The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

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I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful
eyes of Karamaneh! She--whom I had seen in so many guises--
was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much
of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.

She glanced about her apprehensively.

"Quick! Come round the corner. I must speak to you," she said,
her musical voice thrilling with excitement.

I never was quite master of myself in her presence.
He must have been a man of ice who could have been,
I think for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity;
she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a woman.
Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
have risked much to save her from it.

As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:

"I am in distress. You have often asked me to enable you to capture
Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."

I could scarcely believe that I heard right.

"Your brother--" I began.

She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.

"You are a doctor," she said. "I want you to come and see him now."

"What! Is he in London?"

"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."

"And you would have me ---"

"Accompany me there, yes."

Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against
trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.
Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling
eastward in a closed cab. Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I
turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression
in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there
was something else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.
The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,
the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about
the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.
In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world
of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.

I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared
the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,
and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down
a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,
hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.
But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze
of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,
so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this
girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character
was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask
the cunning of a serpent.

I spoke to her.

"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.

The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through
a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.
The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.
I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow
of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.

For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors
of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume
which now I had come to associate with her. Absolute darkness
was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she,
was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led
along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.
A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely
furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp
which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean
of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow
richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.

Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood
listening intently for a moment.

The silence was unbroken.

Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two
tiny bright eyes looked up at me. Peering closely, I succeeded
in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset. "This way," whispered Karamaneh.

Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more
unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration
of prudence could now be of avail.

The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted. Following the direction
of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend
as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.
Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked
down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist
within many a mile of that district.

The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into
which first we had come. Here, as there, piles of cushions formed
splashes of gaudy color about the floor. Three lamps hung by chains
from the ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.
One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases containing
chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications
of Dr. Fu-Manchu's pursuits, whilst close against another lay
the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--
a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy.
In the light of a lamp which hung directly above him, his olive
face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--
save that the girl's coloring was more delicate. He had black,
curly hair, which stood out prominently against the white covering
upon which he lay, his hands crossed upon his breast.

Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.
The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer,
for here, in East-End London, was a true magician's palace,
lacking not its beautiful slave lacking not its enchanted prince!

"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.

We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.
Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair
and whispering to him lovingly. I, too, bent over him;
and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's eyes as she
watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief examination.

Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
shell held no spark of life. But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands,
and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined
must be her native language.

Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me,
read the truth in my eyes, and rose from her knees,
stood rigidly upright, and clutched me tremblingly.

"He is not dead--he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me
as a child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.
"Oh, tell me he is not ---"

"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."

"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
half distraught. "You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.
You do not understand ---"

She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome
face of the boy to me. It was pitiful; it was uncanny.
But sorrow for the girl predominated in my mind.

Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.

"Quick!" Karamaneh had me by the arm. "Up! He has returned!"

She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.
The shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound
of our tread, or certainly we must have been detected by the man
who entered the room we had just quitted.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

Yellow-robbed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.

Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.

"Watch!" she whispered. "Watch!"

Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I
had pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case,
took out a long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it,
into a graduated glass, he poured some drops of an amber liquid
wholly unfamiliar to me. I watched him with all my eyes,
and noted how high the liquid rose in the measure.
He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
made an injection.

Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible,
and with an awe which any other physician who had examined
Aziz must have felt, I admitted him a miracle-worker. For
as I watched, all but breathless, the dead came to life!
The glow of health crept upon the olive cheek--the boy moved--
he raised his hands above his head--he sat up, supported by
the Chinese doctor!

Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell. A hideous yellow man with a scarred
face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes,
and a flask of red wine.

As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.
My heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand
over hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.

"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!
But without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me. How can I leave him
when he holds the life of Aziz in his hand?"

"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"

"I cannot tell you," she replied. "I do not know. It is something
in the wine. In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.
But see." And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial
half filled with the amber liquid.

"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket. "When will be the best
time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"

"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
hurriedly from the room. "He is going away to-night to the north;
but you must not come to-night. Quick! Quick! Along the passage.
He may call me at any moment."

So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of Karamaneh,
I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant perfumes
of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.

CHAPTER XXII

"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
"This time we are sure of our ally--"

"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.

"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.
"I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
he added grimly.

Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between
his teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.
The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness
of his gray eyes.

"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me across
his shoulder--"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest weapons in
the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be turned against him.
That day has dawned."

"We must await word from her."

"Quite so."

He knocked out his pipe on the grate. Then:

"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"

"Not the slightest. And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."

Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl,
and dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.

"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said. "I am itching to get to work.
Yet, a false move, and--" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring
from the window.

"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.

Smith made no reply.

"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."

My friend did not turn. But:

"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.

"In the wine, yes."

Silence fell. My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu held
in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her brother,
suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
the mandates of the cunning Chinaman? What perverted genius was his!
If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living men,
had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the name
of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the history of healing.

Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed me.

"Look up the next train to L--!" he rapped. "To L--? What--?"

"There's the Bradshaw. We haven't a minute to waste."

In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his
eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for action--
a portentous truth suddenly grasped.

"One in half-an-hour--the last."

"We must catch it."

No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown
and smoking without intermission.

Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi
upon the rank. Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--
all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
movements in times of important action.

He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
of his ear.

"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there
is a little problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.
Did you bring the things I mentioned?"

"Yes."

Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
Smith said: "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"

"Undoubtedly," I replied.

"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"

"Possibly not. But Von Homber has been dead for three years."

"Three years, is it?"

"Roughly."

"Ah!"

We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor
compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully
to inspect the occupants of all the others, from the engine
to the guard's van. He was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned
me to keep out of sight in the corner of the compartment.
In fact, his behavior had me bursting with curiosity.
The train having started:

"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.
I am simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.
The idea upon which I am acting does not seem to have struck you.
I wish it had. The fact would argue in favor of its being, sound."

"At present I am hopelessly mystified."

"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.
But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at
the reason for this sudden journey. I shall be distinctly
encouraged if you succeed."

But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was
unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more.
The train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with
the stationmaster in making some mysterious arrangements.
At L--, however, their object became plain, for a high-power car
was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the greater
number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.

Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line
of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.

"Stradwick Hall," said Smith. "The home of Lord Southery.
We are first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."

Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.

CHAPTER XXIII

"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"

The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery)
puffed at his cigar indignantly. Nayland Smith, whose restless
pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote
but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open
hearth with the solicitor.

"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced
upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze. "Save for the heir,
who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin
of Lord Southery to consider. The word rests with you.
If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none
whose susceptibilities will suffer--"

"My own, sir!"

"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become
a murderer, Mr. Henderson."

The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered
over him menacingly.

"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.
"If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood,
I do not doubt what my answer had been. Why do you hesitate?
Why do you experience this feeling of horror?"

Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire. His constitutionally
ruddy face was pale.

"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith. We have not the necessary powers--"

Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch
from his pocket and glancing at it.

"I am vested with the necessary powers. I will give you
a written order, sir."

"The proceeding savors of paganism. Such a course might be admissible
in China, in Burma--"

"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles? Do you suppose that,
granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance
such a thing if be doubted the necessity?"

Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.

"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended
the ceremony to-day. They--"

"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.
"Good God! why do you delay?"

"You wish it to be kept secret?"

"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.
We require no other witnesses. We are answerable only
to our consciences."

The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.

"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so
momentous a decision in so short a time," he confessed.
But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision.
As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators,
hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke
to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in
the garden of England. Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves.
The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber.
Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him),
the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene;
and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.
Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.

As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith.
His face twitched oddly.

"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."

"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.

Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent
up within that lean frame. He stood motionless, listening--and I
knew for whom he listened. He peered about him to right and left--
and I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see.

Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from
the aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--
or so it seemed.

By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery
had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going;
by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone
to their last resting-place.

To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.
No branch, no leaf, intervened. Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.
The keys which he carried rattled in his hand.

"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.

Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into
the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.
He turned to the solicitor.

"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly. "It is your plain
duty to your client."

"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson,
and opened the door.

We descended the steps. The air beneath was damp and chill.
It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was
not wholly physical.

Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer
whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support.
Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.

With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend
and myself set to work. In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken
labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.
It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.

At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
the intruding light. Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
when he raised the lantern. Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--
but not until his work was finished.

That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely--
professional zeal. For, under conditions which, in the event
of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant
inquiry by the British Medical Association, I was about
to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician
of the white races.

Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or
any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible.
But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry, or what any one
of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me. Yet so
profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was
a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.
I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--
though blindly--into the FUTURE of medical science.

So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead. Unhesitatingly, I
would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.
The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests
of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels,
would serve the yellow group better than his death. The second,
I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.

From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me,
I charged the needle syringe. I made the injection, and waited.

"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith. "It seems incredible
that he can have survived for three days without food.
Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week."

Mr. Henderson groaned.

Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.

A second passed; another; a third. In the fourth the miracle began.
Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.
It came in waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing
of the awakened heart; which swept fuller and stronger;
which filled and quickened the chilled body.

As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of
the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up,
looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back.
"My God!" cried Smith.

"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice
had assumed a professional tone. "A little brandy from my flask
is all that is necessary now."

"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.

Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.

"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."

He extinguished the light.

I supported Lord Southery. "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
"Where am I? Oh, God! what has happened?"

I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling
coat about him. The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we
had reclosed but not relocked. Now, as I upheld the man whom
literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.
To aid Henderson I could make no move. Smith was breathing hard beside me.
I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects
might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted condition.

Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light,
touching the last stone of the stairway.

A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu
stood at the head of the stairs. Although I could not see my friend,
I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
and I reached into my pocket for mine.

At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.
It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.
Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door,
his capture was imminent.

Someone was descending the steps.

In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery,
I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known.

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