Bat Wing by Sax Rohmer

Book Details

Bat Wing – A thrilling tale by Sax Rohmer where the sign of a bat’s wing nailed to a door indicates that the owner has been placed under a voodoo curse and that he is marked for death! Paul Harley of His Majesty’s Government must investigate an uncooperative man who is fated to be the victim of this cursed murder.

Paul Harley is finishing up some last minute work for the Home Department in anticipation of a relaxing fishing trip with his friend Knox when he is importuned by a Colonel Menendez who insists he is about to be murdered. Menendez who had lived in Cuba and the West Indies, fears he will be murdered by the practitioners of Voodoo.

Bat Wing (1921)
Chapter I – Paul Harley Of Chancery Lane
Chapter II – The Voodoo Swamp
Chapter III – The Vampire Bat
Chapter IV – Cray’s Folly
Chapter V – Val Beverley
Chapter VI – The Barrier
Chapter VII – At The Lavender Arms
Chapter VIII – The Call Of M’kombo
Chapter IX – Obeah
Chapter X – The Night Walker
Chapter XI – The Shadow On The Blind
Chapter XII – Morning Mists
Chapter XIII – At The Guest House
Chapter XIV – Ysola Camber
Chapter XV – Unrest
Chapter XVI – Red Eve
Chapter XVII – Night Of The Full Moon
Chapter XVIII – Inspector Aylesbury Of Market Hilton
Chapter XIX – Complications
Chapter XX – A Spanish Cigarette
Chapter XXI – The Wing Of A Bat
Chapter XXII – Colin Camber’s Secret
Chapter XXIII – Inspector Aylesbury Cross-Examines
Chapter XXIV – An Official Move
Chapter XXV – Aylesbury’s Theory
Chapter XXVI – In Madame’s Room
Chapter XXVII – An Inspiration
Chapter XXVIII – My Theory Of The Crime
Chapter XXIX – A Lee-Enfield Rifle
Chapter XXX – The Seventh Yew Tree
Chapter XXXI – Ysola Camber’s Confession
Chapter XXXII – Paul Harley’s Experiment
Chapter XXXIII – Paul Harley’s Experiment Concluded
Chapter XXXIV – The Creeping Sickness
Chapter XXXV – An Afterword

Arthur Henry “Sarsfield” Ward (1883-1959), better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Ward was born in Birmingham, England to a working class family. He got his start in writing as a poet, songwriter, and comedy sketch writer for music hall performers.

In 1912, as he began writing the Fu-Manchu stories, Ward began using the pseudonym Sax Rohmer.

Bat Wing has 2 illustrations.

Files:

1. Rohmer-BatWing.epub

Excerpt: Bat Wing

Chapter I

Paul Harley Of Chancery Lane

TOWARD the hour of six on a hot summer’s evening Mr. Paul Harley was seated in his private office in Chancery Lane reading through a number of letters which Innes, his secretary, had placed before him for signature. Only one more remained to be passed, but it was a long, confidential report upon a certain matter, which Harley had prepared for His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. He glanced with a sigh of weariness at the little clock upon his table before commencing to read.

“Shall detain you only a few minutes, now, Knox,” he said.

I nodded, smiling. I was quite content to sit and watch my friend at work.

Paul Harley occupied a unique place in the maelstrom of vice and ambition which is sometimes called London life. Whilst at present he held no official post, some of the most momentous problems of British policy during the past five years, problems imperilling inter-state relationships and not infrequently threatening a renewal of the world war, had owed their solution to the peculiar genius of this man.

No clue to his profession appeared upon the plain brass plate attached to his door, and little did those who regarded Paul Harley merely as a successful private detective suspect that he was in the confidence of some who guided the destinies of the Empire. Paul Harley’s work in Constantinople during the feverish months preceding hostilities with Turkey, although unknown to the general public, had been of a most extraordinary nature. His recommendations were never adopted, unfortunately. Otherwise, the tragedy of the Dardanelles might have been averted.

His surroundings as he sat there, gaze bent upon the typewritten pages, were those of any other professional man. So it would have seemed to the casual observer. But perhaps there was a quality in the atmosphere of the office which would have told a more sensitive visitor that it was the apartment of no ordinary man of business. Whilst there were filing cabinets and bookshelves laden with works of reference, many of them legal, a large and handsome Burmese cabinet struck an unexpected note.

On closer inspection, other splashes of significant colour must have been detected in the scheme, notably a very fine engraving of Edgar Allan Poe, from the daguerreotype of 1848; and upon the man himself lay the indelible mark of the tropics. His clean-cut features had that hint of underlying bronze which tells of years spent beneath a merciless sun, and the touch of gray at his temples only added to the eager, almost fierce vitality of the dark face. Paul Harley was notable because of that intellectual strength which does not strike one immediately, since it is purely temperamental, but which, nevertheless, invests its possessor with an aura of distinction.

Writing his name at the bottom of the report, Paul Harley enclosed the pages in a long envelope and dropped the envelope into a basket which contained a number of other letters. His work for the day was ended, and glancing at me with a triumphant smile, he stood up. His office was a part of a residential suite, but although, like some old-time burgher of the city, he lived on the premises, the shutting of a door which led to his private rooms marked the close of the business day. Pressing a bell which connected with the public office occupied by his secretary, Paul Harley stood up as Innes entered.

“There’s nothing further, is there, Innes?” he asked.

“Nothing, Mr. Harley, if you have passed the Home Office report?”

Paul Harley laughed shortly.

“There it is,” he replied, pointing to the basket; “a tedious and thankless job, Innes. It is the fifth draft you have prepared and it will have to do.”

He took up a letter which lay unsealed upon the table. “This is the Rokeby affair,” he said. “I have decided to hold it over, after all, until my return.”

“Ah!” said Innes, quietly glancing at each envelope as he took it from the basket. “I see you have turned down the little job offered by the Marquis.”

“I have,” replied Harley, smiling grimly, “and a fee of five hundred guineas with it. I have also intimated to that distressed nobleman that this is a business office and that a laundry is the proper place to take his dirty linen. No, there’s nothing further to-night, Innes. You can get along now. Has Miss Smith gone?”

But as if in answer to his enquiry the typist, who with Innes made up the entire staff of the office, came in at that moment, a card in her hand. Harley glanced across in my direction and then at the card, with a wry expression.

“Colonel Juan Menendez,” he read aloud, “Cavendish Club,” and glanced reflectively at Innes. “Do we know the Colonel?”

“I think not,” answered Innes; “the name is unfamiliar to me.”

“I wonder,” murmured Harley. He glanced across at me. “It’s an awful nuisance, Knox, but just as I thought the decks were clear. Is it something really interesting, or does he want a woman watched? However, his name sounds piquant, so perhaps I had better see him. Ask him to come in, Miss Smith.”

Innes and Miss Smith retiring, there presently entered a man of most striking and unusual presence. In the first place, Colonel Menendez must have stood fully six feet in his boots, and he carried himself like a grandee of the golden days of Spain. His complexion was extraordinarily dusky, whilst his hair, which was close cropped, was iron gray. His heavy eyebrows and curling moustache with its little points were equally black, so that his large teeth gleamed very fiercely when he smiled. His eyes were large, dark, and brilliant, and although he wore an admirably cut tweed suit, for some reason I pictured him as habitually wearing riding kit. Indeed I almost seemed to hear the jingle of his spurs.

He carried an ebony cane for which I mentally substituted a crop, and his black derby hat I thought hardly as suitable as a sombrero. His age might have been anything between fifty and fifty-five.

Standing in the doorway he bowed, and if his smile was Mephistophelean, there was much about Colonel Juan Menendez which commanded respect.

“Mr. Harley,” he began, and his high, thin voice afforded yet another surprise, “I feel somewhat ill at ease to—how do you say it?—appropriate your time, as I am by no means sure that what I have to say justifies my doing so.”

“He spoke most fluent, indeed florid, English. But his sentences at times were oddly constructed; yet, save for a faint accent, and his frequent interpolation of such expressions as “how do you say?”—a sort of nervous mannerism—one might have supposed him to be a Britisher who had lived much abroad. I formed the opinion that he had read extensively, and this, as I learned later, was indeed the case.

“Sit down, Colonel Menendez,” said Harley with quiet geniality. “Officially, my working day is ended, I admit, but if you have no objection to the presence of my friend, Mr. Knox, I shall be most happy to chat with you.”

He smiled in a way all his own.

“If your business is of a painfully professional nature,” he added, “I must beg you to excuse me for fourteen days, as I am taking a badly needed holiday with my friend.”

“Ah, is it so?” replied the Colonel, placing his hat and cane upon the table, and sitting down rather wearily in a big leathern armchair which Harley had pushed forward. “If I intrude I am sorry, but indeed my business is urgent, and I come to you on the recommendation of my friend, Señor Don Merry del Val, the Spanish Ambassador.”

He raised his eyes to Harley’s face with an expression of peculiar appeal. I rose to depart, but:

“Sit down, Knox,” said Harley, and turned again to the visitor. “Please proceed,” he requested. “Mr. Knox has been with me in some of the most delicate cases which I have ever handled, and you may rely upon his discretion as you may rely upon mine.” He pushed forward a box of cigars. “Will you smoke?”

“Thanks, no,” was the answer; “you see, I rarely smoke anything but my cigarettes.”

Colonel Menendez extracted a slip of rice paper from a little packet which he carried, next, dipping two long, yellow fingers into his coat pocket, he brought out a portion of tobacco, laid it in the paper, and almost in the twinkling of an eye had made, rolled, and lighted a very creditable cigarette. His dexterity was astonishing, and seeing my surprise he raised his heavy eyebrows, and:

“Practice makes perfect, is it not said?” he remarked.

He shrugged his shoulders and dropped the extinguished match in an ash tray, whilst I studied him with increasing interest. Some dread, real or imaginary, was oppressing the man’s mind, I mused. I felt my presence to be unwelcome, but:

“Very well,” he began, suddenly. “I expect, Mr. Harley, that you will be disposed to regard what I have to tell you rather as a symptom of what you call nerves than as evidence of any agency directed against me.”

Paul Harley stared curiously at the speaker. “Do I understand you to suspect that someone is desirous of harming you?” he enquired.

Colonel Menendez slowly nodded his head.

“Such is my meaning,” he replied.

“You refer to bodily harm?”

“But yes, emphatically.”

Excerpt From: Sax Rohmer. “Bat Wing”