The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

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"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
Weakly he grasped my hand. "My fault. I shouldn't have let, you come."

From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked
a long tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report.
And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.

One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone
to his account.

A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.

Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came
the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
have been upon our trail. The room was full of pungent smoke.
I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
turned towards me. Something familiar there was in that long,
gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.

It was my gray rain-coat.

"Karamaneh," I whispered.

And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely,
which sounded like "God bless her!"

The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint,
pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.

"I followed you," she said. "Did you not know I should follow you?
But I had to hide because of another who was following also.
I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."

She broke off and turned to Smith.

"This is your pistol," she said naively. "I found it in your bag.
Will you please take it!"

He took it without a word. Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.

"Now go. Hurry!" she said. "You are not safe yet."

"But you?" I asked.

"You have failed," she replied. "I must go back to him.
There is no other way."

Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous
escape from death, I opened the door. Coatless, disheveled figures,
my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.

Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men,
their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.
Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains.
If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers--a nature more
tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it.
Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she
had the heart of a child--this girl who could shoot so straight.

"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.
"Or the papers--"

"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness
of the cottage.

It was a singular situation. My very soul rebelled against it.
But what could we do?

"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.

"Hurry. I shall be suspected. Do you want him to kill me!"

We moved away. All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
faintly ahead. Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.

"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.

CHAPTER XVIII

TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task
at once useless and thankless. In its actual and in its dramatic
significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.
And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant
by "Sweet Sorrow."

There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood,
a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.
Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was
the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh. I sought to forget her.
I sought to remember her. Indeed, in the latter task I found
one more congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas
which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.

East and West may not intermingle. As a student of
world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny,
that truth. Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited,
she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands
of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers;
had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such
things to have passed.

But if it were so?

At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes
in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.

Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
persistently haunted my mind. But, always, my heart had an answer.
And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!--
who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past
the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute
sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--
no place--are excluded!

But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to
enlist sympathy for the recorder. The topic upon which, here,
I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me;
I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other.
Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let
us forget my brief digression.

It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned,
since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart
of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few;
places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.

Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from
the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.
Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts
he paused and turned to me.

"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."

A cab had dropped us at the corner. We both wore dark suits and fez
caps with black silk tassels. My complexion had been artificially
reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang
the bell beside the door.

Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously ugly.

Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic. As a linguist his
attainments were a constant source of surprise. The jargons
of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.
The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us
into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
Following this passage, and passing an inner door,
from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music,
we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting
for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor.
In a niche burned a common metal lamp.

The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man
with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy.
Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he appeared to be--
drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess. Placing his finger
upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.

We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us. The sounds of crude
music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
aside I gave a start of surprise.

Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
three of its walls. These divans were occupied by a motley company
of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.
Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.
A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying
the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon
a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their
hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.

Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated,
and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room.
A buzz of conversation arose.

"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain
class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith whispered.
"The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host.
I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank."

He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.

"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.

"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.
"It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group
use it at times."

Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spy-hole.
My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.

"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.

"S-sh!"

Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.
He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some
subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know
that a new arrival was entering. The hum of conversation died away,
and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies.
The newcomer was a woman, then. Fearful of making any noise I yet
managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.

A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.
She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across
her face. A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous
she looked in that place--and she had disappeared from sight,
having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately
beneath our point of vantage.

From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
surprising to those in the room as it was to me.

Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--
who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity,
but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a
midnight expedition of so unusual a character?

I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
His excitement was intense. Had his keener powers enabled him
to recognize the unknown?

A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume
which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.
Only one woman known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.

Then it was she!

At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded. Eagerly I bent forward.
Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery. Again the strange
perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right
nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no longer doubted--
recross the room and disappear.

"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith. "We must see him!
We must have him!"

He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.
It was empty. Down the passage he led, and we were almost come
to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came
rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him,
and was gone, slamming it fast.

I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained
the street it was empty. Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic.
A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.

"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's
name is the man to whom she brought the message?
I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot.
To think that we have had such an opportunity and have
thrown it away!"

Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction
of the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
and sharply clicking his teeth together. I, too, was very thoughtful.
Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant antagonist.
The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying
a moment too long might mean the victory of Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning
of the balance which a wise providence had adjusted between the white
and yellow races, was appalling.

To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences
at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be,
the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule,
it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretched out over London.
Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the civilized world.
Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions
whose fate he sought to command.

"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.
"What State secret is to be filched? What faithful servant
of the British Raj to be spirited away? Upon whom now has
Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"

"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary
of the Doctor's."

"I feel assured that she was, Petrie. Of the many whom this yellow
cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
The man's instructions were urgent. Witness his hasty departure.
Curse it!" He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his
left hand. "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.
To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation
of just such a meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!"
Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly
Circus, and had walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.
I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the off-front
wheel of a big Mercedes. Then the traffic was blocked, and we found
ourselves dangerously penned in amidst the press of vehicles.

Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers,
who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors,
and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London
policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath
of perfume became perceptible to me.

The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again,
and there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.
I could not pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew
that someone--someone who used that rare, fragrant essence--
was leaning from the window of the car.

"ANDAMAN--SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.

We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.

Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen
occupant of the car, had not detected the whispered words.
But I had no reason to doubt my senses, and I knew beyond
question that Fu-Manchu's lovely slave, Karamaneh, had been
within a yard of us, had recognized us, and had uttered
those words for our guidance.

On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering
what "ANDAMAN--SECOND" could possibly mean.

"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything--
the result of a race, for instance."

He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut mixture
into his briar. I could see that he had no intention of turning in.

"I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present
upon whom it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt,"
he said, "except ourselves."

We began methodically to go through the long list of names
which we had compiled and to review our elaborate notes.
When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day.
But sleep evaded me, and "ANDAMAN--SECOND" danced like a
mocking phantom through my brain.

Then I heard the telephone bell. I heard Smith speaking.

A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.

"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some
black business was afoot last night," he said. "And it was.
Within pistol-shot of us! Someone has got at Frank Norris West.
Inspector Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."

"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator--and inventor--"
"Of the West aero-torpedo--yes. He's been offering it to the English
War Office, and they have delayed too long."

I got out of bed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention
of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

Those words operated electrically. I do not know how long I was in dressing,
how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had 'phoned arrived,
how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey; but, in a nervous whirl,
these things slipped into the past, like the telegraph poles seen from
the window of an express, and, still in that tense state, we came upon
the scene of this newest outrage.

Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall
of his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver
in his hand.

The outer door had been forced by the police. They had
had to remove a piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.
A medical man was leaning over the recumbent figure in the striped
pajama suit, and Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching
him as Smith and I entered.

"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at
West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.
It isn't chloroform or anything of that nature.
He can safely be left to sleep it off, I think."

I agreed, after a brief examination.

"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth. "He rang up the Yard
about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.
Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall. When we got here his
front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up.
Nothing is disturbed."

"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.

"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"
replied the detective, "and that is locked all right. I think
he must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions.
But in case there was anything in what he mumbled (you could
hardly understand him) I thought it as well to send for you."

"Quite right," said Smith rapidly. His eyes shone like steel.
"Lay him on the bed, Inspector."

It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.

Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been
sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary
invasion mentioned by the drugged man. It was a small room--
the chambers were of that kind which are let furnished--and very neat.
A safe with a combination lock stood in a corner. The window was open
about a foot at the top. Smith tried the safe and found it fast.
He stood for a moment clicking his teeth together, by which I knew
him to be perplexed. He walked over to the window and threw it up.
We both looked out.

"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from
the court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder
with one of their bamboo rod arrangements. And, even if they could
get up there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--
for them to have fixed it from there."

Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an iron
bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he stooped,
with a sharp exclamation. Bending over his shoulder I saw what it was
that had attracted his attention.

Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a confused
series of marks--tracks call them what you will.

Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.

"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly. "Some kind of bird has been here,
and recently." Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.

"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.

Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.

"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."

He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.

"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.

"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.

He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping
before the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.

Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments,
only to return again to the bedroom.

"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.
West must be aroused."

Inspector Weymouth stared.

Smith turned to me impatiently. The doctor summoned by the police had gone.
"Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.

"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew
what drug he had taken."

My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon
a little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books
on a shelf near the bed. He uttered a triumphant exclamation.

"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
"It bears no label."

I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue
to the powder.

"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.

"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.

"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my notebook.
I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call up the nearest
chemist and procure the antidote.

During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious inventor,
a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.

"ANDAMAN--SECOND," he muttered. "Shall we find the key
to the riddle here, I wonder?"

Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.
I administered the powerful restorative, and although,
as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition,
the antidote operated successfully.

Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
with haggard eyes.

"The Chinamen! The Chinamen!" he muttered.

He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled,
and almost fell.

"It is all right," I said, supporting him. "I'm a doctor.
You have been unwell."

"Have the police come?" he burst out. "The safe--try the safe!"

"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth. "The safe is locked--
unless someone else knows the combination, there's nothing
to worry about."

"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe.
Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw with
a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts
and opened the safe.

He bent down, looking in.

In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.

"God!" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--"the plans are gone!"

CHAPTER XIX

I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.

"This is absolutely incredible!" he said. "There's only one door
to your chambers. We found it bolted from the inside."

"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.
"I bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."

"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.
The plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."

"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War Office,
and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and bolted the door.
I returned them to the safe and locked it. That it was still locked you
saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world knows the combination."

"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth. "It's magic! How was it done?
What happened last night, sir? What did you mean when you rang us up?"

Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.
He turned abruptly to the aviator.

"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely;
"and be as brief as you possibly can."

"I came in, as I said," explained West "about eleven o'clock and having
made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this morning,
I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."

"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.

"There was not," replied West. "I looked. I invariably do.
Almost immediately, I went to sleep."

"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.

Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.

"You're cute, Doctor," he said. "I took two. It's a bad habit,
but I can't sleep without. They are specially made up for me
by a firm in Philadelphia."

"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams,
and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--
shall never know, I suppose. But out of the dreamless void
a face came to me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.

"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows
that one is dreaming and seeks to awaken--to escape.
But a nightmare-like oppression held me. So I must lie
and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over me,
for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized
scar running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth,
and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.
I could look into the malignant, jaundiced eyes;
I could hear the dim whispering of the distorted mouth--
whispering that seemed to counsel something--something evil.
That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.
Then the wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede
until it became as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--
almost like a glutinous, liquid thing.

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