Moon of Skulls Read Online Free PDF

with a shy smile. “I — I am glad you like me. I am glad you no longer dream hashish dreams.”
    Strange that so small a thing should set my heart to leaping wildly!
    “I owe it all to you, Zuleika,” I said huskily. “Had not I dreamed of you every hour since you first lifted me from the gutter, I had lacked the power of even hoping to be freed from my curse.”
    She blushed prettily and intertwined her white fingers as if in nervousness.
    “You leave England tomorrow?” she said suddenly.
    “Yes. Hassim has not returned with my ticket —” I hesitated suddenly, remembering the command of silence.
    “Yes, I know, I know!” she whispered swiftly, her eyes widening. “And John Gordon has been here! He saw you!”
    “Yes!”
    She came close to me with a quick lithe movement.
    “You are to impersonate some man! Listen, while you are doing this, you must not ever let Gordon see you! He would know you, no matter what your disguise! He is a terrible man!”
    “I don’t understand,” I said, completely bewildered. “How did the Master break me of my hashish craving? Who is this Gordon and why did he come here? Why does the Master go disguised as a leper — and who is he? Above all, why am I to impersonate a man I never saw or heard of?”
    “I cannot — I dare not tell you!” she whispered, her face paling. “I —”
    Somewhere in the house sounded the faint tones of a Chinese gong. The girl started like a frightened gazelle.
    “I must go! He summons me!”
    She opened the door, darted through, halted a moment to electrify me with her passionate exclamation: “Oh, be careful, be very careful, sahib!”
    Then she was gone.
    7. The Man of the Skull
     
    “What the hammer? What the chain?
    In what furnace was thy brain?
    What the anvil? What dread grasp
    Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”
— Blake
     
    A while after my beautiful and mysterious visitor had left, I sat in meditation. I believed that I had at last stumbled onto an explanation of a part of the enigma, at any rate. This was the conclusion I had reached: Yun Shatu, the opium lord, was simply the agent or servant of some organization or individual whose work was on a far larger scale than merely supplying dope addicts in the Temple of Dreams. This man or these men needed co-workers among all classes of people; in other words, I was being let in with a group of opium smugglers on a gigantic scale. Gordon no doubt had been investigating the case, and his presence alone showed that it was no ordinary one, for I knew that he held a high position with the English government, though just what, I did not know.
    Opium or not, I determined to carry out my obligation to the Master. My moral sense had been blunted by the dark ways I had traveled, and the thought of despicable crime did not enter my head. I was indeed hardened. More, the mere debt of gratitude was increased a thousand-fold by the thought of the girl. To the Master I owed it that I was able to stand up on my feet and look into her clear eyes as a man should. So if he wished my services as a smuggler of dope, he should have them. No doubt I was to impersonate some man so high in governmental esteem that the usual actions of the customs officers would be deemed unnecessary; was I to bring some rare dream-producer into England?
    These thoughts were in my mind as I went downstairs, but ever back of them hovered other and more alluring suppositions — what was the reason for the girl, here in this vile dive — a rose in a garbage-heap — and who was she?
    As I entered the outer bar, Hassim came in, his brows set in a dark scowl of anger, and, I believed, fear. He carried a newspaper in his hand, folded.
    “I told you to wait in opium room,” he snarled.
    “You were gone so long that I went up to my room. Have you the ticket?”
    He merely grunted and pushed on past me into the opium room, and standing at the door I saw him cross the floor and disappear into the rear room. I stood there, my