 de febreiro de 2025, 22:27
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Punxsutawney Phil
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 11:15
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Punxsutawney Phil
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 11:30
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Punxsutawney Phil
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 11:31
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Chop Suey
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 19:41
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Mike Barja
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 19:53
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Inglés afincado
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 20:09
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Home meu
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 20:16
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Floja como una Cruzcampo
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 21:38
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Caida y auge de Leonard Perrin
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2 de febreiro de 2025, 23:41
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Andar por los puertos es una de la formas de pereza que enriquece más
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3 de febreiro de 2025, 09:39
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Navegante
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3 de febreiro de 2025, 11:07
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Náufrago del chorromoco.
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3 de febreiro de 2025, 13:13
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The man in the high castle
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3 de febreiro de 2025, 13:18
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Matadero 88
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3 de febreiro de 2025, 23:00
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Enid Mitford
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 00:05
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Enid Mitford
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 00:11
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Célebre Jabalí Antropomórfico
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 10:04
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Jaland
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 11:09
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Garci tiene razón
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 13:20
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Sexo anal del malo
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 17:12
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:41
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:41
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:42
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:43
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:43
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:44
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:44
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:45
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4 de febreiro de 2025, 21:46
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Boroman
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 10:30
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Bujarrol y su chiringo de bujarras aguerridos
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 19:34
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Aaja Sanam Madhur Chandni
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 21:04
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 21:10
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Blas Trallero Lezo
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 21:17
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Blas Trallero Lezo
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 21:17
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Blas Trallero Lezo
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tortillera
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 21:30
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Guthrie McCabe Garth Ajo
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 23:00
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Guthrie McCabe Garth Ajo
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5 de febreiro de 2025, 23:07
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Lechón
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 00:07
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O Xoves Hai Cocido
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 10:40
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Wystan Evelyn Parsnip Pimpernell
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 10:53
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 21:58
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:07
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Mi número favorito
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:08
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:09
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La copa número 11
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:18
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Soyuz 11
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:19
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La Máquina del Tiempo del Doctor Muerte
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:36
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La Máquina del Tiempo del Doctor Muerte
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6 de febreiro de 2025, 22:37
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El Dios Erizo protege a sus encolerizados
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 09:20
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la fusión más cool de gastronomía francesa y oriental.
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 20:57
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Errante
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 20:59
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Amierda 2030
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 22:15
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los indómitos paladines de ese aborigenismo turulato
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 22:17
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los indómitos paladines de ese aborigenismo turulato
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 22:20
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os voy a dar diez hostias al cuadrado a cada uno, o sea cien hostias.
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 22:26
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101st Airborne Division
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7 de febreiro de 2025, 22:30
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Mighty Main
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8 de febreiro de 2025, 21:07
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Barrabás Balarrasa
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8 de febreiro de 2025, 21:11
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El Sereno
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 04:28
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Wokismo de Hacendado
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 09:43
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El Balón Perdido de Nivea
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 18:28
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El Balón Perdido de Nivea
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 18:52
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El pato Donald
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 20:21
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Galician Patriot
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 20:52
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Galician Patriot
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 21:05
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J'écris l'Iliade
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 21:12
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Bodas de lefa
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9 de febreiro de 2025, 21:57
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Salmón Enfurruñado
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 09:02
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Salmón Enfurruñado
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 09:03
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Greta Bono
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 10:14
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El sereno
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 10:35
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Náufrago do Mayflower.
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 15:23
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Mazinger Z
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 18:34
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Basgan Sagart
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 18:46
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Odio los números capicúas
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 19:37
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A hostias con los papistas
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 21:39
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 21:45
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 21:49
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 21:50
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 21:52
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 21:52
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Tenemos razones para dudar de la existencia de Dios. Respecto al Diablo no está tan clara la cosa.
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 22:04
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Una de las cosas que más me atraen del personal son los defectos físicos: cojeras, estrabismos, cicatrices...
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 22:10
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Cabrón con pintas
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 23:43
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Nemo Alcume
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 23:45
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Vacuidad
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 23:46
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Orson (Falstaff at Midnight)
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 23:49
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Chaska Rillo
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10 de febreiro de 2025, 23:53
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Le Main tiene un pájaro azul en una jaula roja
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11 de febreiro de 2025, 09:26
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🫓 woke
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11 de febreiro de 2025, 21:56
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Merda ciao
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 08:32
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El sereno sereno
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 10:30
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Afrotortillas
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 11:28
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Luis Hermoso
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 12:45
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O Derradeiro Xabarín Ceibe
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:08
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O Derradeiro Xabarín Ceibe
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:09
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Licofrón, Albucio, Labieno, Damascio
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:23
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Valerio Catulo Marco Tulio Lépido Diocleciano
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:29
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[...]
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:36
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Cabalgando con el Diablo
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:48
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Cabalgando con el Diablo
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:49
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una pareja de tejones devienen una experiencia mística y redentora
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 18:53
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Luzbel
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 23:14
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somos dioses cuando soñamos y mendigos cuando despertamos
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12 de febreiro de 2025, 23:19
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¡Gracias! Recibimos tu solicitud. La revisaremos y tomaremos medidas adicionales si corresponde. En algunos casos, podemos enviar un correo electrónico con más información a la dirección que proporcionaste. Revisa tu carpeta de spam o la papelera para evitar perder la comunicación
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 09:19
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O Xoves Hai Cocido
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 11:55
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O Xoves Hai Cocido
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 11:57
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O Xoves Hai Cocido
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 11:58
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Unha cabicha atopada en haxix
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 13:28
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el mapa de León
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 18:44
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El Sármata Borracho que fue Samurái Vagabundo
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 18:53
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una constante y bella bonhomía
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 18:59
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The man in the high castle
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 19:02
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Mister Patata
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13 de febreiro de 2025, 21:47
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Amor es Cupido
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14 de febreiro de 2025, 10:35
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Amor es Cupido
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14 de febreiro de 2025, 10:45
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Diario de un Porco Bravo
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14 de febreiro de 2025, 13:23
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Diario de un Porco Bravo
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14 de febreiro de 2025, 13:24
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Diario de un Porco Bravo
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14 de febreiro de 2025, 13:24
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To lift this restriction, you need to add a verified recovery email address or phone number, or consider upgrading your account
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 10:42
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Hurlements en faveur de Sade
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 10:55
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Mighty Main
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 11:31
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Y yo con estas pintas
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:24
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:24
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:24
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:25
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:25
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:26
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:26
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:49
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:49
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:51
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:51
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:51
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:52
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:53
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:54
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:54
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:55
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Y yo con estas pintas
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:55
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Y yo con estas pintas
dixo...
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:56
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Y yo con estas pintas
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:57
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Y yo con estas pintas
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:57
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Y yo con estas pintas
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15 de febreiro de 2025, 17:58
«A máis antiga ‹Máis antiga 1 – 200 de 464 Máis recente › A máis nova»Chinatown in Manchester, England, is the second largest Chinatown in the United Kingdom and the third largest in Europe.Its archway was completed in 1987 on Faulkner Street in Manchester city centre, which contains Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Nepali, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants, shops, bakeries and supermarkets.
Chinatown is a small area of Manchester's city centre. Its boundaries form a rectangle, surrounded by Mosley Street, Manchester Art Gallery and the Portico Library to the west, Portland Street to the east, Princess Street to the south, and Charlotte Street to the north. However, these boundaries are not official; some maps extend Chinatown further south to Oxford Street.To the east lies the city's gay village, centred on Canal Street, and to the north lies Piccadilly Gardens. Being in the city centre, the area is entirely urbanised. Unlike Manchester city centre as a whole, Chinatown's streets appear largely in a grid plan.
The first Chinese settlers arrived in the city in the early 20th century; many were engaged in the laundry trade.
Manchester's first Chinese restaurant, Ping Hong, opened on Oxford Street in 1948. A Chinese immigration wave began in the 1950s, when there were severe labour shortages, and in response to the British Nationality Act 1948 which allowed easier access into the country. Hong Kong's rapid urbanisation also meant that farmers' traditional homes were being destroyed by urban sprawl, so many decided to migrate.
Chinese restaurants multiplied after the immigration boom. By the 1970s other Chinese businesses had opened, such as medicine shops, supermarkets and financial and legal services serving the area, including a Hong Kong government office and branch of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. In 1989, the Chinese Arts Centre opened in Chinatown. In 2013, the Bank of East Asia opened their first Manchester branch on Charlotte Street in Chinatown.
The area's nearest Metrolink stations are Piccadilly Gardens (which is also a bus interchange), and St Peter's Square tram stop. The nearest National Rail stations are Manchester Oxford Road to the south and Manchester Piccadilly to the east of Chinatown, the latter of which can be reached by Metrolink services. Furthermore, there is a car park off Faulkner Street for visitors driving into Chinatown in private vehicles. It is decorated in an oriental theme, in keeping with Chinatown, and a mural of a junk, a Chinese sea vessel, is contained within a brick wall overlooking the car park.
Chinatown is an ethnic enclave in the City of Westminster, London, bordering Soho to its north and west, Theatreland to the south and east. The enclave currently occupies the area in and around Gerrard Street. It contains a number of Chinese restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets, souvenir shops, and other Chinese-run businesses. The first Chinatown was located in Limehouse in the East End.
The first area in London known as Chinatown was located in the Limehouse area of the East End of London. At the start of the 20th century, the Chinese population of London was concentrated in that area, setting up businesses which catered to the Chinese sailors who frequented in Docklands. The area was known through exaggerated reports and tales of slum housing and (the then-legal) opium dens, rather than the Chinese restaurants and supermarkets of the current Chinatown. However, much of the area was damaged by aerial bombing during the Blitz in the Second World War, although a number of elderly Chinese still choose to live in this area. After the Second World War, however, the growing popularity of Chinese cuisine and an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong led to an increasing number of Chinese restaurants being opened elsewhere.
The present Chinatown, which is off Shaftesbury Avenue did not start to be established until the 1970s. Previously, it was a regular Soho area, run-down, with Gerrard Street the main thoroughfare. It was dominated by the Post Office, facing Macclesfield Street, and other major establishments were The Tailor & Cutter House, at 43/44, now a Chinese supermarket and restaurant, the Boulogne Restaurant, near the Wardour Street end, and by Peter Mario's Restaurant at the other end. Other businesses included a master baker's, the Sari Centre, Lesgrain French Coffee House, Harrison Marks' Glamour Studio, an Indian restaurant and various brothels. Probably the first Chinese restaurants opened in Lisle Street, parallel to Gerrard Street, and more opened gradually; one of the first restaurants was Kowloon Restaurant. The Tailor & Cutter did not close down until around 1974. The area now has more than 80 restaurants.
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook‘s
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein
Lo que son las entradas del blog en los tiempos de twitter, perdón, X
Esta épica infernal de la nueva y vieja carne, esta crónica bíblica de un éxodo post-galaico en pos de una revelación que quizá sea, simple y rugosamente, que no hay luz al final del túnel, sino sólo y por siempre oscuridad. Oscuridad. Oscuridad y comida china.
En un Inglaterra existió hace muchos años una Oveja negra.
Fue fusilada por un pelotón de cocineros chinos.
Un siglo después, el rebaño arrepentido le levantó una estatua ecuestre que quedó muy bien en el parque.
Así, en lo sucesivo, cada vez que aparecían ovejas negras eran rápidamente pasadas por las armas para que las futuras generaciones de ovejas comunes y corrientes pudieran ejercitarse también en la escultura y en el Hotpot picante de carne de oveja negra.
Llueve en silencio, que esta lluvia es muda
y no hace ruido sino con sosiego.
El cielo duerme. Cuando el alma es viuda
de algo que ignora, el sentimiento es ciego.
Llueve. De mí (de este que soy) reniego…
Tan dulce es esta lluvia de escuchar
(no parece de nubes) que parece
que no es lluvia, mas sólo un susurrar
que a sí mismo se olvida cuando crece.
Llueve. Nada apetece…
No pasa el viento, cielo no hay que sienta.
Llueve lejana e indistintamente,
como una cosa cierta que nos mienta,
como un deseo grande que nos miente.
Llueve. Nada en mí siente…
Se despertó al amanecer, recogió los huesos blancos, divididos en fragmentos diminutos, parecidos a trocitos de talco, y bajó de la montaña; en el fondo de una trinchera, detrás de la casa de la viuda, encontró la ropa interior del kimono de su madre hecha un ovillo y empapada de agua —sin duda la había olvidado en la casa y la viuda la había arrojado allí—, la recogió, se la puso sobre un hombro y se fue; ya no regresaría jamás a la cueva.
Ayer fui al supermercado y el estallido de silencio me ensordeció. Nunca, hasta entonces, mi ciudad me ha parecido tan vulnerable. El miedo campeaba por aquí y por allá; vecinos que, en otro tiempo, me miraban con indiferencia en el ascensor, parecían detectar en mí a un asesino potencial ―e inconscientemente, hay que admitirlo, yo pensé lo mismo de ellos.
Esta generación, en teoría la más educada de todas, quedó impotente ante un virus que, aunque mucho más «benigno» que los monstruos medievales, avanza, veloz e implacable, por todo el planeta.
Los millennials y los centennials no encuentran respuestas en sus diplomas; ni siquiera hallan referencias sobre la gripe española en los libros de estudio que les dieron en la universidad y el colegio. Para ellos la viruela, la bubónica o el cólera son anécdotas de viejo.
Muchos salen a las calles desafiando toques de queda y cuarentena no tanto por torpeza, sino por terror a lo desconocido, queriendo aplacar al demonio de la soledad con música estridente y sexo casual. El aislamiento en redes sociales estaba bien cuando había la certeza de que, a cualquier hora y sin pedir permiso a nadie, se podía salir de casa para embriagar el vacío en la licorería de la esquina.
Mas la incertidumbre no solo ataca a los magísteres en fermentación, sino a los políticos que, acostumbrados a endulzar la realidad con discursos o teorías sociológicas manidas, ahora enfrentan la potencia —tan destructiva como creadora—de la naturaleza.
Acusan al virus de extranjero o le declaran la guerra en cadenas nacionales. Empero las proclamas —que eran tan eficientes para aniquilar molinos de viento con cara de adversario político, periodista o emigrante— parecen tenerle sin cuidado a un ente tan minúsculo que es capaz de producir hecatombes.
Tal vez Malthus tenía razón y las plagas, igual que las guerras, son frenos lógicos para una humanidad que devora todo a su paso. Tal vez los exestudiantes de Sociología tengan razón y esto, lo que vivimos hoy, se convierta en un capítulo de una tesis plagada de nombres alemanes y franceses. Tal vez…
Sin embargo, lo más probable es que la torpeza del «más sabio» de los homínidos, mañana, cuando el miedo se haya diluido en un cóctel de necesidades, rutinas y egoísmos, le haga volver a pisar el patio del otro, a salir de casa sin importarle lo que queda allí.
Quizá me equivoque y nos quede memoria. Se vuelve imperioso volver los ojos a los que están a nuestro lado, a esos a los que el miedo convirtió en bombas de tiempo, para cuidarlos y quererlos, sin olvidar que son vulnerables, perecederos.
Lo bueno que podemos sacar de todo este mal es una conciencia plena de nuestra fragilidad. Pero no es suficiente si esta no sirve para obligarnos a dejar de lado las bajezas y odios infantiles. Ojalá que esta conciencia sea el elemento clave de la vacuna que nos pongan mañana. Esa es mi esperanza hoy.
Avui per dinar he menjat pésols.
El inglés es un sastre que viste lo cursi y lo vacío de profundo o importante con una precisión que asusta.
Estrenamos mes.
Fría, devastadora belleza la de Febrero
donde se solapan los inviernos y se acumulan las resacas.
Sabrás que se trata del ruido de las bestias sólo cuando tras tu espalda se cierre la trampilla.
Ya sumamos 78.000 comentarios en el Mainblog.
Los chinos comen cualquier cosa con cuatro patas excepto sillas y mesas.
La marmota Phil pronostica cada 2 de febrero cuándo terminará el invierno. Desde 1887, el roedor sale por la mañana de su madriguera tras un período de hibernación. Si está nublado y no proyecta su sombra, la primavera está cerca. Si hace sol y ve reflejado el oscuro perfil de su cuerpo sobre la superficie, vuelve a meterse en su refugio, porque la estación durará seis semanas más. Como el Calendario Zaragozano, pero peludo
What happens to some people?
They're born nice. They grow up nice. You put 'em on TV and - bam! Prima donnas.
Once a year, the eyes of the nation turn here, to this tiny
hamlet in Galiza, to watch a master at work. The master?
Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous weatherman, the
groundhog, who, as legend has it, can predict the coming of an
early spring.
El día de la Candelaria, la cigüeña estará en las campanas; y si no hace frío, la golondrina buscará su nido.
Me estaba fumando un porro en la terraza y mi vecina amenazó con llamar a la policía. Cuando llegaron, me preguntaron si tenía hierba, pero me la había fumado toda. Preguntaron quién me la vendió y les dije que mi vecina y ahora le están registrando la casa.
Yo diría que ingleses y gallegos comparten la misma cultura, pero bueno...
Leyendo esto parece que ir a jugar a Inglaterra es como ir a
a jugar a Bangladés.
Texto hiperbólico como poco.
Mistificación de la mítica mística.
El famoso choque cultural se resume en el volante en el otro lado y una hora menos.
Y lo segundo ya pasa con Portugal.
Dicen que dicen los gitanos que no quieren para sus hijos buenos principios.
Nuestra barca y tu bocaza, alzada en las brumas inmóviles, se orienta hacia el puerto de la miseria, la enorme ciudad del cielo manchado por fuego y lodo. ¡Ah, los andrajos podridos, el pan mojado en lluvia, la ebriedad, los mil amores que me crucificaron en posición gamada!
-Oh adorado Main, que de verdad que no quiero ir a Inglaterra.
-Calla Delfín, y sigue nadando.
Y me verían extraño y harapiento como el Profeta que ha recorrido la tierra para traer la oscura palabra, y la única palabra que tenía era "iGuau!".
La palabra agua no moja como la palabra perro, no ladra.
The cache revealed that the Main was being prescribed a heady cocktail of drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines and testosterone. Indeed he was taking up to 80 drugs a day, at the same time as masterminding his attempted conquest of the world.
We can’t possibly rely on the whims of the people. They can only be trusted to have freedom within the control of the state.
Llegamos tarde para el momentum y pronto para el revival; el autor no escribe mal pero no observa bien.
Stay humble
Ir a Inglaterra en la XVIII fue un tráns-ito trans-cendente
Cuando no se presenta ninguna catástrofe, avanzamos sin mirar atrás, clavamos la vista en la línea del horizonte, de frente. Cuando surge un drama, damos marcha atrás, volvemos para rondar por allí, llevamos a cabo una reconstrucción.
"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."
From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
"Ten-thirty!" I said. "A late visitor. Show him up, if you please."
I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:
"Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"
It was Nayland Smith—whom I had thought to be in Burma!
"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise! Whatever—however—"
"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in. "Don't put it down to the sun!" And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
I was too surprised to speak.
"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly, I could see him at the window, peering out into the road, "but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah, nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time." And, stepping back to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.
"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS. "A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy—what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest."
I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions. His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
"You have taken your leave early?"
"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. "I am on duty."
"On duty!" I exclaimed. "What, are you moved to London or something?"
"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass, its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?"
Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an inch or so around.
"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
"Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."
"Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom of a hamadryad went in there!"
A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge. I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated. Here's the point. It was not an accident!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon the tracks of the man who extracted that venom—patiently, drop by drop—from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused it to be shot at me."
"What fiend is this?"
"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe—though I pray I may be wrong—that its survival depends largely upon the success of my mission."
To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what to think, what to believe.
"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass, he stood up. "I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma. I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time—it's imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?"
I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties were not onerous.
"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. "We start now."
"What, to-night?"
"To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches. But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately. I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
"Sir Crichton Davey—of the India—"
"Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without question, without hesitation—before Heaven, nothing can save him! I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."
How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and unlooked for. To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it: unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's highway.
The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the wildly bizarre—though it was the bridge between the ordinary and the outre—has left no impression upon my mind. Into the heart of a weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs and portents—warnings.
It was not so. I recall nothing of the route and little of import that passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we were come to our journey's end. Then:
"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at the open door. Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb, Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and bearing commanded respect.
"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched my shoulder convulsively. Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
"My God!" he whispered. "I am too late!"
With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of loungers, bounded up the steps. In the hall a man who unmistakably was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman. Other members of the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear. Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a respectful manner.
A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a large library. A group of people were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch. Another door communicated with a small study, and through the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet. The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room, and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned, made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind.
As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the immediate cause of death," he said. "Sir Crichton was addicted to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can establish the facts—if," he added, "we ever arrive at them. A most mysterious case!"
Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation, I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smoking-jacket. He had been of spare but hardy build, with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands. I pushed back his sleeve, and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm. Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm. It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips. I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation, if it were not a birthmark.
Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark, and inquired if it were constitutional. "It is not, sir," answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question. "I have already made that inquiry. Does it suggest anything to your mind? I must confess that it affords me no assistance."
"Nothing," I replied. "It is most curious."
"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary, "but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority. I understand that Sir Crichton was—seized with illness in his study?"
"Yes—at half-past ten. I was working here in the library, and he inside, as was our custom."
"The communicating door was kept closed?"
"Yes, always. It was open for a minute or less about ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton. I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health."
"What was the message?"
"I could not say. It was brought by a district messenger, and he placed it beside him on the table. It is there now, no doubt."
"And at half-past ten?"
"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a scream, into the library. I ran to him but he waved me back. His eyes were glaring horribly. I had just reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor. He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon the couch, he gasped something that sounded like 'The red hand!' Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"
Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to find this evidence confusing.
"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"
"I think not. From the direction of his last glance, I feel sure he referred to something in the study."
"What did you do?"
"Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was absolutely nothing unusual to be seen. The windows were closed and fastened. He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather. There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was in the library, unseen by me. Had someone concealed himself in the study earlier in the evening—and I am convinced that it offers no hiding-place—he could only have come out again by passing through here."
Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when meditating.
"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"
"Yes. Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."
"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"
"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached no importance to it at the time. Three nights ago Sir Crichton came out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves—you know? Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study. He had an idea that something was concealed there."
"Some THING or someone?"
"'Something' was the word he used. I searched, but fruitlessly, and he seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."
"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne. My friend and I would like a few minutes' private investigation in the study."
SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist. A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall. The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light. The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my friend did so. It contained a blank sheet of paper!
"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me. I raised it to my nostrils. It was scented with some pungent perfume.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply, "which I have met with before, though never in Europe. I begin to understand, Petrie."
He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth. I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously, when he turned, a strange expression upon his face.
"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.
Much surprised, I did as he directed.
"Don't touch anything in the room. It may be dangerous."
Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the study, watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room—behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves.
"That will do," he said at last. "There is nothing here and I have no time to search farther."
We returned to the library.
"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and the library locked. Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me." It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne, Smith passed briskly downstairs. In the hall a man who looked like a groom out of livery was waiting.
"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.
"Yes, sir."
"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about the time of Sir Crichton's death?"
"Yes, sir. I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair. Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on the blind. Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."
"What kind of call?"
The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened, seemed puzzled for a suitable description.
"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last. "I never heard anything like it before, and don't want to again."
"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry, impossible to describe. Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed, it was an eerie sound.
"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in his voice. "But stay! Take us through to the back of the house."
The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a small, paved courtyard. It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points. How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night had loosed a soul upon the infinite.
"Up yonder are the study windows, sir. Over that wall on your left is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."
"Are the study windows visible from there?"
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Who occupies the adjoining house?"
"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."
"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."
Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to wonder at anything. Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare. My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane—all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality. So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie. Everyone has cleared off now. It is getting late. Keep your eyes open and be on your guard. I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he probably knows by now that I am here, too."
With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with leisure to think, to try to understand.
The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had died from natural causes. The intense heat having driven most of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so suddenly had found myself involved.
By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death? Did Nayland Smith know? I rather suspected that he did. What was the hidden significance of the perfumed envelope? Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had murdered Sir Crichton? Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held office in India, and during his long term of service at home, had earned the good will of all, British and native alike. Who was his secret enemy?
Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type. With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.
"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon my arm, "if I startled you. But—is it true that Sir Crichton Davey has been—murdered?"
I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths—only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty. The grotesque idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave—though not indelibly—just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand. But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a mediaeval legend. No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton who lived close by.
"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible.
"But he is—Dead?"
I nodded.
She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily. Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder to support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
"I am quite well, thank you," she said.
"You are certain? Let me walk with you until you feel quite sure of yourself."
She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes, and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely at a loss to account. Suddenly she resumed:
"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but—I think I have some information—for the police. Will you give this to—whomever you think proper?"
She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away. She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure, when she turned abruptly and came back.
Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a distant corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General Platt-Houston, she made the following extraordinary request:
"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be grateful,"—she glanced at me with passionate intentness—"when you have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go near him any more to-night!"
Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran. Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared! I heard the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and, in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps, I knew that I had nodded at my post.
"Smith!" I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!" And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I held one to beat it."
"What! You know this girl! Who is she?"
"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie. But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous. To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically Oriental, for yourself. Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident. She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands. Give it to me."
I did so.
"She has succeeded. Smell."
He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea, I recognized the strange perfume.
"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case? Can you doubt any longer? She did not want you to share my fate, Petrie."
"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation, but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means."
"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab. We are hardly safe here. Oh, you need not fear shots or knives. The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy, tell-tale weapons."
Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first, something hissed past my ear, missed both Smith and me by a miracle, and, passing over the roof of the taxi, presumably fell in the enclosed garden occupying the center of the square.
"What was that?" I cried.
"Get in—quickly!" Smith rapped back. "It was attempt number one! More than that I cannot say. Don't let the man hear. He has noticed nothing. Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look out behind. Good! We've started."
The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back through the little window in the rear.
"Someone has got into another cab. It is following ours, I think."
Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall know that I bear a charmed life."
I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe.
"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I will do so to the best of my ability. You no doubt wonder why a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in London, in the character of a detective. I am here, Petrie—and I bear credentials from the very highest sources—because, quite by accident, I came upon a clew. Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man. At the present stage of the case I should not be justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's ambassador in London."
He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly. "Afterwards there is much. To continue: This man, whether a fanatic or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and formidable personality existing in the known world today. He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric. He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great university could teach him. He also is an adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach. He has the brains of any three men of genius. Petrie, he is a mental giant."
"You amaze me!" I said.
"As to his mission among men. Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall dead in a Paris opera house? Because of heart failure? No! Because his last speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking. What became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus? Elopement? Suicide? Nothing of the kind. He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril. He alone knew the truth about Mongolia. Why was Sir Crichton Davey murdered? Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers. I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few. Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, who would teach the deaf to hear, the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader? He will die. And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign. The others I can merely surmise."
"But, Smith, this is almost incredible! What perverted genius controls this awful secret movement?"
"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government—which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
Excellent stuff.
Qué cojones haces, no ves que estoy trabajando? ¿Qué ciervo ni qué dices? ¡Me cago en Dios!.
Ay tiunumani taylongo
Mongoloya jaitaiti, sibuloya con mongoyote
tiunaman nisan nipo.
I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong peg of brandy.
"We have been followed here," I said. "Why did you make no attempt to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"
Smith laughed.
"Useless, in the first place. Wherever we went, HE would find us. And of what use to arrest his creatures? We could prove nothing against them. Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night—and by the same means that proved so successful in the case of poor Sir Crichton."
His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his feet, shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
"The villain!" he cried. "The fiendishly clever villain! I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right. But I came too late, Petrie! That hits me hard, old man. To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!"
He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius," he said. "He has underrated his adversary. He has not given me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages. He has thrown away one powerful weapon—to get such a message into my hands—and he thinks that once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died. But without the indiscretion of your charming friend, I should have known what to expect when I receive her 'information'—which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."
"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"
"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave. I am inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but his will, except"—with a quizzical glance—"in a certain instance."
"How can you jest with some awful thing—Heaven knows what—hanging over your head? What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes? How did Sir Crichton die?"
"He died of the Zayat Kiss. Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not know.' The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais, or rest-houses. Along a certain route—upon which I set eyes, for the first and only time, upon Dr. Fu-Manchu—travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned, in those parts, the title of the 'Zayat Kiss.' The rest-houses along that route are shunned now. I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I live. It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory, and it is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him. This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve. Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned ignorance of the meaning of the mark, knowing that he would be almost certain to employ the same methods upon some other victim. I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation, and I shall have one."
"But the scented envelopes?"
"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent, is sometimes met with. I recognized the heavy perfume at once. I take it that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted by this orchid. You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches. I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way. After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton—you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study on a previous occasion?—Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes. He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession—possibly to feed the creature."
"What creature? How could any kind of creature have got into Sir Crichton's room tonight?"
"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study. I found a fair quantity of fallen soot. I at once assumed, since it appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still be concealed either in the study or in the library. But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal. I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney. What did the signal mean? That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair, and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing which someone on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney. It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing. By means of the iron stairway at the rear of Major-General Platt-Houston's, I quite easily, gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study—and I found this."
Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually large-sized split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
"My theory proven," he resumed. "Not anticipating a search on the roof, they had been careless. This was to weight the line and to prevent the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney. Directly it had dropped in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work. It might have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writing-table for the prepared envelope. From there to the hand of Sir Crichton—which, from having touched the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume—was a certain move."
"My God! How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into the dusky shadows of the room. "What is your theory respecting this creature—what shape, what color—?"
"It is something that moves rapidly and silently. I will venture no more at present, but I think it works in the dark. The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom. Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal, at any rate—if not yours."
"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least."
"You remember the cry in the back lane? It suggested something to me, and I tested my idea—successfully. It was the cry of a dacoit. Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening. To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."
The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind, by the striking of a distant clock. It is singular how trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension. I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written we should encounter.
The clock across the common struck two.
Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with a solution of ammonia, Smith and I had followed the programme laid down. It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end, stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed. The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe. I occupied a post between the windows.
No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night. Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one. The full moon had painted about the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door, across the room, past the little table where the envelope lay, and finally to the foot of the bed.
The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself to the extreme edge of the moon's design.
Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window. I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us.
The shadow became stationary. The dacoit was studying the interior of the room.
Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left, I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which it grasped—and then another. The man made absolutely no sound whatever. The second hand disappeared—and reappeared. It held a small, square box. There was a very faint CLICK.
The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped upon the carpet!
"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon the coffee-table in the center.
Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color! It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs. In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me.
These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next—Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow of the golf club!
I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread brush my hand as I did so. A black shape was dropping, with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and, without once offering a mark for a revolver-shot, it merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden. As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands. Even that grim courage had been tried sorely.
"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said. "Nemesis will know where to find him. We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss. Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the enemy is poorer—unless he has any more unclassified centipedes. I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it—Sir Crichton's stifled cry. When we remember that he was almost past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not 'The red hand!' but 'The red ANT!' Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than an hour, to save him from such an end!"
"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at six A.M. this morning. It is supposed that the man met with an accident in leaving his ship."
Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph.
"For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'" he said. "Our visitor, who came by way of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions. Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him. Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."
It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we had to deal. My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
The telephone bell rang. I went out and found that Inspector Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police Station at once," was the message.
Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it—as we must presume him to be—probably something ghastly."
A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains to serve our haste. We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma. Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the Yellow Movement. His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.
But the drive concluded—and all too soon. In a silence which neither of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room. No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of the Thames outside—of the Thames which had so many strange secrets to tell, and now was burdened with another.
The body lay prone upon the deal table—this latest of the river's dead—dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a seaman of nondescript nationality—such as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell. His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead; his skin was stained, they told me. He wore a gold ring in one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
"It was almost the same with Mason." The river police inspector was speaking. "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own time on some funny business down St. George's way—and Thursday night the ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole. His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left hand was mutilated frightfully."
He paused and glanced at Smith.
"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir; you remember his hands?"
Smith nodded.
"He was not a lascar," he said shortly. "He was a dacoit."
Silence fell again.
I turned to the array of objects lying on the table—those which had been found in Cadby's clothing. None of them were noteworthy, except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt. This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith, for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
It was a Chinese pigtail. That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue was a false one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth, his eye on the strange relic. "Cadby was clever at disguise."
Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and tried to fit it on the dead detective.
"Too small by inches!" he jerked. "And look how it's padded in the crown. This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
"Where did you find him—exactly?" he asked.
"Limehouse Reach—under Commercial Dock Pier—exactly an hour ago."
"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"—to Weymouth.
"Eight to a quarter past."
"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"
"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group, that he followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood of old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night. You are sure that is where he was going?"
"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away, poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off. But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night in that district. He left the Yard about eight, as I've said, to go to his rooms, and dress for the job."
"Did he keep any record of his cases?"
"Of course! He was most particular. Cadby was a man with ambitions, sir! You'll want to see his book. Wait while I get his address; it's somewhere in Brixton."
He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's face.
Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track of Fu-Manchu! Poor Mason had probably blundered on the scent, too, and he met with a similar fate. Without other evidence, the fact that they both died in the same way as the dacoit would be conclusive, for we know that Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"
"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"
"God knows! Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"
"There are no other marks of violence."
"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector Ryman. "Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the Crystal Palace last year! Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown. And as for Mason, he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"
Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died," he said simply.
Weymouth returned from the telephone.
"The address is No.—Cold Harbor Lane," he reported. "I shall not be able to come along, but you can't miss it; it's close by the Brixton Police Station. There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in the world. His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find in his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner—top shelf. Here are his keys, all intact. I think this is the cupboard key."
Smith nodded.
"Come on, Petrie," he said. "We haven't a second to waste."
Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along Wapping High Street. We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I think, when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
"That pigtail!" he cried. "I have left it behind! We must have it, Petrie! Stop! Stop!"
The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly. "Here, take Weymouth's card. Remember where he said the book was? It's all we want. Come straight on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."
"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"
"Can't it!" he snapped. "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave evidence like that lying about? It's a thousand to one he has it already, but there is just a bare chance."
It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded no room for comment; and so lost in thought did I become that the cab was outside the house for which I was bound ere I realized that we had quitted the purlieus of Wapping. Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop of events which had crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith from Burma. Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton Davey, and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing that had killed him. Now, with those remorseless memories jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's last victim, and the shadow of that giant evil seemed to be upon it like a palpable cloud.
Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and embarrassment in her manner.
"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news respecting Mr. Cadby."
"Oh, sir!" she cried. "Don't tell me that anything has happened to him!" And divining something of the mission on which I was come, for such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man: "Oh, the poor, brave lad!"
Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that hour, since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and spoke eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night, Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked. Poor lad! It was the same when his mother died."
At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such beliefs are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently composed I went on to explain what I thought necessary. And now the old lady's embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow, and presently the truth came out:
"There's a—young lady—in his rooms, sir."
I started. This might mean little or might mean much.
"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor—from ten until half-past—and this morning again. She came the third time about an hour ago, and has been upstairs since."
"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO. And God knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him; but she is not the girl I should have liked a son of mine to take up with."
At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious. Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit followers was watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's approach! Warning to whom? It was unlikely that I should forget the dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants. Was that lure of men even now in the house, completing her evil work?
"I should never have allowed her in his rooms—" began Mrs. Dolan again. Then there was an interruption.
A soft rustling reached my ears—intimately feminine. The girl was stealing down!
I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me—back up the stairs! Taking three steps at a time, I followed her, bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back to the door.
She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust. The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah. For it was she!
"So I came in time," I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly, "and then prepare to accompany me."
She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
"I have taken nothing," she said. Her breast was heaving tumultuously. "Oh, let me go! Please, let me go!" And impulsively she threw herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a magic cloud. Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation. "Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree; it is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand." Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words. Her clothes or her hair exhaled a faint perfume. Like all Fu-Manchu's servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties. Her beauty was wholly intoxicating.
But I thrust her away.
"You have no claim to mercy," I said. "Do not count upon any. What have you taken from here?"
She grasped the lapels of my coat.
"I will tell you all I can—all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully. "I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost! If you could only understand you would not be so cruel." Her slight accent added charm to the musical voice. "I am not free, as your English women are. What I do I must do, for it is the will of my master, and I am only a slave. Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police. You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to save you once."
I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly had tried to save me from a deadly peril once—at the expense of my friend. But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it. How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder? And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what have YOU to do with the police? It is not your work to hound a woman to death. Could you ever look another woman in the eyes—one that you loved, and know that she trusted you—if you had done such a thing? Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here. Do not be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and save me—from HIM." The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath fanned my cheek. "Have mercy on me."
At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must come to. After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of Dr. Fu-Manchu? Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must necessarily be different from mine. Irreconcilable as the thing may be with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed the girl to be a slave. Then there remained that other reason why I loathed the idea of becoming her captor. It was almost tantamount to betrayal! Must I soil my hands with such work?
Thus—I suppose—her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right. The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes, in an abandonment of pleading despair. Then I remembered the fate of the man in whose room we stood.
"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me. "No, I swear by the holy name I did not! I did not! I watched him, spied upon him—yes! But, listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death. I could not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you. I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them. Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away. I came twice and could not find it. There, will you let me go?"
"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu—yes."
Her hands dropped and she took a backward step. A new terror was to be read in her face.
"I dare not! I dare not!"
"Then you would—if you dared?"
She was watching me intently.
"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at all which the words implied. She grasped my arm.
"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"
"The authorities—"
"Ah!" Her expression changed. "They can put me on the rack if they choose, but never one word would I speak—never one little word."
She threw up her head scornfully. Then the proud glance softened again.
"But I will speak for you."
Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no longer be his slave."
My heart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt of. For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my judgment seat—had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to justice. Now, I was disarmed—but in a quandary. What should I do? What COULD I do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I stepped across the room until I glanced back. But she had gone!
As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you—yet. Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I wished it. Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and hide me."
Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her. The front door opened and closed.
Este año se va a conmemorar el ochenta aniversario de muchas cosas. No hace mucho les tocó a muchos enjugarse las lágrimas de cocodrilo para recordar la liberación del campo de Auschwitz, terrorífica efemérides que siempre se encargan de reavivar los del lobby, para que "empaticemos" con ellos, que tanto sufrieron por culpa de la Shoah. Al parecer, deben ser los únicos mortales que merecen un trato tan especial, consistente en que todo el mundo tenga la obligación de entonar el mea culpa, darse golpes de pecho y hacer un acto de contrición por causa de aquellos que, mientras tanto, siguen poniendo en marcha y a todo trapo su particular holocausto, en el que las víctimas han intercambiado los papeles con los victimarios. Pero ahora ni siquiera se recuerda en estos fastos a aquella Rusia leal, a cuyo ejército (cuando era la URSS del papito Stalin) deberían los mosaicos agradecer su liberación de los "campos de la muerte" y la custodia de las polémicas cámaras de gas. Así paga el Pueblo Elegido los valiosísimos servicios prestados por sus fámulos bolcheviques a sus herederos .
Veremos si para el mes de agosto se organiza alguna ceremonia parecida por lo de Hiroshima-Nagasaki y si hay alguien que pida perdón por la bestialidad que el ejército norteamericano desplegó en aquella ocasión. Incluso Hollywood se ha permitido el lujo de realizar una superproducción para festejar como un héroe a uno de los inventores de la bomba atómica. Y lo mismo cabe decir de los bombardeos estratégicos y terroristas sobre Europa de las postrimerías de la Segunda Guerra Mundial... Es improbable que los angloamericanos se sientan siquiera aludidos en el caso de que alguien osara recordar las masacres multitudinarias de la población civil que entonces se perpetraron en el nombre de la "democracia y de los derechos humanos".
El año pasado apenas se rememoraron las hazañas bélicas del general Clarck, llamado con toda justicia "el ángel exterminador de la Italia meridional" por Norman Lewis, autor británico y testigo presencial como agente del MI6 de ese otro genocidio del que nadie habla. Su libro, "Nápoles, 1944", es una obra maldita para los biempensantes porque describe con toda crudeza la destrucción de esa y otras ciudades italianas por parte de la aviación aliada (dos mil víctimas perecieron sepultadas bajo las ruinas de la bimilenaria Benevento, en un ataque a todas luces gratuito) las vilezas, saqueos, violaciones, prostitución de las italianas y asesinatos a culatazos de los prisioneros alemanes por parte de las hordas de John Bull y del Tío Sam, y la corrupción generalizada que se estableció tras la "liberación", en descarada complicidad con la mafia recién restituida. Así el capo Vito Genovese se convirtió en el principal asesor del jefe del gobierno militar norteamericano y consiguió colocar como alcaldes de Nápoles y de otras ciudades vecinas a hombres de su confianza, protegidos por las autoridades aliadas.
Este 13 de febrero se cumplirán ochenta años de la "tormenta de fuego" de Dresde, dirigida por el Bomberman, el "carnicero" Harris, que redujo a escombros y cenizas, y aniquiló a buena parte de la población de la antes llamada "Florencia del Elba", una ciudad alemana que poseía un gran patrimonio histórico y artístico que se perdió para siempre. Las fuentes más solventes estiman que el ataque, que se prolongó durante tres días, arrojó más de 50.000 víctimas y que dejó sin casa a más de un millón de habitantes. Además de que no se trataba de un objetivo militar, ni siquiera industrial, que justificase tal acción está el agravante de que Dresde se había convertido en una especie de ciudad-hospital durante la contienda, a donde se trasladaba a un gran número de heridos, pensando que podía ser un lugar seguro para ellos. Qué equivocados estaban. Casi tres mil toneladas de bombas de fósforo y demás materiales incendiarios se emplearon en este auténtico genocidio, crimen de guerra y de lesa humanidad, por el que nadie que se sepa ha pedido perdón ni nada parecido hasta la fecha. Incluso en los últimos tiempos se ha tendido a minimizar la importancia del bombardeo, como se puede comprobar en la Whiskypedia, esa cosa que para algunos constituye una fuente solvente y casi irreprochable de conocimientos.
or fortuna existen testimonios de primera mano, nada sospechosos de filonazismo, como el del escritor norteamericano Kurt Vonnegut, que habiendo servido como soldado en el ejército yanqui fue capturado por los alemanes mientras vagaba solitario por un bosque belga tras la batalla de las Ardenas, y trasladado posteriormente a Dresde. Allí sobrevivió a los bombardeos aliados refugiándose en la cámara frigorífica de un sótano destinado a empaquetar carne conocido como el "Matadero Cinco". Cuando salió de su refugio se encontró con que la ciudad que conocía había prácticamente desaparecido. Años más tarde recordaría que aquello había sido "una destrucción completa, una matanza inconcebible". Tras la guerra fue condecorado con el "Corazón Púrpura" y habló con historiadores militares, pero ninguno quiso investigar aquel vergonzoso episodio.
Por esa razón y porque estaba harto de las versiones hollywoodienses sobre la guerra, quiso contar su experiencia en su libro "Matadero Cinco o la cruzada de los niños", publicado en 1969, y que mezcla lo autobiográfico con la ciencia-ficción y la sátira, quizás la única forma de que su testimonio pudiera ser digerible en los USA. Pero aún así su obra fue prohibida en las escuelas públicas de Oakland (Michigan) y un consejo escolar de Dakota del Norte ordenó quemar (mucho antes del wokismo y "la cultura de la cancelación") los treinta y dos ejemplares que tenía una escuela de secundaria. A día de hoy sigue siendo un libro prohibido en muchas escuelas norteamericanas.
Hay que anotar que Vonnegut fue un reconocido autor de izquierdas, pacifista y defensor de los derechos civiles, y que la publicación de su novela coincidió con la Operación Menú lanzada por Nixon contra los vietnamitas, convirtiéndose en un alegato en contra de aquella guerra.
A pesar de la censura, el libro fue llevado al cine por George Roy Hill en 1972, ganando un premio en el festival de Cannes, e incluso ha sido adaptado al cómic por Ryan North y el dibujante español Albert Monteys, siendo ambas versiones muy apreciadas por los entendidos. No estaría mal que se revisaran esta clase de obras, para poder conocer en su auténtico contexto lo que no fueron otra cosa que crímenes de guerra, que al ser cometidos por el bando ganador han quedado impunes.
¿Si el Rey no puede evitar que troceen su Reino, de qué sirve el Rey?
Tengo la impresión de que los muchos millones que se han gastado y siguen gastándose en políticas mujeristas o de género en lo que queda de Occidente lo único que han conseguido es la entronización de un nuevo biotipo femenino: la mujer blandengue
"El Señor de los Mares" es la historia de un inglés que conquista los siete mares, se convierte en regente de Inglaterra, compra Palestina a Turquía y envía allí a los judíos, sólo para descubrir, tras ver hundirse su imperio, que él mismo es judío y acabar aclamado en Palestina como el nuevo mesías. Por suerte, el "peligro judío" no prendió en el imaginario popular de igual forma que el "amarillo" a pesar del antisemitismo reinante y la leyenda urbana de los Protocolos de los Sabios de Sión.
La manera insolente que es ahora común para el hombre blanco en el Oriente, despreciando al culí, obligándolo por la fuerza bruta a hacer su voluntad, considerándolo como una herramienta, una bestia, despreciando sus intereses y sus derechos como hombre; es lo que hará surgir un peligro amarillo en verdad. El trato del hombre blanco hacia el hombre amarillo generará con el tiempo tales sentimientos de indignación y odio hacia todos los hombres blancos que, cuando llegue una gran crisis económica, como debe llegar, el hombre amarillo se alzará. Destruirá los bancos, los ferrocarriles, las fábricas y todas las empresas del hombre blanco y lo expulsará de su tierra con maldiciones y derramamiento de sangre. El intento de la raza blanca de reducir a la raza amarilla a una posición de subordinación política y de esclavitud económica engendrará males económicos más allá del control del hombre blanco
Supongo que fue una cuestión de orgullo. Los hombres destruimos nuestras relaciones, y a nosotros mismos, en nombre del orgullo.
There are many variations of lobscouse. The dish may be made of fresh or leftover meat (usually beef or lamb, but sometimes also chicken, pork, or ham) and potatoes. Other typical ingredients are vegetables (such as carrots, onions, leeks, celery root, and rutabaga), spices (such as pepper or ginger), salt, and herbs.
Auden came to Manchester on the 10th Nov 1934, giving a talk to the Manchester Literary society at the University, where he divided literature history into three distinct periods. Medieval, from 1000-1500, capitalism from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution and socialist, whose great philosphers were Marx and Freud both reactionaries against nineteenth century capitalism . He then predicted a new era of poetry was about to be born, but as Biswell illustrated, over the next five years his philosophy changed.
Resumen: Auden se hartó de poner el culo a obreros mancunians.
"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.
"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it. There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't understand this."
We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that combustion had not been complete.
"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "'… Hunchback … lascar went up … unlike others … not return … till Shen-Yan' (there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out … booming sound … lascar in … mortuary I could ident … not for days, or suspici … Tuesday night in a different make … snatch … pigtail…'"
"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere—presumably upstairs—at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound. Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary. We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered by Fu-Manchu! It is sheer supposition, however. But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction. The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body."
Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said. "I will trouble you, Inspector, for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe. There is time to spend an hour in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."
Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
"It might be risky. What about an official visit?"
Nayland Smith laughed.
"Worse than useless! By your own showing, the place is open to inspection. No; guile against guile! We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced."
"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain truculence. "It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure. Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it. Foster will make your face up. What disguise do you propose to adopt?"
"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby. I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise."
"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.
He turned to me quickly.
"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no sort of hobby."
"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?" I said angrily.
Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind. You know that I meant something totally different."
"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung his hand heartily. "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another. I shall be going, too, Inspector."
As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab, accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the wilderness of London's night. In this theatrical business there was, to my mind, something ridiculous—almost childish—and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to farce.
The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections—Fu-Manchu, who, with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very area which was so sedulously patrolled—Fu-Manchu, whom I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable! Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths, and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place is close to the riverside. Then you can put us ashore somewhere below. Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your fellows will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the whistle."
"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that. If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?"
"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully. "Even in that event I might wait awhile."
"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector. "We shouldn't be much wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel, somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."
The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.
"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway. You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home. Don't move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders, and note everybody that goes in and comes out. You other two belong to this division?"
The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt, but don't stick your chests out so much. Do you know of a back way to Shen-Yan's?"
The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them. "I know a broken window at the back where we could climb in. Then we could get through to the front and watch from there."
"Good!" cried the Inspector. "See you are not spotted, though; and if you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside Shen-Yan's like lightning. Otherwise, wait for orders."
Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
"Launch is waiting," he said.
"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully. "I am half afraid, though, that the recent alarms may have scared our quarry—your man, Mason, and then Cadby. Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there has been no clew pointing to this opium den. Remember, he thinks Cadby's notes are destroyed."
"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman. "I'm told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there to-night?"
"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned."
"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal. He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do you follow me? He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it."
Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch. With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.
The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again and show the muddy swirls about us. The view was not extensive from the launch. Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large vessel. In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the foreground of the night-piece.
The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity. The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomy—a dense, dark mass, amid which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring to the eye.
Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us. A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.
Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers. The chill of the near water communicated itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.
Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light—vaporous, mysterious—flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain. It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."
The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
"On your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp is—beyond that; next to the dark, square building—Shen-Yan's."
It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with your ears wide open. We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."
From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames had claimed at least one other victim.
"Dead slow," came Ryman's order. "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."
A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above which, crudely painted, were the words:
"SHEN-YAN, Barber."
I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs, German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair. A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations. From behind a curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing, shook his head vigorously.
"No shavee—no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late! Shuttee shop!"
"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes. Smokee pipe, you yellow scum—savvy?"
My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of gentle persuasion.
"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's yellow paw. "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down, Charlie. You can lay to it."
"No hab got pipee—" began the other.
Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
"Allee lightee," he said. "Full up—no loom. You come see."
He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a dark stair. The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which was literally poisonous. It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with opium fumes. Never before had I experienced anything like it. Every breath was an effort. A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied. Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes. These had not yet attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
"No loom—samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor, pulling me down with him.
"Two pipe quick," he said. "Plenty room. Two piecee pipe—or plenty heap trouble."
A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer! an' stop 'is palaver."
Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp. Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end. Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a spirituous blue flame.
"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.
Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and prepared another for me.
"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.
It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to smoke. Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.
"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks. "Look at the rats."
Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense of isolation from my fellows—from the whole of the Western world. My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached. The vicious atmosphere seemed contaminating. I was as one dropped—
Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
Smith began to whisper softly.
"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said. "I don't know if you have observed it, but there is a stair just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain. We are near that, and well in the dark. I have seen nothing suspicious so far—or nothing much. But if there was anything going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we new arrivals were well doped. S-SH!"
He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning. Through my half-closed eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred. I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room with a curiously lithe movement.
The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes—here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy, corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings and murmurings in far-away voices—an uncanny, animal chorus. It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements; but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent—that this was one of the doctor's servants. How I came to that conclusion, I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer, nearer, silently, bent and peering.
He was watching us.
Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance. There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks. The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own. I completely closed my eyes.
Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid. Divining what was coming, I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again. The man moved away.
I had saved the situation! And noting anew the hush about me—a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened—I was glad. For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the Chinese.
"Good," whispered Smith at my side. "I don't think I could have done it. He took me on trust after that. My God! what an awful face. Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes. Ah, I thought so. Do you see that?"
I turned my eyes round as far as was possible. A man had scrambled down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.
They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following. The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me. Who was the occupant of the room above?
Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor, and went out. The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith. "A dacoit! They come here to report and to take orders. Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu is up there."
"What shall we do?"—softly.
"Wait. Then we must try to rush the stairs. It would be futile to bring in the police first. He is sure to have some other exit. I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here. You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows, I can then deal with him."
Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit, who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately took his departure. A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay, ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth, whose nationality it was impossible to determine, followed. Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right of the outer door—
"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous and further dissimulation useless.
I leaped to my feet. Snatching my revolver from the pocket of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went blundering up in complete darkness. A chorus of brutish cries clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all. But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway, in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at the end and almost fell into the room beyond.
What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table. But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have had no eyes for any of its wonders.
He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.
Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of writing convincingly. It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green. But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess (it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.
I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience. He was surprised by this sudden intrusion—yes, but no trace of fear showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt. And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his gaze from mine.
"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was almost a scream. "IT'S FU-MANCHU! Cover him! Shoot him dead if—"
The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped from under me.
One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water, which closed over my head.
Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle. But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down the black terror that had me by the throat—terror of the darkness about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
"Smith!" I cried.… "Help! Help!"
My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place—to die hard if die I must.
A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the water beside me!
I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
Another fiery drop—and another!
I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached one bound of my watery prison. More fire fell from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.
Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments, I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse. For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.
The room above me was in flames!
It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me—for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead. Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the flames grew brighter … and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls—showed me that there was no escape!
By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap—but the bottom three were missing!
Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light—the light of what should be my funeral pyre—reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed me … a projecting beam a few feet above the water … and directly below the iron ladder!
"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed. "Have I the strength?"
A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force. I knew what it portended and fought it down—grimly, sternly.
My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam. Nearer I swam … nearer. Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood. Confused sounds—a remote uproar—came to my ears. I was nearly spent … I was in the shadow of the beam! If I could throw up one arm…
A shrill scream sounded far above me!
"Petrie! Petrie!" (That voice must be Smith's!) "Don't touch the beam! For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM! Keep afloat another few seconds and I can get to you!"
Another few seconds! Was that possible?
I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest sight which that night yet had offered.
Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung … supported by the hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
"I can't reach him!"
It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up—and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off! With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask, deprived of its fastenings, fell from position! "Here! Here! Be quick! Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be quick! Be quick!"
A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers—which were wild with fear … for me!
Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had striven to reach.
"The severed fingers—" I said; and swooned.
How Smith got me through the trap I do not know—nor how we made our way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon. My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us, and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment. "Shen-Yan's is in flames. It was your shot, as you fell through the trap, broke the oil-lamp."
"Is everybody out?"
"So far as we know."
"Fu-Manchu?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"No one has seen him. There was some door at the back—"
"Do you think he may—"
"No," he said tensely. "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall I believe it."
Then memory resumed its sway. I struggled to my feet.
"Smith, where is she?" I cried. "Where is she?"
"I don't know," he answered.
"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth, as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane. "So has Mr. Singapore Charlie—and, I'm afraid, somebody else. We've got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again. Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman. I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder. Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.
It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop, and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.
"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on Cadby?"
"Yes. I had hoped to meet the owner."
"Have you got it now?"
"No. I met the owner."
I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith. "We are far too sentimental. I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart. I owed her your life—I had to square the account."
NIGHT fell on Redmoat. I glanced from the window at the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me. To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad. Faint bird-calls floated over the water. These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors; to my ears, every sound a signal of dread. For the deathful hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.
"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined, sensitive face of the clergyman.
"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark. I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than upon the day when I left Mandalay. You offer me a clew; I am here. Your affair, I believe, stands thus: A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind, has alarmed your household. Yesterday, returning from London with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and, occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept. Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage—a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands."
"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone. The man was standing by one of the windows. Directly he observed that my daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."
"What did he do with the case in his hands?"
"She did not notice—or did not mention having noticed. In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me, without succeeding, felt hands grasp her shoulders—and swooned."
"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."
"Greba has no recollection of having done so."
"Hm! Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train. When did you awake?"
"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."
"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard? You acted very wisely, sir. How long were you in China?"
Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China, Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem so. The fact is"—his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment—"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud. I have lived in retirement ever since. Unwittingly—I solemnly declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly—I stirred up certain deep-seated prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty—my duty. I think you asked me how long I was in China? I was there from 1896 until 1900—four years."
"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd note in his voice. "I have been endeavoring to think where I had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered. I am happy to have met you, sir."
The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head, with its scanty fair hair.
"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it? I was unable to see in the dusk."
"It remains. Redmoat—a corruption of Round Moat—was formerly a priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536." His pedantic manner was quaint at times. "But the moat is no longer flooded. In fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic strength of the place"—he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed again—"it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and—other arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically. "And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."
He left us.
"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.
Smith smiled.
"You are wondering what caused the 'episcopal cloud?'" he suggested. "Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up culminated in the Boxer Risings."
"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words awakened.
"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued quickly; "but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that I think it probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind. The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of Christian women from death—and worse."
"J. D. Eltham—" I began.
"Is 'Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the 'Fighting Missionary,' the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor held the hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers. That's who the Rev. J. D. Eltham is! But what is he up to, now, I have yet to find out. He is keeping something back—something which has made him an object of interest to Young China!"
During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not hold priority in the conversation. In fact, this, for the most part, consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess, and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party. No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain from the subject uppermost in our minds.
These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of the circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful, so almost grotesquely calm. For I, within my very bones, felt it to be the calm before the storm. When, later, we men passed to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater of strange doings."
He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded dim illumination. Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby, lolled smoking on the window-seat, and I sat near to him. Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.
"Some months ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman, "a burglarious attempt was made upon the house. There was an arrest, and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection." He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about the shadowed room.
"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for—playing at forts to run away with me." He smiled an apology. "I virtually fortified Redmoat—against trespassers of any kind, I mean. You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound. This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork; a portion of the ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively, this time toward the window.
"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended by its environing moat. Today it is completely surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream, a tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road, but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular. On the south is the remaining part of the moat—now my kitchen garden; but from there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again, and the barbed wire must also be counted with.
"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting. There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."
He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed; and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries, with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind. "The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells," he said triumphantly. "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing. A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."
He was so boyish—so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive—that it was difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital. I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat. It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as, faintly, he was ashamed of his "fortifications." "But," rapped Smith, "it was not the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate precautions."
Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith. It was the burglar who was responsible for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights. My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they said, after dusk. No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces. I must admit that.
"Then—I received what I may term a warning. My position is a peculiar one—a peculiar one. My daughter, too, saw this prowling person, over by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man. It was the incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led me to speak to the police, little as I desired to—er—court publicity."
Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across the sloping lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay. A dog was howling dismally somewhere.
"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked. "On our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death of his collie a few nights ago."
The clergyman's face clouded.
"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.
"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon came down, bringing the dog with him. On the night of his arrival it ran, barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out. He went to look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among the bushes, quite dead. The poor creature had been dreadfully beaten about the head."
"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could have got out of the grounds without a ladder and someone to assist him. But there was no sign of a living thing about. Edwards and I searched every corner."
"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.
"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.
"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the yard. He is never allowed on this side of the house."
Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said, "but what was the nature of the warning to which you referred, and from whom did it come?"
Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts, that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"
Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried. "Now I understand! Why have you not told me before? That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking. Your troubles date from the time of your decision to return?"
"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.
"And your warning came from China?"
"It did."
"From a Chinaman?"
"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."
"Yen-Sun-Yat! My good sir! He warned you to abandon your visit? And you reject his advice? Listen to me." Smith was intensely excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert. "The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"
"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."
"No, sir. China to-day is not the China of '98. It is a huge secret machine, and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels! But if, as I understand, this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life! You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China! My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."
Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson Dan" showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
"No, sir!" replied the clergyman—and the change in his voice was startling. "I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."
The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence in his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven, no MAN will be able to do so! Your presence in Ho-Nan can do no possible good at present. It must do harm. Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory."
"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious to international peace. At the present moment, Ho-Nan is a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match. I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit to the interior of China!"
"You insist, Mr. Smith?"
"As your guest, I regret the necessity for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it."
Denby fidgeted uneasily. The tone of the conversation was growing harsh and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.
There was a short, silent interval.
"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman. "This was my reason for not seeking official protection."
"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes under the very eyes of the Western world."
"The 'Yellow Peril'!"
"You scoff, sir, and so do others. We take the proffered right hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife! The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham. Unknowingly, you tamper with tremendous issues."
Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it. I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again with you to-morrow."
Thus, then, the storm blew over. Yet I had never experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril—of a sinister presence—as oppressed me at that moment. The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume. And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream—the scream of a woman in direst fear.
"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.
IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall. But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham prone by the French windows.
These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in the alcove which they formed. I bent over her. Nayland Smith was at my elbow.
"Get my bag" I said. "She has swooned. It is nothing serious."
Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently; but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.
I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm she retired to her own rooms.
It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me. I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.
"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly. "He will think me imaginative, but you have been so kind. It was two green eyes! Oh! Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn. And they shone like the eyes of a cat."
The words thrilled me strangely.
"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie. There was something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance. I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days! But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose. Father thinks"—she was becoming charmingly confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician—"that shut up here we are safe from—whatever threatens us." I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder. "But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!"
"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
"Oh! I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie. What does it ALL mean? Vernon has been explaining to me that some awful Chinaman is seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith. But if the same man wants to kill my father, why has he not done so?"
"I am afraid you puzzle me."
"Of course, I must do so. But—the man in the train. He could have killed us both quite easily! And—last night someone was in father's room."
"In his room!"
"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving. My room is the next one. I knocked on the wall and woke father. There was nothing; so I said it was the howling of the dog that had frightened me."
"How could anyone get into his room?"
"I cannot imagine. But I am not sure it was a man."
"Miss Eltham, you alarm me. What do you suspect?"
"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected. Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall to the window? Do you know of anything with a long, thin body?"
For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine. She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes, who would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated a victim of "nerves."
"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips together.
"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from my window. The moonlight threw half the lawn into shadow, and just disappearing in this shadow was something—something of a brown color, marked with sections!"
"What size and shape?"
"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quite six feet of it flash across the grass!"
"Did you hear anything?"
"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
She met my eyes expectantly. Her confidence in my powers of understanding and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but occupied the position of a father-confessor.
"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke in the train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some way. I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an old traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!"
Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they want to do to him?"
"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
"Will you think over what I have told you? For I do assure you there is something here in Redmoat—something that comes and goes in spite of father's 'fortifications'? Caesar knows there is. Listen to him. He drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as he threw the weight of his big body upon it.
I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor smoking and talking.
"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said; "but they dare not have him in Nan-Yang at present. He knows the country as he knows Norfolk; he would see things!
"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think. The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity. But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way) they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here. In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided for getting at him here!"
"But how, Smith?"
"That's the mystery. But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
"It's impossible, Petrie. You are thinking of secret passages, and so forth. There are none. Eltham has measured up every foot of the place. There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnel under the moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, a former camp of Hadrian's time. I have seen a very old plan of the Round Moat Priory as it was called. There is no entrance and no exit save by the steps. So how was the dog killed?"
I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith. "Our danger is no greater in Norfolk than in London. But what do they want to do? That man in the train with the case of instruments—WHAT instruments? Then the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been the eyes of Fu-Manchu? Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated—something calling for the presence of the master?"
"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
"Quite so. He probably has instructions to be merciful. But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"
I went to my own room then. But I did not even undress, refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open window. Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed green eyes, could never leave me. The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.
The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on the night with something menacing in it. I sat looking out across the sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea. The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant with country scents.
It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious death—that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared. What uncanny secret did it hold?
Caesar became silent.
As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed, now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. It was twelve minutes past midnight.
As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone of sheer anger. He was alternately howling and snarling in a way that sounded new to me. The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain, shook the building in which he was confined. It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view of the corner of the house that he broke loose.
With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall. There followed a strange, guttural cry … and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house. He was out! But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog. Of what was he in pursuit?
At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know. I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing into the undergrowth.
Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only spectator of the scene. I leaned farther from the window.
"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said. "I am so glad you are awake. Can we do nothing to help? Caesar will be killed."
"Did you see what he went after?"
"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
For a strange figure went racing across the grass. It was that of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand. Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
"Come back! Come back, Eltham!"
I ran out into the passage and downstairs. The front door was open. A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and something else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed. He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
"The man is mad!" he snapped. "Heaven knows what lurks there! He should not have gone alone!"
Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern. The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly. Stumbling over stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes. He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by the dim light.
"Look!" he cried.
The body of the dog lay at his feet.
It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad to find traces of life.
"Drag him out. He is not dead," I said.
"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us. We were not molested. No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared. The white faces of the house servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me from her room:
"Is he dead?"
"No," I replied; "only stunned."
We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head. It had been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull was not broken. It is hard to kill a mastiff.
"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham. "We must see that the villain does not escape."
His face was grim and set. This was a different man from the diffident clergyman we knew: this was "Parson Dan" again.
I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the others went off for more lights to search the shrubbery. As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me. It was the sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientific ministration, which recalled Caesar to life. For, as she entered, his tail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet—one of which was injured.
Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of his young mistress and joined the search party. They had entered the shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
Ha debutado un rollito de primavera
There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit in moments of perplexity.
«¿Por qué no puedo tener una novia a la que le gusten los mismos discos que a mí?». Es algo absurdo, desde luego, pero en aquella época no me daba cuenta de que mi pareja ideal era una versión femenina de mí mismo. Mi sueño era salir conmigo.
No hay goma que borre lo que se dibuja en la memoria cuando eres niño.
Mucho de lo que se dice en nombre de la «justicia social» asume de manera implícita tres cosas: 1) la falacia aparentemente invencible de que los distintos grupos obtendrían los mismos éxitos en ausencia de un trato sesgado por parte de otros; 2) la causa de los resultados dispares puede determinarse por el lugar donde se recogen los datos que reflejan esa desigualdad; 3) si las personas más afortunadas no son del todo responsables de su buena suerte, entonces el Estado –políticos, burócratas y jueces– proporcionará unos resultados más eficientes o superiores desde un punto de vista moral gracias a su intervención.
Cuando observamos los hechos en el mundo real, una y otra vez encontramos distribuciones de los resultados muy sesgadas, ya sea entre seres humanos o en la naturaleza. Pero, cuando observamos las visiones sociales o las agendas políticas, encontramos que la conjetura dominante es la igualdad de resultados, y que las políticas del gobierno deben imponer esa norma cuando ese escenario no se produce. Si ciertas categorías de personas no están representadas de forma equitativa en determinadas profesiones, instituciones o franjas de ingresos, entonces se considera que alguien debe ser culpable de que la igualdad natural de los resultados se haya frustrado. Detrás de mucho de lo que se dice y se hace, ahí está la falacia aparentemente invencible.
Existe una asimetría fundamental en la carga de la prueba. Ya no importa la cantidad de datos empíricos sobre las distribuciones desiguales de los resultados que se presenten en contra de la falacia invencible, porque el otro bando no debe asumir la carga de la prueba y presentar un solo ejemplo de una representación equitativa de los distintos grupos sociales en una actividad determinada. ¿En qué país, en qué clase de actividad o en qué siglo de los vastos milenios de la historia humana ha existido una representación proporcional de los distintos grupos en cualquier actividad donde las personas hayan sido libres para competir entre ellas? Podemos leer un montón de argumentos en defensa de que las disparidades estadísticas comportan un tratamiento sesgado, sin dar con un solo ejemplo empírico de distribución equitativa entre los grupos sociales en cualquier actividad, en cualquier país, o en cualquier período de la historia.
Los que debutan con Victoria, se sientan para siempre a la derecha del Main.
En el matadero de la Anglogalician siempre aparece un sótano más
Mi aprecio por las patrias es nulo y qué decir de la tierra que nos vio nacer y toda esa faramalla sentimental que para lo único que sirve es para convertirnos en bestias de corral. Y para engordar y enriquecer a los administradores del corral. Tribalismo, atraso, rumiantismo (creo que me acabo de inventar una palabra).
No quiere decirse que Inglaterra, como el resto de la Europa de las libertades, no esté dispuesta a suicidarse culturalmente, a pegarse un tiro en el pie, por obra y gracia del cacofónico y destartalado zurriburri de la ideología woke, hoy dominante, y también a canjear el cosmopolitismo propio de una gran nación por el fracaso clamoroso (y premeditado) del multiculturalismo de mierda.
Si no te licúas de gustirrinín al chamullar el lenguaje inclusivo con sus tres posibles terminaciones (“tontos, tontas y tontes”), te adentras en arenas movedizas. Lo mismo sucede si eres refractario a cualquier excentricidad convertida en dogma de fe por la turra cansina de la “ideología de género”.
Setze jutges mengen fetge
La descendencia futura activa temores ocultos y desvela prejuicios y fobias de las gentes del común. “¿Y si me sale un hijo blade?”, se pregunta retóricamente el owl fanatizado. “¿Y si la niña se presenta en casa con un bombo de la mano de un negro o de un moro?”, se desespera el racista furibundo. Los riesgos están ahí y son esquivos al cálculo como la arena de la playa.
Sucede que cuando están así las cosas, cuando te hacen pasar a bayonetazos bajo las horcas caudinas de la imposición, la cordialidad de la presente entrada, cual errabunda pompa de jabón, deviene una futesa, una ñoñería… un flatus vocis. Nadamos en un estanque rodeados de cocodrilos voraces que muerden con un índice (PSI) de 5.000 quilos de presión por centímetro cuadrado, no de esos pececillos plateados, faltos de atavío, que te tiran inocuos pellizcos a los tobillos.
Donde no parecía haber nada, de pronto hay un latido íntimo, un brote helado y vivo. Las vacas lo tronzan y levantan la cabeza mucho, como para mostrar al cielo lo que han conseguido sacar de la nada. A eso me agarro en días de luz menor, ceniza y abismo.
La documentación de la sangre llega más allá de la irremediable insolvencia de los apellidos.
Si buscas resultados distintos no hagas siempre lo mismo.
Van de diversos, de inclusivos, y en cuanto te sales de sus raíles te quedas fuera del paraíso progresista. La checa y el gulag de nuestro tiempo es la cancelación por parte de todo este cortijo. No hace tanto frío, pero sí te puede quitar el pan de la boca.
Nos cuesta soportar nuestro propio reflejo.
Varios adolescentes venusianos lo envolvían con sus penes membranosos, succionando y bombeando alternativamente una viscosa sustancia negra a través de ventosas fálicas. Ni siquiera dejó de hablar cuando el orgasmo lo redujo a una pulpa de consistencia gelatinosa.
La conciencia es una enfermedad
Domingo de Supertazón.
Edición LIX, la 59 para los que no sabéis latín.
La disputan mismos equipos que en el año 2023: Kansas City Chiefs y Philadelfia Eagles.
Los primeros, a pesar de lo que puedan pensar por el nombre, son del estado confederado de Misuri.
Los segundos, de Pensilvania y sus marmotas, cuyo lema estatal es "Virtud, libertad e independencia". Sólo les falta poner resiliencia.
Los Chiefs ya han ganado 4 veces la Super Bowl, y buscan ser los primeros en conseguir tres títulos consecutivos.
Los de Filadelfia, buscan su segundo campeonato y, que no se la den con queso.
20 equipos saben lo que es ganar esta competición:
Kansas City Chiefs, vigentes campeones.
Los Angeles Rams, 2022 (2)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers, en 2021. (2)
Nuestros New England Patriots. 2019. Y van 6.
Philadelphia Eagles, 2018.
Denver Broncos, 2016. (3)
Seattle Seahawks, 2014.
Baltimore Ravens, 2013 (2)
New York Giants, 2012. (4)
Green Bay Packers, 2011 (4)
New Orleans Saints, 2010
Pittsburgh Steelers, 2009 (6)
Indianapolis Colts, 2007 (2)
Dallas Cowboys, 1996 (5)
San Francisco 49ers, 1995 (5)
Washington Redskins, 1992 (3). Ahora tiene otro nombre.
Chicago Bears, 1986.
Las Vegas Raiders, 1984 (3)
Miami Dolphins, 1974 (2)
New York Jets en 1969.
Cerveza floja, holocausto de alitas de pollo, una actuación musical que será una puta mierda, porristas harto lechables, y una final de bostezos.
Bienvenidos al Supertazón LIX, edición 59 para los que no saben latín.
El estado confederado de Misuri contra el queso Filadelfia.
La cordura del viejo es una cordura senil
Todo acto encaminado al orden social necesitó siempre de una cobertura ritual suficiente para cimentarlo, para hacerlo trascendente a los ojos de todos. La Iglesia se hizo cargo enseguida de sustanciar el matrimonio convirtiéndolo en algo indeleble y sagrado, revistiéndolo de relumbre y parafernalia contundente. Pero ahora que lo que era ceremonial se ha convertido en puro trámite administrativo, en un simple acto civil de diez minutos de duración en una oficina municipal, ¿con qué cimentarlo?, ¿qué puede sustituir la inflamación de las homilías y el sortilegio de las fórmulas arcanas? No hay duda: en esta época de ruido bruto y de alegría montuna el acto más sólido de una boda son las despedidas de solteros/-as. Algunas duran más que los propios matrimonios que están pregonando. Cuando veo a esa cáfila de muchachos y muchachas con camisetas de leyendas zafias y disfrazados de lo más hortera posible, empiezo a echar de menos la solemnidad del órgano y el vapor del tul en aquellas novias cursis y arrobadas. Creo que me estoy haciendo mayor.
Y la señera pionta 78.000 goes y va para X. Moldes, debutante en estas lides de carnicería y odio.
Pionta 77.000 para "Los renos drogados de Father Yule sueñan que son jabalíes en la hazaña de Sheffield". Ya le vale o alcume.
Pionta 76.000 perpetrada por "Ganó y bien el pato Donald y el puto mundo será trumphial y más decente"
La pionta 75.000 goes fue para "75.000 brillantes comentarios (y sólo 88 autores)"
La pionta 74.000 fue para Cowput Keriot, abisal escriba de las brumas y las tolemias.
La pionta 73.000 fue para Portavoz en las Sombras Ctónicas del Rodillarato, que no marcó en la XVII pero anduvo lejos.
La pionta número 72.000 fue de Willy S, que existe y va a los partidos aunque ustedes no lo crean.
La pionta número 71.000 goes fue de Algernon Mouse. Un pub lleno de queso.
La pionta de culto número 70.000 goes fue para "Hice este perfil para ser la puta e histórica pionta 70.000, y ya verás como la lluvia anglogaliciosa borra mis huellas ".
La pionta 69.000 fue de Eire Brezal, que tiene pinta de saber lo que es un buen 69.
La pionta 68.000 fue para Mike Barja ( uno de ellos pero el único que se hizo colono)
La pionta 67.000 fue de Clack Quantrill, héroe en los maizales y en las pocilgas de Kansas.
La pionta 66.000 fue para"O xoves hai cocido". Un clásico de los jueves calientes y del caldo frío.
La pionta 65.000 se la adjudicó Amapola Hanoi, que en su día fumó la 60.000.
La pionta 64.000 ha sido fabulada por Las crónicas de un Sochantre armado con un sacho.
- Piranha (making friends since 1973) tiene 7 muescas: 1000, 3000, 9000, 10.000, 14.000 , 18.000 y 20.000.
- "Call Me Tider" escribió la 2.000.
Sergio Vidal la 4000.
Teixugo la 5000
Thomo fue el autor de la piontas 6000 y 11000
Díotima firmó las 7.000, 8.000 y 13.000
- El Abu, 12.000 y 17.000
- O Fento Fedorento, 15.000
Réjean Ducharme escribió el comentario 16.000.
Anonymous, la 19.000.
"21.000 y tomate frito. No quiero el libro." firmó la 21000
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer y los dos patitos en millares" la 22.000
El Fulano Ulano Ufano se llevó la 23.000
Vadío da Brétema, las 24.000 y 59.000.
Mr Brimstone, 25000.
La 26.000, Pordiosero Metafísico.
La pionta 27.000, Vincent Vega.
La pionta 28.000, Barrabás Balarrasa.
29.000, pailaroko mencey.
La piontas 30.000, 35.000 y 38.000 son de Diario de un Porco Bravo que también firmó la mítica 50.000.
Barrilete firmó 31.000 y 36.000.
La 32.000, Curtido en Los Barrizales de la Vanidad.
33.000, Willy Pangloss Maya May.
La pionta 34.000 la cantó Bruce Dickinson.
37.000, Viggo Bonrad.
39000, ¿No hay ayuda para el hijo de la viuda?
40000, Perkele Maljanne.
41000, Rostro Gótico, Glabro.
42.000, Sláine
43000, Burnt Norton.
44000, The Great Malcolm Swindle.
45000, Boroman.
46000, RAF Birras
47000, Klaus Kliff Kañón .
48000, Liam Neeson.
49000 y 56000, Red Olifantshoek.
51.000, The man in the high castle.
52.000, The Bushranger.
53000, by "Hice este perfil para ser la puta pionta 53.000, así que no jodáis mi sigilo u os lanzo una maldición"
54000, Cisco Miño.
55000, "500 millas de Orange Plank Road asfaltadas en Peltre".
57.000, por "Herencias de vanguardia: a la sombra, una subterránea (pos)autonomía del sexo anal "
58.000, by "Hice este perfil para ser la puta pionta 58.000, así que dejadme cantar con Bunbury y Bosé, que tienen toda la puta razón"
61000, por "Jugando a la ruleta rusa montado en una montaña rusa".
62.000, Veterano de Yardley Gobion.
Y la 63.000, firmada por Malvado Follomar.
Recuerden: todas las fucking piontas son importantes, incluso las de la escoria woke que ve los Goya y escucha a la cerda de la Swift.
¿Soy yo más extranjero porque mi pelo es negro y rizado, o sois vosotros los extranjeros porque vuestras manos son frías y duras? ¿Quién es más extranjero, vosotros o yo? Quien odia es más extranjero que quien es odiado y los más extranjeros son aquellos que más se sienten en casa
¡Las doce en punto y sereno!
Los Plymouth Pilgrims son uno de los grupos de inmigrantes más importantes de la historia. Eran ingleses que buscaban escapar de la controversia religiosa y los problemas económicos de su época emigrando a Estados Unidos.
Muchos de los peregrinos eran miembros de una secta puritana conocida como separatistas que se separaron de la Iglesia de Inglaterra. Se comprometieron a una vida basada en la Biblia. La mayoría de estos separatistas eran agricultores, con poca educación y sin posición social o política.
La última línea de defensa de un hombre son sus puños.
No hay ningún deporte, siquiera el críquet o la sodomía, que sea más esencialmente inglés que el boxeo.
The king, the saint, the fool for Main's sake. You'll get your comeuppance. And in the end a bás gan sagart, Demons will possess your soul.
Tiene un cesto de rocío el charlatán del cielo.
¿Ustedes se han fijado en las dimensiones que ha alcanzado el culo del Papa Francisco? Hoy lo vi en la televisión y su culo parece una lancha de desembarco. Y qué decir de la papada. Dios podría hacer algo, me dije, a fin de cuentas es su representante en el planeta Tierra. Si yo fuera Dios y tuviera un representante así, haría algo. Por ejemplo, mandarlo a vivir un año, o el tiempo que haga falta, a Cuba; a vivir como un cubano cualquiera, se entiende. Con su Libreta de racionamiento y todo. El Papa es muy aficionado a los Castro. Y a los pobres, no se los saca de la boca, así qué. Vi al Papa en la televisión y me recordó a esos hombres biculos (un culo en la cara y otro donde todos tenemos el culo) que yo pintaba. Si al Papa le sigue creciendo el culo se convertirá en el primer PapaCulo de la historia de la Iglesia. Si no estalla antes, claro.
WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical contrivances from every point. They were in perfect order. It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered and quitted Redmoat during the night. The barbed-wire fencing was intact, and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west of the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle, but no human footprint could be found.
"The ground is dry," said Smith. "We cannot expect much."
"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar; his presence is dangerous. And in his rage he broke loose."
"I think so, too," agreed Smith. "But why did this person make for here? And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat? I am open to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during the day whilst the gates are open, and hiding until dusk. But how in the name of all that's wonderful does he GET OUT? He must possess the attributes of a bird."
I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend of her description of the thing which she had seen passing into this strangely haunted shrubbery.
"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he said. "Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible. My view of the case to date stands thus:
"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China, is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way to stay in England.
"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room coffee. An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia.
"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made for his return. These lead to:
"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
"So that the clearing up of my fourth point—id est, the discovery of the nature of these preparations—becomes our immediate concern. The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone to gain access to Eltham's room. The other events are incidental. The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt that Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."
"But from what? For Heaven's sake, from what?"
Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
"From a visit by someone—perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a hushed voice. "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn; for that would mean that it had been achieved."
"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you think he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere? It would be like him."
"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world to be hidden here. I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"
Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby, who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside, and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew of any kind.
"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said. And his voice had awe in it.
That day dragged slowly on. A party of us scoured the neighborhood for traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin hard by; but vainly.
"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?" I asked Smith.
"I think not," he replied. "You see, unless we can prevail upon him, Eltham sails in a fortnight. So the Doctor has no time to waste. Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character that they MUST go forward. He might turn aside, of course, to assassinate me, if opportunity arose! But we know, from experience, that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."
There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat, for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.
I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian knife raised above my breast!
Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which we had no armor. Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that the climax was reached so quickly. And it came suddenly enough; for there in that quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu. It was upon us before we realized it. There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.
As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight, I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things. Then Caesar, who had been a docile patient all day, began howling again; and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors, when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion. I suppose it was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act, a desire personally to distinguish himself. But, as I recalled afterwards, his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to seek her face, and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his chair, and dashed across the grass to the trees.
"Did you see it?" he yelled. "Did you see it?"
He evidently carried a revolver. For from the edge of the shrubbery a shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham. "Mr. Smith, will you enter the bushes from the west. Dr. Petrie, east. Edwards, Edwards—" And he was off across the lawn with the nervous activity of a cat.
As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's voice from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan. It was to surround the shrubbery.
Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood. Then a loud cry—I thought, from Denby—and a second, muffled one.
Following—silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of geranium and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the elms. Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's answering voice.
"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder: "Denby!"
But the silence fell again.
Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before me. Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I pressed on into the midst of the thicket.
"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.
"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry directly ahead of me.
With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me, I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the elmen roof. At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham. Then Smith plunged into view. Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a big rhododendron and completed the party.
We stood quite still for a moment.
A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
"Where is he?"
I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement to notice. Then Eltham began shouting:
"Vernon! Vernon! VERNON!"
His voice pitched higher upon each repetition. There was something horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech, with shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
"Quick! Lights!" rapped Smith. "Every lamp you have!"
Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the lawn, a disordered company. Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his jaw set hard. He met my eye.
"God forgive me!" he said. "I could do murder to-night!"
He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
It seemed an age before the lights were found. But at last we returned to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive. We found his revolver, but there was no one there—nothing.
When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen Smith so haggard.
"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered. "What does it mean?"
He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
"Search! Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.
He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among the flowers like a madman, muttering: "Vernon! Vernon!" For close upon an hour we all searched. We searched every square yard, I think, within the wire fencing, and found no trace. Miss Eltham slipped out in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt. Some of the servants assisted too.
It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together again on the terrace. One and then another would give up, until only Eltham and Smith were missing. Then they came back together from examining the steps to the lower gate.
Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal, snapping his teeth together and tugging at his ear.
Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his tumultuous thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off across the grass and to the shrubbery once more. I followed him. I think his idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there. He surprised himself, and all of us.
For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat. I ran to him.
He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came to be there now we dared not conjecture. Mr. Eltham joined us, uttered one short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees. Then we were carrying Denby back to the house, with the mastiff howling a marche funebre.
We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace. Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible. But the stark horror of the thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby. Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the river:
"Heavens! we are fools! LOOSE THE DOG!"
"But the dog—" I began.
Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
"I know he's crippled," he whispered. "But if anything human lurks there, the dog will lead us to it. If a MAN is there, he will fly! Why did we not think of it before. Fools, fools!" He raised his voice again. "Keep him on leash, Edwards. He will lead us."
The scheme succeeded.
Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ringing inside the house.
"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly. "Above the moat," he panted. And we were off en masse round the edge of the trees.
It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence. There was no sound.
"He's out!" screamed Eltham. "Down the steps!"
We all ran our best and swiftest. But Eltham outran us. Like a fury he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road. Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin. But no living thing moved upon it. The distant baying of the dog was borne to our ears.
"Curse it! he's crippled," hissed Smith. "Without him, as well pursue a shadow!"
A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough: A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass. A slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence. It had a hook on the top, and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith, "as he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted him in her father's room. He and whomever he had with him doubtless slipped in during the daytime—whilst Eltham was absent in London—bringing the prepared cask and all necessary implements with them. They concealed themselves somewhere—probably in the shrubbery—and during the night made the cache. The excavated earth would be disposed of on the flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready. You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one. But owing to the 'defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark. For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE Redmoat was essential. His servant—for he needed assistance—must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where! During the day they could come or go by the gates, as we have already noted."
"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
"It seems possible. Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham saw from the window last night?"
Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had planned to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China. This we learned from Denby. For Denby was not dead.
It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned (judging from the evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into the cache—to which he must have lain in such dangerous proximity as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing him. The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath. When the search of the shrubbery was concluded, his body had been borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.
Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing the secret of the shrubbery. The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent, consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated; his memory had completely deserted him!
This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted, was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence, slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine, of a minute puncture—undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe. Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain; for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms was a mystery—a mystery which defied Western science: one of the many strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up Dr. Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention or had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk, in glancing through a number of papers which I had brought in with me, I chanced upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less directly upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese. Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in England, the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his existence. This was due to Nayland Smith. But, as a result, I feel assured that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters, meet with an incredulous reception.
I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening chapters of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult it would be for my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings, to credit any human being with a callous villainy great enough to conceive and to put into execution such a death pest as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing—against however vile an enemy—such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss. So thinking, my eye was caught by the following:—
EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
LORESGRADO
"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching the South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island of Maui, who, it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions to Chinese in Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese, has increased so terribly that the authorities have started a searching inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion dealer of Maui.
"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls, and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect in support of the statement.
"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt down the scorpion dealer at any cost."
Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a Fu-Manchu? I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that, if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The Star also furnished work for my scissors. Here were evidences of the deep-seated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested itself so far from its center as peaceful England in the person of the sinister Doctor.
"HONG KONG, Friday.
"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday, was charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder. The prisoner, who was not defended, pleaded guilty. The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand until Monday, which was granted.
"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver. It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence."
Later.
"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary. In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt had failed."—Reuter.
"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi, near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
"They fired at the house and set it in flames. There were in the house about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make the most vigorous representations on the subject."—Reuter.
Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:—
"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.—ELTHAM."
I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table. I showed him the cutting.
"I am glad, for Eltham's sake—and for the girl's," was his comment. "But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu! Just Heaven! Why is retribution delayed!"
Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me! During the months that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt. He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!"
Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end. Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca, he now had turned his attention again to Tibet—thereby signing his own death-warrant.
"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
"England at present is the web," he replied. "The spider will be waiting. Petrie, I sometimes despair. Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd. You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle. Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus. He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!"
"Chinese!"
"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee. I don't like him. Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face. He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples. By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the landing-stage—including his Tibetan notes."
"Significant!"
"Of course. But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London. I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute."
"He is wasting no time."
"Wasting time! In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet, he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has unearthed in Egypt. As I came away, a van drove up from the docks and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat. It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum after he has examined it. The man crams six months' work into six weeks; then he is off again."
"What do you propose to do?"
"What CAN I do? I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him. I cannot doubt it. Ugh! that house gave me the shudders. No sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue. There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other. It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture. I tell you, the place was made for murder."
"Have you taken any precautions?"
"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but—"
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"What is Sir Lionel like?"
"A madman, Petrie. A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely shaves—I don't know which. I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears, pottery and what not—sometimes kicking a book from his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask—alternately dictating and conversing. Phew!"
For some time we were silent.
"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business. With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us, still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
Nayland Smith nodded.
"And we don't know all," he said. "We mark such and such a man as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him—if we have time. Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not. But what do we know, Petrie, of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency? We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China. I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering. I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything. I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life. The fact that WE are alive is a miracle."
He glanced at his watch.
"Nearly eleven," he said. "But sleep seems a waste of time—apart from its dangers."
We heard a bell ring. A few moments later followed a knock at the room door.
"Come in!" I cried.
A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith. His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope. He glanced at the form, stood up and passed it to me, reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
"MAIN help us, Petrie!" he said.
This was the message:
"Sir Lionel Barton murdered. Meet me at his house at once.—WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR."
¿Sabrán de verdad las ovejas inglesas, dirigidas y azuzadas por el perro woke, que quien realmente manda es ese señor con turbante que está ahí quieto?
cuando todo da lo mismo, porqué no hacer alpinismo
Hay algunas actividades y circunstancias más o menos cotidianas que a todos nos gustaría no hacer. Son nimiedades, pero muy fastidiosas, y cada vez que toca hacerlas lo hacemos a disgusto. Rutinas que nos saltaríamos alegremente, pero que no podemos hacerlo, puesto que son necesarias para lograr otros objetivos. Ahí van algunas de las cosas que a mi me fastidian especialmente:
-Encontrarme con otro coche a la entrada o salida del aparcamiento.
-Tener que abrir un tetra-brick.
-Cambiar el papel higiénico.
-Los aerosoles.
-Limpiar los zapatos.
-Hacer cola en el banco o en el cajero automático (curiosamente, en otras partes no me molesta).
-Dar propina a los aparcacoches (tanto que, si hay uno, prefiero aparcar más lejos y evitarlos).
-Responder al contestador automático (y según qué días, al teléfono).
-Las migajas de la patatilla al fondo de la bolsa.
El nombre que a cada uno nos ponen es algo así como nuestro estandarte, aquello que nos muestra en sociedad. Y aunque es impuesto (igual que el mote), lo es en el primer momento de nuestra existencia (las tribulaciones de los padres a la hora de ponerle nombre a sus hijos son una señal de lo importante que es el nombrar a alguien), quedando unido a nosotros para siempre. En cambio, el mote viene dado por los demás y con posterioridad al nacimiento. Si el nombre va de los padres al hijo, en un acto íntimo, el mote es algo social, del colectivo, que va parejo a la socialización del individuo. En este sentido, es llamativo que los motes se utilicen en ámbitos donde el grupo es muy importante, casi anterior al individuo, como son los pueblos pequeños o regiones con un alto grado de sociabilidad, en las que la vida individual se desarrolla en gran medida en el espacio público. También los grupos de amigos adquieren una dinámica similar.
Lo llamativo del caso es ese eclipse que el mote supone sobre el nombre, como si ese estandarte de uno mismo que es quedara velado y palidecido por el yo social (que es una especie de yo externo y débil, por más que uno se pueda sentir muy a gusto en él). Velado o cuidadosamente escondido, porque en un ambiente en el que todo está expuesto, si hay que mantener algo en secreto, debe hacerse con mayor celo. Y el nombre (trasunto del Yo) sería así la etiqueta para todo lo que queda reservado, frente al mote, patrimonio del grupo. Es más, cabe la posibilidad de que el mismo grupo se abandone al juego del mote movido por el deseo de dejar algo para la reserva.
En este sentido, es esclarecedor el hecho de que muchos criminales (en especial los que se mueven en organizaciones) adopten un alias de cara al grupo en el que están y a la sociedad en general. Es obvio que se trata de ocultar la verdadera identidad con vistas a no ser detenidos, pero el mecanismo de mostrar y ocultar que se manifiesta en ello no parece tan distinto al de los motes populares.
Hay qué ver la facilidad con la que proclamamos consignas y condenamos a los demás, como si fuéramos los portadores de la verdad absoluta, cuando en realidad no somos más que unos insignificantes seres que, ante la inmensidad vacía nos agarramos al clavo ardiendo de nosotros mismos, frágiles tablas de salvación. Pretendemos ocultar toda nuestra nada bajo la alfombra de precarias verdades.
Se supone que el estruendo de tabúes quebrantados que nos rodea por todas partes nos ensordece, pero no debemos equivocarnos. El espectáculo es una farsa. Se ha representado durante demasiado tiempo con cambios sólo menores en la trama y en el reparto de los personajes. Los verdaderos tabúes están en otra parte y rígidamente en vigor. Nuestros más feroces desmitificadores rápidamente retornan a las más anticuadas convenciones cuando se trata de afrontar los problemas realmente delicados.
Salvemos las ballenas, pero que se mueran todas las focas.
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Ayer, el caballo salvaje del Mainblog cumplió los diecisiete.
Todo nuestro Descomunal Aparato Mediático procede de aquel galope primigenio.
IMWT
Se ha armado un revuelo de chochos típico de la prensa jabonera y mujerista española (casi toda) porque una futbolista le tocó el coño a otra. No es que se lo agarrara en plan lúbrico ni nada de eso, fue algo como lo que hacen los futbolistas que se tocan el culo constantemente y en ocasiones el pito, sin que se alarme o escandalice. Pero. No revolveré la porquería mediática. A fin de cuentas lo sucedido al calor de un encuentro deportivo, no tiene mayor importancia.
A mí lo que me parece digno de atención, es la pregunta. Después de efectuar el leve tocamiento, la jugadora “agresora” le preguntó a su “víctima”: ¡si tenía picha! Esto ha despertado mi curiosidad. ¿Se trató de un intento de demonización de la picha en general?¿Odia las pichas la jugadora que formula la pregunta? ¿Estamos ante un caso de delito de odio contra el órgano sexual masculino?¿Por qué razón la molestia o el enfado de la jugadora que ejecutó el tocamiento, desembocó en una condena del pene (qué palabra ridícula) masculino, que no pintaba nada allí? ¿Es un insulto para la jugadora “agresora” tener picha? ¿Equivalía la pregunta a decir… qué, tienes ahí ese tumor maligno masculino en vez de un maravilloso coño como debe ser?
Todas preguntas pertinentes, pero, ay, nadie las plantea.
Existe un par dialéctico entre la locura y la pobreza
-y se rascaba la cabeza-
la locura empobrece, la pobreza enloquece.
Continuaba…
Sé que a veces, uno, de la locura sale…pero ¿ Cómo se hace para salir de la pobreza?
Imposible pero verosímil
Consideramos esencial abordar este suceso desde una perspectiva interseccional que contemple no solo las dinámicas de género, sino también las de raza y poder que subyacen en este tipo de situaciones. La violencia digital es una extensión de las violencias estructurales que enfrentan las mujeres negras, y en este caso, se manifiesta en forma de insultos, amenazas y deslegitimación de su vivencia como víctima. Esta actitud está basada en prejuicios raciales y etnocentristas, donde las experiencias de mujeres negras y migrantes son desestimadas o ignoradas. Estamos hablando de nuevo del «feminismo blanco», que se caracteriza por centrar las luchas feministas en las experiencias de mujeres blancas, dejando de lado las problemáticas específicas que afectan a mujeres de otras razas. En la gestión de este incidente, se han replicado patrones típicos del machismo institucional: el silencio, el ninguneo y la desligitimación de la víctima. La falta de una respuesta contundente por parte de las instituciones deportivas y de ciertos colectivos feministas ante una agresión que vulnera la integridad de una jugadora evidencia una complicidad con las estructuras de poder que perpetúan la violencia hacia las mujeres racializadas.
Podemos adoptar un primer principio: las formas de decir verdad de los distintos ámbitos (sean estos cuales sean, habrá que identificarlos) sólo son válidas para su propio ámbito, nunca para el resto.
O intelecto é pra vere no azul do ámpito aínda máis aló que os telescopios.
Os telescopios son cañóns que disparan olladas aos outros mundos.
Algúns homes teñenos ollos pra non vere, e a testa pésalles menos que si a tivesen valeira. É porque a teñen inzada co «gas da fachada» cuia densidade é máis cativa que a do ar.
Teño no canto de miolos unha arela acesa, e, o seu fogax rádiase na retina, que soilo deixa pasar as vibracións do roxo.
Choro moitas vegadas porque non teño alas.
–¿Qué faría eu si as tivera?
–Voarías ao Norte ou o Sur?
–Non; ao zenit, a queimala ao Sol.
Ti gustabas enredar co río. Un río nas tuas mans como unha cobra de madeira e xestas verdes nas maus dos rapaces. Ti e mais o río áxiles e nuos. Ti berrabas, con voz prestada d’un charlatán, cinguindo o río ás veas do teu fros, do teu van ou dos teus muslos.
Collares e cinturós!
Pendentes!
Quén merca?
Ligas con broches de remuiños!
Sempre fuches caprichosa.com o unha pomba coxa, ou como un camiño de semprevivas. E leda como unha nube, unha veleta ou unha agulla.
Fixeches do río o que quixeches. Canzón. Risa. Navalla. Língoa. Traia. Poma. Camisa.
Hai que decir eiquí que os meus brazos –cauce enxoito que buscaba o esbarar segrel do teu corpo– i-o río dábame un Vostede de rivals. Eu non tiven que facerlle.
Divertíate a sua docilidade chea de ecos como parágoas de equilibrista.
Quixeches que pelexaramos por ti. Nacérate na cabeza un caravel sinvergonza. E nós tiñamos esas olladas atravesadas que tanto traballo custa meter polas portas.
Nos teus ollos non había ningún probrema de axedrez. Semellaban ser mais lixeiros que o ar. E toda ti eras segrel e incomprensibel como un alfiler cravado na lua.
La homogeneidad cultural, histórica, tal es el destino del hombre. La heterogeneidad natural, originaria, tal es el destino del arte. La fragmentación es el alma del arte.
Las palabras latinas fragmen y fragmentum proceden de frango, romper, hacer añicos, convertir en pedazos, en polvo, en migajas, aniquilar.
Se puede observar la siguiente secuencia: 1) El sujeto se conecta con el objeto. 2) El objeto es encontrado en lugar de ser colocado en el mundo por el sujeto. 3) El sujeto destruye el objeto. 4) El objeto sobrevive a la destrucción. 5) El sujeto puede utilizar el objeto.
El objeto siempre está a punto de destruirse.
La destructividad, combinada con la supervivencia del objeto a la destrucción, lo sitúa fuera del ámbito de los objetos establecidos por los mecanismos mentales del sujeto. Esto crea un mundo de realidad compartida que el sujeto puede utilizar y que puede devolver al sujeto una sustancia distinta de mí mismo
Una prueba práctica de libre albedrío: si volvieras al momento exacto en que tomaste un camino de entrada ante una circunvalación (antes), con todos los corpúsculos del mundo en la misma posición, podrías cambiar tu elección. Eterna indecisión. Cómo reaccionarías si un demonio te propone: esta vida, tal y como la vives, tendrás que vivirla un número infinito de veces y no habrá nada nuevo en ella (bis), cada dolor, cada pensamiento, cada suspiro se repetirá en una secuencia eterna, sin posibilidad de cambio. Eterno retorno.
En la ventana, siempre abierta, me pareció distinguir una sombra trágica y desolada. ¡Pobre sombra envejecida, arrugada, miedosa, que vaga todavía por aquellas estancias, y todavía cree verme acechándola en la oscuridad! Me contaron que ahora, al cabo de tantos años, ya repite sin pasión, sin duelo, con la monotonía de una vieja que reza:
—¡Fué Satanás...! ¡Fué Satanás...!
No hay que irse de delirio nocturno con una mochila llena de piedras.
Queridas damas feminazis: basta ya de quebrantos. Lucifer sabrá compensar a Clarita Culieva por sus fechorías libidinosas, otorgándole un tercer seno y el apetecido milagro de la vagina dentada, para que baje entras las llamas del cielo, el día del Juicio Final, junto a Godzila Cosmocrator. Ahora vuestra amiga conocerá otras latitudes, coleccionará escrotos de sabores y será parte del ganado de Kali. Amo a la vaca obediente que me desprecia con sus cánticos. ¡Salve, salve, oh, Godzila San, patrón de la Zona Infrarroja!.
Estaba hoy observando el interior de su boca y me sentía otra vez un nervioso e inmaduro estudiante de odontología, que maneja con torpeza espejos y compresas. Luego la rodeé con mis brazos, para enseñarle a cepillarse los dientes correctamente. La adorable tontuela estaba acostumbraba a sostener el cepillo inmóvil y menear la cabeza de un lado para otro. El próximo jueves le daré cloroformo y le pediré que se case conmigo.
El trono de las entradas naïf ya tiene dos pretendientes.
Solomillo de reno
Ingredientes
(Para 4 personas)
Remolacha marinada
1 kg de remolacha
100 ml de aceite de oliva
100 ml de vinagre de frambuesa
50 ml de vinagre balsámico
2 dientes de ajo (rallados)
1 cucharadita de tomillo picado
Sal
Pimienta
Salsa de setas
200 gramos de setas variadas (como champiñones, shiitake, etc.)
3 cucharadas de chalotas
2 dientes de ajo
50 ml de aceite de girasol
1 cucharadita de azúcar
10 ml de vino tinto
50 ml de vinagre balsámico
1 litro de caldo de carne
500 ml de nata
Sal
Puré de apio
1 apio
200 ml de leche
200 ml de nata
200 ml de agua
1 cucharada de mantequilla
½ cucharadita de sal
Solomillo de reno asado
Solomillo de carne de reno (150 - 200 gramos por persona)
1 cucharada de aceite de girasol
1 cucharada de mantequilla
1 cucharada de tomillo
2 dientes de ajo
Sal
Preparación
Remolacha marinada
1. Poner en el horno la remolacha a 170 °C, hasta que esté tierna. Dejar enfriar. Luego pelar y trocear en cubos de unos 1.5 por 1.5 centímetros.
2. Mezclar con el resto de ingredientes y dejar marinar durante varias horas.
Salsa de setas
1. Trocear setas, chalotas y ajo y freír en aceite hasta que adquieran un color entre dorado y marrón. Añadir el azúcar y freír hasta que este comience a caramelizarse.
2. Añadir el vino tinto y el vinagre balsámico y dejar que la mezcla se reduzca a la mitad. Añadir el caldo de carne y cocer a fuego lento durante una media hora. Añadir la nata y dejar en el fuego hasta que la textura de la salsa y el sabor sean los deseados. Añadir sal y/o vinagre balsámico al gusto.
Puré de apio
1. Pelar el apio y cortar en partes de igual tamaño para cocerlo. Poner en una olla y añadir cantidades similares de nata, leche y agua hasta que el apio quede cubierto completamente. Dejar que hierva y luego cocinar a fuego lento hasta que el apio se ablande.
2. Colar la mezcla para separar el apio y poner el resto en la batidora, junto con una cucharada de mantequilla y media cucharadita de sal. Batir hasta obtener una crema uniforme y añadir sal al gusto.
Solomillo de carne de reno asada
1. Salar la carne durante unos cinco minutos antes de freirla. Poner la sartén a fuego medio-alto. Añadir aceite de girasol y luego poner la carne en la sartén. Dar la vuelta a la carne aproximadamente una vez cada minuto.
2. Después de tres minutos, añadir tomillo, mantequilla y ajo a la sartén y retirar del fuego. Verter a cucharadas la mezcla de hierbas y mantequilla derretida sobre la carne durante unos 30 segundos. La carne debería estar a una temperatura de entre 45 y 50 grados una vez en reposo.
Fårikål (estofado de cordero y col)
Ingredientes
(8 raciones)
3 kilogramos de carne de cordero
3 kilogramos de col
8 cucharaditas de pimienta negra en grano
4 cucharaditas de sal
600 mililitros de agua
Método de preparación
1. Lava la col y córtala en trozos de aproximadamente 2-4 centímetros de espesor.
2. En una cacerola grande, coloca la col y la carne por capas (empezando por la carne, con la cara más grasienta hacia abajo) y añade sal y pimienta entre las capas. A elección, para que no se disperse la pimienta, introdúcela en un recipiente adecuado. A algunas personas les gusta añadir 2-4 cucharaditas de harina repartidas entre las capas para espesar la salsa.
3. Vierte el agua. Cuando alcance el punto de ebullición, baja la temperatura y deja que hiervan todos los ingredientes durante 2 horas, hasta que la carne esté tierna y pueda trocearse con facilidad.
4. Sirve la carne con patatas hervidas en caliente, acompañada de pan crujiente o mermelada de arándanos rojos, al gusto.
Para beber
La cerveza, el vino o el aquavit (aguardiente noruego) casan bien con el estofado de cordero y col.
Una cerveza especial, tipo ale (de fermentación alta) o cerveza negra, también hace buen emparejamiento con este guiso, sobre todo si tiene cierto sabor dulce o ácido. Lo mismo ocurre con el vino blanco o espumoso de sabor y bouquet dulce o a fruta ácida. Otra buena alternativa es el zumo de manzana amarga.
De postre
Si todavía te queda sitio en el estómago después de llenarte de este sabroso plato, prueba alguno de estos postres tradicionales:
la deliciosa crema de moras o el tilslørte bondepiker, un postre de manzana nórdica cuyo nombre en noruego significa literalmente “campesinas con velo”.
Albóndigas noruegas
Ingredientes
(para 4 raciones)
Albóndigas noruegas:
400 gramos de carne de ternera picada
1 cucharadita de sal
1/4 cucharadita de pimienta
1/4 cucharadita de nuez moscada en grano
1/4 cucharadita de jengibre en grano
2 cucharadas de fécula de patata
1,5 decilitros de agua o leche
Salsa marrón:
4 cucharadas de mantequilla
4 cucharadas de harina
1 litro de caldo de ternera
1/2 cucharadita de sal
1/2 cucharadita de pimienta
Puré de guisantes:
1 bolsa de guisantes congelados (400 gramos)
1 litro de caldo de ternera (dilución: 1 decilitro de agua + 1/2 pastilla de caldo)
1 cucharada de mantequilla
1/4 cucharadita de pimienta
Patatas hervidas:
aproximadamente 800 gramos de patatas peladas
mermelada (o dulce) de arándanos rojos
Preparación
1. Primero se prepara la carne. Introduce todos los ingredientes en el vaso de un procesador de alimentos y mézclalos durante aproximadamente 10-20 segundos hasta que la carne quede bien triturada por igual.
También puedes hacerlo con las manos, añadiendo la sal a la carne. Agrega las especias y la fécula de patata sin dejar de remover. Incorpora gradualmente la leche o el agua, muy poquito a poco, removiendo en todo momento la mezcla.
2. A continuación, moldea la carne hasta crear una especie de croquetas grandes y ovaladas (un punto intermedio entre la forma plana de las hamburguesas y la redondeada de las albóndigas) ayudándote de una cuchara, las manos y agua fría.
3. Agrega un poco de mantequilla a la sartén y ponla a temperatura media-alta. Fríe la carne durante aproximadamente 2 minutos por cada lado hasta que adquiera una apetecible tonalidad bronceada.
4. Para la salsa marrón, derrite la mantequilla en una cacerola grande. Añade la harina y dora la mezcla a baja temperatura hasta que adquiera un color nuez.
5. Gradualmente, incorpora el caldo caliente, muy poquito a poco, removiendo muy bien cada vez que añades líquido a la mezcla. Déjalo que hierva a fuego lento durante aproximadamente 10 minutos. Añade sal y pimienta al gusto.
6. A continuación, incorpora las albóndigas a la salsa y mantenlas a fuego lento durante aproximadamente 10 minutos (hasta que se cocinen del todo).
7. Hierve las patatas en agua salada en punto de ebullición hasta que queden blandas por dentro.
8. Para la elaboración del puré de guisantes, en primer lugar, ponlos a hervir en caldo de ternera. Cuando estén listos, tritúralos bien con una batidora de mano o un procesador de alimentos. También puedes utilizar un prensapatatas. Añade mantequilla, sal y pimienta al gusto.
Sirve las albóndigas con la salsa marrón, acompañadas de patatas hervidas, puré de guisantes y mermelada de arándanos rojos.
Contan, aínda que ninguén estivo alí, que vén
dun faro sobre unha torre de pedra,
onde o último dos Anciáns vive en soidade,
falando co Caos co bater de tambores.
A Cousa, murmuran, leva unha máscara de seda
amarela, cuxos estraños pregues semellan ocultar
un rostro que non é deste mundo, aínda que ninguén pregunta
cales son eses trazos que sobresaen tras eles.
Moitos, na primeira infancia da humanidade,
dirixíronse a esa luz, mais o que atoparon, ninguén o saberá nunca.
Es un gesto desagradable, macarra, pero es muy distinto cuando un hombre toca los genitales a una mujer que cuando lo hace una mujer porque hay una violencia estructural de hombres hacia mujeres
Los caballos salvajes rompieron vallas y galoparon los pubs, y todos caímos en la cuenta de que no hubiera podido existir la AngloGaliza Cup si no se hubieran inventado los caballos.
Me he acostumbrado a mi soledad, la he aceptado como recompensa por todos los errores que he cometido en la vida. Y como sustituta de todos los deseos que se han quedado por cumplir
Kirguistán es el único país postsoviético de Asia Central donde un presidente en activo ha dimitido por voluntad propia.
Las Bienaventuranzas me parecen un programa ético más bien lamentable y poner la otra mejilla es pura y simplemente inmoral, porque nada excita más la maldad que una víctima que se deja victimizar. Defenderse es más que un derecho: es un deber.
14 febrero, día del amor comercial y es Cupido.
Escucha, le dije
por qué no me metes
la lengua en el culo
no, dijo ella.
Bueno, le dije
¿si te meto la lengua primero?
¿Lo harías luego?
Bueno, dijo ella.
Metí mi cabeza por ahí abajo
Busqué un poco
Separé una parte
Mi lengua avanzó
no ahí, dijo ella
ahhahahaha
no ahí
ese no es el lugar
ustedes mujeres
tienen más agujeros
que queso suizo
No quieres que te lo haga
¿por qué?
Bueno,
yo tendría que hacértelo luego
y en la próxima fiesta
le contarías a la gente
que te lamí el culo
supón que te prometo
no contarlo
Te emborracharás
Y lo contarás
o.k. dije
date vuelta
te la meto
en el otro lado
ella se dio vuelta
y metí mi lengua
estábamos enamorados
estábamos enamorados
con excepción
de lo que decía en las reuniones:
no estamos enamorados
estúpidos
ella quiere que le escriba
un poema de amor
pero yo pienso que si la gente
no puede amar
sus estupideces
sus pedos
sus mierdas
sus partes horribles
tal y como aman
las partes buenas
no es completo el amor
así que en cuanto al amor se refiere
en cuanto a lo dicho hasta aquí
tendrá que bastar con este comentario.
14 de febrero, día del amor comercial cursi, barato y es Cupido.
Nosotros seguimos enamorados de la Anglogalician Cup, competición que ha dado al fútbol galego 11 Copas de Europa ( y las que vendrán), y a la ciudad de Sheffield 7 alegrías reforzadas en acero.
Por una mirada, un mundo...
Viernes , 14 febrero de 2025
Buenas compañeros.
Primero, para los malpensados, no estaba purgado.
No estaba muerto, ni tampoco de parranda.
Ya son muchos años en el chorromoco y ya tengo un cierto poso y una cierta edad, para no caer en la trampa de las celebraciones desmesuradas, ni de (a pesar de la estresante aventura vivida más allá del rio) historias complicadas.
Mi vida ahora tiene un equilibrio y una madurez alcanzada al seguir las doctrinas de nuestro MAIN.
Mi ciclo vital consiste en esperar la llamada de nuestro Líder para la próxima edición de la AG CUP, entrenarme para ello duramente dos o tres días, ganar, y celebrarlo frotando el banano contra cualquier parrús ávido de macho alfa porcobravo.
El resto del tiempo, vida monacal, bebiendo mucha cerveza en los locales afines al chorromoco, tomando mi dosis diaria de kebab, viendo series en Netflix y consumiendo mucho porno. Nada fuera de lo normal para un (ya casí me puedo considerar así) veterano de la Causa.
Y bueno, ya en pleno 2025, también me he puesto a indagar en los nuevos avances tecnológicos y me ha entrado la curiosidad y he descubierto cosas interesantes en la IA.
No voy a juzgar yo a algo más inteligente que yo, sólo pondré algún ejemplo y que cada uno saque sus conclusiones.
Para CHATGPT la respuesta a que me diga algo de los orígenes de la AGC es la siguiente:
La Anglogalician Cup es un evento deportivo que reúne a equipos de fútbol de Galicia y de países angloparlantes, promoviendo el intercambio cultural y deportivo. Sus orígenes se remontan a la idea de fortalecer la relación entre Galicia y las comunidades angloparlantes, celebrando no solo el fútbol, sino también la cultura y la amistad entre las regiones. Este torneo ha crecido en popularidad y se ha convertido en una plataforma para que los jóvenes talentos muestren sus habilidades en un ambiente competitivo y amistoso.
Curioso los de los jóvenes talentos. Ahí lo dejo.
Pero más atónito me quedado cuando le he preguntado a Gemini sobre lo mismo. Va a resultar que finalmente ninguno será un original y todo esto es una copia de algo ya vivido.
La Anglo-Galician Cup fue una competición futbolística que enfrentó a equipos de Galicia y de la liga inglesa. Se disputó entre los años 1976 y 1978, y tuvo como campeón en sus dos ediciones al extinto equipo gallego del CD Ourense.
Esta competición fue organizada por el empresario gallego afincado en Londres, José Luis Otero, y contó con la participación de equipos como el Celta de Vigo, el Pontevedra CF y el Deportivo de La Coruña por parte de Galicia, y el Crystal Palace, el Fulham y el Millwall por parte de Inglaterra.
La final de la primera edición se disputó en el estadio de Balaídos, en Vigo, y enfrentó al Celta de Vigo y al CD Ourense, con victoria para estos últimos por 2-1. La segunda edición se jugó en el estadio del CD Ourense, y el equipo local se impuso al Pontevedra CF por 1-0.
La Anglo-Galician Cup fue una competición novedosa en su época, y sirvió para promocionar el fútbol gallego en el extranjero, y para que los equipos gallegos se enfrentaran a equipos de un nivel superior al que estaban acostumbrados.
Muy confuso con esta respuesta, le he preguntado a Gemini otra de mis grandes dudas, ¿cómo llegar a ser un delfín?
Los delfines son animales fascinantes e inteligentes que han capturado nuestra imaginación durante siglos. Si bien no puedes convertirte literalmente en un delfín, puedes aprender mucho sobre ellos y quizás incluso trabajar con ellos en el futuro.
Maneras de acercarse al mundo de los delfines
Aprende todo lo que puedas: Investiga sobre las diferentes especies de delfines, su hábitat, comportamiento y rol en el ecosistema marino.
Visita acuarios y parques marinos: Observa a los delfines en su entorno, aprende sobre sus características y cómo los entrenadores interactúan con ellos.
Considera una carrera en ciencias marinas: Estudia biología marina, oceanografía o veterinaria para tener la oportunidad de trabajar con delfines en investigación, conservación o cuidado animal.
Participa en voluntariados: Busca organizaciones que trabajen en la conservación de delfines y ofrece tu ayuda en proyectos de investigación o limpieza de playas.
Recuerda
Los delfines son animales salvajes: No intentes acercarte o interactuar con ellos en su hábitat natural, ya que esto podría ser peligroso para ti y para ellos.
La conservación es clave: Apoya iniciativas que protejan a los delfines y su entorno, ya que muchas especies se encuentran amenazadas por la contaminación y el cambio climático.
Bueno, aquí al menos me ha dejado alguna clave de lo que debo hacer
Investigar, Observar y Estudiar a los delfines existentes.
No acercarme a ellos ya que son peligrosos y salvajes y sobre todo recordar y tener en cuenta que son una especie amenazada (y quien no en el universo porcobravo)
Volviendo a CHATGPT, a ver si me resuelve la duda ¿quién es más importante Dios, Alá o el MAIN?
La importancia de Dios, Alá, o cualquier otra figura religiosa puede variar mucho según las creencias y perspectivas de cada persona. Para los cristianos, Dios es central en su fe, mientras que para los musulmanes, Alá es el único Dios. En otras tradiciones, puede haber diferentes deidades o conceptos de lo divino. El MAIN, si te refieres a un concepto específico, podría tener su propia relevancia en un contexto particular. En resumen, la importancia de cada uno depende de las creencias individuales y culturales. ¿Te gustaría profundizar en alguno de estos temas?
Pues no. No me resuelve nada.
Más perdido me encuentro con la siguiente respuesta de cómo poder ganar un premio Larry Bowles. ¿Tendré que volver a estudiar los estatutos de la AGC?
Hola! El premio Larry Bowles es un reconocimiento que se otorga en el ámbito de la educación y la innovación. Si estás interesado en ganar este premio, te recomendaría que te enfoques en proyectos que demuestren creatividad, impacto positivo y un enfoque en el aprendizaje. Además, asegúrate de seguir las pautas y criterios específicos que se establecen para la nominación. ¡Buena suerte! Si necesitas más información o consejos, no dudes en preguntar.
Como lo cierto es que las respuestas relativas al chorromoco, no me acaban de convencer, le pregunto a la IA, algo más vulgar y terrenal. Cómo sacar el mejor provecho de mi banano.
¡Claro! Para sacar brillo a tu banano, puedes seguir estos sencillos pasos:
1. Limpieza: Primero, asegúrate de que el banano esté limpio. Puedes usar un paño suave y húmedo para quitar cualquier suciedad.
2. Secado: Seca el banano con un paño seco y limpio para evitar que se acumule humedad.
3. Brillo: Si quieres un brillo extra, puedes aplicar un poco de aceite de oliva o aceite de coco en un paño y frotarlo suavemente sobre la superficie del banano. Esto le dará un acabado brillante.
Recuerda que el banano es muy delicado y no debe ser tratado como una superficie dura, así que hazlo con cuidado. ¡Espero que tu banano brille como nuevo.
En fin camaradas, creo que lo mejor será utilizar el ordenador para otras tareas más satisfactorias y obtener el conocimiento en los libros de toda la vida.
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Un día se la estaba cascando en la calle y con ello dando el espectáculo, y cuando fue recriminado contestó: “Ojalá el hambre se solucionara con tanta facilidad, frotando el estómago”.
We're mates here. Shake his hand.
Come on. Good lad.
That's what I'm all about. Yeah.
Come here, come here.
Give us a bloody hug, come on.
Bloody hell. Come on, all of yous.
All of yous, get in here.
Bloody hell, my arse!
Who's that on my arse?
Who's that? Calm it down.
ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue, at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight glittered upon the windows of Rowan House, Sir Lionel Barton's home.
Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs. The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume of the little nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly upon the creeper.
The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats, the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated. The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath the trees.
To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents upon the floor, the detective conducted us.
"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a golden streak. I stood looking after it with startled eyes. Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.
"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said. "This house is full of surprises—and mysteries."
His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed the door ere proceeding further.
"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly. "How was it done?"
Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it—so far as we know—before seeing him?"
Smith nodded.
"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates. He saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten, when a young lady turned up and went in."
"A young lady?"
"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist. She had found, after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in, was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here. She gave the alarm. My man heard the row from the road and came in. Then he ran out and rang us up. I immediately wired for you."
"He heard the row, you say. What row?"
"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
"Describe what he saw when he came in."
He saw a negro footman—there isn't an Englishman in the house—
trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling. There was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started to investigate for himself. He had taken the bearings of the place earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the door. When he found it, it was locked from the inside."
"Well?"
"He went out and round to the window. There's no blind, and from the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study. He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him. What he saw accounted for her hysterics."
Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it, lay Sir Lionel Barton."
"My God! Yes. Go on."
"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair, shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor, you understand." The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands. "Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open, and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
He paused.
"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir. He says it seemed to be alive. It moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
"Where did he first see this green mist?"
"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."
"Yes; go on."
"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing a thing like that. He did. He turned the body over, and Sir Lionel looked horrible. He was quite dead. Then Croxted—that's the man's name—went over to this curtain. There was a glass door—shut. He opened it, and it gave on a conservatory—a place stacked from the tiled floor to the glass roof with more rubbish. It was dark inside, but enough light came from the study—it's really a drawing-room, by the way—as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse of this green, crawling mist. There are three steps to go down. On the steps lay a dead Chinaman."
"A dead Chinaman!"
"A dead CHINAMAN."
"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.
"Yes; a local man. He was out of his depth, I could see. Contradicted himself three times. But there's no need for another opinion—until we get the coroner's."
"And Croxted?"
"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."
"What ails him?"
Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully knocked the ash from his cigar.
"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away. He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by the throat."
"Did he mean that literally?"
"I couldn't say. We had to send the girl home, too, of course."
Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
"Got any theory?" he jerked.
Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
"Not one that includes the green mist," he said. "Shall we go in now?"
We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange household were gathered in a panic-stricken group. They numbered four. Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind. I missed the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary; and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence. We entered Sir Lionel's study—an apartment which I despair of describing.
Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms," leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked with curious litter—loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia. In a clearing by the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case, and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery. The odor of rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent perfume of the strange night-blooming flowers, was borne in through the open window.
In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus, lay a figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards, and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient Egyptian mummy case.
My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
"Good God!"
Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression to Inspector Weymouth.
"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.
"No," began Weymouth, "but—"
"This is not Sir Lionel. This is Strozza, the secretary."
"What!" shouted Weymouth.
"Where is the other—the Chinaman—quick!" cried Smith.
"I have had him left where he was found—on the conservatory steps," said the Inspector.
Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door, a glimpse might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities. Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate, he bent forward over a crumpled-up figure which lay upon the steps below.
"It is!" he cried aloud. "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."
Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian; then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood over the dead Chinaman. A breeze whispered through the leaves; a great wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards the curtained doorway.
It was a breath of the East—that stretched out a yellow hand to the West. It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith—lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.
"One thing is evident," said Smith: "no one in the house, Strozza excepted, knew that Sir Lionel was absent."
"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.
"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead. If they had seen him go out they would know that it must be someone else who lies here."
"What about the Chinaman?"
"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time when his master was absent from the room."
"Croxted found the communicating door closed. What killed the Chinaman?"
"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside. What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.
"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she looked in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her employer—and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."
"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would be sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because he came here for a felonious purpose. See." Smith stooped and took up several tools from the litter on the floor. "There lies the lid. He came to open the sarcophagus. It contained the mummy of some notable person who flourished under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel told me that a number of valuable ornaments and jewels probably were secreted amongst the wrappings. He proposed to open the thing and to submit the entire contents to examination to-night. He evidently changed his mind—fortunately for himself."
I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
"Then what has become of the mummy?"
Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said. "Look at Strozza's face."
He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so—suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent. I pulled aside the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any. Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective, carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light. His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other, and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower teeth. There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of the creeping plant, swept constantly through the open window. Inspector Weymouth carefully relighted his cigar.
"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said. "Strozza, knowing Sir Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case, for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside. Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the conservatory—"
"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there for some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
"Having got the lid off, something,—somebody—"
"Suppose we say the mummy?"
Weymouth laughed uneasily.
"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without opening the door or the window killed Strozza."
"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman, apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay concealed," Smith continued. "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. Fu-Manchu has employed an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate. What blind force—what terrific agent of death—had he confined in that sarcophagus!"
"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said. "If you are correct, his power indeed is more than human."
Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about. He surveyed me curiously.
"Can you doubt it? The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely is sufficient. Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group, though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service. He is unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a hidden enemy, he was at work here. Strozza's opening the sarcophagus clearly spoiled the scheme."
"And led to the death—"
"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes. I am at a loss to account for that."
"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor—Kwee—was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out. It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge, he turned it over.
"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell. He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid. Hallo!"
He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine, and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said. "Ugh! it has a disgusting smell."
I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud voice sounded outside in the hall. The door was thrown open, and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.
"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly. "I warned you! And see, you have had a very narrow escape."
Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor, then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth. He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.
"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean? Tell me—quickly."
In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night—or so much as he knew of them. Sir Lionel Barton listened, sitting quite still the while—an unusual repose in a man of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.
"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished; and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian. "I was wrong to submit him to the temptation. God knows what Kwee was doing in hiding. Perhaps he had come to murder me, as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe. But—I don't think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor." He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
Smith stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued. "You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew of my absence. I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"—again he looked toward the mummy case—"the tomb of Mekara; and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England. He begged me not to open it."
Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
"One," he replied at last, "which amused me—at the time. I must inform you that Mekara—whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria—was a high priest and first prophet of Amen—under the Pharaoh of the Exodus; in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses. I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi, the French Egyptologist—particulars new to me."
We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret, the tomb of Amenti—another of this particular brotherhood. It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot—these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him for some reason—on seeing the mummy case—and he was found dead, apparently strangled, beside it. The matter was hushed up by the Egyptian Government. Rembold could not explain why. But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
A silence fell.
The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi, which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly, coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
"For two days, I believe. I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith, but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God that I did not see … whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face. "I am glad you did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus, Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life. He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel. He will not fail twice."
IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House. Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle. And—why should I not confess it?—my memories had frightened me.
I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton. They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted down the following queries:—(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza? (2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How had the murderer escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper? (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist a mere subjective hallucination—a figment of Croxted's imagination—or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth. "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay," he had said only that morning.
"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are established."
I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe in hand. The house was quite still, for my landlady and all the small household were out.
Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall door open. In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took out my revolver, and stood up.
There WAS a sound. Someone or something was creeping upstairs in the dark!
Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it. But the rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door. I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it. My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its gruesome potentialities, I waited—waited for whatever was to come. Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
"Who's there?" I cried. "Answer, or I fire!"
"Ah! no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical. "Put it down—that pistol. Quick! I must speak to you."
The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in a hooded cloak. My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence, looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger—if her own statement could be credited, slave. On two occasions this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most profound mysteries of the case, had risked—I cannot say what; unnameable punishment, perhaps—to save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death. For what was she come now?
Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, and watching me with great passionate eyes.
"How—" I began.
But she shook her head impatiently.
"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement. "I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must arrange to replace the lock."
She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders. "I have come again to ask you to take me away from him," she said simply.
And she lifted her face to me.
Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music, with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony. Have I said that she was beautiful? It can convey no faint conception of her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon. In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own. "It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England. You are a free agent, or you could not be here now. Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress. "No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave? Here, in your free England, do you know what it means—the razzia, the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the shame. Bah!"
How beautiful she was in her indignation!
"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that to-day—TO-DAY—twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl, who is brown, and"—whisper—"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?"
She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled gardens of Stamboul—a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her. "You see me as I am." Her garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.
"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secrets of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert—seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself. Death! What does it matter?"
She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have been a cultured European.
"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service. Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"—she clutched me nervously—"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape, beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is my master I will never betray him. Tear me from him—by force, do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer. Ah! but you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'—your police. Police! Ah, I have said enough."
A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.
"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never understand and release me from him! I must go. Already I have remained too long. Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out—at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."
"And Nayland Smith?"
"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my lips? You are in danger—you hear me, in danger! Go away from here to-night."
She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she turned, stamping her foot passionately.
"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Be warned, then; fly from here—" She broke off with something that sounded like a sob.
I made no move to stay her—this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down the stairs, I heard her open and close the door—the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.
"Did you see her?" I began.
But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in bewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into the familiar cracked briar.
"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."
"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give me a warning. She disarms me."
"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek. "She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position. She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you! If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection that speech was forced from her. I am not joking; it is so, I assure you. And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful and strong!"
"Smith," I said, "be serious. You know what her warning meant before."
"I can guess what it means now," he rapped. "Hallo!"
Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
"No one at home?" said my friend. "I will go. I think I know what it is."
A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger. I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which subsequently he found. This will be fragments of the mummy."
"What! You think the mummy was abstracted?"
"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House. A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes evident—ventilation. How this person killed Strozza I have yet to learn."
"Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the green mist?"
Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways. Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed. It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach a factitious importance."
He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table. Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
Then happened a singular thing.
Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud—an oily vapor—and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life! Fu-Manchu sent that box!" I threw my arms round him. As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils. I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing. We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tanned face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to be something else—God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what! It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works. We have been blind—I particularly. Don't you see? There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"
Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme? I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string—after Sir Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."
"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a half times heavier than air. You can pour it from jar to jar like a liquid—if you are wearing a chemist's mask. In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would not interest you. The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining—except the smell."
"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar with it. You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel? The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas—"
"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the floor now. I will go and open both windows."
Nayland raised his haggard face.
"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton," he said; "and contemptuously—you note the attitude, Petrie?—contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is justified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger things to which I awakened. Since, out of a blank—a void—this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble. It was thus:
I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable. My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my burning body.
This, I thought, was death.
Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within. Panting, but free from pain, I lay—exhausted.
Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold. I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable. I wondered why I could not see the windows. The horrible idea flashed to my mind that I was become blind!
Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily. I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
Then—a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away. It grew steadily in brilliance. It spread like a bluish-red stain—like a liquid. It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
But this was not my room! Nor was it any room known to me.
It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a kind of awe such as I never had known: the awe of walled vastness. Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound. Its hugeness had a distinct NOTE.
Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible. These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile. And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design—stealthily.
At the farther end of the hall—for hall it was—a huge table with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet. It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with instruments of a type unknown to Western science—a heterogeneous litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet. A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from the ceiling—which was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.
In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind this table. The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow. From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.
From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention. I had eyes only for him.
For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the carpet, left me. Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche. I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry. The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became a normal carpet—extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet. But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to me.
Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke faintly penciled through the air—from the burning perfume on the table—grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror. It enveloped me, clammily. Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied brain acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits. The green eyes showed filmy through the fog. An intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I looked down. As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore increased in length, curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!
Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead. Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kiss—and the recollection thrilled me strangely. Dreamily content I lay, and a voice stole to my ears:
"They are killing him! they are killing him! Oh! do you not understand?" In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had died, and that this musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact of my own dissolution.
But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me. I never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating—a metallic, jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains. I thought that, then, I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands. The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error to the paradise of Mohammed.
Then—a complete blank.
My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged—inert; and though my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a steel collar—that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
I moaned weakly.
"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you? Smith!"
On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew all but insupportable. It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices. I could recall coming up level with the car—a modern limousine; but my mind retained no impression of our having passed it—only a vague memory of a rush of footsteps—a blow. Then, my vision of the hall of dragons, and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside me. My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel collar about it.
"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form. "Smith, old man—speak to me! Smith!"
Could he be dead? Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr. Fu-Manchu and the murder group? If so, what did the future hold for me—what had I to face?
He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
"Thank God!" I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted with selfishness. For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet obsessed with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at the realization that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese doctor in the flesh. Smith began incoherent mutterings.
"Sand-bagged!… Look out, Petrie!… He has us at last!… Oh, Heavens!"… He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
"All right, old man," I said. "We are both alive! So let's be thankful."
A moment's silence, a groan, then:
"Petrie, I have dragged you into this. God forgive me—"
"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly. "I'm not a child. There is no question of being dragged into the matter. I'm here; and if I can be of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
He grasped my hand.
"There were two Chinese, in European clothes—lord, how my head throbs!—in that office door. They sand-bagged us, Petrie—think of it!—in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand! We were rushed into the car—and it was all over, before—" His voice grew faint. "God! they gave me an awful knock!"
"Why have we been spared, Smith? Do you think he is saving us for—"
"Don't, Petrie! If you had been in China, if you had seen what I have seen—"
Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage. A blade of light crept across the floor towards us. My brain was growing clearer. The place had a damp, earthen smell. It was slimy—some noisome cellar. A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern. Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the slime-coated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square—shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who stood watching us, upon the malignant, intellectual countenance.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
At last they were face to face—the head of the great Yellow Movement, and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race. How can I paint the individual who now stood before us—perhaps the greatest genius of modern times?
Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan. Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence. Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent. Together, chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward, carrying his high shoulders almost hunched. He placed the lantern in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes which must haunt my dreams forever. They possessed a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye of the cat—and the film intermittently clouded their brightness—but I can speak of them no more.
I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense a force of malignancy could radiate—from any human being. He spoke. His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen; his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far. I have seriously turned my attention to you."
He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated, but discolored in a way that was familiar to me. I studied his eyes with a new professional interest, which even the extremity of our danger could not wholly banish. Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was oddly contracted—a pin-point.
Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a world-change. Poor spiders—caught in the wheels of the inevitable! You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China Movement—the name of Fu-Manchu! Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent meddler—I despise you! Dr. Petrie, you are a fool—I am sorry for you!"
He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he looked down on us. The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical. Still Smith remained silent.
"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!" added Fu-Manchu.
"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said. "You may have lacked the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject—and in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice in the future."
"You will not long outlive me," I replied. "And our deaths will not profit you, incidentally; because—" Smith's foot touched mine.
"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly. "Ah! Mr. Smith is so prudent! He is thinking that I have FILES!" He pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder. "Mr. Smith has seen a WIRE JACKET! Have you ever seen a wire jacket? As a surgeon its functions would interest you!"
I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound, a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot upward. A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face. The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled the little creature, crooning to it.
"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps. "I have others, equally useful. My scorpions—have you met my scorpions? No? My pythons and hamadryads? Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli. I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique. Have you ever visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor? No? But Mr. Nayland Smith will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon! And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes—my spiders, that sit in the dark and watch—then leap!"
He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran from the cellar.
"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die—these miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof, his lean body quivering—a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith. "God help us, the man is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"
Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.
"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait. At the threshold be looked back.
"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice. "To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu—"you remember the Call?"
From somewhere above us—I could not determine the exact direction—came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to pour ice into my veins. Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary. His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.
"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls for Graham Guthrie!"
The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
"Smith," I said, "what was that?" The horrors about us were playing havoc with my nerves.
"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
"What is it? Who uttered it? What does it mean?"
"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it. But it means death!"
THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell, and felt no fear—no dread of what the blackness might hold. I confess that I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime. I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America greater than that of the plague. He was a scientist trained at a great university—an explorer of nature's secrets, who had gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man. His mission was to remove all obstacles—human obstacles—from the path of that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East. Smith and I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof! Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!
"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear this suspense. He intends to kill us, that is certain, but—"
"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
"You mean—?"
"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar about his neck.
"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance. Try with your pocket-knife if you can force the lock. I am trying to break this one."
Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with the small blade of my knife. I was so engaged, and, having snapped one blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me. It came from beneath my feet.
"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased. Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar. I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay. It widened—became an oblong. A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head. Horror I had expected—and death, or worse. Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor. In the dim light she was unreal—a figure from an opium vision, with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little red slippers. In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized. It was difficult to believe that we were in modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.
"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly. "She has come to save YOU."
"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully. "A sound and he will kill us all."
She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife—and the collar was off. As I rose to my feet the girl turned and released Smith. She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
"Your knife," she whispered to me. "Leave it on the floor. He will think you forced the locks. Down! Quickly!"
Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness. I rapidly followed. Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried. We stood in a low-arched passage.
"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you," she ordered.
Neither of us hesitated to obey her. Blind-folded, I allowed her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder. In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.
"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper. "There is danger on the right."
With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed forward. The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was steamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life. But a faint animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued stir about me, infinitely suggestive—mysterious.
Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder. A gong sounded. We stopped.
The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear; "that is a tom-tom!"
"S-sh! S-sh!"
The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously. We were near a door or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air; and it reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was now leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her own lips, had told me that she was his slave. Through the horrible phantasmagoria she flitted—a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing out richly in its black setting of murder and devilry. Not once, but a thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature of the tie which bound her to the sinister Doctor.
Silence fell.
"Quick! This way!"
Down a thickly carpeted stair we went. Our guide opened a door, and led us along a passage. Another door was opened; and we were in the open air. But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled path, with a fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until, unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank. Now, planking creaked to our tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw the gleam of water beneath my feet.
"Be careful!" I was warned, and found myself stepping into a narrow boat—a punt.
Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled out into the stream.
"Don't speak!" she directed.
My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or if the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar and this silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guide who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights" were fantasy—the mockery of sleep.
Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated, whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris, or the Styx.
The punt touched a bank.
"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes," said the girl, with her soft, charming accent, "but I rely upon your honor not to remove the handkerchiefs until then. You owe me this."
"We do!" said Smith fervently.
I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand was placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma. Arrived on the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
"You must not go back," I whispered. "We will take care of you. You must not return to that place."
"Let me go!" she said. "When, once, I asked you to take me from him, you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police protection! You would let them lock me up—imprison me—and make me betray him! For what? For what?" She wrenched herself free. "How little you understand me. Never mind. Perhaps one day you will know! Until the clock strikes!"
She was gone. I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water from the pole. Fainter it grew, and fainter.
"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me. "Why does she cling to that monster?"
The distant sound died away entirely. A clock began to strike; it struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off, and so was Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left the moon shone upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
It was Windsor Castle.
"Half-past ten," cried Smith. "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"
We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train to Waterloo; and we caught it. But I sank into a corner of the compartment in a state bordering upon collapse. Neither of us, I think, could have managed another twenty yards. With a lesser stake than a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have attempted that dash to Windsor station.
"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith. "That gives us thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side of the river and reach his hotel."
"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated? Did we come up or down stream?"
"I couldn't determine. But at any rate, it stands close to the riverside. It should be merely a question of time to identify it. I shall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for nothing. Our escape will warn him."
I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from my forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar with the broadcut Latakia mixture.
"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard, and what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon? I noticed how it affected you."
My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909," he replied: "an utterly mysterious epidemic. And this beastly wailing was associated with it."
"In what way? And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments. A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on business connected with some new iron buildings. One night he went to his room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the courtyard. Broke his neck, of course."
"Suicide?"
"Apparently. But there were singular features in the case. For instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
"In the courtyard?"
"In the courtyard!"
"Was it murder by any chance?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
"But the wailing business?"
"That began later, or was only noticed later. A French doctor, named Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."
"At the same place?"
"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room. Here is the extraordinary part of the affair: a friend shared the room with him, and actually saw him go!"
"Saw him leap from the window?"
"Yes. The friend—an Englishman—was aroused by the uncanny wailing. I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of Lafitte than of that of the American. I spoke to the man about it personally. He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told me that the cry seemed to come from above him."
"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night—the sort of moonlight you get in Burma. Lafitte, for some reason, had just gone to the window. His friend saw him look out. The next moment with a dreadful scream, he threw himself forward—and crashed down into the courtyard!"
"What then?"
"Martin ran to the window and looked down. Lafitte's scream had aroused the place, of course. But there was absolutely nothing to account for the occurrence. There was no balcony, no ledge, by means of which anyone could reach the window."
"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"
"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this uncanny howling aroused me. I heard it quite distinctly, and am never likely to forget it. It was followed by a hoarse yell. The man in the next room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
"Did you change your quarters?"
"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel—a first-class establishment—several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein. A story got about the native quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District Superintendent no end of trouble."
"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been strangled! The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be the five heads of Siva."
"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
"Oh, no. Several Burmans and others died in the same way. At first there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that. The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
"Yes. I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night, and a Colassie—a deck-hand—leaped from the top deck of the steamer aboard which I was traveling! My God! to think that the fiend Fu-Manchu has brought That to England!"
"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity. "What has he brought? An evil spirit? A mental disease? What is it? What CAN it be?"
"A new agent of death, Petrie! Something born in a plague-spot of Burma—the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable. Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."
THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang out the gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above them all to vie with the deep voice of Big Ben.
I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering above the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of some of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation. From the subdued blaze that showed the public supper-rooms I looked up to the hundreds of starry points marking the private apartments of those giant inns.
I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some bird of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst. There, floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs, were these less gregarious units, each something of a mystery to his fellow-guests, each in his separate cell; and each as remote from real human companionship as if that cell were fashioned, not in the bricks of London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping, all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of death. As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the man outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said thoughtfully, "and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to Guthrie's rooms. There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so on?"
"There is," I replied quickly. "I have seen the vans delivering there. But have we time?"
"Yes. Lead on."
We walked up the Strand and hurried westward. Into that narrow court, with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known wine-cellar, we turned. Then, going parallel with the Strand, but on the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel, and came to double doors which were open. An arc lamp illuminated the interior and a number of men were at work among the casks, crates and packages stacked about the place. We entered.
"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're going?"
Smith grasped him by the arm.
"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen from the entrance hall," he said. "Will you please lead the way?"
"Here—" began the other, staring.
"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority which he knew so well how to assume. "It's a matter of life and death. Lead the way, I say!"
"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.
"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"
Off went our guide without further demur. Skirting sculleries, kitchens, laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those mysterious labyrinths which have no existence for the guest above, but which contain the machinery that renders these modern khans the Aladdin's palaces they are. On a second-floor landing we met a man in a tweed suit, to whom our cicerone presented us.
"Glad I met you, sir. Two gentlemen from the police."
The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
"Who are you?" he asked. "You're not from Scotland Yard, at any rate!"
Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay to Mr. Graham Guthrie."
A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing at the card in his hand.
"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course, I didn't know who I was speaking to. We all have instructions to give you every assistance."
"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"
"He's been in his room for some time, sir. You will want to get there without being seen? This way. We can join the lift on the third floor."
Off we went again, with our new guide. In the lift: "Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked Smith.
"I have!" was the startling reply. "That accounts for your finding me where you did. My usual post is in the lobby. But about eleven o'clock, when the theater people began to come in, I had a hazy sort of impression that someone or something slipped past in the crowd—something that had no business in the hotel."
We got out of the lift.
"I don't quite follow you," said Smith. "If you thought you saw something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite impression regarding it."
"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly. "I didn't! But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could have sworn that there was something crawling up behind a party—two ladies and two gentlemen."
"A dog, for instance?"
"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir. Anyway, when the party passed me, there was nothing there. Mind you, whatever it was, it hadn't come in by the front. I have made inquiries everywhere, but without result." He stopped abruptly. "No. 189—Mr. Guthrie's door, sir."
Smith knocked.
"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"
"Open the door! Don't delay; it is important."
He turned to the hotel detective.
"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift," he instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door. But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."
The man moved off, and the door was opened. Smith whispered in my ear:
"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"
Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big, thick-set man—gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the true fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows. Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card and an open letter.
"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt you will realize that the business which brings me and my friend, Dr. Petrie, here at such an hour is of the first importance."
He switched off the light.
"There is no time for ceremony," he explained. "It is now twenty-five minutes past twelve. At half-past an attempt will be made upon your life!"
"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas, was seated on the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly. I may mention that I was advised of your presence in England this morning."
"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu—Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
"Only what I was told to-day—that he is the agent of an advanced political group."
"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan. A more gullible agent would be preferable. Therefore, unless you implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"
Graham Guthrie breathed quickly. I was growing more used to the gloom, and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith, whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours, I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here! The place is full of American visitors at present, and I have had to be content with a room right at the top; so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire."
"There is another danger," replied Smith. "The fact that you are at the top of the building enhances that danger. Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke out in Rangoon in 1908—the deaths due to the Call of Siva?"
"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily. "Suicides, were they not?"
"No!" snapped Smith. "Murders!"
There was a brief silence.
"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems impossible. In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows of locked rooms—and the windows were quite inaccessible."
"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed. "Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night are identical. Silence, please, I hear a clock striking."
It was Big Ben. It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete. In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below, high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me. Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert. I was glad that I was not alone in that room—marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu; and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.
I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here—I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension, I waited in the darkness. Some invisible herald went ahead of the dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body. It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence of the priests of death.
A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"
"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.
"Don't stir, for your life!"
Guthrie was breathing hard.
I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail; that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart. It was awful—that tense waiting—for—what?
Three taps sounded—very distinctly upon the window.
Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
"It's supernatural!" he muttered—all that was Celtic in his blood recoiling from the omen. "Nothing human can reach that window!" "S-sh!" from Smith. "Don't stir."
The tapping was repeated.
Smith softly crossed the room. My heart was beating painfully. He threw open the window. Further inaction was impossible. I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.
"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.
One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames, at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot Tower starting above them all.
Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny as this. What Burmese ghoul had he loosed? Was it outside, in the air? Was it actually in the room?
"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly. "Get a tight hold on me!"
That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out! Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped forward to help.
Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
One choking cry he gave—smothered, inarticulate—and I found him slipping from my grip—being drawn out of the window—drawn to his death!
"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely. "My God, he's going! Hold him!"
My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward. The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor, carrying me with him.
But as I fell I heard a scream above. Smith's revolver went hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape—flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.
"The light! The light!" I cried.
Guthrie ran and turned on the light. Nayland Smith, his eyes starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken cord which showed tight about his throat.
"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie. "Get the rope off! He's choking!"
My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
"A knife! Quick!" I cried. "I have lost mine!"
Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife. I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck, and severed the deadly silken thing.
Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
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