The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

S >> Sax Rohmer >> The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily
as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.

The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased,
culminated in a splintering crash. Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servant,
who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under
the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.
The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited,
my mind dully surveying, memories of all the threats which this
uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.

Then, abruptly, it ceased. Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door;
and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista
of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay.
Fu-Manchu spoke softly. His voice, its guttural note alternating
with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman. For he had just
perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and,
in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized
the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house--
the coming of those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese
doctor for the hangman!

"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy
of my attention than I had formerly supposed. A man who can solve
the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely
stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.
The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and
of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.
Therefore, gentlemen, you live--for the present!"

"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
You and all your yellow gang!"

"I trust not," was the placid reply. "Most of my people are safe:
some are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed
by different means. Ah!"

That last word was the only one indicative of excitement
which had yet escaped him. A disk of light danced among
the brilliant poison hues of the passages--but no sound reached us;
by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically.
It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,
and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear.
Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity
of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion--
to be spared the sight of that which ensued.

"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell
that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.
From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering
from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered
to us all.

"Logan!" he cried. "Logan! This way--HELP!"

But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed
to carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.

"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.
"It is fortunate for us all that it is so. This is my
observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy
an unique opportunity of studying fungology. I have already
drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the lycoperdon,> or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves
was charged with them. By a process of my own I have greatly
enhanced the value of the puff-ball in this respect.
Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject;
but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."

"Logan! Help! HELP! This way, man!"

Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.
Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.
A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore
an electric pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray
fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.
The mocking, lecture-room voice continued:

"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor. Do not be deceived by
its size. It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order empusa.> You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly--
which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold.
I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species.
Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue
amanita fungus!"

Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
suddenly silent. For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure horror.
FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress
through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which
Fu-Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths.
I knew, now, that Dr. Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist
the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias were
as children--and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking
into a valley of death.

Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.

Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like
things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought
them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.
A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or powdery--
arose in the cellar.

I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:

I must look.

The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim,
eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second.
A bright light sprang up--doubtless at the touch of the fiendish
being who now resumed speech:

"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!" Out there,
beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--
tearing their garments from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--
were become MANIACS!

"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,"
continued the wicked voice. "The air of the second cellar
being super-charged with oxygen, they immediately germinate.
Ah! it is a triumph! That process is the scientific triumph
of my life!"

Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof,
frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.
Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread
from the head to the, feet of those it touched; it enveloped
them as in glittering shrouds. . . .

"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement;
and I felt assured of something I had long suspected: that that magnificent,
perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac--though Smith would
never accept the theory.

"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman. "And I am
the god of destruction!"

CHAPTER XXVI

THE clammy touch of the mist revived me. The culmination of the scene
in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes
which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.
Now I knew that I was afloat on the river. I still was bound:
furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth,
and I was secured to a ring in the deck.

By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water;
by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the empurpled
face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.
For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.

We were aboard an electric launch. I heard the hated guttural
voice of Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm,
and my heart leaped to hear the voice that answered him.
It was that of Karamaneh. His triumph was complete.
Clearly his plans for departure were complete; his slaughter
of the police in the underground passages had been a final
reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
would have been incapable had he not known his escape from
the country to be assured.

What fate was in store for us? How would he avenge himself upon the girl
who had betrayed him to his enemies? What portion awaited those enemies?
He seemed to have formed the singular determination to smuggle me into China--
but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth, and in the case
of Nayland Smith?

All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.
Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.
Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway;
but through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.

The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.
The launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells.

A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon
us through the haze.

A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--
a voice which I knew. I felt Weymouth writhing impotently
beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew
that he, too, had recognized the voice.

It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch
was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!

"'Hoy! 'Hoy!"

I trembled. A feverish excitement claimed me. They were hailing us.
We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from
my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light
of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist.

I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my
companions were equally helpless. It was a desperate position.
Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random?
The light drew nearer.

"Launch, 'hoy!"

They had seen us! Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--
and our screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank
of darkness. Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.

"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness. "Port! Port!"

Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us
we were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward;
though of this I was unable to judge at the time.

On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.
Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us.
Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog.
The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash
of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode.
It was such a journey as I had taken once before,
early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril;
but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly
in Fu-Manchu's power.

A voice mumbled in my ear. I turned my bound-up face;
and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly
slipped the bandage from his mouth.

"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars,"
he whispered. "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife
and freed my ankles--"

Smith had kicked him with his bound feet. The detective slipped
the bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.
Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.
He was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists. He seated himself
on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.
Now, I could see her face--and the expression in her beautiful
eyes made me writhe.

Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible
in the dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.

"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in China.
You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry. Mr. Smith, I fear
you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you
to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.
Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."

He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him
in pitiful, abject terror.

"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged
with a rare culture. It is the link between the bacilli
and the fungi. You have seemed to display an undue interest
in the peach and pearl which render my Karamaneh so delightful,
In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes.
You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I
have planned for you whilst such distractions exist.
A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"

Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!

Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck--
and lay still. I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith
rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together.

Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat;
with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right.
It held the needle.

Now, I could look along, the length of the little craft, and, so far
as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--
the half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
the cellars. The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--
with so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone
broke the eerie stillness.

By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.
His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.
His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.
His breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly,
but Weymouth was palpably tiring.

The latter suddenly changed his tactics. By a supreme effort,
to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity
of the needle, he raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--
and pitched him sideways.

The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped,
a writhing mass, upon the port cushions. The launch heeled over,
and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.
For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--
fell back--and, bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!

The mist swallowed them up.

There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was one of them.
A chaos ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that the Burman,
forward, glanced back. Then the course of the launch was changed.
How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle
and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot
pretend to state.

With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued,
and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--
which was the last I saw of him.

Water began to wash aboard.

Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords
that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist,
and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility,
a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.

Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting. I think
his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.
Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.
A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I
saw her stir--when I saw her raise her hands to her head--
and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.

CHAPTER XXVII

WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her
stern settled down into the river. Where the mud-bank upon
which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea.
But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Smith stood looking out towards the river.

"My God!" he groaned. "My God!"

He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.

And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars
was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.

"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge,
and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny howling,
and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks--"

Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I
knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength.

Smith swallowed noisily.

"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.
"I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body
on the end of a grappling-iron!"

We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so nearly
as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight.
Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear
as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this
stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.

But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous
the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we
had matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.

There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.
A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
they should be lodged at a hotel.

"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
"to have the place patrolled night and day."

"You cannot suppose--"

"Petrie! I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my own
eyes I have seen him so!"

Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her
brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.
I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars
lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake.
Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out
the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds. . . .

From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.

"What am I? Does my poor history matter--to anyone?"
was her answer to questions respecting herself.

And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.

The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
numbered seven, we learned. As you, having followed me thus far,
will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.
Probably only one now remained in England. They had
lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor
(which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction,
the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.

Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts
of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters. He had employed the hulk
from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.

Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had
a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.
She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it,
and could give us no information respecting its character.
It had sailed for China.

"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"

"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."

"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger boat?"

"I cannot say what were his plans."

In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood,
we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us
of our fellow-worker.

Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
visited it. I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.

"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very unreal."

"I wish to God it had been!"

"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth. But your brother made a gallant finish.
If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his credit,
his life had been well spent."

James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.
Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint
little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees
which had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were,
was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England.
But another shadow lay upon it to-day--chilling, fearful.
An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying
malevolence had touched this home.

"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued Weymouth.
"What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river police heard
in the fog? And where are the bodies?"

Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.
Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose,
paused in his aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.

In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England
of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend
was more lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him.
His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare
and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue;
but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.
But I knew that he was as fit as ever.

"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.
"She and her brother were for some time in the household of
Dr. Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies,
was a slave."

Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely
veiled distrust. "You don't look as though you had come
from China, miss," he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.

I do not come from China, replied Karamaneh. "My father
was a pure Bedawee. But my history does not matter."
(At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this
her musical accent added force.) "When your brave brother,
Inspector Weymouth, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up
by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned needle in his hand.
The laughter meant that the needle had done its work.
Your brother had become mad!"

Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion. "What was on the needle?"
he asked huskily.

"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder,"
she answered. "It produces madness, but not always death."

"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in complete
possession of his senses. At the time of the encounter we must have been
some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was impenetrable."

"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies
have been recovered?"

"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point
are not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."

There was a faint sound from the room above. The news of that
tragic happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated
poor Mrs. Weymouth.

"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She doesn't
know about--the poisoned needle. What kind of fiend was this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment. "John never told
me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the papers. What was he?
Who was he?"

Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.

"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many generations.
He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he willed,
could have revolutionized science. There is a superstition in some
parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar conditions
(one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an evil spirit
of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born infant.
All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the genealogy
of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this.
But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old
Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I have mentioned
prevailed at his birth!"

Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly,
and quite mirthlessly.

"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked. "I suppose my labors are finished;
but I am far from triumphant. Is there any improvement in
Mrs. Weymouth's condition?"

"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious
state since the news came. No one had any idea she would
take it so. At one time we were afraid her brain was going.
She seemed to have delusions."

Smith spun round upon Weymouth.

"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17