Daughter of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page A

small cigarettes which she loved, smouldering in a long engraved holder between delicate ivory fingers.
    We passed the tree-shaded well, and mounted a stiff slope beyond. I cannot answer for the others, but, as I have indicated, my own thoughts were far away. It was just as we reached the crest, and saw a further prospect of boundless desert before us, that I became aware, or perhaps I should say conscious, of that old sense of espionage.
    Nothing moved upon that desolate expanse, over which the air danced like running water. But a positive conviction seized me—a conviction that news of our journey had reached the enemy, or would shortly reach the enemy. I began to think about that solitary Pharaoh’s Chicken—that sentinel vulture—floating high above the palms…
    “Stop!” I said.
    “What is it?” snapped Nayland Smith.
    “May be nothing,” I replied, “but I want to walk back to the brow of the hill and take a good look at the wâdi through which we have just come.”
    “Good!” He nodded. “I should have thought of it myself.”
    I got out the glasses, slung them across my shoulder, and walked rapidly back. At a point which I remembered, because a great blackened boulder lying straight across the road had nearly brought us to grief, I stooped and went forward more slowly. This boulder, I reflected, might provide just the cover I required. Lying flat down beside the stone, to the great alarm of a number of lizards who fled rapidly to right and left, I focused my glasses upon the clump of trees below me.
    At first I could see nothing unusual. But the vulture still floated in the sky and the significance of his presence had become unmistakable… Some living thing was hidden in the grove!
    Adjusting the sights to a nicety, I watched, I waited. And presently my patience was rewarded.
    A figure came out of the clump of trees!
    I could see him clearly and only hoped that he could not see me. He might have passed muster, except for his tightly knotted blue turban. Emphatically, he was not an Egyptian. Standing beside the irregularly marked path, he placed a box upon the ground. I studied his movements with growing wonderment.
    What could he be about? He seemed to be fumbling in the box.
    Then suddenly he withdrew his hand, raised it high above his head—and a gray pigeon swept low over the desert, rose up and up, higher and higher! It circled once, twice, three times. Then, straight as an arrow it set out… undoubtedly bound for the Oasis of Khârgal.
    “Very clever,” said Nayland Smith grimly. “We shall therefore be expected. I might have guessed she wouldn’t be taken unawares. But it confirms my theory.”
    “What theory?” Petrie asked.
    “That tonight is a very special occasion at the house of the Sheikh Ismail!”
    “We’re running into a trap,” said Weymouth. “Now that we know beyond any doubt that we’re expected, what are our chances? It’s true there’s a railway to this place—but it’s rarely used. The people of the oases have never been trustworthy—so that our nearest help will be a hundred and fifty miles off!”
    Smith nodded. He got out and joined me where I stood beside the car; loading and lighting his pipe. He began to walk up and down, glancing alternately at me, at Weymouth, and at Dr. Petrie. I knew what he was thinking and I didn’t interrupt him. He was wondering if he was justified in risking our lives on so desperate a venture; weighing the chances of what success might mean to the world against our chances of coming out of the job alive. Suddenly:
    “What’s the alternative?” he snapped, peering at Weymouth.
    “There isn’t one that I can think of.”
    “What do you say, Petrie?”
    Petrie shrugged his shoulders.
    “I hadn’t foreseen this,” he confessed. “But now that it’s happened…”
    He left the sentence unfinished.
    “Get the map out, Greville,” Nayland Smith rapped… “Here, on the ground.”
    I dived into the front of the car and