The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu
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Sax Rohmer >> The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu
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For the twentieth time, I should think, I carried the ash-tray in my
hand and laid it immediately under the table-lamp in order to examine
its contents. In the little brass bowl lay a blood-stained fragment of
grayish hair attached to a tatter of skin. This fragment of epidermis
had an odd bluish tinge, and the attached hair was much darker at the
roots than elsewhere. Saving its singular color, it might have been
torn from the forearm of a very hirsute human; but although my
thoughts wandered unfettered, north, south, east and west; although,
knowing the resources of Fu-Manchu, I considered all the recognized
Mongolian types, and, in quest of hirsute mankind, even roamed far
north among the blubbering Esquimo; although I glanced at Australasia,
at Central Africa, and passed in mental review the dark places of the
Congo, nowhere in the known world, nowhere in the history of the human
species, could I come upon a type of man answering to the description
suggested by our strange clue.
Nayland Smith was watching me curiously as I bent over the little
brass ash-tray.
"You are puzzled," he rapped in his short way.
"So am I--utterly puzzled. Fu-Manchu's gallery of monstrosities clearly
has become reinforced; for even if we identified the type, we should
not be in sight of our explanation."
"You mean," I began . . .
"Fully four feet from the window, Petrie, and that window but a few
inches open! Look"--he bent forward, resting his chest against the
table, and stretched out his hand toward me. "You have a rule there;
just measure."
Setting down the ash-tray, I opened out the rule and measured the
distance from the further edge of the table to the tips of Smith's
fingers.
"Twenty-eight inches--and I have a long reach!" snapped Smith,
withdrawing his arm and striking a match to relight his pipe. "There's
one thing, Petrie, often proposed before, which now we must do without
delay. The ivy must be stripped from the walls at the back. It's a
pity, but we can not afford to sacrifice our lives to our sense of the
aesthetic. What do you make of the sound like the cracking of a whip?"
"I make nothing of it, Smith," I replied, wearily. "It might have been
a thick branch of ivy breaking beneath the weight of a climber."
"Did it sound like it?"
"I must confess that the explanation does not convince me, but I have
no better one."
Smith, permitting his pipe to go out, sat staring straight before him,
and tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
"The old bewilderment is seizing me," I continued. "At first, when I
realized that Dr. Fu-Manchu was back in England, when I realized that
an elaborate murder-machine was set up somewhere in London, it seemed
unreal, fantastical. Then I met--Karamaneh! She, whom we thought to be
his victim, showed herself again to be his slave. Now, with Weymouth
and Scotland Yard at work, the old secret evil is established again in
our midst, unaccountably--our lives are menaced--sleep is a danger--
every shadow threatens death . . . oh! it is awful."
Smith remained silent; he did not seem to have heard my words. I knew
these moods and had learnt that it was useless to seek to interrupt
them. With his brows drawn down, and his deep-set eyes staring into
space, he sat there gripping his cold pipe so tightly that my own jaw
muscles ached sympathetically. No man was better equipped than this
gaunt British Commissioner to stand between society and the menace of
the Yellow Doctor; I respected his meditations, for, unlike my own,
they were informed by an intimate knowledge of the dark and secret
things of the East, of that mysterious East out of which Fu-Manchu
came, of that jungle of noxious things whose miasma had been wafted
Westward with the implacable Chinaman.
I walked quietly from the room, occupied with my own bitter
reflections.
CHAPTER XV
BEWITCHMENT
"You say you have two items of news for me?" said Nayland Smith,
looking across the breakfast table to where Inspector Weymouth sat
sipping coffee.
"There are two points--yes," replied the Scotland Yard man, whilst
Smith paused, egg-spoon in hand, and fixed his keen eyes upon the
speaker. "The first is this: the headquarters of the Yellow group is
no longer in the East End."
"How can you be sure of that?"
"For two reasons. In the first place, that district must now be too
hot to hold Dr. Fu-Manchu; in the second place, we have just completed
a house-to-house inquiry which has scarcely overlooked a rathole or a
rat. That place where you say Fu-Manchu was visited by some Chinese
mandarin; where you, Mr. Smith," and--glancing in my direction--"you,
Doctor, were confined for a time--"
"Yes?" snapped Smith, attacking his egg.
"Well," continued the inspector, "it is all deserted, now. There is
not the slightest doubt that the Chinaman has fled to some other
abode. I am certain of it. My second piece of news will interest you
very much, I am sure. You were taken to the establishment of the
Chinaman, Shen-Yan, by a certain ex-officer of New York Police--
Burke . . ."
"Good God!" cried Smith, looking up with a start; "I thought they had
him!"
"So did I," replied Weymouth grimly; "but they haven't! He got away in
the confusion following the raid, and has been hiding ever since with
a cousin, a nurseryman out Upminster way . . ."
"Hiding?" snapped Smith.
"Exactly--hiding. He has been afraid to stir ever since, and has
scarcely shown his nose outside the door. He says he is watched night
and day."
"Then how . . ."
"He realized that something must be done," continued the inspector,
"and made a break this morning. He is so convinced of this constant
surveillance that he came away secretly, hidden under the boxes of a
market-wagon. He landed at Covent Garden in the early hours of this
morning and came straight away to the Yard."
"What is he afraid of exactly?"
Inspector Weymouth put down his coffee cup and bent forward slightly.
"He knows something," he said in a low voice, "and they are aware that
he knows it!"
"And what is this he knows?"
Nayland Smith stared eagerly at the detective.
"Every man has his price," replied Weymouth with a smile, "and Burke
seems to think that you are a more likely market than the police
authorities."
"I see," snapped Smith. "He wants to see me?"
"He wants you to go and see him," was the reply. "I think he
anticipates that you may make a capture of the person or persons
spying upon him."
"Did he give you any particulars?"
"Several. He spoke of a sort of gipsy girl with whom he had a short
conversation one day, over the fence which divides his cousin's flower
plantations from the lane adjoining."
"Gipsy girl!" I whispered, glancing rapidly at Smith.
"I think you are right, Doctor," said Weymouth with his slow smile;
"it was Karamaneh. She asked him the way to somewhere or other and got
him to write it upon a loose page of his notebook, so that she should
not forget it."
"You hear that, Petrie?" rapped Smith.
"I hear it," I replied, "but I don't see any special significance in
the fact."
"I do!" rapped Smith; "I didn't sit up the greater part of last night
thrashing my weary brains for nothing! But I am going to the British
Museum to-day, to confirm a certain suspicion." He turned to Weymouth.
"Did Burke go back?" he demanded abruptly.
"He returned hidden under the empty boxes," was the reply. "Oh! you
never saw a man in such a funk in all your life!"
"He may have good reasons," I said.
"He has good reasons!" replied Nayland Smith grimly; "if that man
really possesses information inimical to the safety of Fu-Manchu, he
can only escape doom by means of a miracle similar to that which has
hitherto protected you and me."
"Burke insists," said Weymouth at this point, "that something comes
almost every night after dusk, slinking about the house--it's an old
farmhouse, I understand; and on two or three occasions he has been
awakened (fortunately for him he is a light sleeper) by sounds of
coughing immediately outside his window. He is a man who sleeps with a
pistol under his pillow, and more than once, on running to the window,
he has had a vague glimpse of some creature leaping down from the
tiles of the roof, which slopes up to his room, into the flower beds
below . . ."
"Creature!" said Smith, his gray eyes ablaze now--"you said creature!"
"I used the word deliberately," replied Weymouth, "because Burke seems
to have the idea that it goes on all fours."
There was a short and rather strained silence. Then:
"In descending a sloping roof," I suggested, "a human being would
probably employ his hands as well as his feet."
"Quite so," agreed the inspector. "I am merely reporting the
impression of Burke."
"Has he heard no other sound?" rapped Smith; "one like the cracking of
dry branches, for instance?"
"He made no mention of it," replied Weymouth, staring.
"And what is the plan?"
"One of his cousin's vans," said Weymouth, with his slight smile, "has
remained behind at Covent Garden and will return late this afternoon.
I propose that you and I, Mr. Smith, imitate Burke and ride down to
Upminster under the empty boxes!"
Nayland Smith stood up, leaving his breakfast half finished, and began
to wander up and down the room, reflectively tugging at his ear. Then
he began to fumble in the pockets of his dressing-gown and finally
produced the inevitable pipe, dilapidated pouch, and box of safety
matches. He began to load the much-charred agent of reflection.
"Do I understand that Burke is actually too afraid to go out openly
even in daylight?" he asked suddenly.
"He has not hitherto left his cousin's plantations at all," replied
Weymouth. "He seems to think that openly to communicate with the
authorities, or with you, would be to seal his death warrant."
"He's right," snapped Smith.
"Therefore he came and returned secretly," continued the inspector;
"and if we are to do any good, obviously we must adopt similar
precautions. The market wagon, loaded in such a way as to leave ample
space in the interior for us, will be drawn up outside the office of
Messrs. Pike and Pike, in Covent Garden, until about five o'clock this
afternoon. At, say, half past four, I propose that we meet there and
embark upon the journey."
The speaker glanced in my direction interrogatively.
"Include me in the program," I said. "Will there be room in the
wagon?"
"Certainly," was the reply; "it is most commodious, but I cannot
guarantee its comfort."
Nayland Smith promenaded the room, unceasingly, and presently he
walked out altogether, only to return ere the inspector and I had had
time to exchange more than a glance of surprise, carrying a brass
ash-tray. He placed this on a corner of the breakfast table before
Weymouth.
"Ever seen anything like that?" he inquired.
The inspector examined the gruesome relic with obvious curiosity,
turning it over with the tip of his little finger and manifesting
considerable repugnance--in touching it at all. Smith and I watched
him in silence, and, finally, placing the tray again upon the table,
he looked up in a puzzled way.
"It's something like the skin of a water rat," he said.
Nayland Smith stared at him fixedly.
"A water rat? Now that you come to mention it, I perceive a certain
resemblance--yes. But"--he had been wearing a silk scarf about his
throat and now he unwrapped it--"did you ever see a water rat that
could make marks like these?"
Weymouth started to his feet with some muttered exclamation.
"What is this?" he cried. "When did it happen, and how?"
In his own terse fashion, Nayland Smith related the happenings of the
night. At the conclusion of the story:
"By heaven!" whispered Weymouth, "the thing on the roof--the coughing
thing that goes on all fours, seen by Burke . . ."
"My own idea exactly!" cried Smith . . .
"Fu-Manchu," I said excitedly, "has brought some new, some dreadful
creature, from Burma . . ."
"No, Petrie," snapped Smith, turning upon me suddenly. "Not from
Burma--from Abyssinia."
That day was destined to be an eventful one; a day never to be
forgotten by any of us concerned in those happenings which I have to
record. Early in the morning Nayland Smith set off for the British
Museum to pursue his mysterious investigations, and having performed
my brief professional round (for, as Nayland Smith had remarked on one
occasion, this was a beastly healthy district), I found, having made
the necessary arrangements, that, with over three hours to spare, I
had nothing to occupy my time until the appointment in Covent Garden
Market. My lonely lunch completed, a restless fit seized me, and I
felt unable to remain longer in the house. Inspired by this
restlessness, I attired myself for the adventure of the evening, not
neglecting to place a pistol in my pocket, and, walking to the
neighboring Tube station, I booked to Charing Cross, and presently
found myself rambling aimlessly along the crowded streets. Led on by
what link of memory I know not, I presently drifted into New Oxford
Street, and looked up with a start--to learn that I stood before the
shop of a second-hand book-seller where once two years before I had
met Karamaneh.
The thoughts conjured up at that moment were almost too bitter to be
borne, and without so much as glancing at the books displayed for
sale, I crossed the roadway, entered Museum Street, and, rather in
order to distract my mind than because I contemplated any purchase,
began to examine the Oriental Pottery, Egyptian statuettes, Indian
armor, and other curios, displayed in the window of an antique dealer.
But, strive as I would to concentrate my mind upon the objects in the
window, my memories persistently haunted me, and haunted me to the
exclusion even of the actualities. The crowds thronging the Pavement,
the traffic in New Oxford Street, swept past unheeded; my eyes saw
nothing of pot nor statuette, but only met, in a misty imaginative
world, the glance of two other eyes--the dark and beautiful eyes of
Karamaneh. In the exquisite tinting of a Chinese vase dimly
perceptible in the background of the shop, I perceived only the
blushing cheeks of Karamaneh; her face rose up, a taunting phantom,
from out of the darkness between a hideous, gilded idol and an Indian
sandalwood screen.
I strove to dispel this obsessing thought, resolutely fixing my
attention upon a tall Etruscan vase in the corner of the window, near
to the shop door. Was I losing my senses indeed? A doubt of my own
sanity momentarily possessed me. For, struggle as I would to dispel
the illusion--there, looking out at me over that ancient piece of
pottery, was the bewitching face of the slave-girl!
Probably I was glaring madly, and possibly I attracted the notice of
the passers-by; but of this I cannot be certain, for all my attention
was centered upon that phantasmal face, with the cloudy hair, slightly
parted red lips, and the brilliant dark eyes which looked into mine
out of the shadows of the shop.
It was bewildering--it was uncanny; for, delusion or verity, the
glamour prevailed. I exerted a great mental effort, stepped to the
door, turned the handle, and entered the shop with as great a show of
composure as I could muster.
A curtain draped in a little door at the back of one counter swayed
slightly, with no greater violence than may have been occasioned by
the draught. But I fixed my eyes upon this swaying curtain almost
fiercely . . . as an impassive half-caste of some kind who appeared to
be a strange cross between a Graeco-Hebrew and a Japanese, entered and
quite unemotionally faced me, with a slight bow.
So wholly unexpected was this apparition that I started back.
"Can I show you anything, sir?" inquired the new arrival, with a
second slight inclination of the head.
I looked at him for a moment in silence. Then:
"I thought I saw a lady of my acquaintance here a moment ago," I said.
"Was I mistaken?"
"Quite mistaken, sir," replied the shopman, raising his black eyebrows
ever so slightly; "a mistake possibly due to a reflection in the
window. Will you take a look around now that you are here?"
"Thank you," I replied, staring him hard in the face; "at some other
time."
I turned and quitted the shop abruptly. Either I was mad, or Karamaneh
was concealed somewhere therein.
However, realizing my helplessness in the matter, I contented myself
with making a mental note of the name which appeared above the
establishment--J. Salaman--and walked on, my mind in a chaotic
condition and my heart beating with unusual rapidity.
CHAPTER XVI
THE QUESTING HANDS
Within my view, from the corner of the room where I sat in deepest
shadow, through the partly opened window (it was screwed, like our
own) were rows of glass-houses gleaming in the moonlight, and, beyond
them, orderly ranks of flower-beds extending into a blue haze of
distance. By reason of the moon's position, no light entered the room,
but my eyes, from long watching, were grown familiar with the
darkness, and I could see Burke quite clearly as he lay in the bed
between my post and the window. I seemed to be back again in those
days of the troubled past when first Nayland Smith and I had come to
grips with the servants of Dr. Fu-Manchu. A more peaceful scene than
this flower-planted corner of Essex it would be difficult to imagine;
but, either because of my knowledge that its peace was chimerical, or
because of that outflung consciousness of danger which, actually, or
in my imagination, preceded the coming of the Chinaman's agents, to my
seeming the silence throbbed electrically and the night was laden with
stilly omens.
Already cramped by my journey in the market-cart, I found it difficult
to remain very long in any one position. What information had Burke to
sell? He had refused, for some reason, to discuss the matter that
evening, and now, enacting the part allotted him by Nayland Smith, he
feigned sleep consistently, although at intervals he would whisper to
me his doubts and fears.
All the chances were in our favor to-night; for whilst I could not
doubt that Dr. Fu-Manchu was set upon the removal of the ex-officer of
New York police, neither could I doubt that our presence in the farm
was unknown to the agents of the Chinaman. According to Burke,
constant attempts had been made to achieve Fu-Manchu's purpose, and
had only been frustrated by his (Burke's) wakefulness.
There was every probability that another attempt would be made to-
night.
Any one who has been forced by circumstance to undertake such a vigil
as this will be familiar with the marked changes (corresponding with
phases of the earth's movement) which take place in the atmosphere, at
midnight, at two o'clock, and again at four o'clock. During those
fours hours falls a period wherein all life is at its lowest ebb, and
every Physician is aware that there is a greater likelihood of a
patient's passing between midnight and four A. M., than at any other
period during the cycle of the hours.
To-night I became specially aware of this lowering of vitality, and
now, with the night at that darkest phase which precedes the dawn, an
indescribable dread, such as I had known before in my dealings with
the Chinaman, assailed me, when I was least prepared to combat it. The
stillness was intense. Then:
"Here it is!" whispered Burke from the bed.
The chill at the very center of my being, which but corresponded with
the chill of all surrounding nature at that hour, became intensified,
keener, at the whispered words.
I rose stealthily out of my chair, and from my nest of shadows watched
--watched intently, the bright oblong of the window . . .
Without the slightest heralding sound--a black silhouette crept up
against the pane . . . the silhouette of a small, malformed head, a
dog-like head, deep-set in square shoulders. Malignant eyes peered
intently in. Higher it arose--that wicked head--against the window,
then crouched down on the sill and became less sharply defined as the
creature stooped to the opening below. There was a faint sound of
sniffing.
Judging from the stark horror which I experienced, myself, I doubted,
now, if Burke could sustain the role allotted him. In beneath the
slightly raised window came a hand, perceptible to me despite the
darkness of the room. It seemed to project from the black silhouette
outside the pane, to be thrust forward--and forward--and forward . . .
that small hand with the outstretched fingers.
The unknown possesses unique terrors; and since I was unable to
conceive what manner of thing this could be, which, extending its
incredibly long arms, now sought the throat of the man upon the bed, I
tasted of that sort of terror which ordinarily one knows only in
dreams.
"Quick, sir--quick!" screamed Burke, starting up from the pillow.
The questing hands had reached his throat!
Choking down an urgent dread that I had of touching the thing which
reached through the window to kill the sleeper, I sprang across the
room and grasped the rigid, hairy forearms.
Heavens! Never have I felt such muscles, such tendons, as those
beneath the hirsute skin! They seemed to be of steel wire, and with a
sudden frightful sense of impotence, I realized that I was as
powerless as a child to relax that strangle-hold. Burke was making the
most frightful sounds and quite obviously was being asphyxiated before
my eyes!
"Smith!" I cried, "Smith! Help! help! for God's sake!"
Despite the confusion of my mind I became aware of sounds outside and
below me. Twice the thing at the window coughed; there was an
incessant, lash-like cracking, then some shouted words which I was
unable to make out; and finally the staccato report of a pistol.
Snarling like that of a wild beast came from the creature with the
hairy arms, together with renewed coughing. But the steel grip relaxed
not one iota.
I realized two things: the first, that in my terror at the suddenness
of the attack I had omitted to act as pre-arranged: the second, that I
had discredited the strength of the visitant, whilst Smith had
foreseen it.
Desisting in my vain endeavor to pit my strength against that of the
nameless thing, I sprang back across the room and took up the weapon
which had been left in my charge earlier in the night, but which I had
been unable to believe it would be necessary to employ. This was a
sharp and heavy axe, which Nayland Smith, when I had met him in Covent
Garden, had brought with him, to the great amazement of Weymouth and
myself.
As I leaped back to the window and uplifted this primitive weapon, a
second shot sounded from below, and more fierce snarling, coughing,
and guttural mutterings assailed my ears from beyond the pane.
Lifting the heavy blade, I brought it down with all my strength upon
the nearer of those hairy arms where it crossed the window-ledge,
severing muscle, tendon and bone as easily as a knife might cut
cheese. . . .
A shriek--a shriek neither human nor animal, but gruesomely compounded
of both--followed . . . and merged into a choking cough. Like a flash
the other shaggy arm was withdrawn, and some vaguely-seen body went
rolling down the sloping red tiles and crashed on to the ground
beneath.
With a second piercing shriek, louder than that recently uttered by
Burke, wailing through the night from somewhere below, I turned
desperately to the man on the bed, who now was become significantly
silent. A candle, with matches, stood upon a table hard by, and, my
fingers far from steady, I set about obtaining a light. This
accomplished, I stood the candle upon the little chest-of-drawers and
returned to Burke's side.
"Merciful God!" I cried.
Of all the pictures which remain in my memory, some of them dark
enough, I can find none more horrible than that which now confronted
me in the dim candle-light. Burke lay crosswise on the bed, his head
thrown back and sagging; one rigid hand he held in the air, and with
the other grasped the hairy forearm which I had severed with the ax;
for, in a death-grip, the dead fingers were still fastened, vise-like,
at his throat.
His face was nearly black, and his eyes projected from their sockets
horribly. Mastering my repugnance, I seized the hideous piece of
bleeding anatomy and strove to release it. It defied all my efforts;
in death it was as implacable as in life. I took a knife from my
pocket, and, tendon by tendon, cut away that uncanny grip from Burke's
throat . . .
But my labor was in vain. Burke was dead!
I think I failed to realize this for some time. My clothes were
sticking clammily to my body; I was bathed in perspiration, and,
shaking furiously, I clutched at the edge of the window, avoiding the
bloody patch upon the ledge, and looked out over the roofs to where,
in the more distant plantations, I could hear excited voices. What had
been the meaning of that scream which I had heard but to which in my
frantic state of mind I had paid comparatively little attention?
There was a great stirring all about me.
"Smith!" I cried from the window; "Smith, for mercy's sake where are
you?"
Footsteps came racing up the stairs. Behind me the door burst open and
Nayland Smith stumbled into the room.
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