Chapter 3. The Master of Doom
"And He that toss'd you down into the
Field,
He knows about it all - He knows! He
knows!"
Omar Khayyam
A hand shook me roughly as I emerged languidly from my latest debauch.
"The Master wishes you! Up,
swine!"
Hassim it was who shook me and who
spoke.
"To Hell with the Master!"
I answered, for I hated Hassim - and feared him.
"Up with you or you get no more
hashish," was the brutal response, and I rose in trembling haste.
I followed the huge black man and he
led the way to the rear of the building, stepping in and out among the wretched
dreamers on the floor.
"Muster all hands on
deck!" droned a sailor in a bunk. "All hands!"
Hassim flung open the door at the
rear and motioned me to enter. I had never before passed through that door and
had supposed it led into Yun Shatu's private quarters. But it was furnished
only with a cot, a bronze idol of some sort before which incense burned, and a
heavy table.
Hassim gave me a sinister glance and
seized the table as if to spin it about. It turned as if it stood on a
revolving platform and a section of the floor turned with it, revealing a
hidden doorway in the floor. Steps led downward in the darkness.
Hassim lighted a candle and with a
brusque gesture invited me to descend. I did so, with the sluggish obedience of
the dope addict, and he followed, closing the door above us by means of an iron
lever fastened to the underside of the floor. In the semi-darkness we went down
the rickety steps, some nine or ten I should say, and then came upon a narrow
corridor.
Here Hassim again took the lead,
holding the candle high in front of him. I could scarcely see the sides of this
cave-like passageway but knew that it was not wide. The flickering light showed
it to be bare of any sort of furnishings save for a number of strange-looking chests
which lined the walls - receptacles containing opium and other dope, I thought.
A continuous scurrying and the
occasional glint of small red eyes haunted the shadows, betraying the presence
of vast numbers of the great rats which infest the Thames waterfront of that
section.
Then more steps loomed out of the
dark in front of us as the corridor came to an abrupt end. Hassim led the way
up and at the top knocked four times against what seemed the underside of a
floor. A hidden door opened and a flood of soft, illusive light streamed through.
Hassim hustled me up roughly and I
stood blinking in such a setting as I had never seen in my wildest flights of
vision. I stood in a jungle of palm trees through which wriggled a million
vivid-hued dragons! Then, as my startled eyes became accustomed to the light, I
saw that I had not been suddenly transferred to some other planet, as I had at
first thought. The palm trees were there, and the dragons, but the trees were
artificial and stood in great pots and the dragons writhed across heavy
tapestries which hid the walls.
The room itself was a monstrous
affair - inhumanly large, it seemed to me. A thick smoke, yellowish and
tropical in suggestion, seemed to hang over all, veiling the ceiling and
baffling upward glances. This smoke, I saw, emanated from an altar in front of
the wall to my left. I started. Through the saffron-billowing fog two eyes,
hideously large and vivid, glittered at me. The vague outlines of some bestial
idol took indistinct shape. I flung an uneasy glance about, marking the oriental
divans and couches and the bizarre furnishings, and then my eyes halted and
rested on a lacquer screen just in front of me.
I could not pierce it and no sound
came from beyond it, yet I felt eyes searing into my consciousness through it,
eyes that burned through my very soul. A strange aura of evil flowed from that
strange screen with its weird carvings and unholy decorations.
Hassim salaamed profoundly before it
and then, without speaking, stepped back and folded his arms, statue-like.
A voice suddenly broke the heavy and
oppressive silence.
"You who are a swine, would you
like to be a man again?"
I started. The tone was inhuman,
cold - more, there was a suggestion of long disuse of the vocal organs - the
voice I had heard in my dream!
"Yes," I replied,
trance-like, "I would like to be a man again."
Silence ensued for a space; then the
voice came again with a sinister whispering undertone at the back of its sound
like bats flying through a cavern.
"I shall make you a man again
because I am a friend to all broken men. Not for a price shall I do it, nor for
gratitude. And I give you a sign to seal my promise and my vow. Thrust your
hand through the screen."
At these strange and almost
unintelligible words I stood perplexed, and then, as the unseen voice repeated
the last command, I stepped forward and thrust my hand through a slit which
opened silently in the screen. I felt my wrist seized in an iron grip and something
seven times colder than ice touched the inside of my hand. Then my wrist was
released, and drawing forth my hand I saw a strange symbol traced in blue close
to the base of my thumb - a thing like a scorpion.
The voice spoke again in a sibilant
language I did not understand, and Hassim stepped forward deferentially. He
reached about the screen and then turned to me, holding a goblet of some
amber-colored liquid which he proffered me with an ironical bow. I took it
hesitatingly.
"Drink and fear not," said
the unseen voice. "It is only an Egyptian wine with life-giving
qualities."
So I raised the goblet and emptied
it; the taste was not unpleasant, and even as I handed the beaker to Hassim
again, I seemed to feel new life and vigor whip along my jaded veins.
"Remain at Yun Shatu's
house," said the voice. "You will be given food and a bed until you
are strong enough to work for yourself. You will use no hashish nor will you
require any. Go!"
As in a daze, I followed Hassim back
through the hidden door, down the steps, along the dark corridor and up through
the other door that let us into the Temple of Dreams.
As we stepped from the rear chamber
into the main room of the dreamers, I turned to the Negro wonderingly.
"Master? Master of what? Of
Life?"
Hassim laughed, fiercely and
sardonically.
"Master of Doom!"
Chapter 4. The Spider and the Fly
"There was the Door to which I found no
Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not
see."
Omar Khayyam
I sat on Yun Shatu's cushions and pondered with a clearness of mind
new and strange to me. As for that, all my sensations were new and strange. I
felt as if I had wakened from a monstrously long sleep, and though my thoughts
were sluggish, I felt as though the cobwebs which had dogged them for so long
had been partly brushed away.
I drew my hand across my brow,
noting how it trembled. I was weak and shaky and felt the stirrings of hunger--not
for dope but for food. What had been in the draft I had quenched in the chamber
of mystery? And why had the "Master" chosen me, out of all the other
wretches of Yun Shatu's, for regeneration?
And who was this Master? Somehow the
word sounded vaguely familiar - I sought laboriously to remember. Yes - I had
heard it, lying half-waking in the bunks or on the floor - whispered sibilantly
by Yun Shatu or by Hassim or by Yussef Ali, the Moor, muttered in their low-voiced
conversations and mingled always with words I could not understand. Was not Yun
Shatu, then, master of the Temple of Dreams? I had thought and the other
addicts thought that the withered Chinaman held undisputed sway over this drab
kingdom and that Hassim and Yussef Ali were his servants. And the four China
boys who roasted opium with Yun Shatu and Yar Khan the Afghan and Santiago the
Haitian and Ganra Singh, the renegade Sikh - all in the pay of Yun Shatu, we
supposed - bound to the opium lord by bonds of gold or fear.
For Yun Shatu was a power in
London's Chinatown and I had heard that his tentacles reached across the seas
into high places of mighty and mysterious tongs. Was that Yun Shatu behind the
lacquer screen? No; I knew the Chinaman's voice and besides I had seen him
puttering about in the front of the Temple just as I went through the back
door.
Another thought came to me. Often,
lying half-torpid, in the late hours of night or in the early grayness of dawn,
I had seen men and women steal into the Temple, whose dress and bearing were
strangely out of place and incongruous. Tall, erect men, often in evening
dress, with their hats drawn low about their brows, and fine ladies, veiled, in
silks and furs. Never two of them came together, but always they came
separately and, hiding their features, hurried to the rear door, where they
entered and presently came forth again, hours later sometimes. Knowing that the
lust for dope finds resting-place in high positions sometimes, I had never
wondered overmuch, supposing that these were wealthy men and women of society
who had fallen victims to the craving, and that somewhere in the back of the
building there was a private chamber for such. Yet now I wondered - sometimes
these persons had remained only a few moments - was it always opium for which they
came, or did they, too, traverse that strange corridor and converse with the
One behind the screen?
My mind dallied with the idea of a
great specialist to whom came all classes of people to find surcease from the
dope habit. Yet it was strange that such a one should select a dope-joint from
which to work - strange, too, that the owner of that house should apparently look
on him with so much reverence.
I gave it up as my head began to
hurt with the unwonted effort of thinking, and shouted for food. Yussef Ali
brought it to me on a tray, with a promptness which was surprizing. More, he
salaamed as he departed, leaving me to ruminate on the strange shift of my
status in the Temple of Dreams.
I ate, wondering what the One of the
screen wanted with me. Not for an instant did I suppose that his actions had
been prompted by the reasons he pretended; the life of the underworld had
taught me that none of its denizens leaned toward philanthropy. And underworld
the chamber of mystery had been, in spite of its elaborate and bizarre nature.
And where could it be located? How far had I walked along the corridor? I
shrugged my shoulders, wondering if it were not all a hashish-induced dream;
then my eye fell upon my hand - and the scorpion traced thereon.
"Muster all hands!" droned
the sailor in the bunk. "All hands!"
To tell in detail of the next few
days would be boresome to any who have not tasted the dire slavery of dope. I
waited for the craving to strike me again--waited with sure sardonic
hopelessness. All day, all night - another day - then the miracle was forced
upon my doubting brain. Contrary to all theories and supposed facts of science
and common sense the craving had left me as suddenly and completely as a bad
dream! At first I could not credit my senses but believed myself to be still in
the grip of a dope nightmare. But it was true. From the time I quaffed the
goblet in the room of mystery, I felt not the slightest desire for the stuff
which had been life itself to me. This, I felt vaguely, was somehow unholy and
certainly opposed to all rules of nature. If the dread being behind the screen
had discovered the secret of breaking hashish's terrible power, what other
monstrous secrets had he discovered and what unthinkable dominance was his? The
suggestion of evil crawled serpent-like through my mind.
I remained at Yun Shatu's house,
lounging in a bunk or on cushions spread upon the floor, eating and drinking at
will, but now that I was becoming a normal man again, the atmosphere became
most revolting to me and the sight of the wretches writhing in their dreams
reminded me unpleasantly of what I myself had been, and it repelled, nauseated
me.
So one day, when no one was watching
me, I rose and went out on the street and walked along the waterfront. The air,
burdened though it was with smoke and foul scents, filled my lungs with strange
freshness and aroused new vigor in what had once been a powerful frame. I took
new interest in the sounds of men living and working, and the sight of a vessel
being unloaded at one of the wharfs actually thrilled me. The force of
longshoremen was short, and presently I found myself heaving and lifting and
carrying, and though the sweat coursed down my brow and my limbs trembled at
the effort, I exulted in the thought that at last I was able to labor for
myself again, no matter how low or drab the work might be.
As I returned to the door of Yun
Shatu's that evening - hideously weary but with the renewed feeling of manhood
that comes of honest toil - Hassim met me at the door.
"You been where?" he
demanded roughly.
"I've been working on the
docks," I answered shortly.
"You don't need to work on
docks," he snarled. "The Master got work for you."
He led the way, and again I
traversed the dark stairs and the corridor under the earth. This time my
faculties were alert and I decided that the passageway could not be over thirty
or forty feet in length. Again I stood before the lacquer screen and again I
heard the inhuman voice of living death.
"I can give you work,"
said the voice. "Are you willing to work for me?"
I quickly assented. After all, in
spite of the fear which the voice inspired, I was deeply indebted to the owner.
"Good. Take these."
As I started toward the screen a
sharp command halted me and Hassim stepped forward and reaching behind took
what was offered. This was a bundle of pictures and papers, apparently.
"Study these," said the
One behind the screen, "and learn all you can about the man portrayed
thereby. Yun Shatu will give you money; buy yourself such clothes as seamen
wear and take a room at the front of the Temple. At the end of two days, Hassim
will bring you to me again. Go!"
The last impression I had, as the
hidden door closed above me, was that the eyes of the idol, blinking through
the everlasting smoke, leered mockingly at me.
The front of the Temple of Dreams
consisted of rooms for rent, masking the true purpose of the building under the
guise of a waterfront boarding house. The police had made several visits to Yun
Shatu but had never got any incriminating evidence against him.
So in one of these rooms I took up
my abode and set to work studying the material given me.
The pictures were all of one man, a
large man, not unlike me in build and general facial outline, except that he
wore a heavy beard and was inclined to blondness whereas I am dark. The name,
as written on the accompanying papers, was Major Fairlan Morley, special commissioner
to Natal and the Transvaal. This office and title were new to me and I wondered
at the connection between an African commissioner and an opium house on the Thames
waterfront.
The papers consisted of extensive
data evidently copied from authentic sources and all dealing with Major Morley,
and a number of private documents considerably illuminating on the major's
private life.
An exhaustive description was given
of the man's personal appearance and habits, some of which seemed very trivial
to me. I wondered what the purpose could be, and how the One behind the screen had
come in possession of papers of such intimate nature.
I could find no clue in answer to
this question but bent all my energies to the task set out for me. I owed a
deep debt of gratitude to the unknown man who required this of me and I was
determined to repay him to the best of my ability. Nothing, at this time,
suggested a snare to me.
