Nude in Mink by Sax Rohmer (top reads .TXT) 📕
There was a semi-circular recess, like a shrine, approached by three marble steps and veiled by silk curtains of rosy pink.
The existence of this singular apartment was destined to arouse keen curiosity in certain quarters (and before long) and to provoke equally keen incredulity in others.
A high, sweet note, that of a bell or of a silver gong, split the hushed silence, hitherto unbroken except for faint stirrings of lily leaves in the pool when one of several large golden orfe swimming there disturbed them.
Almost noiselessly, a bronze door was opened at the head of a short flight of marble steps. The handrail also was bronze, terminating in a newel post representing a sphinx. A man came down, slowly. He was a man of slight and graceful build. His leisurely move
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There was a click as Jackie moved the switch, and complete darkness.
“Oh! be careful, Jackie—be careful!”
Claudette became aware of furtive movements.
“Jackie! where are you?”
“Ssh! keep quiet… I’m in the lobby.”
Claudette was trembling—and the knocking had ceased. Those furtive stirrings continued.
“Jackie! … it that you?”
“Aye”—in a whisper—“it’s me… I’m back again.” She drew a deep breath. “The phone’s gone dead, too!”
“Oh, Jackie, dear, what are we going to do?”
“Stay in the dark. But if that knocking starts again I’m going to open the window and let out a yell that’ll wake all London!”
4
And in the small waiting-room, Donovan and Maitland had fallen into a momentary silence. From the laboratory outside, no sound reached them. One hanging lamp lighted the room, a room in which there was no furniture other than a bare oak table on which a copy of Punch was lying, three office chairs and an umbrella-stand.
“Well,” Donovan breathed, “thank God you’re alive, Maitland. We have to face this thing calmly.” He glanced down at his hands. “Just unfasten my hands, will you, and maybe we can do something.”
Maitland’s teeth flashed queerly in the bearded face. It was a grim smile.
“Easily said, Donovan! Look at my own!”
He held up his wrists. They were tied together by a slender green cord.
“Good God! I never realised it! But why don’t you snap free?”
Maitland smiled again. “Why don’t you? Just try it. But go easy… There!”—as Donovan suppressed an exclamation—“all the stress comes on the thumbs. That’s how it’s tied. A purely Eastern trick—which is significant in a way.”
“What in hell is it made of?” growled Donovan, examining a cut on his thumb caused by his attempt to jerk the line apart.
“A very thin steel wire covered with silk. But, tell me, Donovan, how on earth do you come to be there?”
“That can wait. What’s bothering me is where are we? This appears to be a huge place. It can’t be in London.”
“M’no… but it may not be far away. How were you brought here? How long did the journey take?”
“Couldn’t say. I passed out in the back of a car—held in the grip of a fellow who must be related to Samson.”
“Dressed like a chauffeur?”
“I don’t know how he was dressed, I was temporarily blind.”
“I think I have had the privilege of meeting him—on the landing outside your door! He was accompanied by a hairy monster of even more forbidding appearance, whom I had the pleasure of knocking backwards down half a flight of stairs! But the chauffeur thug got me with a rubber truncheon… Ssh! Someone coming!”
Whispering footsteps approached the door. It was unlocked and a smiling man in Arab dress bowed on the threshold.
“Dr. Steel Maitland, will you be good enough to follow me?”
His voice was gently unctuous.
“What of my friend?” Maitland demanded.
“He will be good enough to remain here.”
Maitland and Donovan exchanged glances, then: “I suppose there is nothing for it, Donovan,” Maitland murmured. “Don’t be rash. We haven’t a chance, even if our hands were free … Hope to rejoin you shortly.”
The smiling attendant stood aside, bowing deeply. “This way, if you please, Dr. Maitland.”
For a moment Maitland hesitated. “Where are we going?”
“Our Lady will receive you, sir.”
“Very sweet of her, I’m sure.” He glanced back. “Well, Donovan—wish me luck!”
Maitland heard the door being relocked in the semi-darkness as he came out. The man in Arab dress stepped to his side.
“This way, if you please, Dr. Maitland.”
Silently, Maitland walked along with his smiling companion, fringing the laboratory, its equipment discernible only in the form of specks of light reflected from glass vessels. Another door was opened—and closed behind them. They went up a short stair, and came out through a carpeted passage into a lofty marble-floored place which reminded Maitland of a Roman temple.
He noted a number of antique pillars supporting a painted ceiling, rugs and skins strewn about the marble floor. A stair led up to a bronze door. There was a square pool into which there peered a figure of Pan as it seeking some hidden nymph. A bank of mimosa bloomed beside it, and the heated air was heavy with perfume …
“Will you be good enough to wait here whilst I announce you.”
The red-slippered feet of his guide whispered across to a semi-circular recess, a sort of shrine, approached by three marble steps and veiled by pink gauzy curtains. He mounted the steps and drew the curtains apart. They emitted a sound resembling tiny bells.
“My Lady, Dr. Steel Maitland is here …”
“I HAVE been anxious to make your acquaintance, Dr. Maitland.” It was a magic voice; mystic melody. Of this commonplace it created music like that of harps softly played. “I find you unaccountably reluctant to meet me. Most men are provokingly persistent.” She gestured with a white peacock fan. “Wont you please sit down. I trust the perfume of mimosa does not disturb you?”
“Not at all,” said Maitland. “But you do.”
“Perhaps you are thinking that I am dressed in this—barbaric—manner in order to seduce you from what you probably regard as your duty. But you are wrong. This is my customary dress—when I am at home. But please sit down.”
The second invitation was in fact an order, an order which Maitland obeyed. The tip of the white peacock plume indicated where he should sit—beside that graceful, reclining figure. Yet, even as he moved forward, and now, in intimate proximity, he never seemed to remove his gaze from those compelling eyes.
Maitland was haunted by a memory, or the ghost of a memory which refused to materialise. Some trick of lighting or an artifice in the use of her long lashes, made it impossible to identify the colour of her eyes; but, somewhere, at some time, perhaps years ago, he had seen this woman before …
“Allow me to unfasten your wrists. Such tricks as these are out of date.”
“I promise nothing if you do.”
“It is unnecessary.”
With a pair of tiny scissors she snipped the steel wire and freed Maitland’s hands.
“You must not make the fatal mistake of joining my enemies. Indeed, I know you will not want to, when I have explained my motives. It was in order that I might do so that I sent for you. But please don’t permit me to bore you. I will try to be brief.”
Bore him! her voice played a symphony to which he could have listened, enraptured, for hours.
“You see, Dr. Maitland, our world has been brought to the edge of disaster by ugliness. Ugliness of body and ugliness of mind. If, like the old Greeks, we had worshipped beauty, do you suppose that the horrors of the recent war with Germany, the present threat of Soviet Russia, could ever have fallen upon us?”
“Perhaps—” Maitland hesitated—“perhaps I don’t understand you?”
“Few do understand me. Few men and women alive today are capable of understanding me. Those few that are, I try to find, try to make them listen. Men so hideous as Hitler and Himmler, deformed in body and warped in mind, should never have been permitted to rule any country. Consider the ape-like war lords of Japan—that land of exquisite refinements; consider those who, today, rule Holy Russia, and tell me if such as these should be allowed to disfigure the world. The West must control the East—or perish.”
“But I thought—”
“You thought, perhaps, that I was Japanese!” She laughed. Her laughter resembled a peal of fairy bells… “Dr. Steel Maitland, in this as in many other things, you were wrong. You have been misled by my association with the unhappy Marquis. Look at me. Inspect me as closely as you please. I am not sensitive.”
And in some way the spell of her unfathomable eyes was lifted, so that Maitland found himself free to look at her, unfettered. She raised her arms, so that the peacock plumes waved far above her head.
“Did the dark womb of Japan ever produce skin as white as mine? Am I shaped like a geisha?” She extended herself languidly on the couch, raised and painted one slender foot clad in a gold sandal, revealing curves, classical but unendurable. ‘The Japanese are a short limbed race. Are my lips the lips of an Oriental woman?”
But he was afraid to answer, afraid to trust himself. This woman was a sorceress. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands and was silent. She laughed again, very softly; fairy bells in the distance.
“Yes, men desire me. Once, it might have amused me to permit those bearded lips to humble themselves upon my body; but I conquered such impulses long, long ago. I sometimes surrender myself, out of curiosity or to gain my ends. That ancient Roman who exhausted his passion upon an ivory statue experienced at least as much rapture as my lovers… You may open your eyes. I have finished tempting you.”
Lightly, she brushed his cheek with the peacock fan.
Maitland opened his eyes—and his soul was lost again in the dark pools of her own.
“You may consider it remarkable that a woman so desirable as myself (Oh, I am free from false modesty) should possess any brains, much less the scientific knowledge which is mine. Woman scientists in your own country are so plain and stuffy, don’t you think?”
And Maitland later blushed to recall that he did not rise up in their defence.
“There was in Greece a great man called Plato. No doubt—” (a note of mockery faintly disturbed the harmony of her voice)—“as a physician and a trusted agent of British Intelligence, you are familiar with his work? You will remember that he postulated a governing class bred for their high office. Above greed, immune from passion, undisturbed by those lusts, those ambitions, which lure lesser men from the path of duty, these leaders of his ideal republic would work unswervingly for peace, for beauty, for perfection.”
She paused, but Maitland said nothing, and presently she continued.
“We have fallen far below Plato’s ideal with our so-called civilisation. So far below, Dr. Maitland, that only drastic measures can save mankind from total destruction. I have been at work on such measure for, oh, ever so many years. The outburst of discord which you called the world war, interrupted me. Yet, I bent events to my purpose. I have resumed my task. It is no easy one. You see, mere virtue is not enough. Virtue is sometimes ugly. Wars are not brought about by nations. They are brought about by a small group of warped men. If the virtuous leaders of other states but recognised their ugliness, they would not permit them to live—and there would be no wars.”
Maitland remained silent, spellbound.
“Great armies are not necessary for my purpose. I concern myself only with those who dream of employing them. And whilst such as these have been playing with rockets capable of carrying atomic bombs across the Atlantic, with lethal gas to destroy whole populations, with absurd planes to fly at ridiculous speeds, I have been busy in the directions. My warfare is intensive, but equally scientific. I can control those destructive brains as no Charter could control them. If I wish, I can remove them altogether. There are sciences higher than those of explosives. Those things are unseemly. Those things must be effaced. There is no room for beauty where such ugliness exists. Destructive individuals must not be. Consider the hideous experiment known as splitting the atom. This was performed, quite successfully, ever so long ago. In fact, Atlantis disappeared shortly afterwards. Those who work
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