Quite softly: "Freder… " And once more: "Freder… "
Then she raised her head, listening attentively, standing quite still…
It came back as a whisper: An echo?—No.
Almost inaudibly a word was breathed:
"Maria… "
She turned around, blissfully startled. Was it possible that he had come back.
"Freder—!" she called. She listened.
No answer.
"Freder—!"
Nothing.
But suddenly there came a cool draught of air which made the hair at her neck quiver, and a hand of snow ran down her back.
There came an agonized sigh—a sigh which would not come to an end…
The girl stood still. The bright little lamp which she held in her hand let its gleam play tremblingly about her feet.
"Freder… ?"
Now her voice, too, was only a whisper.
No answer. But, behind her, in the depths of the passage she would have to pass through, a gentle, gliding slink became perceptible: feet in soft shoes on rough stones…
That was… yes, that was strange. Nobody, apart from her, ever came this way. Nobody could be here. And, if somebody were here, then it was no friend…
Certainly nobody whom she wanted to meet.
Should she let him by—yes.
A second passage opened to her left. She did not know it well. But she would not follow it up. She would only wait in it until the man outside—the man behind her—had gone by.
She pressed herself against the wall of the strange passage, keeping still and waiting quite silently. She did not breath. She had extinguished the lamp. She stood in utter darkness, immovable.
She listened: the gliding feet were approaching. They walked in darkness as she stood in darkness. Now they were here. Now they must..they must go past… But they did not go. They stood quite still. Before the opening to the passage in which she stood, the feet stopped still and seemed to wait.
For what… ? For her… ?
In the complete silence the girl suddenly heard her own heart… She heard her own heart, like pump-works, beating more and more quickly, throbbing more and more loudly. These loud throbbing heartbeats must also be heard by the man who kept the opening to the passage. And suppose he did not stay there any longer… suppose he came inside… she could not hear his coming, her heart throbbed so.
She groped, with fumbling hand, along the stone wall. Without breathing, she set her feet, one before the other… Only to get away from the entrance… Away from the place where the other was standing…
Was she wrong? Or were the feet really coming after her? Soft, slinking shoes on rough stones? Now the agonised, heavy breathing, heavier still, and nearer… cold breath on her neck… .Then—Nothing more. Silence. And waiting. And watching—keeping on the look-out…
Was it not as if a creature, such as the world had never seen: trunkless, nothing but arms, legs and head… but what a head! God—God in heaven!… was crouching on the floor before her, knees drawn up to chin, the damp arms supported right and left, against the walls, near her hips, so that she stood defenceless, caught? Did she not see die passage lighted by a pale shimmer—and did not the shimmer come from the being's jelly-fish head?
"Freder!" she thought. She bit the name tightly between her jaws, yet heard the scream with which her heart screamed it.
She threw herself forwards and felt—she was free—she was still free—and ran and stumbled, and pulled herself up again and staggered from wall to wall, knocking herself bloody, suddenly clutched into space, stumbled, fell to the ground, felt… Something lay there… what? No—No—No—!
The lamp had long since fallen from her hand. She raised herself to her knees and clapped her fists to her ears, in order not to hear the feet, the slinking feet coming nearer. She knew herself to be imprisoned in darkness and yet opened her eyes because she could no longer bear the circles of fire, the wheels of flame behind her closed lids—
And saw her own shadow thrown, gigantic, on the wall before her, and behind her was light, and before her lay a man—
A man?—That was not a man… That was the remains of a man, with his back half leaning against the wall, half slipped down, and on his skeleton feet, which almost touched the girl's knees, were the slender shoes, pointed and purple-red…
With a shriek which tore her throat, the girl threw herself up, backwards—and then on and on, without looking round, pursued by the light which lashed her own shadow in springs before her feet—pursued by long, soft, feathery feet—by feet which walked in red shoes, by the icy breath which blew at her back.
She ran, screamed and ran—
"Freder… ! Freder… !"
Her throat rattled, she fell.
There were some stairs… Crumbling stairs… She pressed her bleeding hands, right and left, against the stone wall, by the stone steps. She dragged herself up. She staggered up, step by step… There was the top.
The stairs ended in a stone trap-door.
The girl groaned: "Freder… !"
She stretched both fists above her. She pushed head and shoulders against the trap-door.
And one more groan: "Freder… "
The door rose and fell back with a crash.
Below—deep down—laughter…
The girl swung herself over the edge of the trapdoor. She ran hither and thither, with out-stretched hands. She ran along walls, finding no door. She saw the lustre which welled up from the depths. By this light she saw a door, which was latchless. It had neither bolt nor lock.
In the gloomy wood glowed, copper-red, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.
The girl turned around.
She saw a man sitting on the edge of the trap-door and saw his smile.
Then it was as though she were extinguished, and she plunged into nothing…
Chapter 6
THE PROPRIETOR OF YOSHIWARA used to earn money in a variety of ways. One of them, and quite positively the most harmless, was to make bets that no man—be he never so widely travelled—was capable of guessing to what weird mixture of races he owed his face. So far he had won all such bets, and used to sweep in the money which they brought him with hands, the cruel beauty of which would not have shamed an ancestor of the Spanish Borgias, the nails of which, however, showed an inobliterable shimmer of blue; on the other hand, the politeness of his smile on such profitable occasions originated unmistakably in that graceful insular world, which, from the eastern border of Asia, smiles gently and watchfully across at mighty America.
There were prominent properties combined within him which made him appear to be a general representative of Great Britain and Ireland, for he was as red-haired, chaff-loving and with as good a head for drink as if his name had been McFosh, avaricious and superstitious as a Scotsman and—In certain circumstances, which made it requisite, of that highly bred obliviousness, which is a matter of will and a foundation stone of the British Empire. He spoke practicality all living languages as though his mother had taught him to pray in them and his father to curse. His greed appeared to hail from the Levant, his contentment from China. And, above all this, two quiet, observant eyes watched with German patience and perseverance.
As to the rest, he was called, for reasons unknown, September.
The visitants to Yoshiwara had met September in a variety of emotions-from the block-headed dozing away of the well-contented bushman to the dance-ecstatic of the Ukrainer.
But to come upon his features in an expression of absolute bewilderment was reserved for Slim, when, on the morning after his having lost sight of his young master, he set throbbing the massive gong which demanded entrance to Yoshiwara.
It was most unusual that the generally very obliging door of Yoshiwara was not opened before the fourth gong-signal; and that this was performed by September himself and with this expression of countenance deepened the impression of an only tolerably overcome catastrophe. Slim bowed. September looked at him. A mask of brass seemed to fall over his face. But a chance glance at the driver of the taxi, in which Slim had come tore it off again.
"Would to God your tin-kettle had gone up in the air before you could have brought that lunatic here yesterday evening," he said. "He drove away my guests before they even thought of paying. The girls are huddling down in the corners like lumps of wet floor-cloth—that is, those who are not in hysterics. Unless I call in the police I might just as well close the house; for it doesn't look as though that chap will have recovered his five senses by this evening."
"Of whom are you speaking, September?" asked Slim.
September looked at him. At this moment the tiniest hamlet in North Siberia would have flatly refused to have been proclaimed the birth-place of so idiotic looking an individual.
"If it is the man for whom I have come here to look," continued Slim, "then I shall rid you of him in a more agreeable and swifter manner than the police."
"And for what man are you looking, sir?"
Slim hesitated. He cleared his throat slightly. "You know the white silk which is woven for' comparatively few in Metropolis… "
In the long line of ancestors, the mainfold sediment of whom had been crystalised into September, a fur-trader from Tarnopolis must also have been represented and he now smiled out from the corners of his great-grandson's wily eyes.
"Come in, sir!" the proprietor of Yoshiwara invited Slim, with true Singalese gentleness.
Slim entered. September closed the door behind him.
In the moment when the matutinal roar of the great Metropolis no longer bellowed up from the streets, another roar from inside the building became perceptible—the roar of a human voice, hotter-than the voice of a beast of prey, mad-drunk with triumph.
"Who is that?" asked Sum, involuntarily dropping his own voice.
"He—!" answered September, and how he could stow the smooth and pointed vengefulness of whole Corsica into the monosyllable remained his own secret.
Slim's glance became uncertain, but he said nothing. He followed September over soft and glossy straw mats, along walls of oiled paper, narrowly framed in bamboo.
Behind one of these walls the weeping of a woman was to be heard—monotonous, hopeless, heartbreaking, like a long spell of rainy days which envelope the summit of Fuji Yama.
"That's Yuki," murmured September, with a fierce glance at the paper prison of this pitiful weeping. "She's been crying since midnight, as if she wanted to be the source of a new salt sea… This evening she will have a swollen potato on her face instead of a nose… Who pays for it?—I do!"
"Why is the little snowflake crying?" asked Slim, half thoughtlessly, for the roaring of the human voice, coming from the depths of the house occupied all the ears and attention he possessed.
"Oh, she isn't the only one," answered September, with the tolerant mien of one who owns a prosperous harbour tavern in Shanghai. "But she is at least tame. Plum Blossom has been snapping about her like a young Puma, and Miss Rainbow has thrown the Saki bowl at the mirror and is trying to cut her artery with the chips—and all on account of this white silk youngster."
The agitated expression on Slim's face deepened. He shook his head.
"How did he manage to get such a hold over them… " he said, and it was not meant to be a question. September shrugged his shoulders.
"Maohee… " he said in a sing-song tone, as though beginning one of those Greenland fairy tales, which, the quicker they sent one to sleep are the more highly appreciated.
"What is that: Maohee?" asked Slim, irritably. September drew his head down between his shoulders. The Irish and the British blood-corpuscles in his veins seemed to be falling out, violently: but the impenetrable Japanese smile covered this up with its mantle before it could grow dangerous.
"You don't know what Maohee is… Not a soul in the great Metropolis knows… No… Nobody. But here in Yoshiwara they all know."
"I wish to know, too, September," said Slim. Generations of Roman lackeys bowed within September as he said, "Certainly, sir!" But they did not get the better of the wink of the heavy-drinking lying grandfathers in Copenhagen. "Maohee, that is… Isn't it odd, that, of all the ten thousand who have been guests here in Yoshiwara and who had experienced in detail what Maohee stands for, outside they know nothing more about it? Don't walk so fast, sir. The yelling gentleman down there won't run away from us—and if I am to explain to you what Maohee means… "
"Drugs, I expect, September—?"
"My dear sir, the lion is also a cat. Maohee is a drug: but what is a cat beside a lion? Maohee is from the other side of the earth. It is the divine, the only thing—because it is the only thing which makes us feel the intoxication of the others."
"The intoxication—of the others… ?" repeated Slim, stopping still.
September smiled the smile of Hotei the god of Happiness, who likes little children. He laid the hand of the Borgia, with the suspiciously blue shimmering nails on Slim's arm.
"The intoxication of the others—Sir, do you know what that means? Not of one other—no, of the multitude which rolls itself into a lump, the rolled up intoxication of the multitude gives Maohee its friends… "
"Has Maohee many friends, September?"
The proprietor of Yoshiwara grinned, apocalyptically.
"Sir, in this house there is a round room. You shall see it. It has not its like. It is built like a winding seashell, like a mammoth shell, in the windings of which thunders the surf of seven oceans; in these windings people crouch, so densely crowded that their faces appear as one face. No one knows the other, yet they are all friends. They all fever. They are all pale with expectation. They have all clasped hands. The trembling of those who sit right down at the bottom of the shell runs right through the windings of the mammoth shell, right up to those, who, from the gleaming top of the spiral, send out their own trembling towards it… "
September gulped for breath. Sweat stood like a fine chain of beads on his brow. An international smile of insanity parted his prating mouth.
"Go on, September!" said Slim.