Sax Rohmer

“ You would ask: What is the secret of Ismail? I would tell you, ask it of Hassan the Handless, of Mustapha, the blind Persian of the Bâb ez-Zuwêla; better still, ask it of any son of the Fàyûm, of any man of the Mâzi. None of them will answer you, for none save Hassan and Mustapha knows the strange truth—Hassan and Mustapha, and Abdûl Moharli ... and no one of these three knows all, nor will reveal what he knows.
Ah! how my heart leapt and how my eyes must have gleamed in the darkness of the tent, yet how cold a fear clutched at the life within me. ”

“ Fo-Hi approached her closely and abject terror now had robbed her of strength. Her limbs seemed to have become numbed, her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.
"Fear me no more, Miska," said Fo-Hi. "I will you nothing but joy. The man who has learned the Fifth Secret of Rache Churan—who has learned how to control his will—holds a power absolute and beyond perfectability. You know, who have dwelt beneath my roof, that there is no escape from my will." His calm was terrible, and his glance, through the green veil, was like a ray of scorching heat. ”

“ The strange words of the Eurasian he did not construe literally; yet could he be certain that he was secure?...Nay! he could be certain that he was not!
The shaded lamp was swung in such a position that most of the light was directed upon him where he lay, whilst the walls of the room were bathed in a purple shadow. Behind him and above him, directly over the head of the bunk, a faint sound—a sound inaudible except in such a dead silence as that prevailing—told of some shutter being raised or opened. ”

“ I knew that the saintly Hassan was Sheikh of the Hashishin. And familiarity with that dreadful organization had by no means bred contempt. I was the holder of the key, and my fear of the fanatics grew like a magic mango, darkened the sunlight of each day, and filled the night with indefinable dread.
You, who have not read poor Deeping’s “Assyrian Mythology”, cannot picture a creature with a huge, distorted head, and a tiny, dwarfed body—a thing inhuman, yet human—a man stunted and malformed by the cruel arts of brother men—a thing obnoxious to life, with but one passion, the passion to kill. ”

“ For he spoke of a secret oasis and of a sheikh who had lived since the days of Sultan Kalaûn; of a treasure vast as that of Suleyman—and of magic, black magic; of the transmuting of gold and the making of diamonds.
But I, who am a Greek, and one who has lived all his life between Alexandria and the Red Sea; I who know the Garden of Egypt as another knows the palm of his hand—I detected in this delirium the shadow of a truth. ”

“ The curves of their astral selves were sweeping inward to a point of contact which Paul knew subconsciously would be electric, odic, illuminating. He felt the driving force of Jules Thessaly's personality, and it struck from the lyre of his genius strange harmonious chords. He knew, as some of the ancients knew, that the very insect we crush beneath our feet is crushed not by accident, but in accordance with a design vast beyond human conception; and he wondered what part in his life this strange, powerful man was cast to play. ”

“ I cried; “Hassan es-Sugra!”
No answer greeted me, although in the desert stillness the call must have been audible for miles. A second and a third time I called his name ... and the only reply was the shrill note of a pyramid bat that swooped low above my head; the vast solitude of the sands swallowed up my voice and the walls of the Tomb of Sneferu mocked me with their echo, crying eerily:
“Hassan! Hassan es-Sugra.... Hassan!...” ”

“ His ideas changed abruptly, unaccountably. How beautiful she was. He became possessed of an insane desire to make love to her, and she, as if reading his glance aright, imparted to her slow smile such a quality of allurement that it became an invitation.
"Must you leave me?" she said very softly.
At that, his self-possession deserted him. He was carried out of himself by such a great surge of longing as he had never known even in his dreams of Jasmine. He found himself kneeling upon the golden carpet beside her, his lips pressed passionately to her hand, his arm about her waist. ”

“ He was about to switch on the reading lamp, for it was now too dark to write, when his mind wandered off along another channel of reflection. He found himself picturing Myra as she had looked the last time that he had seen her.
She was seated in Mr. Saunderson's garden, still pale from her dreadful illness, but beautiful—more beautiful in the eyes of Robert Cairn than any other woman in the world. The breeze was blowing her rebellious curls across her eyes—eyes bright with a happiness which he loved to see. ”

“ Slowly he turned, looking toward his open window through which sunlight streamed into the room. An uncanny memory had come to him—the memory, he determined, of some forgotten nightmare. It was that of a grey face, the face of a dead man, except that the eyes were alive and stared out like two points of light.
Teak raised his hand to his close-cropped skull and then sat down on the side of the bed to consider this matter. He was not an orderly thinker, and for a long time he wrestled with a series of confusing ideas which suddenly had presented themselves to his mind. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Paul Harley withdrew quietly. He had begun to walk along the corridor when the sound of a motor brought him up sharply. A limousine was being driven away from the side entrance! Not alone had he heard that sound. His face deathly, and the lack-lustre eyes dully on fire, Nicol Brinn burst out of the room and, not heeding the presence of Harley, hurled himself down the stairs. He was as a man demented, an avenging angel. ”

“ Even the strings of the harp were visible now.
"Curse me!" came Moris Klaw's hoarse whisper; "it seems to grow light! That is a delusion of the mind, my friends—repel it—repel it!"
Fairbank drew a quick, sibilant breath. A half-suppressed exclamation from Klaw followed; for the high-pitched rattle came from close at hand! The sense of the supernormal had grown unbearable. Fairbank's science and my own semi-scepticism were but weapons of sand against it.
The door opened silently, admitting a flood of the soft moon-like radiance. And Ailsa Brearley entered! ”

“ A hundred human comedies and tragedies were to be witnessed upon the highways; but to all of them Kerry was blind as he was deaf to the din of workaday Babylon. In spirit he was roaming the bank of old Father Thames where the river sweeps eastward below Limehouse Causeway—wonder-stricken before the magic of the one-eyed wizard who could at will efface himself as an artist rubs out a drawing, who could camouflage a drug warehouse so successfully that human skill, however closely addressed to the task, failed utterly to detect its whereabouts. ”

“ It became a woman, beautiful with a beauty that could only be described as awful.
She wore upon her brow the uraeus of ancient Egyptian royalty. Her sole garment was a robe of finest gauze. Like a cloud, like a vision, she floated into the light cast by the tripod.
A voice—a voice which seemed to come from a vast distance, from somewhere outside the mighty granite walls of that unholy place—spoke. The language was unknown to Sime, but the fierce hand grip upon his wrist grew fiercer. ”

“ With its coming, fantasy vanished; and I knew that the dead dacoit, his great curved knife yet clutched in his hand, the Yellow menace hanging over London, over England, over the civilized world, the absence, the heart-breaking absence, of Kâramaneh—all were real, all were true, all were part of my life.
Nayland Smith was standing staring vaguely before him and tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
"Come along!" he snapped suddenly. "We have no more to learn here: the clue to the mystery must be sought elsewhere." ”

“ Cairn noted with dismay the shadows under her eyes—the grey eyes that he would have wished to see ever full of light and laughter. She was pale, too, or seemed unusually so in her black dress; but the tragic death of her guardian, Sir Michael Ferrara, had been a dreadful blow to this convent-bred girl who had no other kin in the world. A longing swept into Cairn's heart and set it ablaze; a longing to take all her sorrows, all her cares, upon his own broad shoulders, to take her and hold her, shielded from whatever of trouble or menace the future might bring. ”

“ In the lonely desert it is ten thousand times grander, ten thousand times more impressive; it speaks to the soul with the voice of the silence. Ah, those desert nights!
So was the night of which I speak; and having partaken of the fare which the Sheikh caused to be set before me—and Bedouin fare is not for the squeamish stomach—I sipped that delicious coffee which, though an acquired taste, is the true nectar, and looked out beyond the four or five palm trees of this little oasis to where the gray carpet of the desert grew black as ebony and met the violet sweep of the sky. ”

“ Paul Harley nodded grimly. The storm he had foreseen was approaching; but Van Dean buried his face in his hands and groaned,
“I shall never live to see it published!”
“Pull yourself together, man!” cried Harley sharply. “There, in that safe, lies material which, when it is made public will wake up the white peoples of the world to a peril of which they have scarcely dreamed. Yet it grows and grows, like the storm over yonder. One day, if we fail, it will burst on the white races like a second deluge. Remember, nothing to the women.” ”

“ The smoke of the incense curled upward and played around the straight, slender figure, drew vaporous lines about the still, ivory face—a handsome, sinister face—sometimes partly veiling the long black eyes, and sometimes showing them in all their unnatural brightness. So the man stood, looking toward the barred window.
It was Antony Ferrara.
“Ah, dear Cairn!” The husky but musical voice smote upon Cairn's ears as the most hated sound in nature. “So you have followed me to Egypt. Not content with driving me from London, you would also render Cairo—my dear Cairo—untenable for me.” ”