The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
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Sax Rohmer >> The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
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"I lost one."
"No matter. We have the other. I expect no further arrests,
and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's
servants that nothing can save it. I fear its ashes will afford
us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should
serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's world."
He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
She looked up proudly.
"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.
"I will come with you."
That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me
thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes;
but of the many such scenes in that race--drama wherein Nayland
Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none
more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.
Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into
our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London,
for my friend's authority was supreme. A strange trio we were,
and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came
to an end at last. Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room--
the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story
of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought
to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe and America
beneath the scepter of Cathay.
I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands;
Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened
briar a dozen times in as many minutes. In the big arm-chair
the pseudogypsy was curled up. A brief toilet had converted
the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.
Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb.
She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us
through lowered lashes.
Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate,
and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful
eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved.
Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul,
yet I strove not to think of them. Accomplice of an arch-murderer she
might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning
upon her, "was in Burma up till quite recently. He murdered
a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left.
The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head.
Am I right?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Suppose--What then?" she asked.
"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.
But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we
both had owed our lives to this girl.
"As you please," she replied. "The police would learn nothing."
"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.
"You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no
kin of Fu-Manchu."
"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"
She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
Smith walked to the door.
"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said. "Look after the prisoner."
And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was
expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.
What attitude should I adopt? How should I go about my delicate task?
In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances
saw captive in my rooms.
"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.
"No harm shall come to you. Why will you not trust us?"
She raised her brilliant eyes.
"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,"
she said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
Alas! it had been of none, and I knew it well. I thought I grasped
the drift of her words.
"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully. "Do I seem one
to fear for myself?"
"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
She looked at me oddly.
"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly,
"my sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child."
She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent
rendered it the more soft. "My sister died in the desert.
My brother lived. Better, far better, that he had died, too."
Her words impressed me intensely.
"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned. "You speak of
slave-raids, of the desert. Where did these things take place?
Of what country are you?"
"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn. "Of what country am I?
A slave has no country, no name."
"No name!" I cried.
"You may call me Karamaneh," she said. "As Karamaneh I was
sold to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.
We were cheap at the price he paid." She laughed shortly, wildly.
"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me. My brother is all
that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power
of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand? It is upon him the blow will fall.
You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.
Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"
I shook my head sadly.
"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I would,
I dare not betray him."
I walked to the window and looked out. How could I answer her arguments?
What could I say? I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called
herself Karamaneh stood beside me. She laid her hand upon my arm.
"Let me go," she pleaded. "He will kill him! He will kill him!"
Her voice shook with emotion.
"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame,"
I said angrily. "We arrested you; you are not here of your own free will."
She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
"Listen." She was speaking rapidly, nervously. "If I help you
to take Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--
will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately
go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother;
that you will let us both go free?"
"I will," I said, without hesitation. "You may rest assured of it."
"But there is a condition," she added.
"What is it?"
"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."
I hesitated. Smith often had accused me of weakness
where this girl was concerned. What now was my plain duty?
That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances
unless it suited her to do so I felt assured. If she spoke
the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element;
her conduct I now viewed in a new light. Humanity, I thought,
dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame
now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation,
perhaps of fear.
She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.
"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."
"Not for my sake."
"Then for your brother's."
"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper. "For your own."
CHAPTER XVII
A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.
Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land
through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.
Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,
with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round
the bend ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps,
as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,
broke the stillness of that lonely place.
Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,
I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure
alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;
but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;
and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
A light came into view far ahead of us.
"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith. "If we keep that straight before us,
according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence
of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.
I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,
to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere
of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men.
The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever
cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.
I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.
Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.
We stood listening. "What?" I asked.
"You heard nothing?"
I shook my head.
Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.
He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked. "We are trusting her blindly."
Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms
against the innuendo.
"I don't," I said shortly.
He nodded. We pressed on.
Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered
always about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway,
his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.
The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,
at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.
Always he made his headquarters upon the river. It was significant;
and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew
for our future guidance.
"Bear to the right," directed Smith. "We must reconnoiter
before making our attack."
We took a path that led directly to the river bank.
Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it
moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.
But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.
The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.
Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked
indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
we played our parts. When I had lain in the East End opium den,
when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon
a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,
of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
I made no comment.
"There's the hulk," he added.
The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
of the running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--
for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--
a rough pier showed. Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch
of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.
"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on
to the staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down
to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.
With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,
its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.
"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared
below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,
I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon
the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.
My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,
that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share
in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.
I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird
creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,
and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound
of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.
Rather, white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.
He had witnessed my accident, but--
"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear. "We dare not turn back now."
He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,
I perforce following.
At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.
It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of shelves loaded
with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,
with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,
and with instruments--some of them of a form unknown to my experience.
I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare
wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds
about me, incisive, commanding:
"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
lay chained in the cell!
Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
leaped and chattered a little marmoset.
That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything--
for anything except for what really happened.
The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks."
His voice quivered with excitement. "The game's up,
Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie."
I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him
in the narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet
like a living thing groaning, creaking--and the water lapped
about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.
"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon
the impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it,
only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth,
but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
He spoke softly, sibilantly.
"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
quickly over my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.
A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords,
held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.
A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.
For God's sake keep him covered. But a dacoit has his knife
at my throat!"
Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled. But his glance never wavered
from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched
his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.
I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed
but a few seconds. To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought
to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought:
the girl had betrayed us!
"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow
mask when we had entered.
"But my faithful servant followed you," he added. "I thank him.
The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
in a whistling voice.
"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely. "I warn you!"
Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
have captured one of my people, too. I congratulate you.
She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."
The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"
"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
You, I take it, know as little of mine. My Burmese friend and
Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
my steps. I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
Is it agreed?"
Smith hesitated. Then:
"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.
Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.
"Agreed. Shall I lead the way?"
"No!" rapped Smith. "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin,
with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."
"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
cover of Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit,
dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
a scene in that place.
"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
The man threw his knife upon the ground.
"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith. "He may have a second concealed."
The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty garments.
"Now search Fu-Manchu."
This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense
of revulsion from any human being. I shuddered, as though I
had touched a venomous reptile.
Smith drew down his revolver.
"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said. "No one could
dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance
of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it,
had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment.
Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he,
too, must have known.
The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.
Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise.
For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape,
my friend began shedding his coat, collar and waistcoat.
"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
"We have a poor chances but we are both fairly fit.
To-night, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."
We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few
men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.
At Smith's words I realized in a flash that such was to be
our fate to-night.
I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.
East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for. To the south
was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments,
we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose
on the night and was answered--was answered again.
"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits. Hopeless."
"Take the revolver," I cried. "Smith, it's--"
"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth. "A servant of the Crown
in the East makes his motto: `Keep your word, though it break
your neck!' I don't think we need fear it being used against us.
Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods."
So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.
It was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--
and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
was practically nil.
At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
decide our fate. The professional murderers who pursued us ran
like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell
upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming, knives.
For a long time neither of us looked back.
On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
Should I, too, look back? Yes. It was impossible to resist
the horrid fascination.
I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.
Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow
(or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.
More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings,
running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.
The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see,
even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance,
and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.
"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith. "We must make an attempt
to break into the empty cottage. Only chance."
I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
cannot speak. But I am confident that the next half-mile was done
in time that would not have disgraced a crack man. Not once again did
either of us look back. Yard upon yard we raced forward together.
My heart seemed to be bursting. My leg muscles throbbed with pain.
At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.
Once I stumbled.
"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
But I recovered myself. Bare feet pattered close upon our heels,
and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard
put to it by the killing pace we had made.
"Smith," I whispered, "look in front. Someone!"
As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself
from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.
It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,
or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open
the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.
It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
into the interior darkness. Flat upon the floor he lay, for as,
with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within,
I almost fell over his recumbent body.
Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open.
I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to. As I turned,
the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets,
his face the face of a demon leaped wildly through the gateway.
That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
accident my weak hands found the bolt. With the last ounce
of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--
as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel
and protruded above my head.
I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
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