The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu

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"He is one of what we used to call in New York, the Seven Group."

Smith began to tug at the lobe of his left ear, reflectively, as I saw
out of the corner of my eye.

"The Seven Group!" he mused. "That is significant. I always suspected
that Dr. Fu-Manchu and the notorious Seven Group were one and the
same. Go on, Burke."

"Well, sir," the man continued, more calmly, "the lieutenant--"

"The lieutenant!" began Smith; then: "Oh! of course; Slattin used to
be a police lieutenant!"

"Well, sir, he--Mr. Slattin--had a sort of hold on this Singapore
Charlie, and two years ago, when he first met him, he thought that
with his aid he was going to pull off the biggest thing of his life--"

"Forestall me, in fact?"

"Yes, sir; but you got in first, with the big raid and spoiled it."

Smith nodded grimly, glancing at the Scotland Yard man, who returned
his nod with equal grimness.

"A couple of months ago," resumed Burke, "he met Charlie again down
East, and the Chinaman introduced him to a girl--some sort of an
Egyptian girl."

"Go on!" snapped Smith--"I know her."

"He saw her a good many times--and she came here once or twice. She
made out that she and Singapore Charlie were prepared to give away the
boss of the Yellow gang--"

"For a price, of course?"

"I suppose so," said Burke; "but I don't know. I only know that I
warned him."

"H'm!" muttered Smith. "And now, what took place to-night?"

"He had an appointment here with the girl," began Burke

"I know all that," interrupted Smith. "I merely want to know, what
took place after the telephone call?"

"Well, he told me to wait up, and I was dozing in the next room to the
study--the dining-room--when the 'phone bell aroused me. I heard the
lieutenant--Mr. Slattin, coming out, and I ran out too, but only in
time to see him taking his hat from the rack--"

"But he wears no hat!"

"He never got it off the peg! Just as he reached up to take it, he
gave a most frightful scream, and turned around like lightning as
though some one had attacked him from behind!"

"There was no one else in the hall?"

"No one at all. I was standing down there outside the dining-room just
by the stairs, but he didn't turn in my direction, he turned and
looked right behind him--where there was no one--nothing. His cries
were frightful." Burke's voice broke, and he shuddered feverishly.
"Then he made a rush for the front door. It seemed as though he had
not seen me. He stood there screaming; but, before I could reach him,
he fell. . . ."

Nayland Smith fixed a piercing gaze upon Burke.

"Is that all you know?" he demanded slowly.

"As God is my judge, sir, that's all I know, and all I saw. There was
no living thing near him when he met his death."

"We shall see," muttered Smith. He turned to me--"What killed him?" he
asked, shortly.

"Apparently, a minute wound on the left wrist," I replied, and,
stooping, I raised the already cold hand in mine.

A tiny, inflamed wound showed on the wrist; and a certain puffiness
was becoming observable in the injured hand and arm. Smith bent down
and drew a quick, sibilant breath.

"You know what this is, Petrie?" he cried.

"Certainly. It was too late to employ a ligature and useless to inject
ammonia. Death was practically instantaneous. His heart . . ."

There came a loud knocking and ringing.

"Carter!" cried Smith, turning to the detective, "open that door to no
one--no one. Explain who I am--"

"But if it is the inspector?--"

"I said, open the door to no one!" snapped Smith.

"Burke, stand exactly where you are! Carter, you can speak to whoever
knocks, through the letter-box. Petrie, don't move for your life! It
may be here, in the hallway!--"

CHAPTER IX

THE CLIMBER

Our search of the house of Abel Slattin ceased only with the coming of
the dawn, and yielded nothing but disappointment. Failure followed
upon failure; for, in the gray light of the morning, our own quest
concluded, Inspector Weymouth returned to report that the girl,
Karamaneh, had thrown him off the scent.

Again he stood before me, the big, burly friend of old and dreadful
days, a little grayer above the temples, which I set down for a record
of former horrors, but deliberate, stoical, thorough, as ever. His
blue eyes melted in the old generous way as he saw me, and he gripped
my hand in greeting.

"Once again," he said, "your dark-eyed friend has been too clever for
me, Doctor. But the track as far as I could follow, leads to the old
spot. In fact,"--he turned to Smith, who, grim-faced and haggard,
looked thoroughly ill in that gray light--"I believe Fu-Manchu's lair
is somewhere near the former opium-den of Shen-Yan--'Singapore
Charlie.'"

Smith nodded.

"We will turn our attention in that direction," he replied, "at a very
early date."

Inspector Weymouth looked down at the body of Abel Slattin.

"How was it done?" he asked softly.

"Clumsily for Fu-Manchu," I replied. "A snake was introduced into the
house by some means--"

"By Karamaneh!" rapped Smith.

"Very possibly by Karamaneh," I continued firmly. "The thing has
escaped us."

"My own idea," said Smith, "is that it was concealed about his
clothing. When he fell by the open door it glided out of the house. We
must have the garden searched thoroughly by daylight."

"He"--Weymouth glanced at that which lay upon the floor--"must be
moved; but otherwise we can leave the place untouched, clear out the
servants, and lock the house up."

"I have already given orders to that effect," answered Smith. He spoke
wearily and with a note of conscious defeat in his voice. "Nothing has
been disturbed;"--he swept his arm around comprehensively--"papers and
so forth you can examine at leisure."

Presently we quitted that house upon which the fateful Chinaman had
set his seal, as the suburb was awakening to a new day. The clank of
milk-cans was my final impression of the avenue to which a dreadful
minister of death had come at the bidding of the death lord. We left
Inspector Weymouth in charge and returned to my rooms, scarcely
exchanging a word upon the way.

Nayland Smith, ignoring my entreaties, composed himself for slumber in
the white cane chair in my study. About noon he retired to the
bathroom, and returning, made a pretense of breakfast; then resumed
his seat in the cane armchair. Carter reported in the afternoon, but
his report was merely formal. Returning from my round of professional
visits at half past five, I found Nayland Smith in the same position;
and so the day waned into evening, and dusk fell uneventfully.

In the corner of the big room by the empty fireplace, Nayland Smith
lay, with his long, lean frame extended in the white cane chair. A
tumbler, from which two straws protruded, stood by his right elbow,
and a perfect continent of tobacco smoke lay between us, wafted toward
the door by the draught from an open window. He had littered the
hearth with matches and tobacco ash, being the most untidy smoker I
have ever met; and save for his frequent rapping-out of his pipe bowl
and perpetual striking of matches, he had shown no sign of activity
for the past hour. Collarless and wearing an old tweed jacket, he had
spent the evening, as he had spent the day, in the cane chair, only
quitting it for some ten minutes, or less, to toy with dinner.

My several attempts at conversation had elicited nothing but growls;
therefore, as dusk descended, having dismissed my few patients, I
busied myself collating my notes upon the renewed activity of the
Yellow Doctor, and was thus engaged when the 'phone bell disturbed me.
It was Smith who was wanted, however; and he went out eagerly, leaving
me to my task.

At the end of a lengthy conversation, he returned from the 'phone and
began, restlessly, to pace the room. I made a pretense of continuing
my labors, but covertly I was watching him. He was twitching at the
lobe of his left ear, and his face was a study in perplexity. Abruptly
he burst out:

"I shall throw the thing up, Petrie! Either I am growing too old to
cope with such an adversary as Fu-Manchu, or else my intellect has
become dull. I cannot seem to think clearly or consistently. For the
Doctor, this crime, this removal of Slattin, is clumsy--unfinished.
There are two explanations. Either he, too, is losing his old cunning
or he has been interrupted!"

"Interrupted!"

"Take the facts, Petrie,"--Smith clapped his hands upon my table and
bent down, peering into my eyes--"is it characteristic of Fu-Manchu to
kill a man by the direct agency of a snake and to implicate one of his
own damnable servants in this way?"

"But we have found no snake!"

"Karamaneh introduced one in some way. Do you doubt it?"

"Certainly Karamaneh visited him on the evening of his death, but you
must be perfectly well aware that even if she had been arrested, no
jury could convict her."

Smith resumed his restless pacings up and down.

"You are very useful to me, Petrie," he replied; "as a counsel for
the defense you constantly rectify my errors of prejudice. Yet I am
convinced that our presence at Slattin's house last night prevented
Fu-Manchu from finishing off this little matter as he had designed to
do."

"What has given you this idea?"

"Weymouth is responsible. He has rung me up from the Yard. The
constable on duty at the house where the murder was committed, reports
that some one, less than an hour ago, attempted to break in."

"Break in!"

"Ah! you are interested? I thought the circumstance illuminating,
also!"

"Did the officer see this person?"

"No; he only heard him. It was some one who endeavored to enter by the
bathroom window, which, I am told, may be reached fairly easily by an
agile climber."

"The attempt did not succeed?"

"No; the constable interrupted, but failed to make a capture or even
to secure a glimpse of the man."

We were both silent for some moments; then:

"What do you propose to do?" I asked.

"We must not let Fu-Manchu's servants know," replied Smith, "but
to-night I shall conceal myself in Slattin's house and remain there
for a week or a day--it matters not how long--until that attempt is
repeated. Quite obviously, Petrie, we have overlooked something which
implicates the murderer with the murder! In short, either by accident,
by reason of our superior vigilance, or by the clumsiness of his plans,
Fu-Manchu for once in an otherwise blameless career, has left a clue!"

CHAPTER X

THE CLIMBER RETURNS

In utter darkness we groped our way through into the hallway of
Slattin's house, having entered, stealthily, from the rear; for Smith
had selected the study as a suitable base of operations. We reached it
without mishap, and presently I found myself seated in the very chair
which Karamaneh had occupied; my companion took up a post just within
the widely opened door.

So we commenced our ghostly business in the house of the murdered man
--a house from which, but a few hours since, his body had been
removed. This was such a vigil as I had endured once before, when,
with Nayland Smith and another, I had waited for the coming of one of
Fu-Manchu's death agents.

Of all the sounds which, one by one, now began to detach themselves
from the silence, there was a particular sound, homely enough at
another time, which spoke to me more dreadfully than the rest. It was
the ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece; and I thought how this
sound must have been familiar to Abel Slattin, how it must have formed
part and parcel of his life, as it were, and how it went on now--tick-
tick-tick-tick--whilst he, for whom it had ticked, lay unheeding--
would never heed it more.

As I grew more accustomed to the gloom, I found myself staring at his
office chair; once I found myself expecting Abel Slattin to enter the
room and occupy it. There was a little China Buddha upon the bureau in
one corner, with a gilded cap upon its head, and as some reflection of
the moonlight sought out this little cap, my thoughts grotesquely
turned upon the murdered man's gold tooth.

Vague creakings from within the house, sounds as though of stealthy
footsteps upon the stair, set my nerves tingling; but Nayland Smith
gave no sign, and I knew that my imagination was magnifying these
ordinary night sounds out of all proportion to their actual
significance. Leaves rustled faintly outside the window at my back: I
construed their sibilant whispers into the dreaded name--Fu-Manchu-
Fu-Manchu--Fu-Manchu!

So wore on the night; and, when the ticking clock hollowly boomed the
hour of one, I almost leaped out of my chair, so highly strung were my
nerves, and so appallingly did the sudden clangor beat upon them.
Smith, like a man of stone, showed no sign. He was capable of so
subduing his constitutionally high-strung temperament, at times, that
temporarily he became immune from human dreads. On such occasions he
would be icily cool amid universal panic; but, his object
accomplished, I have seen him in such a state of collapse, that utter
nervous exhaustion is the only term by which I can describe it.

Tick-tick-tick-tick went the clock, and, with my heart still thumping
noisily in my breast, I began to count the tickings; one, two, three,
four, five, and so on to a hundred, and from one hundred to many
hundreds.

Then, out from the confusion of minor noises, a new, arresting sound
detached itself. I ceased my counting; no longer I noted the tick-tick
of the clock, nor the vague creakings, rustlings and whispers. I saw
Smith, shadowly, raise his hand in warning--in needless warning, for I
was almost holding my breath in an effort of acute listening.

From high up in the house this new sound came from above the topmost
room, it seemed, up under the roof; a regular squeaking, oddly
familiar, yet elusive. Upon it followed a very soft and muffled thud;
then a metallic sound as of a rusty hinge in motion; then a new
silence, pregnant with a thousand possibilities more eerie than any
clamor.

My mind was rapidly at work. Lighting the topmost landing of the house
was a sort of glazed trap, evidently set in the floor of a loft-like
place extending over the entire building. Somewhere in the red-tiled
roof above, there presumably existed a corresponding skylight or
lantern.

So I argued; and, ere I had come to any proper decision, another
sound, more intimate, came to interrupt me.

This time I could be in no doubt; some one was lifting the trap above
the stairhead--slowly, cautiously, and all but silently. Yet to my
ears, attuned to trifling disturbances, the trap creaked and groaned
noisily.

Nayland Smith waved to me to take a stand on the other side of the
opened door--behind it, in fact, where I should be concealed from the
view of any one descending the stair.

I stood up and crossed the floor to my new post.

A dull thud told of the trap fully raised and resting upon some
supporting joist. A faint rustling (of discarded garments, I told
myself) spoke to my newly awakened, acute perceptions, of the visitor
preparing to lower himself to the landing. Followed a groan of
woodwork submitted to sudden strain--and the unmistakable pad of bare
feet upon the linoleum of the top corridor.

I knew now that one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's uncanny servants had gained the
roof of the house by some means, had broken through the skylight and
had descended by means of the trap beneath on to the landing.

In such a tensed-up state as I cannot describe, nor, at this hour
mentally reconstruct, I waited for the creaking of the stairs which
should tell of the creature's descent.

I was disappointed. Removed scarce a yard from me as he was, I could
hear Nayland Smith's soft, staccato breathing; but my eyes were all
for the darkened hallway, for the smudgy outline of the stair-rail
with the faint patterning in the background which, alone, indicated
the wall.

It was amid an utter silence, unheralded by even so slight a sound as
those which I had acquired the power of detecting--that I saw the
continuity of the smudgy line of stair-rail to be interrupted.

A dark patch showed upon it, just within my line of sight, invisible
to Smith on the other side of the doorway, and some ten or twelve
stairs up.

No sound reached me, but the dark patch vanished and reappeared three
feet lower down.

Still I knew that this phantom approach must be unknown to my
companion--and I knew that it was impossible for me to advise him of
it unseen by the dreaded visitor.

A third time the dark patch--the hand of one who, ghostly, silent, was
creeping down into the hallway--vanished and reappeared on a level
with my eyes. Then a vague shape became visible; no more than a blur
upon the dim design of the wall-paper . . . and Nayland Smith got his
first sight of the stranger.

The clock on the mantelpiece boomed out the half-hour.

At that, such was my state (I blush to relate it) I uttered a faint
cry!

It ended all secrecy--that hysterical weakness of mine. It might have
frustrated our hopes; that it did not do so was in no measure due to
me. But in a sort of passionate whirl, the ensuing events moved
swiftly.

Smith hesitated not one instant. With a panther-like leap he hurled
himself into the hall.

"The lights, Petrie!" he cried--"the lights! The switch is near the
street-door!"

I clenched my fists in a swift effort to regain control of my
treacherous nerves, and, bounding past Smith, and past the foot of the
stair, I reached out my hand to the switch, the situation of which,
fortunately, I knew.

Around I came, in response to a shrill cry from behind me--an inhuman
cry, less a cry than the shriek of some enraged animal. . . .

With his left foot upon the first stair, Nayland Smith stood, his lean
body bent perilously backward, his arms rigidly thrust out, and his
sinewy fingers gripping the throat of an almost naked man--a man whose
brown body glistened unctuously, whose shaven head was apish low,
whose bloodshot eyes were the eyes of a mad dog! His teeth, upper and
lower, were bared; they glistened, they gnashed, and a froth was on
his lips. With both his hands, he clutched a heavy stick, and once--
twice, he brought it down upon Nayland Smith's head!

I leaped forward to my friend's aid; but as though the blows had been
those of a feather, he stood like some figure of archaic statuary, nor
for an instant relaxed the death grip which he had upon his
adversary's throat.

Thrusting my way up the stairs, I wrenched the stick from the hand of
the dacoit--for in this glistening brown man, I recognized one of that
deadly brotherhood who hailed Dr. Fu-Manchu their Lord and Master.

* * * * *

I cannot dwell upon the end of that encounter; I cannot hope to make
acceptable to my readers an account of how Nayland Smith, glassy-eyed,
and with consciousness ebbing from him instant by instant, stood
there, a realization of Leighton's "Athlete," his arms rigid as iron
bars even after Fu-Manchu's servant hung limply in that frightful
grip.

In his last moments of consciousness, with the blood from his wounded
head trickling down into his eyes, he pointed to the stick which I had
torn from the grip of the dacoit, and which I still held in my hand.

"Not Aaron's rod, Petrie!" he gasped hoarsely--"the rod of Moses!--
Slattin's stick!"

Even in upon my anxiety for my friend, amazement intruded.

"But," I began--and turned to the rack in which Slattin's favorite
cane at that moment reposed--had reposed at the time of his death.

Yes!--there stood Slattin's cane; we had not moved it; we had
disturbed nothing in that stricken house; there it stood, in company
with an umbrella and a malacca.

I glanced at the cane in my hand. Surely there could not be two such
in the world?

Smith collapsed on the floor at my feet.

"Examine the one in the rack, Petrie," he whispered, almost inaudibly,
"but do not touch it. It may not be yet. . . ."

I propped him up against the foot of the stairs, and as the constable
began knocking violently at the street door, crossed to the rack and
lifted out the replica of the cane which I held in my hand.

A faint cry from Smith--and as if it had been a leprous thing, I
dropped the cane instantly.

"Merciful God!" I groaned.

Although, in every other particular, it corresponded with that which I
held--which I had taken from the dacoit--which he had come to
substitute for the cane now lying upon the floor--in one dreadful
particular it differed.

Up to the snake's head it was an accurate copy; but the head lived!

Either from pain, fear or starvation, the thing confined in the hollow
tube of this awful duplicate was become torpid. Otherwise, no power on
earth could have saved me from the fate of Abel Slattin; for the
creature was an Australian death-adder.

CHAPTER XI

THE WHITE PEACOCK

Nayland Smith wasted no time in pursuing the plan of campaign which he
had mentioned to Inspector Weymouth. Less than forty-eight hours after
quitting the house of the murdered Slattin, I found myself bound along
Whitechapel Road upon strange enough business.

A very fine rain was falling, which rendered it difficult to see
clearly from the windows; but the weather apparently had little effect
upon the commercial activities of the district. The cab was threading
a hazardous way through the cosmopolitan throng crowding the street.
On either side of me extended a row of stalls, seemingly established
in opposition to the more legitimate shops upon the inner side of the
pavement.

Jewish hawkers, many of them in their shirt-sleeves, acclaimed the
rarity of the bargains which they had to offer; and, allowing for the
difference of costume, these tireless Israelites, heedless of climatic
conditions, sweating at their mongery, might well have stood, not in a
squalid London thoroughfare, but in an equally squalid market-street
of the Orient.

They offered linen and fine raiment; from footgear to hair-oil their
wares ranged. They enlivened their auctioneering with conjuring tricks
and witty stories, selling watches by the aid of legerdemain, and
fancy vests by grace of a seasonable anecdote.

Poles, Russians, Serbs, Roumanians, Jews of Hungary, and Italians of
Whitechapel mingled in the throng. Near East and Far East rubbed
shoulders. Pidgin English contested with Yiddish for the ownership of
some tawdry article offered by an auctioneer whose nationality defied
conjecture, save that always some branch of his ancestry had drawn
nourishment from the soil of Eternal Judea.

Some wearing mens' caps, some with shawls thrown over their oily
locks, and some, more true to primitive instincts, defying, bare-
headed, the unkindly elements, bedraggled women--more often than not
burdened with muffled infants--crowded the pavements and the roadway,
thronged about the stalls like white ants about some choicer carrion.

And the fine drizzling rain fell upon all alike, pattering upon the
hood of the taxi-cab, trickling down the front windows; glistening
upon the unctuous hair of those in the street who were hatless; dewing
the bare arms of the auctioneers, and dripping, melancholy, from the
tarpaulin coverings of the stalls. Heedless of the rain above and of
the mud beneath, North, South, East, and West mingled their cries,
their bids, their blandishments, their raillery, mingled their persons
in that joyless throng.

Sometimes a yellow face showed close to one of the streaming windows;
sometimes a black-eyed, pallid face, but never a face wholly sane and
healthy. This was an underworld where squalor and vice went hand in
hand through the beautiless streets, a melting-pot of the world's
outcasts; this was the shadowland, which last night had swallowed up
Nayland Smith.

Ceaselessly I peered to right and left, searching amid that rain-
soaked company for any face known to me. Whom I expected to find
there, I know not, but I should have counted it no matter for surprise
had I detected amid that ungracious ugliness the beautiful face of
Karamaneh the Eastern slave-girl, the leering yellow face of a Burmese
dacoit, the gaunt, bronzed features of Nayland Smith; a hundred times
I almost believed that I had seen the ruddy countenance of Inspector
Weymouth, and once (at which instant my heart seemed to stand still) I
suffered from the singular delusion that the oblique green eyes of Dr.
Fu-Manchu peered out from the shadows between two stalls.

It was mere phantasy, of course, the sick imaginings of a mind
overwrought. I had not slept and had scarcely tasted food for more
than thirty hours; for, following up a faint clue supplied by Burke,
Slattin's man, and, like his master, an ex-officer of New York Police,
my friend, Nayland Smith, on the previous evening had set out in quest
of some obscene den where the man called Shen-Yan--former keeper of an
opium-shop--was now said to be in hiding.

Shen-Yan we knew to be a creature of the Chinese doctor, and only a
most urgent call had prevented me from joining Smith upon this
promising, though hazardous expedition.

At any rate, Fate willing it so, he had gone without me; and
now--although Inspector Weymouth, assisted by a number of C. I. D.
men, was sweeping the district about me--to the time of my departure
nothing whatever had been heard of Smith. The ordeal of waiting
finally had proved too great to be borne. With no definite idea of
what I proposed to do, I had thrown myself into the search, filled
with such dreadful apprehensions as I hope never again to experience.

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