The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
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Sax Rohmer >> The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
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"Then what has become of the mummy?"
Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
"Look at Strozza's face."
He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles,
the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--
suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent. I pulled aside
the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective,
carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other,
and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower teeth.
There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been
tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from
the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of
the creeping, plant, swept constantly through the open window.
Inspector Weymouth carefully relighted his cigar.
"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said. "Strozza, knowing Sir
Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside.
Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the conservatory--"
"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there
for some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"
"Suppose we say the mummy?"
Weymouth laughed uneasily.
"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without
opening the door or the window killed Strozza."
"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay concealed,"
Smith continued. "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. Fu-Manchu has employed
an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate.
What blind force--what terrific agent of death--had he confined
in that sarcophagus!"
"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.
"If you are correct, his power indeed is more than human."
Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.
He surveyed me curiously.
"Can you doubt it? The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely
is sufficient. Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group,
though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.
He is unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part
was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a
hidden enemy, he was at work here. Strozza's opening the sarcophagus
clearly spoiled the scheme."
"And led to the death--"
"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes. I am at a loss to account for that."
"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor--
Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining
the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.
It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge,
he turned it over.
"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid. Hallo!"
He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine,
and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
"Ugh! it has a disgusting smell."
I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
voice sounded outside in the hall. The door was thrown open,
and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather,
wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.
"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly. "I warned you!
And see, you have had a very narrow escape."
Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor,
then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.
He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.
"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?
Tell me--quickly."
In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--
or so much as he knew of them. Sir Lionel Barton listened,
sitting quite still the while--an unusual repose in a man
of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.
"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished;
and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.
"I was wrong to submit him to the temptation. God knows what
Kwee was doing in hiding. Perhaps he had come to murder me,
as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe.
But--I don't think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor."
He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
Smith stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew
of my absence. I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"--
again he looked toward the mummy case--"the tomb of Mekara;
and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.
He begged me not to open it."
Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
"One," he replied at last, "which amused me--at the time. I must inform
you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence
in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria--
was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the Pharaoh of the Exodus;
in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses.
I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me
with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi,
the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me."
We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret,
the tomb of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.
It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot--
these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley
of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him
for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he was found dead,
apparently strangled, beside it. The matter was hushed up
by the Egyptian Government. Rembold could not explain why.
But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
A silence fell.
The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly,
coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
"For two days, I believe. I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith,
but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts
respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God
that I did not see. . .whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face. "I am glad you
did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara
has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus,
Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life.
He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel.
He will not fall twice."
CHAPTER XII
IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry
at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle.
And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had frightened me.
I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted down
the following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How had the murderer
escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist
a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
he had said only that morning.
"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.
For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain
that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason
it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.
Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep
to the FACTS which are established."
I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
pipe in hand. The house was quite still, for my landlady
and all the small household were out.
Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
door open. In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer,
took out my revolver, and stood up.
There WAS a sound. Someone or something was creeping upstairs
in the dark!
Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it. But the rustling
sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.
I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors
at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
"Who's there?" I cried. "Answer, or I fire!"
"Ah! no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical. "Put it down--
that pistol. Quick! I must speak to you."
The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped
in a hooded cloak. My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence,
looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--
if her own statement could be credited, slave. On two occasions
this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most
profound mysteries of the case, had risked--I cannot say what;
unnameable punishment, perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases
from a terrible death. For what was she come now?
Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her,
and watching me with great passionate eyes.
"How--" I began.
But she shook her head impatiently.
"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must arrange
to replace the lock."
She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders.
"I have come again to ask you to take me away from him," she said simply.
And she lifted her face to me.
Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
Have I said that she was beautiful? It can convey no faint
conception of her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine,
she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.
In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man
who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
"I will see that you are placed under proper protection,"
I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.
"It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England.
You are a free agent, or you could not be here now.
Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud
of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress. "No?
He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia,
the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer,
the shame. Bah!"
How beautiful she was in her indignation!
"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that
to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian,
who is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?"
She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes,
half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer
silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape;
wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled
gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic
setting of my rooms.
"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss,"
she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.
"You see me as I am." Her garments exhaled a faint perfume,
and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her.
I looked into the challenging eyes.
"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secrets
of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--
seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.
I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon.
I have known the lash myself. Death! What does it matter?"
She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again,
and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful
to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type
of beauty, might have been a cultured European.
"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.
Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is
my master I will never betray him. Tear me from him--by force,
do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.
Ah! but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities'--
your police. Police! Ah, I have said enough."
A clock across the common began to strike. The girl
started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.
There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.
"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you
never understand and release me from him! I must go.
Already I have remained too long. Listen. Go out without delay.
Remain out--at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."
"And Nayland Smith?"
"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my lips?
You are in danger--you hear me, in danger! Go away from here to-night."
She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she turned,
stamping her foot passionately.
"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.
Be warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something
that sounded like a sob.
I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer,
Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps paltering down the stairs, I heard
her open and close the door--the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key.
Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key
grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.
"Did you see her?" I began.
But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told
him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
"How can she have passed through London in that costume?"
I cried in bewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture
into the familiar cracked briar.
"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said;
"and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
You should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we
have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let
her go free."
"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
me a warning. She disarms me."
"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know
the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.
She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!
If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar,
hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you
everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with
the reflection that speech was forced from her. I am not joking;
it is so, I assure you. And she would adore you for your savagery,
deeming you forceful and strong!"
"Smith," I said, "be serious. You know what her warning meant before."
"I can guess what it means now," he rapped. "Hallo!"
Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
"No one at home?" said my friend. "I will go. I think I know
what it is."
A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.
I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any
evidence which subsequently he found. This will be fragments
of the mummy."
"What! You think the mummy was abstracted?"
"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else
was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.
A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use
of the rubber stopper becomes evident--ventilation. How this
person killed Strozza I have yet to learn."
"Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the green mist?"
Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.
Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed.
It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach
a fictitious importance."
He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop
in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.
Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining,
such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached
to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid
at once raised and tilted it.
Then happened a singular thing.
Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--
an oily vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less,
born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor,
came to me.
"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life!
Fu-Manchu sent that box!" I threw my arms round him.
As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.
I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.
We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light,
I saw that Smith's tanned face was unusually drawn,
and touched with pallor.
"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects
identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove
it to be something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!
It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching
powder works. We have been blind--I particularly. Don't you see?
There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough
of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"
Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme?
I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned,
and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string--after Sir
Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."
"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said;
"two and a half times heavier than air. You can pour it from
jar to jar like a liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.
In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points
of difference would not interest you. The sarcophagus would
have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed,
with no clew remaining--except the smell."
"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course,
was unfamiliar with it. You may remember that you were
prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel?
The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have
drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff,
capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee
was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught
to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the floor now.
I will go and open both windows."
Nayland raised his haggard face.
"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton,"
he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude, Petrie?--
contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is justified.
I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is by no wit
of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
CHAPTER XIII
I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger
things to which I awakened. Since, out of a blank--a void--this vision
burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble.
It was thus:
I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.
My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness
was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising
from my burning body.
This, I thought, was death.
Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin
and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.
Panting, but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.
I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me
rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.
I wondered why I could not see the windows. The horrible idea
flashed to my mind that I was become blind!
Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.
I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some
kind of incense.
Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.
It grew steadily in brilliance. It spread like a bluish-red stain--
like a liquid. It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
But this was not my room! Nor was it any room known to me.
It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
kind of awe such as I never had known: the awe of walled vastness.
Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound. Its hugeness had
a distinct NOTE.
Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible.
These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons;
and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the
increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its
glittering coils more closely with those of another.
The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile.
And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they
seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design--stealthily.
At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table
with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.
It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms,
and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined,
with instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor,
forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.
A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from
the ceiling-which was so lofty that, following the chains upward,
my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.
In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat
behind this table. The light from the swinging lamp fell fully
upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble
of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow.
From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke
writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.
From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare
fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
I had eyes only for him.
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