The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu

THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

By Sax Rohmer

CHAPTER I. A MIDNIGHT SUMMONS

“When did you last hear from Nayland Smith?” asked my visitor.

I paused, my hand on the syphon, reflecting for a moment.

“Two months ago,” I said; “he’s a poor correspondent and rather soured,

I fancy.”

“What--a woman or something?”

“Some affair of that sort. He’s such a reticent beggar, I really know

very little about it.”

I placed a whisky and soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also sliding

the tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face of

the clergy-man offered no indication of the truculent character of the

man. His scanty fair hair, already gray over the temples, was silken and

soft-looking; in appearance he was indeed a typical English churchman;

but in China he had been known as “the fighting missionary,” and had

fully deserved the title. In fact, this peaceful-looking gentleman had

directly brought about the Boxer Risings!

“You know,” he said, in his clerical voice, but meanwhile stuffing

tobacco into an old pipe with fierce energy, “I have often wondered,

Petrie--I have never left off wondering--”

“What?”

“That accursed Chinaman! Since the cellar place beneath the site of the

burnt-out cottage in Dulwich Village--I have wondered more than ever.”

He lighted his pipe and walked to the hearth to throw the match in the

grate.

“You see,” he continued, peering across at me in his oddly nervous way,

“one never knows, does one? If I thought that Dr. Fu-Manchu lived; if

I seriously suspected that that stupendous intellect, that wonderful

genius, Petrie, er--” he hesitated characteristically--“survived, I

should feel it my duty--”

“Well?” I said, leaning my elbows on the table and smiling slightly.

“If that Satanic genius were not indeed destroyed, then the peace of the

world, may be threatened anew at any moment!”

He was becoming excited, shooting out his jaw in the truculent manner I

knew, and snapping his fingers to emphasize his words; a man composed of

the oddest complexities that ever dwelt beneath a clerical frock.

“He may have got back to China, Doctor!” he cried, and his eyes had the

fighting glint in them. “Could you rest in peace if you thought that he

lived? Should you not fear for your life every time that a night-call

took you out alone? Why, man alive, it is only two years since he was

here among us, since we were searching every shadow for those awful

green eyes! What became of his band of assassins--his stranglers, his

dacoits, his damnable poisons and insects and what-not--the army of

creatures--”

He paused, taking a drink.

“You--” he hesitated diffidently--“searched in Egypt with Nayland Smith,

did you not?”

I nodded.

“Contradict me if I am wrong,” he continued; “but my impression is that

you were searching for the girl--the girl--Karamaneh, I think she was

called?”

“Yes,” I replied shortly; “but we could find no trace--no trace.”

“You--er--were interested?”

“More than I knew,” I replied, “until I realized that I had--lost her.”

“I never met Karamaneh, but from your account, and from others, she was

quite unusually--”

“She was very beautiful,” I said, and stood up, for I was anxious to

terminate that phase of the conversation.

Eltham regarded me sympathetically; he knew something of my search with

Nayland Smith for the dark-eyed, Eastern girl who had brought romance

into my drab life; he knew that I treasured my memories of her as I

loathed and abhorred those of the fiendish, brilliant Chinese doctor who

had been her master.

Eltham began to pace up and down the rug, his pipe bubbling furiously;

and something in the way he carried his head reminded me momentarily of

Nayland Smith. Certainly, between this pink-faced clergyman, with his

deceptively mild appearance, and the gaunt, bronzed, and steely-eyed

Burmese commissioner, there was externally little in common; but it was

some little nervous trick in his carriage that conjured up through the

smoky haze one distant summer evening when Smith had paced that very

room as Eltham paced it now, when before my startled eyes he had rung up

the curtain upon the savage drama in which, though I little suspected it

then, Fate had cast me for a leading role.

I wondered if Eltham’s thoughts ran parallel with mine. My own were

centered upon the unforgettable figure of the murderous Chinaman. These

words, exactly as Smith had used them, seemed once again to sound in my

ears: “Imagine a person tall, lean, and feline, high shouldered, with a

brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and

long magnetic eyes of the true cat green. Invest him with all the cruel

cunning of an entire Eastern race accumulated in one giant intellect,

with all the resources of science, past and present, and you have a

mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the ‘Yellow Peril’ incarnate in one

man.”

This visit of Eltham’s no doubt was responsible for my mood; for this

singular clergyman had played his part in the drama of two years ago.

“I should like to see Smith again,” he said suddenly; “it seems a pity

that a man like that should be buried in Burma. Burma makes a mess of

the best of men, Doctor. You said he was not married?”

“No,” I replied shortly, “and is never likely to be, now.”

“Ah, you hinted at something of the kind.”

“I know very little of it. Nayland Smith is not the kind of man to talk

much.”

“Quite so--quite so! And, you know, Doctor, neither am I; but”--he was

growing painfully embarrassed--“it may be your due--I--er--I have a

correspondent, in the interior of China--”

“Well?” I said, watching him in sudden eagerness.

“Well, I would not desire to raise--vain hopes--nor to occasion, shall

I say, empty fears; but--er... no, Doctor!” He flushed like a girl--“It

was wrong of me to open this conversation. Perhaps, when I know

more--will you forget my words, for the time?”

The telephone bell rang.

“Hullo!” cried Eltham--“hard luck, Doctor!”--but I could see that he

welcomed the interruption. “Why!” he added, “it is one o’clock!”

I went to the telephone.

“Is that Dr. Petrie?” inquired a woman’s voice.

“Yes; who is speaking?”

“Mrs. Hewett has been taken more seriously ill. Could you come at once?”

“Certainly,” I replied, for Mrs. Hewett was not only a profitable

patient but an estimable lady--“I shall be with you in a quarter of an

hour.”

I hung up the receiver.

“Something urgent?” asked Eltham, emptying his pipe.

“Sounds like it. You had better turn in.”

“I should much prefer to walk over with you, if it would not be

intruding. Our conversation has ill prepared me for sleep.”

“Right!” I said; for I welcomed his company; and three minutes later we

were striding across the deserted common.

A sort of mist floated amongst the trees, seeming in the moonlight like

a veil draped from trunk to trunk, as in silence we passed the Mound

pond, and struck out for the north side of the common.

I suppose the presence of Eltham and the irritating recollection of his

half-confidence were the responsible factors, but my mind persistently

dwelt upon the subject of Fu-Manchu and the atrocities which he had

committed during his sojourn in England. So actively was my imagination

at work that I felt again the menace which so long had hung over me; I

felt as though that murderous yellow cloud still cast its shadow upon

England. And I found myself longing for the company of Nayland Smith.

I cannot state what was the nature of Eltham’s reflections, but I can

guess; for he was as silent as I.

It was with a conscious effort that I shook myself out of this morbidly

reflective mood, on finding that we had crossed the common and were come

to the abode of my patient.

“I shall take a little walk,” announced Eltham; “for I gather that you

don’t expect to be detained long? I shall never be out of sight of the

door, of course.”

“Very well,” I replied, and ran up the steps.

There were no lights to be seen in any of the windows, which

circumstance rather surprised me, as my patient occupied, or had

occupied when last I had visited her, a first-floor bedroom in the front

of the house. My knocking and ringing produced no response for three or

four minutes; then, as I persisted, a scantily clothed and half

awake maid servant unbarred the door and stared at me stupidly in the

moonlight.

“Mrs. Hewett requires me?” I asked abruptly.

The girl stared more stupidly than ever.

“No, sir,” she said, “she don’t, sir; she’s fast asleep!”

“But some one ‘phoned me!” I insisted, rather irritably, I fear.

“Not from here, sir,” declared the now wide-eyed girl. “We haven’t got a

telephone, sir.”

For a few moments I stood there, staring as foolishly as she; then

abruptly I turned and descended the steps. At the gate I stood looking

up and down the road. The houses were all in darkness. What could be the

meaning of the mysterious summons? I had made no mistake respecting the

name of my patient; it had been twice repeated over the telephone; yet

that the call had not emanated from Mrs. Hewett’s house was now palpably

evident. Days had been when I should have regarded the episode as

preluding some outrage, but to-night I felt more disposed to ascribe it

to a silly practical joke.

Eltham walked up briskly.

“You’re in demand to-night, Doctor,” he said. “A young person called

for you almost directly you had left your house, and, learning where you

were gone, followed you.”

“Indeed!” I said, a trifle incredulously. “There are plenty of other

doctors if the case is an urgent one.”

“She may have thought it would save time as you were actually up and

dressed,” explained Eltham; “and the house is quite near to here, I

understand.”

I looked at him a little blankly. Was this another effort of the unknown

jester?

“I have been fooled once,” I said. “That ‘phone call was a hoax--”

“But I feel certain,” declared Eltham, earnestly, “that this is genuine!

The poor girl was dreadfully agitated; her master has broken his leg and

is lying helpless: number 280, Rectory Grove.”

“Where is the girl?” I asked, sharply.

“She ran back directly she had given me her message.”

“Was she a servant?”

“I should imagine so: French, I think. But she was so wrapped up I had

little more than a glimpse of her. I am sorry to hear that some one has

played a silly joke on you, but believe me--” he was very earnest--“this

is no jest. The poor girl could scarcely speak for sobs. She mistook me

for you, of course.”

“Oh!” said I grimly, “well, I suppose I must go. Broken leg, you

said?--and my surgical bag, splints and so forth, are at home!”

“My dear Petrie!” cried Eltham, in his enthusiastic way--“you no doubt

can do something to alleviate the poor man’s suffering immediately. I

will run back to your rooms for the bag and rejoin you at 280, Rectory

Grove.”

“It’s awfully good of you, Eltham--”

He held up his hand.

“The call of suffering humanity, Petrie, is one which I may no more

refuse to hear than you.”

I made no further protest after that, for his point of view was evident

and his determination adamant, but told him where he would find the

bag and once more set out across the moonbright common, he pursuing a

westerly direction and I going east.

Some three hundred yards I had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been

very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new

complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the

first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker

practising his wiles at one o’clock in the morning. I thought of our

recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered

the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a French

maid--whose personal charm had so completely enlisted his sympathies.

Now, to this train of thought came a new one, and, adding it, my

suspicion became almost a certainty.

I remembered (as, knowing the district, I should have remembered before)

that there was no number 280 in Rectory Grove.

Pulling up sharply I stood looking about me. Not a living soul was

in sight; not even a policeman. Where the lamps marked the main paths

across the common nothing moved; in the shadows about me nothing

stirred. But something stirred within me--a warning voice which for long

had lain dormant.

What was afoot?

A breeze caressed the leaves overhead, breaking the silence with

mysterious whisperings. Some portentous truth was seeking for admittance

to my brain. I strove to reassure myself, but the sense of impending

evil and of mystery became heavier. At last I could combat my strange

fears no longer. I turned and began to run toward the south side of the

common--toward my rooms--and after Eltham.

I had hoped to head him off, but came upon no sign of him. An all-night

tramcar passed at the moment that I reached the high road, and as I ran

around behind it I saw that my windows were lighted and that there was a

light in the hall.

My key was yet in the lock when my housekeeper opened the door.

“There’s a gentleman just come, Doctor,” she began--

I thrust past her and raced up the stairs into my study.

Standing by the writing-table was a tall, thin man, his gaunt face brown

as a coffee-berry and his steely gray eyes fixed upon me. My heart gave

a great leap--and seemed to stand still.

It was Nayland Smith!

“Smith,” I cried. “Smith, old man, by God, I’m glad to see you!”

He wrung my hand hard, looking at me with his searching eyes; but there

was little enough of gladness in his face. He was altogether grayer than

when last I had seen him--grayer and sterner.

“Where is Eltham?” I asked.

Smith started back as though I had struck him.

“Eltham!” he whispered--“Eltham! is Eltham here?”

“I left him ten minutes ago on the common--”

Smith dashed his right fist into the palm of his left hand and his eyes

gleamed almost wildly.

“My God, Petrie!” he said, “am I fated always to come too late?”

My dreadful fears in that instant were confirmed. I seemed to feel my

legs totter beneath me.

“Smith, you don’t mean--”

“I do, Petrie!” His voice sounded very far away. “Fu-Manchu is here; and

Eltham, God help him... is his first victim!”

CHAPTER II. ELTHAM VANISHES

Smith went racing down the stairs like a man possessed. Heavy with such

a foreboding of calamity as I had not known for two years, I followed

him--along the hall and out into the road. The very peace and beauty of

the night in some way increased my mental agitation. The sky was lighted

almost tropically with such a blaze of stars as I could not recall to

have seen since, my futile search concluded, I had left Egypt. The glory

of the moonlight yellowed the lamps speckled across the expanse of

the common. The night was as still as night can ever be in London. The

dimming pulse of a cab or car alone disturbed the stillness.

With a quick glance to right and left, Smith ran across on to the

common, and, leaving the door wide open behind me, I followed. The path

which Eltham had pursued terminated almost opposite to my house. One’s

gaze might follow it, white and empty, for several hundred yards past

the pond, and further, until it became overshadowed and was lost amid a

clump of trees.

I came up with Smith, and side by side we ran on, whilst pantingly, I

told my tale.

“It was a trick to get you away from him!” cried Smith. “They meant no

doubt to make some attempt at your house, but as he came out with you,

an alternative plan--”

Abreast of the pond, my companion slowed down, and finally stopped.

“Where did you last see Eltham?” he asked rapidly.

I took his arm, turning him slightly to the right, and pointed across

the moonbathed common.

“You see that clump of bushes on the other side of the road?” I said.

“There’s a path to the left of it. I took that path and he took this. We

parted at the point where they meet--”

Smith walked right down to the edge of the water and peered about over

the surface.

What he hoped to find there I could not imagine. Whatever it had been he

was disappointed, and he turned to me again, frowning perplexedly, and

tugging at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick which reminded me of

gruesome things we had lived through in the past.

“Come on,” he jerked. “It may be amongst the trees.”

From the tone of his voice I knew that he was tensed up nervously, and

his mood but added to the apprehension of my own.

“What may be amongst the trees, Smith?” I asked.

He walked on.

“God knows, Petrie; but I fear--”

Behind us, along the highroad, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless

bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the

thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about

with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car

windows, in a place of prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic,

flickering lamps, two fellow men moved upon the border of a horror-land!

Beneath the trees a shadow carpet lay, its edges tropically sharp; and

fully ten yards from the first of the group, we two, hatless both, and

sharing a common dread, paused for a moment and listened.

The car had stopped at the further extremity of the common, and now with

a moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again. We stood

and listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a footstep could be

heard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of the little coppice we

stopped again abruptly.

Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of light

pierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch. But no

trace of Eltham was discoverable.

There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening just before

sunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under the trees

the ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice we came upon

tracks--the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints of the toes

indicated.

Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two sets

converging from left and right. There was a confused patch, trailing off

to the west; then this became indistinct, and was finally lost upon the

hard ground outside the group.

For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree, and from

bush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and fearful of what we

might find. We found nothing; and fully in the moonlight we stood facing

one another. The night was profoundly still.

Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to turn

his head from left to right, taking in the entire visible expanse of the

common. Toward a point where the road bisected it he stared intently.

Then, with a bound, he set off.

“Come on, Petrie!” he cried. “There they are!”

Vaulting a railing he went away over a field like a madman. Recovering

from the shock of surprise, I followed him, but he was well ahead of me,

and making for some vaguely seen object moving against the lights of the

roadway.

Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a second, triangular

grass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty yards from the road

when the sound of a starting motor broke the silence. We gained the

graveled footpath only to see the taillight of the car dwindling to the

north!

Smith leaned dizzily against a tree.

“Eltham is in that car!” he gasped. “Just God! are we to stand here and

see him taken away to--”

He beat his fist upon the tree, in a sort of tragic despair. The nearest

cab-rank was no great distance away, but, excluding the possibility of

no cab being there, it might, for all practical purposes, as well have

been a mile off.

The beat of the retreating motor was scarcely audible; the lights

might but just be distinguished. Then, coming in an opposite direction,

appeared the headlamp of another car, of a car that raced nearer and

nearer to us, so that, within a few seconds of its first appearance, we

found ourselves bathed in the beam of its headlights.

Smith bounded out into the road, and stood, a weird silhouette, with

upraised arms, fully in its course!

The brakes were applied hurriedly. It was a big limousine, and its

driver swerved perilously in avoiding Smith and nearly ran into me.

But, the breathless moment past, the car was pulled up, head on to the

railings; and a man in evening clothes was demanding excitedly what had

happened. Smith, a hatless, disheveled figure, stepped up to the door.

“My name is Nayland Smith,” he said rapidly--“Burmese Commissioner.” He

snatched a letter from his pocket and thrust it into the hands of the

bewildered man. “Read that. It is signed by another Commissioner--the

Commissioner of Police.”

With amazement written all over him, the other obeyed.

“You see,” continued my friend, tersely--“it is carte blanche. I wish to

commandeer your car, sir, on a matter of life and death!”.

The other returned the letter.

“Allow me to offer it!” he said, descending. “My man will take your

orders. I can finish my journey by cab. I am--”

But Smith did not wait to learn whom he might be.

“Quick!” he cried to the stupefied chauffeur--“You passed a car a minute

ago--yonder. Can you overtake it?”

“I can try, sir, if I don’t lose her track.”

Smith leaped in, pulling me after him.

“Do it!” he snapped. “There are no speed limits for me. Thanks!

Goodnight, sir!”

We were off! The car swung around and the chase commenced.

One last glimpse I had of the man we had dispossessed, standing alone by

the roadside, and at ever increasing speed, we leaped away in the track

of Eltham’s captors.

Smith was too highly excited for ordinary conversation, but he threw out

short, staccato remarks.

“I have followed Fu-Manchu from Hongkong,” he jerked. “Lost him at Suez.

He got here a boat ahead of me. Eltham has been corresponding with some

mandarin up-country. Knew that. Came straight to you. Only got in this

evening. He--Fu-Manchu--has been sent here to get Eltham. My God! and

he has him! He will question him! The interior of China--a seething

pot, Petrie! They had to stop the leakage of information. He is here for

that.”

The car pulled up with a jerk that pitched me out of my seat, and the

chauffeur leaped to the road and ran ahead. Smith was out in a trice, as

the man, who had run up to a constable, came racing back.

“Jump in, sir--jump in!” he cried, his eyes bright with the lust of the

chase; “they are making for Battersea!”

And we were off again.

Through the empty streets we roared on. A place of gasometers and

desolate waste lots slipped behind and we were in a narrow way where

gates of yards and a few lowly houses faced upon a prospect of high

blank wall.

“Thames on our right,” said Smith, peering ahead. “His rathole is by the

river as usual. Hi!”--he grabbed up the speaking-tube--“Stop! Stop!”

The limousine swung in to the narrow sidewalk, and pulled up close by a

yard gate. I, too, had seen our quarry--a long, low bodied car, showing

no inside lights. It had turned the next corner, where a street lamp

shone greenly, not a hundred yards ahead.

Smith leaped out, and I followed him.

“That must be a cul de sac,” he said, and turned to the eager-eyed

chauffeur. “Run back to that last turning,” he ordered, “and wait there,

out of sight. Bring the car up when you hear a police-whistle.”

The man looked disappointed, but did not question the order. As he began

to back away, Smith grasped me by the arm and drew me forward.

“We must get to that corner,” he said, “and see where the car stands,

without showing ourselves.”

CHAPTER III. THE WIRE JACKET

I suppose we were not more than a dozen paces from the lamp when we

heard the thudding of the motor. The car was backing out!

It was a desperate moment, for it seemed that we could not fail to be

discovered. Nayland Smith began to look about him, feverishly, for a

hiding-place, a quest in which I seconded with equal anxiety. And Fate

was kind to us--doubly kind as after events revealed. A wooden gate

broke the expanse of wall hard by upon the right, and, as the result of

some recent accident, a ragged gap had been torn in the panels close to

the top.

The chain of the padlock hung loosely; and in a second Smith was up,

with his foot in this as in a stirrup. He threw his arm over the top and

drew himself upright. A second later he was astride the broken gate.

“Up you come, Petrie!” he said, and reached down his hand to aid me.

I got my foot into the loop of chain, grasped at a projection in the

gatepost and found myself up.

“There is a crossbar on this side to stand on,” said Smith.

He climbed over and vanished in the darkness. I was still astride the

broken gate when the car turned the corner, slowly, for there was scanty

room; but I was standing upon the bar on the inside and had my head

below the gap ere the driver could possibly have seen me.

“Stay where you are until he passes,” hissed my companion, below. “There

is a row of kegs under you.”

The sound of the motor passing outside grew loud--louder--then began to

die away. I felt about with my left foot; discerned the top of a keg,

and dropped, panting, beside Smith.

“Phew!” I said--“that was a close thing! Smith--how do we know--”

“That we have followed the right car?” he interrupted. “Ask yourself the

question: what would any ordinary man be doing motoring in a place like

this at two o’clock in the morning?”

“You are right, Smith,” I agreed. “Shall we get out again?”

“Not yet. I have an idea. Look yonder.”

He grasped my arm, turning me in the desired direction.

Beyond a great expanse of unbroken darkness a ray of moonlight slanted

into the place wherein we stood, spilling its cold radiance upon rows of

kegs.

“That’s another door,” continued my friend--I now began dimly to

perceive him beside me. “If my calculations are not entirely wrong, it

opens on a wharf gate--”

A steam siren hooted dismally, apparently from quite close at hand.

“I’m right!” snapped Smith. “That turning leads down to the gate. Come

on, Petrie!”

He directed the light of the electric torch upon a narrow path through

the ranks of casks, and led the way to the further door. A good two feet

of moonlight showed along the top. I heard Smith straining; then--

“These kegs are all loaded with grease!” he said, “and I want to

reconnoiter over that door.”

“I am leaning on a crate which seems easy to move,” I reported. “Yes,

it’s empty. Lend a hand.”

We grasped the empty crate, and between us, set it up on a solid

pedestal of casks. Then Smith mounted to this observation platform and I

scrambled up beside him, and looked down upon the lane outside.

It terminated as Smith had foreseen at a wharf gate some six feet to

the right of our post. Piled up in the lane beneath us, against the

warehouse door, was a stack of empty casks. Beyond, over the way, was a

kind of ramshackle building that had possibly been a dwelling-house at

some time. Bills were stuck in the ground-floor window indicating that

the three floors were to let as offices; so much was discernible in that

reflected moonlight.

I could hear the tide, lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill from

the river and hear the vague noises which, night nor day, never cease

upon the great commercial waterway.

“Down!” whispered Smith. “Make no noise! I suspected it. They heard the

car following!”

I obeyed, clutching at him for support; for I was suddenly dizzy, and my

heart was leaping wildly--furiously.

“You saw her?” he whispered.

Saw her! yes, I had seen her! And my poor dream-world was toppling about

me, its cities, ashes and its fairness, dust.

Peering from the window, her great eyes wondrous in the moonlight and

her red lips parted, hair gleaming like burnished foam and her anxious

gaze set upon the corner of the lane--was Karamaneh... Karamaneh whom

once we had rescued from the house of this fiendish Chinese doctor;

Karamaneh who had been our ally; in fruitless quest of whom,--when, too

late, I realized how empty my life was become--I had wasted what little

of the world’s goods I possessed;--Karamaneh!

“Poor old Petrie,” murmured Smith--“I knew, but I hadn’t the heart--He

has her again--God knows by what chains he holds her. But she’s only

a woman, old boy, and women are very much alike--very much alike from

Charing Cross to Pagoda Road.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment; I am ashamed to confess

that I was trembling; then, clenching my teeth with that mechanical

physical effort which often accompanies a mental one, I swallowed the

bitter draught of Nayland Smith’s philosophy. He was raising himself, to

peer, cautiously, over the top of the door. I did likewise.

The window from which the girl had looked was nearly on a level with our

eyes, and as I raised my head above the woodwork, I quite distinctly

saw her go out of the room. The door, as she opened it, admitted a dull

light, against which her figure showed silhouetted for a moment. Then

the door was reclosed.

“We must risk the other windows,” rapped Smith.

Before I had grasped the nature of his plan he was over and had dropped

almost noiselessly upon the casks outside. Again I followed his lead.

“You are not going to attempt anything, singlehanded--against him?” I

asked.

“Petrie--Eltham is in that house. He has been brought here to be put

to the question, in the medieval, and Chinese, sense! Is there time to

summon assistance?”

I shuddered. This had been in my mind, certainly, but so expressed it

was definitely horrible--revolting, yet stimulating.

“You have the pistol,” added Smith--“follow closely, and quietly.”

He walked across the tops of the casks and leaped down, pointing to that

nearest to the closed door of the house. I helped him place it under the

open window. A second we set beside it, and, not without some noise, got

a third on top.

Smith mounted.

His jaw muscles were very prominent and his eyes shone like steel; but

he was as cool as though he were about to enter a theater and not the

den of the most stupendous genius who ever worked for evil. I would

forgive any man who, knowing Dr. Fu-Manchu, feared him; I feared him

myself--feared him as one fears a scorpion; but when Nayland Smith

hauled himself up on the wooden ledge above the door and swung thence

into the darkened room, I followed and was in close upon his heels. But

I admired him, for he had every ampere of his self-possession in hand;

my own case was different.

He spoke close to my ear.

“Is your hand steady? We may have to shoot.”

I thought of Karamaneh, of lovely dark-eyed Karamaneh whom this

wonderful, evil product of secret China had stolen from me--for so I now

adjudged it.

“Rely upon me!” I said grimly. “I...”

The words ceased--frozen on my tongue.

There are things that one seeks to forget, but it is my lot often to

remember the sound which at that moment literally struck me rigid with

horror. Yet it was only a groan; but, merciful God! I pray that it may

never be my lot to listen to such a groan again.

Smith drew a sibilant breath.

“It’s Eltham!” he whispered hoarsely--“they’re torturing--”

“No, no!” screamed a woman’s voice--a voice that thrilled me anew, but

with another emotion--

“Not that, not--”

I distinctly heard the sound of a blow. Followed a sort of vague

scuffling. A door somewhere at the back of the house opened--and shut

again. Some one was coming along the passage toward us!

“Stand back!” Smith’s voice was low, but perfectly steady. “Leave it to

me!”

Nearer came the footsteps and nearer. I could hear suppressed sobs. The

door opened, admitting again the faint light--and Karamaneh came in. The

place was quite unfurnished, offering no possibility of hiding; but to

hide was unnecessary.

Her slim figure had not crossed the threshold ere Smith had his arm

about the girl’s waist and one hand clapped to her mouth. A stifled gasp

she uttered, and he lifted her into the room.

I stepped forward and closed the door. A faint perfume stole to my

nostrils--a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange

days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karamaneh! that

faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may

appear absurd--impossible--but many and many a time I had dreamt of it.

“In my breast pocket,” rapped Smith; “the light.”

I bent over the girl as he held her. She was quite still, but I could

have wished that I had had more certain mastery of myself. I took the

torch from Smith’s pocket, and, mechanically, directed it upon the

captive.

She was dressed very plainly, wearing a simple blue skirt, and white

blouse. It was easy to divine that it was she whom Eltham had mistaken

for a French maid. A brooch set with a ruby was pinned at the point

where the blouse opened--gleaming fierily and harshly against the soft

skin. Her face was pale and her eyes wide with fear.

“There is some cord in my right-hand pocket,” said Smith; “I came

provided. Tie her wrists.”

I obeyed him, silently. The girl offered no resistance, but I think

I never essayed a less congenial task than that of binding her white

wrists. The jeweled fingers lay quite listlessly in my own.

“Make a good job of it!” rapped Smith, significantly.

A flush rose to my cheeks, for I knew well enough what he meant.

“She is fastened,” I said, and I turned the ray of the torch upon her

again.

Smith removed his hand from her mouth but did not relax his grip of her.

She looked up at me with eyes in which I could have sworn there was no

recognition. But a flush momentarily swept over her face, and left it

pale again.

“We shall have to--gag her--”

“Smith, I can’t do it!”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears and she looked up at my companion

pitifully.

“Please don’t be cruel to me,” she whispered, with that soft accent

which always played havoc with my composure. “Every one--every one-is

cruel to me. I will promise--indeed I will swear, to be quiet. Oh,

believe me, if you can save him I will do nothing to hinder you.” Her

beautiful head drooped. “Have some pity for me as well.”

“Karamaneh” I said. “We would have believed you once. We cannot, now.”

She started violently.

“You know my name!” Her voice was barely audible. “Yet I have never seen

you in my life--”

“See if the door locks,” interrupted Smith harshly.

Dazed by the apparent sincerity in the voice of our lovely

captive--vacant from wonder of it all--I opened the door, felt for, and

found, a key.

We left Karamaneh crouching against the wall; her great eyes were turned

towards me fascinatedly. Smith locked the door with much care. We began

a tip-toed progress along the dimly lighted passage.

From beneath a door on the left, and near the end, a brighter light

shone. Beyond that again was another door. A voice was speaking in the

lighted room; yet I could have sworn that Karamaneh had come, not from

there but from the room beyond--from the far end of the passage.

But the voice!--who, having once heard it, could ever mistake that

singular voice, alternately guttural and sibilant!

Dr. Fu-Manchu was speaking!

“I have asked you,” came with ever-increasing clearness (Smith had begun

to turn the knob), “to reveal to me the name of your correspondent in

Nan-Yang. I have suggested that he may be the Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat, but

you have declined to confirm me. Yet I know” (Smith had the door open

a good three inches and was peering in) “that some official, some high

official, is a traitor. Am I to resort again to the question to learn

his name?”

Ice seemed to enter my veins at the unseen inquisitor’s intonation of

the words “the question.” This was the Twentieth Century, yet there, in

that damnable room...

Smith threw the door open.

Through a sort of haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw

Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to a

rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman who wore a slop-shop blue suit

and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham was

ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily, then

I realized that a sort of tourniquet of wire-netting was screwed so

tightly about him that the flesh swelled out in knobs through the mesh.

There was blood--

“God in heaven!” screamed Smith frenziedly--“they have the wire-jacket

on him! Shoot down that damned Chinaman, Petrie! Shoot! Shoot!”

Lithely as a cat the man with the knife leaped around--but I raised the

Browning, and deliberately--with a cool deliberation that came to me

suddenly--shot him through the head. I saw his oblique eyes turn up to

the whites; I saw the mark squarely between his brows; and with no word

nor cry he sank to his knees and toppled forward with one yellow hand

beneath him and one outstretched, clutching--clutching--convulsively.

His pigtail came unfastened and began to uncoil, slowly, like a snake.

I handed the pistol to Smith; I was perfectly cool, now; and I leaped

forward, took up the bloody knife from the floor and cut Eltham’s

lashings. He sank into my arms.

“Praise God,” he murmured, weakly. “He is more merciful to me than

perhaps I deserve. Unscrew... the jacket, Petrie... I think ... I was

very near to.... weakening. Praise the good God, Who... gave me...

fortitude...”

I got the screw of the accursed thing loosened, but the act of removing

the jacket was too agonizing for Eltham--man of iron though he was. I

laid him swooning on the floor.

“Where is Fu-Manchu?”

Nayland Smith, from just within the door, threw out the query in a tone

of stark amaze. I stood up--I could do nothing more for the poor victim

at the moment--and looked about me. The room was innocent of furniture,

save for heaps of rubbish on the floor, and a tin oil-lamp hung, on

the wall. The dead Chinaman lay close beside Smith. There was no second

door, the one window was barred, and from this room we had heard the

voice, the unmistakable, unforgettable voice, of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

But Dr. Fu-Manchu was not there!

Neither of us could accept the fact for a moment; we stood there,

looking from the dead man to the tortured man who only swooned, in a

state of helpless incredulity.

Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and with a

cry of baffled rage Smith leaped along the passage to the second door.

It was wide open. I stood at his elbow when he swept its emptiness with

the ray of his pocket-lamp.

There was a speaking-tube fixed between the two rooms!

Smith literally ground his teeth.

“Yet, Petrie,” he said, “we have learnt something. Fu-Manchu had

evidently promised Eltham his life if he would divulge the name of

his correspondent. He meant to keep his word; it is a sidelight on his

character.”

“How so?”

“Eltham has never seen Dr. Fu-Manchu, but Eltham knows certain parts of

China better than you know the Strand. Probably, if he saw Fu-Manchu, he

would recognize him for who he really is, and this, it seems, the Doctor

is anxious to avoid.”

We ran back to where we had left Karamaneh.

The room was empty!

“Defeated, Petrie!” said Smith, bitterly. “The Yellow Devil is loosed on

London again!”

He leaned from the window and the skirl of a police whistle split the

stillness of the night.

CHAPTER IV. THE CRY OF A NIGHTHAWK

Such were the episodes that marked the coming of Dr. Fu-Manchu to

London, that awakened fears long dormant and reopened old wounds--nay,

poured poison into them. I strove desperately, by close attention to

my professional duties, to banish the very memory of Karamaneh from my

mind; desperately, but how vainly! Peace was for me no more, joy was

gone from the world, and only mockery remained as my portion.

Poor Eltham we had placed in a nursing establishment, where his

indescribable hurts could be properly tended: and his uncomplaining

fortitude not infrequently made me thoroughly ashamed of myself.

Needless to say, Smith had made such other arrangements as were

necessary to safeguard the injured man, and these proved so successful

that the malignant being whose plans they thwarted abandoned his designs

upon the heroic clergyman and directed his attention elsewhere, as I

must now proceed to relate.

Dusk always brought with it a cloud of apprehensions, for darkness must

ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long after the clocks

had struck the mystic hour “when churchyards yawn,” that the hand of

Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp a victim. I was dismissing a

chance patient.

“Good night, Dr. Petrie,” he said.

“Good night, Mr. Forsyth,” I replied; and, having conducted my late

visitor to the door, I closed and bolted it, switched off the light and

went upstairs.

My patient was chief officer of one of the P. and O. boats. He had cut

his hand rather badly on the homeward run, and signs of poisoning

having developed, had called to have the wound treated, apologizing for

troubling me at so late an hour, but explaining that he had only just

come from the docks. The hall clock announced the hour of one as I

ascended the stairs. I found myself wondering what there was in Mr.

Forsyth’s appearance which excited some vague and elusive memory. Coming

to the top floor, I opened the door of a front bedroom and was surprised

to find the interior in darkness.

“Smith!” I called.

“Come here and watch!” was the terse response. Nayland Smith was sitting

in the dark at the open window and peering out across the common. Even

as I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could detect that tensity in his

attitude which told of high-strung nerves.

I joined him.

“What is it?” I said, curiously.

“I don’t know. Watch that clump of elms.”

His masterful voice had the dry tone in it betokening excitement. I

leaned on the ledge beside him and looked out. The blaze of stars almost

compensated for the absence of the moon and the night had a quality of

stillness that made for awe. This was a tropical summer, and the common,

with its dancing lights dotted irregularly about it, had an unfamiliar

look to-night. The clump of nine elms showed as a dense and irregular

mass, lacking detail.

Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I had no

thought of the night’s beauty, for it only served to remind me that

somewhere amid London’s millions was lurking an uncanny being, whose

life was a mystery, whose very existence was a scientific miracle.

“Where’s your patient?” rapped Smith.

His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No footstep

disturbed the silence of the highroad; where was my patient?

I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.

“Don’t lean out,” he said.

I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.

“For Heaven’s sake, why not?”

“I’ll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?”

“I did, and I can’t make out what he is doing. He seems to have remained

standing at the gate for some reason.”

“He has seen it!” snapped Smith. “Watch those elms.”

His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I say that

I was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add that I was

thrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert watching of

Smith could only mean one thing:

Fu-Manchu!

And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set me

listening; not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds within.

Doubts, suspicions, dreads, heaped themselves up in my mind. Why was

Forsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen him before, to

my knowledge, yet there was something oddly reminiscent about the man.

Could it be that his visit formed part of a plot? Yet his wound had been

genuine enough. Thus my mind worked, feverishly; such was the effect of

an unspoken thought--Fu-Manchu.

Nayland Smith’s grip tightened on my arm.

“There it is again, Petrie!” he whispered.

“Look, look!”

His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful and

uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon the

ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, then

began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose,

high--higher--higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or more

from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away again as it had

come!

“For God’s sake, Smith, what was it?”

“Don’t ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We--”

He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith’s shoulder I saw

Forsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out across the

common.

Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.

“We must stop him!” he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to my mouth

as I was about to call out--“Not a sound, Petrie!”

He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the dark,

crying:

“Out through the garden--the side entrance!”

I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room. Through

it he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed him

out, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants in a

neighboring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze stirred; and

in the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of me, tugging at the

bolt of the gate.

Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and left the

door ajar.

“We must not appear to have come from your house,” explained Smith

rapidly. “I will go along the highroad and cross to the common a hundred

yards up, where there is a pathway, as though homeward bound to the

north side. Give me half a minute’s start, then you proceed in an

opposite direction and cross from the corner of the next road. Directly

you are out of the light of the street lamps, get over the rails and run

for the elms!”

He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.

While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive, impetuous way of

his, with his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel,

I had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stood

alone, in that staid and respectable byway, holding a loaded pistol in

my hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.

It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner, as

directed; for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and evil

man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule, not of Nayland

Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the realization of his

monstrous schemes, not even of Karamaneh the slave girl, whose glorious

beauty was a weapon of might in Fu-Manchu’s hand, but of what impression

I must have made upon a patient had I encountered one then.

Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common and

vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward the elms I

found myself wondering what it was all about, and for what we were

come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me that if Smith had

counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late, for it appeared to me

that he must already be in the coppice.

I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms,

came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air--the eerie hoot of a

nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that bird on

the common before, but oddly enough I attached little significance to it

until, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful scream--a scream in which

fear, and loathing, and anger were hideously blended--thrilled me with

horror.

After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myself

standing by the southernmost elm.

“Smith!” I cried breathlessly. “Smith! my God! where are you?”

As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled sobbing

and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly figure--that of a

man whose face appeared to be streaked. His eyes glared at me madly and

he mowed the air with his hands like one blind and insane with fear.

I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled and the man

fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.

Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was still.

The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond the elms,

Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood beside me, I

merely stared at him fatuously.

“I let him walk to his death, Petrie,” I heard dimly. “God forgive

me--God forgive me!”

The words aroused me.

“Smith”--my voice came as a whisper--“for one awful moment I thought--”

“So did some one else,” he rapped. “Our poor sailor has met the end

designed for me, Petrie!”

At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth’s face had struck me

as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now

lay dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight

mustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!

CHAPTER V. THE NET

We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped

upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A

slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but,

screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated

wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with

unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match

touched that other face.

“Oh, God!” whispered Smith.

A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.

In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so

horrible. Forsyth’s livid face was streaked with tiny streams of blood,

which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these

clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye, and

others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were black,

almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated

indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.

Smith’s piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path

and made my examination--an examination which that first glimpse when

Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless--a mere

matter of form.

“He’s quite dead, Smith,” I said huskily. “It’s--unnatural--it--”

Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little,

short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a

car humming along the highroad, but I remained there on my knees staring

dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a matter of minutes

since had been that of a clean looking British seaman. I found myself

contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed mustache with the bloated face

above it, and counting the little drops of blood which trembled upon

its edge. There were footsteps approaching. I stood up. The footsteps

quickened; and I turned as a constable ran up.

“What’s this?” he demanded gruffly, and stood with his fists clenched,

looking from Smith to me and down at that which lay between us. Then his

hand flew to his breast; there was a silvern gleam and--

“Drop that whistle!” snapped Smith--and struck it from the man’s hand.

“Where’s your lantern? Don’t ask questions!”

The constable started back and was evidently debating upon his chances

with the two of us, when my friend pulled a letter from his pocket and

thrust it under the man’s nose.

“Read that!” he directed harshly, “and then listen to my orders.”

There was something in his voice which changed the officer’s opinion of

the situation. He directed the light of his lantern upon the open letter

and seemed to be stricken with wonder.

“If you have any doubts,” continued Smith--“you may not be familiar with

the Commissioner’s signature--you have only to ring up Scotland Yard

from Dr. Petrie’s house, to which we shall now return, to disperse

them.” He pointed to Forsyth. “Help us to carry him there. We must not

be seen; this must be hushed up. You understand? It must not get into

the press--”

The man saluted respectfully; and the three of us addressed ourselves

to the mournful task. By slow stages we bore the dead man to the edge

of the common, carried him across the road and into my house, without

exciting attention even on the part of those vagrants who nightly slept

out in the neighborhood.

We laid our burden upon the surgery table.

“You will want to make an examination, Petrie,” said Smith in his

decisive way, “and the officer here might ‘phone for the ambulance. I

have some investigations to make also. I must have the pocket lamp.”

He raced upstairs to his room, and an instant later came running down

again. The front door banged.

“The telephone is in the hall,” I said to the constable.

“Thank you, sir.”

He went out of the surgery as I switched on the lamp over the table and

began to examine the marks upon Forsyth’s skin. These, as I have said,

were in groups and nearly all in the form of elongated punctures; a

fairly deep incision with a pear-shaped and superficial scratch beneath

it. One of the tiny wounds had penetrated the right eye.

The symptoms, or those which I had been enabled to observe as Forsyth

had first staggered into view from among the elms, were most puzzling.

Clearly enough, the muscles of articulation and the respiratory muscles

had been affected; and now the livid face, dotted over with tiny wounds

(they were also on the throat), set me mentally groping for a clue to

the manner of his death.

No clue presented itself; and my detailed examination of the body

availed me nothing. The gray herald of dawn was come when the police

arrived with the ambulance and took Forsyth away.

I was just taking my cap from the rack when Nayland Smith returned.

“Smith!” I cried--“have you found anything?”

He stood there in the gray light of the hallway, tugging at the lobe of

his left ear, an old trick of his.

The bronzed face looked very gaunt, I thought, and his eyes were bright

with that febrile glitter which once I had disliked, but which I had

learned from experience were due to tremendous nervous excitement.

At such times he could act with icy coolness and his mental faculties

seemed temporarily to acquire an abnormal keenness. He made no direct

reply; but--

“Have you any milk?” he jerked abruptly.

So wholly unexpected was the question, that for a moment I failed to

grasp it. Then--

“Milk!” I began.

“Exactly, Petrie! If you can find me some milk, I shall be obliged.”

I turned to descend to the kitchen, when--

“The remains of the turbot from dinner, Petrie, would also be welcome,

and I think I should like a trowel.”

I stopped at the stairhead and faced him.

“I cannot suppose that you are joking, Smith,” I said, “but--”

He laughed dryly.

“Forgive me, old man,” he replied. “I was so preoccupied with my own

train of thought that it never occurred to me how absurd my request must

have sounded. I will explain my singular tastes later; at the moment,

hustle is the watchword.”

Evidently he was in earnest, and I ran downstairs accordingly, returning

with a garden trowel, a plate of cold fish and a glass of milk.

“Thanks, Petrie,” said Smith--“If you would put the milk in a jug--”

I was past wondering, so I simply went and fetched a jug, into which he

poured the milk. Then, with the trowel in his pocket, the plate of cold

turbot in one hand and the milk jug in the other, he made for the door.

He had it open when another idea evidently occurred to him.

“I’ll trouble you for the pistol, Petrie.”

I handed him the pistol without a word.

“Don’t assume that I want to mystify you,” he added, “but the presence

of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don’t expect to be long.”

The cold light of dawn flooded the hallway momentarily; then the door

closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith as

he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He was making for

the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached them.

I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise. A

policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated reveler

in evening clothes. That sense of unreality assailed me again. Out there

in the gray mists a man who was vested with powers which rendered him a

law unto himself, who had the British Government behind him in all that

he might choose to do, who had been summoned from Rangoon to London on

singular and dangerous business, was employing himself with a plate of

cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!

Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the

common; then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its

lights twinkled yellowly through the grayness, but I was less concerned

with the approaching car than with the solitary traveler who had

descended from it.

As the car went rocking by below me, I strained my eyes in an endeavor

more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the highroad, had

struck out across the common. It was that of a woman, who seemingly

carried a bulky bag or parcel.

One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers in

man which man, in modern times, neglects, or knows not how to develop. I

became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting this lonely

traveler who traveled at an hour so strange. With no definite plan in

mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from the rack, and walked briskly

out of the house and across the common in a direction which I thought

would enable me to head off the woman.

I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have it, and

with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I came upon

her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the bundle which had

attracted my attention. I stopped and watched her.

She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a common

black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that the dexterous

hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white; and I perceived a

pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf beside her. As she threw

open the wrappings and lifted out something that looked like a

small shrimping net, I stepped around the bush, crossed silently the

intervening patch of grass, and stood beside her.

A faint breath of perfume reached me--of a perfume which, like the

secret incense of Ancient Egypt, seemed to assail my soul. The glamour

of the Orient was in that subtle essence; and I only knew one woman who

used it. I bent over the kneeling figure.

“Good morning,” I said; “can I assist you in any way?”

She came to her feet like a startled deer, and flung away from me with

the lithe movement of some Eastern dancing girl.

Now came the sun, and its heralding rays struck sparks from the

jewels upon the white fingers of this woman who wore the garments of

a mendicant. My heart gave a great leap. It was with difficulty that I

controlled my voice.

“There is no cause for alarm,” I added.

She stood watching me; even through the coarse veil I could see how her

eyes glittered. I stooped and picked up the net.

“Oh!” The whispered word was scarcely audible, but it was enough; I

doubted no longer.

“This is a net for bird snaring,” I said. “What strange bird are you

seeking--Karamaneh?”

With a passionate gesture Karamaneh snatched off the veil, and with

it the ugly black hat. The cloud of wonderful, intractable hair came

rumpling about her face, and her glorious eyes blazed out upon me. How

beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an Egyptian night; how

often had they looked into mine in dreams!

To labor against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one knows, upon

evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be worthless--evil; is

there any torture to which the soul of man is subject, more pitiless?

Yet this was my lot, for what past sins assigned to me I was unable to

conjecture; and this was the woman, this lovely slave of a monster, this

creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

“I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!” I said harshly.

Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.

“It is very convenient to forget, sometimes,” I ran on bitterly, then

checked myself; for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless

desire to hear her defense, by a fool’s hope that it might be an

acceptable one.

I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it had a strong spring

fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously it was intended for

snaring.

“What were you about to do?” I demanded sharply--but in my heart,

poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of

Karamaneh’s lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.

She spoke then.

“Dr. Petrie--”

“Well?”

“You seem to be--angry with me, not so much because of what I do, as

because I do not remember you. Yet--”

“Kindly do not revert to the matter,” I interrupted. “You have chosen,

very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please yourself.

But answer my question.”

She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.

“Why do you treat me so!” she cried; she had the most fascinating accent

imaginable. “Throw me into prison, kill me if you like, for what I have

done!” She stamped her foot. “For what I have done! But do not torture

me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches--that I forget you! I tell

you--again I tell you--that until you came one night, last week, to

rescue some one from--” There was the old trick of hesitating before the

name of Fu-Manchu--“from him, I had never, never seen you!”

The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for

belief--or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were

against her.

“Such a declaration is worthless,” I said, as coldly as I could. “You

are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you--”

“I am no traitress!” she blazed at me; her eyes were magnificent.

“This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve

Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your ‘slavery’--for I

take it you are posing as a slave again--is evidently not very harsh.

You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their destruction, and in return he

loads you with jewels, lavishes gifts--”

“Ah! so!”

She sprang forward, raising flaming eyes to mine; her lips were slightly

parted. With that wild abandon which betrayed the desert blood in her

veins, she wrenched open the neck of her bodice and slipped a soft

shoulder free of the garment. She twisted around, so that the white skin

was but inches removed from me.

“These are some of the gifts that he lavishes upon me!”

I clenched my teeth. Insane thoughts flooded my mind. For that creamy

skin was red with the marks of the lash!

She turned, quickly rearranging her dress, and watching me the while. I

could not trust myself to speak for a moment, then:

“If I am a stranger to you, as you claim, why do you give me your

confidence?” I asked.

“I have known you long enough to trust you!” she said simply, and turned

her head aside.

“Then why do you serve this inhuman monster?”

She snapped her fingers oddly, and looked up at me from under her

lashes. “Why do you question me if you think that everything I say is a

lie?”

It was a lesson in logic--from a woman! I changed the subject.

“Tell me what you came here to do,” I demanded.

She pointed to the net in my hands.

“To catch birds; you have said so yourself.”

“What bird?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

And now a memory was born within my brain; it was that of the cry of

the nighthawk which had harbingered the death of Forsyth! The net was

a large and strong one; could it be that some horrible fowl of the

air--some creature unknown to Western naturalists--had been released

upon the common last night? I thought of the marks upon Forsyth’s face

and throat; I thought of the profound knowledge of obscure and dreadful

things possessed by the Chinaman.

The wrapping, in which the net had been, lay at my feet. I stooped and

took out from it a wicker basket. Karamaneh stood watching me and biting

her lip, but she made no move to check me. I opened the basket. It

contained a large phial, the contents of which possessed a pungent and

peculiar smell.

I was utterly mystified.

“You will have to accompany me to my house,” I said sternly.

Karamaneh upturned her great eyes to mine. They were wide with fear. She

was on the point of speaking when I extended my hand to grasp her. At

that, the look of fear was gone and one of rebellion held its place. Ere

I had time to realize her purpose, she flung back from me with that wild

grace which I had met with in no other woman, turned and ran!

Fatuously, net and basket in hand, I stood looking after her. The idea

of pursuit came to me certainly; but I doubted if I could have outrun

her. For Karamaneh ran, not like a girl used to town or even country

life, but with the lightness and swiftness of a gazelle; ran like the

daughter of the desert that she was.

Some two hundred yards she went, stopped, and looked back. It would seem

that the sheer joy of physical effort had aroused the devil in her, the

devil that must lie latent in every woman with eyes like the eyes of

Karamaneh.

In the ever brightening sunlight I could see the lithe figure swaying;

no rags imaginable could mask its beauty. I could see the red lips

and gleaming teeth. Then--and it was music good to hear, despite its

taunt--she laughed defiantly, turned, and ran again!

I resigned myself to defeat; I blush to add, gladly! Some evidences of

a world awakening were perceptible about me now. Feathered choirs hailed

the new day joyously. Carrying the mysterious contrivance which I had

captured from the enemy, I set out in the direction of my house, my mind

very busy with conjectures respecting the link between this bird snare

and the cry like that of a nighthawk which we had heard at the moment of

Forsyth’s death.

The path that I had chosen led me around the border of the Mound Pond--a

small pool having an islet in the center. Lying at the margin of the

pond I was amazed to see the plate and jug which Nayland Smith had

borrowed recently!

Dropping my burden, I walked down to the edge of the water. I was filled

with a sudden apprehension. Then, as I bent to pick up the now empty

jug, came a hail:

“All right, Petrie! Shall join you in a moment!”

I started up, looked to right and left; but, although the voice had been

that of Nayland Smith, no sign could I discern of his presence!

“Smith!” I cried--“Smith!”

“Coming!”

Seriously doubting my senses, I looked in the direction from which the

voice had seemed to proceed--and there was Nayland Smith.

He stood on the islet in the center of the pond, and, as I perceived

him, he walked down into the shallow water and waded across to me!

“Good heavens!” I began--

One of his rare laughs interrupted me.

“You must think me mad this morning, Petrie!” he said. “But I have made

several discoveries. Do you know what that islet in the pond really is?”

“Merely an islet, I suppose--”

“Nothing of the kind; it is a burial mound, Petrie! It marks the site of

one of the Plague Pits where victims were buried during the Great

Plague of London. You will observe that, although you have seen it every

morning for some years, it remains for a British Commissioner resident

in Burma to acquaint you with its history! Hullo!”--the laughter was

gone from his eyes, and they were steely hard again--“what the blazes

have we here!”

He picked up the net. “What! a bird trap!”

“Exactly!” I said.

Smith turned his searching gaze upon me. “Where did you find it,

Petrie?”

“I did not exactly find it,” I replied; and I related to him the

circumstances of my meeting with Karamaneh.

He directed that cold stare upon me throughout the narrative, and when,

with some embarrassment, I had told him of the girl’s escape--

“Petrie,” he said succinctly, “you are an imbecile!”

I flushed with anger, for not even from Nayland Smith, whom I esteemed

above all other men, could I accept such words uttered as he had uttered

them. We glared at one another.

“Karamaneh,” he continued coldly, “is a beautiful toy, I grant you; but

so is a cobra. Neither is suitable for playful purposes.”

“Smith!” I cried hotly--“drop that! Adopt another tone or I cannot

listen to you!”

“You must listen,” he said, squaring his lean jaw truculently. “You are

playing, not only with a pretty girl who is the favorite of a Chinese

Nero, but with my life! And I object, Petrie, on purely personal

grounds!”

I felt my anger oozing from me; for this was strictly just. I had

nothing to say, and Smith continued:

“You know that she is utterly false, yet a glance or two from those dark

eyes of hers can make a fool of you! A woman made a fool of me, once;

but I learned my lesson; you have failed to learn yours. If you are

determined to go to pieces on the rock that broke up Adam, do so! But

don’t involve me in the wreck, Petrie--for that might mean a yellow

emperor of the world, and you know it!”

“Your words are unnecessarily brutal, Smith,” I said, feeling very

crestfallen, “but there--perhaps I fully deserve them all.”

“You do!” he assured me, but he relaxed immediately. “A murderous

attempt is made upon my life, resulting in the death of a perfectly

innocent man in no way concerned. Along you come and let an accomplice,

perhaps a participant, escape, merely, because she has a red mouth, or

black lashes, or whatever it is that fascinates you so hopelessly!”

He opened the wicker basket, sniffing at the contents.

“Ah!” he snapped, “do you recognize this odor?”

“Certainly.”

“Then you have some idea respecting Karamaneh’s quarry?”

“Nothing of the kind!”

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

“Come along, Petrie,” he said, linking his arm in mine.

We proceeded. Many questions there were that I wanted to put to him, but

one above all.

“Smith,” I said, “what, in Heaven’s name, were you doing on the mound?

Digging something up?”

“No,” he replied, smiling dryly; “burying something!”

CHAPTER VI. UNDER THE ELMS

Dusk found Nayland Smith and me at the top bedroom window. We knew, now

that poor Forsyth’s body had been properly examined, that he had died

from poisoning. Smith, declaring that I did not deserve his confidence,

had refused to confide in me his theory of the origin of the peculiar

marks upon the body.

“On the soft ground under the trees,” he said, “I found his tracks right

up to the point where something happened. There were no other fresh

tracks for several yards around. He was attacked as he stood close to

the trunk of one of the elms. Six or seven feet away I found some other

tracks, very much like this.”

He marked a series of dots upon the blotting pad at his elbow.

“Claws!” I cried. “That eerie call! like the call of a nighthawk--is it

some unknown species of--flying thing?”

“We shall see, shortly; possibly to-night,” was his reply. “Since,

probably owing to the absence of any moon, a mistake was made,” his jaw

hardened at the thoughts of poor Forsyth--“another attempt along the

same lines will almost certainly follow--you know Fu-Manchu’s system?”

So in the darkness, expectant, we sat watching the group of nine elms.

To-night the moon was come, raising her Aladdin’s lamp up to the star

world and summoning magic shadows into being. By midnight the highroad

showed deserted, the common was a place of mystery; and save for the

periodical passage of an electric car, in blazing modernity, this was a

fit enough stage for an eerie drama.

No notice of the tragedy had appeared in print; Nayland Smith was vested

with powers to silence the press. No detectives, no special constables,

were posted. My friend was of opinion that the publicity which had

been given to the deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu in the past, together with

the sometimes clumsy co-operation of the police, had contributed not a

little to the Chinaman’s success.

“There is only one thing to fear,” he jerked suddenly; “he may not be

ready for another attempt to-night.”

“Why?”

“Since he has only been in England for a short time, his menagerie of

venomous things may be a limited one at present.”

Earlier in the evening there had been a brief but violent thunderstorm,

with a tropical downpour of rain, and now clouds were scudding across

the blue of the sky. Through a temporary rift in the veiling the

crescent of the moon looked down upon us. It had a greenish tint, and it

set me thinking of the filmed, green eyes of Fu-Manchu.

The cloud passed and a lake of silver spread out to the edge of the

coppice, where it terminated at a shadow bank.

“There it is, Petrie!” hissed Nayland Smith.

A lambent light was born in the darkness; it rose slowly, unsteadily, to

a great height, and died.

“It’s under the trees, Smith!”

But he was already making for the door. Over his shoulder:

“Bring the pistol, Petrie!” he cried; “I have another. Give me at least

twenty yards’ start or no attempt may be made. But the instant I’m under

the trees, join me.”

Out of the house we ran, and over onto the common, which latterly had

been a pageant ground for phantom warring. The light did not appear

again; and as Smith plunged off toward the trees, I wondered if he knew

what uncanny thing was hidden there. I more than suspected that he had

solved the mystery.

His instructions to keep well in the rear I understood. Fu-Manchu, or

the creature of Fu-Manchu, would attempt nothing in the presence of a

witness. But we knew full well that the instrument of death which was

hidden in the elm coppice could do its ghastly work and leave no clue,

could slay and vanish. For had not Forsyth come to a dreadful end while

Smith and I were within twenty yards of him?

Not a breeze stirred, as Smith, ahead of me--for I had slowed my

pace--came up level with the first tree. The moon sailed clear of the

straggling cloud wisps which alone told of the recent storm; and I noted

that an irregular patch of light lay silvern on the moist ground under

the elms where otherwise lay shadow.

He passed on, slowly. I began to run again. Black against the silvern

patch, I saw him emerge--and look up.

“Be careful, Smith!” I cried--and I was racing under the trees to join

him.

Uttering a loud cry, he leaped--away from the pool of light.

“Stand back, Petrie!” he screamed--“Back! further!”

He charged into me, shoulder lowered, and sent me reeling!

Mixed up with his excited cry I had heard a loud splintering and

sweeping of branches overhead; and now as we staggered into the shadows

it seemed that one of the elms was reaching down to touch us! So, at

least, the phenomenon presented itself to my mind in that fleeting

moment while Smith, uttering his warning cry, was hurling me back.

Then the truth became apparent.

With an appalling crash, a huge bough fell from above. One piercing,

awful shriek there was, a crackling of broken branches, and a choking

groan...

The crack of Smith’s pistol close beside me completed my confusion of

mind.

“Missed!” he yelled. “Shoot it, Petrie! On your left! For God’s sake

don’t miss it!”

I turned. A lithe black shape was streaking past me. I

fired--once--twice. Another frightful cry made yet more hideous the

nocturne.

Nayland Smith was directing the ray of a pocket torch upon the fallen

bough.

“Have you killed it, Petrie?” he cried.

“Yes, yes!”

I stood beside him, looking down. From the tangle of leaves and twigs

an evil yellow face looked up at us. The features were contorted with

agony, but the malignant eyes, wherein light was dying, regarded us with

inflexible hatred. The man was pinned beneath the heavy bough; his back

was broken; and as we watched, he expired, frothing slightly at the

mouth, and quitted his tenement of clay, leaving those glassy eyes set

hideously upon us.

“The pagan gods fight upon our side,” said Smith strangely. “Elms have a

dangerous habit of shedding boughs in still weather--particularly after

a storm. Pan, god of the woods, with this one has performed Justice’s

work of retribution.”

“I don’t understand. Where was this man--”

“Up the tree, lying along the bough which fell, Petrie! That is why he

left no footmarks. Last night no doubt he made his escape by swinging

from bough to bough, ape fashion, and descending to the ground somewhere

at the other side of the coppice.”

He glanced at me.

“You are wondering, perhaps,” he suggested, “what caused the mysterious

light? I could have told you this morning, but I fear I was in a bad

temper, Petrie. It’s very simple: a length of tape soaked in spirit or

something of the kind, and sheltered from the view of any one watching

from your windows, behind the trunk of the tree; then, the end ignited,

lowered, still behind the tree, to the ground. The operator swinging it

around, the flame ascended, of course. I found the unburned fragment of

the tape last night, a few yards from here.”

I was peering down at Fu-Manchu’s servant, the hideous yellow man who

lay dead in a bower of elm leaves.

“He has some kind of leather bag beside him,” I began--

“Exactly!” rapped Smith. “In that he carried his dangerous instrument of

death; from that he released it!”

“Released what?”

“What your fascinating friend came to recapture this morning.”

“Don’t taunt me, Smith!” I said bitterly. “Is it some species of bird?”

“You saw the marks on Forsyth’s body, and I told you of those which I

had traced upon the ground here. They were caused by claws, Petrie!”

“Claws! I thought so! But what claws?”

“The claws of a poisonous thing. I recaptured the one used last night,

killed it--against my will--and buried it on the mound. I was afraid to

throw it in the pond, lest some juvenile fisherman should pull it out

and sustain a scratch. I don’t know how long the claws would remain

venomous.”

“You are treating me like a child, Smith,” I said slowly. “No doubt I

am hopelessly obtuse, but perhaps you will tell me what this Chinaman

carried in a leather bag and released upon Forsyth. It was something

which you recaptured, apparently with the aid of a plate of cold turbot

and a jug of milk! It was something, also, which Karamaneh had been sent

to recapture with the aid--”

I stopped.

“Go on,” said Nayland Smith, turning the ray to the left, “what did she

have in the basket?”

“Valerian,” I replied mechanically.

The ray rested upon the lithe creature that I had shot down.

It was a black cat!

“A cat will go through fire and water for valerian,” said Smith; “but I

got first innings this morning with fish and milk! I had recognized the

imprints under the trees for those of a cat, and I knew, that if a cat

had been released here it would still be hiding in the neighborhood,

probably in the bushes. I finally located a cat, sure enough, and

came for bait! I laid my trap, for the animal was too frightened to be

approachable, and then shot it; I had to. That yellow fiend used the

light as a decoy. The branch which killed him jutted out over the path

at a spot where an opening in the foliage above allowed some moon rays

to penetrate. Directly the victim stood beneath, the Chinaman uttered

his bird cry; the one below looked up, and the cat, previously held

silent and helpless in the leather sack, was dropped accurately upon his

head!”

“But”--I was growing confused.

Smith stooped lower.

“The cat’s claws are sheathed now,” he said; “but if you could examine

them you would find that they are coated with a shining black substance.

Only Fu-Manchu knows what that substance is, Petrie, but you and I know

what it can do!”

CHAPTER VII. ENTER MR. ABEL SLATTIN

“I don’t blame you!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Suppose we say, then, a

thousand pounds if you show us the present hiding-place of Fu-Manchu,

the payment to be in no way subject to whether we profit by your

information or not?”

Abel Slattin shrugged his shoulders, racially, and returned to the

armchair which he had just quitted. He reseated himself, placing his hat

and cane upon my writing-table.

“A little agreement in black and white?” he suggested smoothly.

Smith raised himself up out of the white cane chair, and, bending

forward over a corner of the table, scribbled busily upon a sheet of

notepaper with my fountain-pen.

The while he did so, I covertly studied our visitor. He lay back in

the armchair, his heavy eyelids lowered deceptively. He was a thought

overdressed--a big man, dark-haired and well groomed, who toyed with a

monocle most unsuitable to his type. During the preceding conversation,

I had been vaguely surprised to note Mr. Abel Slattin’s marked American

accent.

Sometimes, when Slattin moved, a big diamond which he wore upon the

third finger of his right hand glittered magnificently. There was a sort

of bluish tint underlying the dusky skin, noticeable even in his hands

but proclaiming itself significantly in his puffy face and especially

under the eyes. I diagnosed a laboring valve somewhere in the heart

system.

Nayland Smith’s pen scratched on. My glance strayed from our Semitic

caller to his cane, lying upon the red leather before me. It was of most

unusual workmanship, apparently Indian, being made of some kind of dark

brown, mottled wood, bearing a marked resemblance to a snake’s skin; and

the top of the cane was carved in conformity, to represent the head

of what I took to be a puff-adder, fragments of stone, or beads, being

inserted to represent the eyes, and the whole thing being finished with

an artistic realism almost startling.

When Smith had tossed the written page to Slattin, and he, having read

it with an appearance of carelessness, had folded it neatly and placed

it in his pocket, I said:

“You have a curio here?”

Our visitor, whose dark eyes revealed all the satisfaction which, by his

manner, he sought to conceal, nodded and took up the cane in his hand.

“It comes from Australia, Doctor,” he replied; “it’s aboriginal work,

and was given to me by a client. You thought it was Indian? Everybody

does. It’s my mascot.”

“Really?”

“It is indeed. Its former owner ascribed magical powers to it! In

fact, I believe he thought that it was one of those staffs mentioned in

biblical history--”

“Aaron’s rod?” suggested Smith, glancing at the cane.

“Something of the sort,” said Slattin, standing up and again preparing

to depart.

“You will ‘phone us, then?” asked my friend.

“You will hear from me to-morrow,” was the reply.

Smith returned to the cane armchair, and Slattin, bowing to both of us,

made his way to the door as I rang for the girl to show him out.

“Considering the importance of his proposal,” I began, as the door

closed, “you hardly received our visitor with cordiality.”

“I hate to have any relations with him,” answered my friend; “but we

must not be squeamish respecting our instruments in dealing with Dr.

Fu-Manchu. Slattin has a rotten reputation--even for a private inquiry

agent. He is little better than a blackmailer--”

“How do you know?”

“Because I called on our friend Weymouth at the Yard yesterday and

looked up the man’s record.”

“Whatever for?”

“I knew that he was concerning himself, for some reason, in the case.

Beyond doubt he has established some sort of communication with the

Chinese group; I am only wondering--”

“You don’t mean--”

“Yes--I do, Petrie! I tell you he is unscrupulous enough to stoop even

to that.”

No doubt, Slattin knew that this gaunt, eager-eyed Burmese commissioner

was vested with ultimate authority in his quest of the mighty Chinaman

who represented things unutterable, whose potentialities for evil were

boundless as his genius, who personified a secret danger, the extent

and nature of which none of us truly understood. And, learning of these

things, with unerring Semitic instinct he had sought an opening in this

glittering Rialto. But there were two bidders!

“You think he may have sunk so low as to become a creature of

Fu-Manchu?” I asked, aghast.

“Exactly! If it paid him well I do not doubt that he would serve that

master as readily as any other. His record is about as black as it

well could be. Slattin is of course an assumed name; he was known as

Lieutenant Pepley when he belonged to the New York Police, and he was

kicked out of the service for complicity in an unsavory Chinatown case.”

“Chinatown!”

“Yes, Petrie, it made me wonder, too; and we must not forget that he is

undeniably a clever scoundrel.”

“Shall you keep any appointment which he may suggest?”

“Undoubtedly. But I shall not wait until tomorrow.”

“What!”

“I propose to pay a little informal visit to Mr. Abel Slattin,

to-night.”

“At his office?”

“No; at his private residence. If, as I more than suspect, his object

is to draw us into some trap, he will probably report his favorable

progress to his employer to-night!”

“Then we should have followed him!”

Nayland Smith stood up and divested himself of the old shooting-jacket.

“He has been followed, Petrie,” he replied, with one of his rare smiles.

“Two C.I.D. men have been watching the house all night!”

This was entirely characteristic of my friend’s farseeing methods.

“By the way,” I said, “you saw Eltham this morning. He will soon be

convalescent. Where, in heaven’s name, can he--”

“Don’t be alarmed on his behalf, Petrie,” interrupted Smith. “His life

is no longer in danger.”

I stared, stupidly.

“No longer in danger!”

“He received, some time yesterday, a letter, written in Chinese, upon

Chinese paper, and enclosed in an ordinary business envelope, having a

typewritten address and bearing a London postmark.”

“Well?”

“As nearly as I can render the message in English, it reads: ‘Although,

because you are a brave man, you would not betray your correspondent in

China, he has been discovered. He was a mandarin, and as I cannot write

the name of a traitor, I may not name him. He was executed four days

ago. I salute you and pray for your speedy recovery. Fu-Manchu.’”

“Fu-Manchu! But it is almost certainly a trap.”

“On the contrary, Petrie--Fu-Manchu would not have written in Chinese

unless he were sincere; and, to clear all doubt, I received a cable this

morning reporting that the Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat was assassinated in his

own garden, in Nan-Yang, one day last week.”

CHAPTER VIII. DR. FU-MANCHU STRIKES

Together we marched down the slope of the quiet, suburban avenue; to

take pause before a small, detached house displaying the hatchet boards

of the Estate Agent. Here we found unkempt laurel bushes and acacias

run riot, from which arboreal tangle protruded the notice--“To be Let or

Sold.”

Smith, with an alert glance to right and left, pushed open the wooden

gate and drew me in upon the gravel path. Darkness mantled all; for the

nearest street lamp was fully twenty yards beyond.

From the miniature jungle bordering the path, a soft whistle sounded.

“Is that Carter?” called Smith, sharply.

A shadowy figure uprose, and vaguely I made it out for that of a man in

the unobtrusive blue serge which is the undress uniform of the Force.

“Well?” rapped my companion.

“Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir,” reported the constable. “He

came in a cab which he dismissed--”

“He has not left again?”

“A few minutes after his return,” the man continued, “another cab came

up, and a lady alighted.”

“A lady!”

“The same, sir, that has called upon him before.”

“Smith!” I whispered, plucking at his arm--“is it--”

He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb foolishly.

For now the manner of Slattin’s campaign suddenly was revealed to me. In

our operations against the Chinese murder-group two years before, we had

had an ally in the enemy’s camp--Karamaneh the beautiful slave, whose

presence in those happenings of the past had colored the sometimes

sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia; who had seemed a fitting

figure for the romances of Bagdad during the Caliphate--Karamaneh, whom

I had thought sincere, whose inscrutable Eastern soul I had presumed,

fatuously, to have laid bare and analyzed.

Now, once again she was plying her old trade of go-between; professing

to reveal the secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu, and all the time--I could not

doubt it--inveigling men into the net of this awful fisher.

Yesterday, I had been her dupe; yesterday, I had rejoiced in my

captivity. To-day, I was not the favored one; to-day I had not been

selected recipient of her confidences--confidences sweet, seductive,

deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should

be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely

mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those

perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing;

deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was

about to betray her master, to resign herself a prize to the victor!

Companioned by these bitter reflections, I had lost the remainder of the

conversation between Nayland Smith and the police officer; now, casting

off the succubus memory which threatened to obsess me, I put forth a

giant mental effort to purge my mind of this uncleanness, and became

again an active participant in the campaign against the Master--the

director of all things noxious.

Our plans being evidently complete, Smith seized my arm, and I found

myself again out upon the avenue. He led me across the road and into the

gate of a house almost opposite. From the fact that two upper windows

were illuminated, I adduced that the servants were retiring; the other

windows were in darkness, except for one on the ground floor to the

extreme left of the building, through the lowered venetian blinds

whereof streaks of light shone out.

“Slattin’s study!” whispered Smith. “He does not anticipate

surveillance, and you will note that the window is wide open!”

With that my friend crossed the strip of lawn, and careless of the fact

that his silhouette must have been visible to any one passing the gate,

climbed carefully up the artificial rockery intervening, and crouched

upon the window-ledge peering into the room.

A moment I hesitated, fearful that if I followed, I should stumble or

dislodge some of the larva blocks of which the rockery was composed.

Then I heard that which summoned me to the attempt, whatever the cost.

Through the open window came the sound of a musical voice--a voice

possessing a haunting accent, possessing a quality which struck upon my

heart and set it quivering as though it were a gong hung in my bosom.

Karamaneh was speaking.

Upon hands and knees, heedless of damage to my garments, I crawled up

beside Smith. One of the laths was slightly displaced and over this my

friend was peering in. Crouching close beside him, I peered in also.

I saw the study of a business man, with its files, neatly arranged works

of reference, roll-top desk, and Milner safe. Before the desk, in a

revolving chair, sat Slattin. He sat half turned toward the window,

leaning back and smiling; so that I could note the gold crown which

preserved the lower left molar. In an armchair by the window, close,

very close, and sitting with her back to me, was Karamaneh!

She, who, in my dreams, I always saw, was ever seeing, in an Eastern

dress, with gold bands about her white ankles, with jewel-laden fingers,

with jewels in her hair, wore now a fashionable costume and a hat that

could only have been produced in Paris. Karamaneh was the one Oriental

woman I had ever known who could wear European clothes; and as I watched

that exquisite profile, I thought that Delilah must have been just such

another as this, that, excepting the Empress Poppaea, history has record

of no woman, who, looking so innocent, was yet so utterly vile.

“Yes, my dear,” Slattin was saying, and through his monocle ogling his

beautiful visitor, “I shall be ready for you to-morrow night.”

I felt Smith start at the words.

“There will be a sufficient number of men?”

Karamaneh put the question in a strangely listless way.

“My dear little girl,” replied Slattin, rising and standing looking down

at her, with his gold tooth twinkling in the lamplight, “there will be a

whole division, if a whole division is necessary.”

He sought to take her white gloved hand, which rested upon the chair

arm; but she evaded the attempt with seeming artlessness, and stood up.

Slattin fixed his bold gaze upon her.

“So now, give me my orders,” he said.

“I am not prepared to do so, yet,” replied the girl, composedly; “but

now that I know you are ready, I can make my plans.”

She glided past him to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an

artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim

of all these wiles.

“But--” began Slattin.

“I will ring you up in less than half an hour,” said Karamaneh and

without further ceremony, she opened the door.

I still had my eyes glued to the aperture in the blind, when Smith began

tugging at my arm.

“Down! you fool!” he hissed harshly--“if she sees us, all is lost!”

Realizing this, and none too soon, I turned, and rather clumsily

followed my friend. I dislodged a piece of granite in my descent; but,

fortunately, Slattin had gone out into the hall and could not well have

heard it.

We were crouching around an angle of the house, when a flood of light

poured down the steps, and Karamaneh rapidly descended. I had a glimpse

of a dark-faced man who evidently had opened the door for her, then all

my thoughts were centered upon that graceful figure receding from me

in the direction of the avenue. She wore a loose cloak, and I saw this

fluttering for a moment against the white gate posts; then she was gone.

Yet Smith did not move. Detaining me with his hand he crouched there

against a quick-set hedge; until, from a spot lower down the hill,

we heard the start of the cab which had been waiting. Twenty seconds

elapsed, and from some other distant spot a second cab started.

“That’s Weymouth!” snapped Smith. “With decent luck, we should know

Fu-Manchu’s hiding-place before Slattin tells us!”

“But--”

“Oh! as it happens, he’s apparently playing the game.”--In the

half-light, Smith stared at me significantly--“Which makes it all the

more important,” he concluded, “that we should not rely upon his aid!”

Those grim words were prophetic.

My companion made no attempt to communicate with the detective (or

detectives) who shared our vigil; we took up a position close under the

lighted study window and waited--waited.

Once, a taxi-cab labored hideously up the steep gradient of the avenue

... It was gone. The lights at the upper windows above us became

extinguished. A policeman tramped past the gateway, casually flashing

his lamp in at the opening. One by one the illuminated windows in other

houses visible to us became dull; then lived again as mirrors for the

pallid moon. In the silence, words spoken within the study were clearly

audible; and we heard someone--presumably the man who had opened the

door--inquire if his services would be wanted again that night.

Smith inclined his head and hung over me in a tense attitude, in order

to catch Slattin’s reply.

“Yes, Burke,” it came--“I want you to sit up until I return; I shall be

going out shortly.”

Evidently the man withdrew at that; for a complete silence followed

which prevailed for fully half an hour. I sought cautiously to move my

cramped limbs, unlike Smith, who seeming to have sinews of piano-wire,

crouched beside me immovable, untiringly. Then loud upon the stillness,

broke the strident note of the telephone bell.

I started, nervously, clutching at Smith’s arm. It felt hard as iron to

my grip.

“Hullo!” I heard Slattin call--“who is speaking?... Yes, yes! This is

Mr. A. S.... I am to come at once?... I know where--yes I ... you

will meet me there?... Good!--I shall be with you in half an hour....

Good-by!”

Distinctly I heard the creak of the revolving office-chair as Slattin

rose; then Smith had me by the arm, and we were flying swiftly away from

the door to take up our former post around the angle of the building.

This gained:

“He’s going to his death!” rapped Smith beside me; “but Carter has a cab

from the Yard waiting in the nearest rank. We shall follow to see where

he goes--for it is possible that Weymouth may have been thrown off the

scent; then, when we are sure of his destination, we can take a hand in

the game! We...”

The end of the sentence was lost to me--drowned in such a frightful wave

of sound as I despair to describe. It began with a high, thin scream,

which was choked off staccato fashion; upon it followed a loud and

dreadful cry uttered with all the strength of Slattin’s lungs--

“Oh, God!” he cried, and again--“Oh, God!”

This in turn merged into a sort of hysterical sobbing.

I was on my feet now, and automatically making for the door. I had a

vague impression of Nayland Smith’s face beside me, the eyes glassy with

a fearful apprehension. Then the door was flung open, and, in the bright

light of the hall-way, I saw Slattin standing--swaying and seemingly

fighting with the empty air.

“What is it? For God’s sake, what has happened!” reached my ears

dimly--and the man Burke showed behind his master. White-faced I saw him

to be; for now Smith and I were racing up the steps.

Ere we could reach him, Slattin, uttering another choking cry, pitched

forward and lay half across the threshold.

We burst into the hall, where Burke stood with both his hands raised

dazedly to his head. I could hear the sound of running feet upon the

gravel, and knew that Carter was coming to join us.

Burke, a heavy man with a lowering, bull-dog type of face, collapsed

onto his knees beside Slattin, and began softly to laugh in little

rising peals.

“Drop that!” snapped Smith, and grasping him by the shoulders, he sent

him spinning along the hallway, where he sank upon the bottom step of

the stairs, to sit with his outstretched fingers extended before his

face, and peering at us grotesquely through the crevices.

There were rustlings and subdued cries from the upper part of the

house. Carter came in out of the darkness, carefully stepping over the

recumbent figure; and the three of us stood there in the lighted hall

looking down at Slattin.

“Help us to move him back,” directed Smith, tensely; “far enough to

close the door.”

Between us we accomplished this, and Carter fastened the door. We were

alone with the shadow of Fu-Manchu’s vengeance; for as I knelt beside

the body on the floor, a look and a touch sufficed to tell me that this

was but clay from which the spirit had fled!

Smith met my glance as I raised my head, and his teeth came together

with a loud snap; the jaw muscles stood out prominently beneath the

dark skin; and his face was grimly set in that odd, half-despairful

expression which I knew so well but which boded so ill for whomsoever

occasioned it.

“Dead, Petrie!--already?”

“Lightning could have done the work no better. Can I turn him over?”

Smith nodded.

Together we stooped and rolled the heavy body on its back. A flood of

whispers came sibilantly from the stairway. Smith spun around rapidly,

and glared upon the group of half-dressed servants.

“Return to your rooms!” he rapped, imperiously; “let no one come into

the hall without my orders.”

The masterful voice had its usual result; there was a hurried retreat

to the upper landing. Burke, shaking like a man with an ague, sat on the

lower step, pathetically drumming his palms upon his uplifted knees.

“I warned him, I warned him!” he mumbled monotonously, “I warned him,

oh, I warned him!”

“Stand up!” shouted Smith--“stand up and come here!”

The man, with his frightened eyes turning to right and left, and seeming

to search for something in the shadows about him, advanced obediently.

“Have you a flask?” demanded Smith of Carter.

The detective silently administered to Burke a stiff restorative.

“Now,” continued Smith, “you, Petrie, will want to examine him, I

suppose?” He pointed to the body. “And in the meantime I have some

questions to put to you, my man.”

He clapped his hand upon Burke’s shoulder.

“My God!” Burke broke out, “I was ten yards from him when it happened!”

“No one is accusing you,” said Smith, less harshly; “but since you were

the only witness, it is by your aid that we hope to clear the matter

up.”

Exerting a gigantic effort to regain control of himself, Burke nodded,

watching my friend with a childlike eagerness. During the ensuing

conversation, I examined Slattin for marks of violence; and of what I

found, more anon.

“In the first place,” said Smith, “you say that you warned him. When did

you warn him and of what?”

“I warned him, sir, that it would come to this--”

“That what would come to this?”’

“His dealings with the Chinaman!”

“He had dealings with Chinamen?”

“He accidentally met a Chinaman at an East End gaming-house, a man he

had known in Frisco--a man called Singapore Charlie--”

“What! Singapore Charlie!”

“Yes, sir, the same man that had a dope-shop, two years ago, down

Ratcliffe way--”

“There was a fire--”

“But Singapore Charlie escaped, sir.”

“And he is one of the gang?”

“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.

I did not know the exact situation of the place to which Smith was gone,

for owing to the urgent case which I have mentioned, I had been absent

at the time of his departure; nor could Scotland Yard enlighten me

upon this point. Weymouth was in charge of the case--under Smith’s

direction--and since the inspector had left the Yard, early that

morning, he had disappeared as completely as Smith, no report having

been received from him.

As my driver turned into the black mouth of a narrow, ill-lighted

street, and the glare and clamor of the greater thoroughfare died behind

me, I sank into the corner of the cab burdened with such a sense of

desolation as mercifully comes but rarely.

We were heading now for that strange settlement off the West India Dock

Road, which, bounded by Limehouse Causeway and Pennyfields, and narrowly

confined within four streets, composes an unique Chinatown, a miniature

of that at Liverpool, and of the greater one in San Francisco. Inspired

with an idea which promised hopefully, I raised the speaking tube.

“Take me first to the River Police Station,” I directed; “along

Ratcliffe Highway.”

The man turned and nodded comprehendingly, as I could see through the

wet pane.

Presently we swerved to the right and into an even narrower street. This

inclined in an easterly direction, and proved to communicate with a wide

thoroughfare along which passed brilliantly lighted electric trams. I

had lost all sense of direction, and when, swinging to the left and to

the right again, I looked through the window and perceived that we were

before the door of the Police Station, I was dully surprised.

In quite mechanical fashion I entered the depot. Inspector Ryman, our

associate in one of the darkest episodes of the campaign with the Yellow

Doctor two years before, received me in his office.

By a negative shake of the head, he answered my unspoken question.

“The ten o’clock boat is lying off the Stone Stairs, Doctor,” he said,

“and co-operating with some of the Scotland Yard men who are dragging

that district--”

I shuddered at the word “dragging”; Ryman had not used it literally, but

nevertheless it had conjured up a dread possibility--a possibility in

accordance with the methods of Dr. Fu-Manchu. All within space of an

instant I saw the tide of Limehouse Reach, the Thames lapping about

the green-coated timbers of a dock pier; and rising--falling--sometimes

disclosing to the pallid light a rigid hand, sometimes a horribly

bloated face--I saw the body of Nayland Smith at the mercy of those oily

waters. Ryman continued:

“There is a launch out, too, patrolling the riverside from here to

Tilbury. Another lies at the breakwater”--he jerked his thumb over his

shoulder. “Should you care to take a run down and see for yourself?”

“No, thanks,” I replied, shaking my head. “You are doing all that can be

done. Can you give me the address of the place to which Mr. Smith went

last night?”

“Certainly,” said Ryman; “I thought you knew it. You remember Shen-Yan’s

place--by Limehouse Basin? Well, further east--east of the Causeway,

between Gill Street and Three Colt Street--is a block of wooden

buildings. You recall them?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Is the man established there again, then?”

“It appears so, but, although you have evidently not been informed of

the fact, Weymouth raided the establishment in the early hours of this

morning!”

“Well?” I cried.

“Unfortunately with no result,” continued the inspector. “The notorious

Shen-Yan was missing, and although there is no real doubt that the place

is used as a gaming-house, not a particle of evidence to that effect

could be obtained. Also--there was no sign of Mr. Nayland Smith, and no

sign of the American, Burke, who had led him to the place.”

“Is it certain that they went there?”

“Two C. I. D. men who were shadowing, actually saw the pair of them

enter. A signal had been arranged, but it was never given; and at about

half past four, the place was raided.”

“Surely some arrests were made?”

“But there was no evidence!” cried Ryman. “Every inch of the rat-burrow

was searched. The Chinese gentleman who posed as the proprietor of what

he claimed to be a respectable lodging-house offered every facility to

the police. What could we do?”

“I take it that the place is being watched?”

“Certainly,” said Ryman. “Both from the river and from the shore. Oh!

they are not there! God knows where they are, but they are not there!”

I stood for a moment in silence, endeavoring to determine my course;

then, telling Ryman that I hoped to see him later, I walked out slowly

into the rain and mist, and nodding to the taxi-driver to proceed to our

original destination, I re-entered the cab.

As we moved off, the lights of the River Police depot were swallowed up

in the humid murk, and again I found myself being carried through the

darkness of those narrow streets, which, like a maze, hold secret within

their labyrinth mysteries as great, and at least as foul, as that of

Pasiphae.

The marketing centers I had left far behind me; to my right stretched

the broken range of riverside buildings, and beyond them flowed the

Thames, a stream more heavily burdened with secrets than ever was Tiber

or Tigris. On my left, occasional flickering lights broke through the

mist, for the most part the lights of taverns; and saving these rents

in the veil, the darkness was punctuated with nothing but the faint and

yellow luminance of the street lamps.

Ahead was a black mouth, which promised to swallow me up as it had

swallowed up my friend.

In short, what with my lowered condition and consequent frame of mind,

and what with the traditions, for me inseparable from that gloomy

quarter of London, I was in the grip of a shadowy menace which at any

moment might become tangible--I perceived, in the most commonplace

objects, the yellow hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

When the cab stopped in a place of utter darkness, I aroused myself with

an effort, opened the door, and stepped out into the mud of a narrow

lane. A high brick wall frowned upon me from one side, and, dimly

perceptible, there towered a smoke stack, beyond. On my right uprose

the side of a wharf building, shadowly, and some distance ahead, almost

obscured by the drizzling rain, a solitary lamp flickered. I turned up

the collar of my raincoat, shivering, as much at the prospect as from

physical chill.

“You will wait here,” I said to the man; and, feeling in my

breast-pocket, I added: “If you hear the note of a whistle, drive on and

rejoin me.”

He listened attentively and with a certain eagerness. I had selected

him that night for the reason that he had driven Smith and myself

on previous occasions and had proved himself a man of intelligence.

Transferring a Browning pistol from my hip-pocket to that of my

raincoat, I trudged on into the mist.

The headlights of the taxi were swallowed up behind me, and just abreast

of the street lamp I stood listening.

Save for the dismal sound of rain, and the trickling of water along the

gutters, all about me was silent. Sometimes this silence would be broken

by the distant, muffled note of a steam siren; and always, forming

a sort of background to the near stillness, was the remote din of

riverside activity.

I walked on to the corner just beyond the lamp. This was the street in

which the wooden buildings were situated. I had expected to detect some

evidences of surveillances, but if any were indeed being observed, the

fact was effectively masked. Not a living creature was visible, peer as

I could.

Plans, I had none, and perceiving that the street was empty, and that

no lights showed in any of the windows, I passed on, only to find that I

had entered a cul-de-sac.

A rickety gate gave access to a descending flight of stone steps, the

bottom invisible in the denser shadows of an archway, beyond which, I

doubted not, lay the river.

Still uninspired by any definite design, I tried the gate and found that

it was unlocked. Like some wandering soul, as it has since seemed to

me, I descended. There was a lamp over the archway, but the glass was

broken, and the rain apparently had extinguished the light; as I passed

under it, I could hear the gas whistling from the burner.

Continuing my way, I found myself upon a narrow wharf with the Thames

flowing gloomily beneath me. A sort of fog hung over the river, shutting

me in. Then came an incident.

Suddenly, quite near, there arose a weird and mournful cry--a cry

indescribable, and inexpressibly uncanny!

I started back so violently that how I escaped falling into the river

I do not know to this day. That cry, so eerie and so wholly unexpected,

had unnerved me; and realizing the nature of my surroundings, and the

folly of my presence alone in such a place, I began to edge back toward

the foot of the steps, away from the thing that cried; when--a great

white shape uprose like a phantom before me!...

There are few men, I suppose, whose lives have been crowded with so many

eerie happenings as mine, but this phantom thing which grew out of the

darkness, which seemed about to envelope me, takes rank in my memory

amongst the most fearsome apparitions which I have witnessed.

I knew that I was frozen with a sort of supernatural terror. I stood

there with hands clenched, staring--staring at that white shape, which

seemed to float.

As I stared, every nerve in my body thrilling, I distinguished the

outline of the phantom. With a subdued cry, I stepped forward. A new

sensation claimed me. In that one stride I passed from the horrible to

the bizarre.

I found myself confronted with something tangible, certainly, but

something whose presence in that place was utterly extravagant--could

only be reconcilable in the dreams of an opium slave.

Was I awake, was I sane? Awake and sane beyond doubt, but surely

moving, not in the purlieus of Limehouse, but in the fantastic realms of

fairyland.

Swooping, with open arms, I rounded up in an angle against the building

and gathered in this screaming thing which had inspired in me so keen a

terror.

The great, ghostly fan was closed as I did so, and I stumbled back

toward the stair with my struggling captive tucked under my arm; I

mounted into one of London’s darkest slums, carrying a beautiful white

peacock!

CHAPTER XII. DARK EYES LOOKED INTO MINE

My adventure had done nothing to relieve the feeling of unreality which

held me enthralled. Grasping the struggling bird firmly by the body, and

having the long white tail fluttering a yard or so behind me, I returned

to where the taxi waited.

“Open the door!” I said to the man--who greeted me with such a stare of

amazement that I laughed outright, though my mirth was but hollow.

He jumped into the road and did as I directed. Making sure that both

windows were closed, I thrust the peacock into the cab and shut the door

upon it.

“For God’s sake, sir!” began the driver--

“It has probably escaped from some collector’s place on the riverside,”

I explained, “but one never knows. See that it does not escape again,

and if at the end of an hour, as arranged, you do not hear from me, take

it back with you to the River Police Station.”

“Right you are, sir,” said the man, remounting his seat. “It’s the first

time I ever saw a peacock in Limehouse!”

It was the first time I had seen one, and the incident struck me as

being more than odd; it gave me an idea, and a new, faint hope. I

returned to the head of the steps, at the foot of which I had met with

this singular experience, and gazed up at the dark building beneath

which they led. Three windows were visible, but they were broken and

neglected. One, immediately above the arch, had been pasted up with

brown paper, and this was now peeling off in the rain, a little stream

of which trickled down from the detached corner to drop, drearily, upon

the stone stairs beneath.

Where were the detectives? I could only assume that they had directed

their attention elsewhere, for had the place not been utterly deserted,

surely I had been challenged.

In pursuit of my new idea, I again descended the steps. The persuasion

(shortly to be verified) that I was close upon the secret hold of the

Chinaman, grew stronger, unaccountably. I had descended some eight

steps, and was at the darkest part of the archway or tunnel, when

confirmation of my theories came to me.

A noose settled accurately upon my shoulders, was snatched tightly about

my throat, and with a feeling of insupportable agony at the base of

my skull, and a sudden supreme knowledge that I was being

strangled--hanged--I lost consciousness!

How long I remained unconscious, I was unable to determine at the time,

but I learned later, that it was for no more than half an hour; at any

rate, recovery was slow.

The first sensation to return to me was a sort of repetition of

the asphyxia. The blood seemed to be forcing itself into my eyes--I

choked--I felt that my end was come. And, raising my hands to my throat,

I found it to be swollen and inflamed. Then the floor upon which I lay

seemed to be rocking like the deck of a ship, and I glided back again

into a place of darkness and forgetfulness.

My second awakening was heralded by a returning sense of smell; for I

became conscious of a faint, exquisite perfume.

It brought me to my senses as nothing else could have done, and I sat

upright with a hoarse cry. I could have distinguished that perfume amid

a thousand others, could have marked it apart from the rest in a scent

bazaar. For me it had one meaning, and one meaning only--Karamaneh.

She was near to me, or had been near to me!

And in the first moments of my awakening, I groped about in the darkness

blindly seeking her.

Then my swollen throat and throbbing head, together with my utter

inability to move my neck even slightly, reminded me of the facts as

they were. I knew in that bitter moment that Karamaneh was no longer my

friend; but, for all her beauty and charm, was the most heartless, the

most fiendish creature in the service of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I groaned aloud

in my despair and misery.

Something stirred, near to me in the room, and set my nerves creeping

with a new apprehension. I became fully alive to the possibilities of

the darkness.

To my certain knowledge, Dr. Fu-Manchu at this time had been in England

for fully three months, which meant that by now he must be equipped with

all the instruments of destruction, animate and inanimate, which dread

experience had taught me to associate with him.

Now, as I crouched there in that dark apartment listening for a

repetition of the sound, I scarcely dared to conjecture what might have

occasioned it, but my imagination peopled the place with reptiles which

writhed upon the floor, with tarantulas and other deadly insects which

crept upon the walls, which might drop upon me from the ceiling at any

moment.

Then, since nothing stirred about me, I ventured to move, turning my

shoulders, for I was unable to move my aching head; and I looked in the

direction from which a faint, very faint, light proceeded.

A regular tapping sound now began to attract my attention, and, having

turned about, I perceived that behind me was a broken window, in places

patched with brown paper; the corner of one sheet of paper was detached,

and the rain trickled down upon it with a rhythmical sound.

In a flash I realized that I lay in the room immediately above the

archway; and listening intently, I perceived above the other faint

sounds of the night, or thought that I perceived, the hissing of the gas

from the extinguished lamp-burner.

Unsteadily I rose to my feet, but found myself swaying like a drunken

man. I reached out for support, stumbling in the direction of the wall.

My foot came in contact with something that lay there, and I pitched

forward and fell....

I anticipated a crash which would put an end to my hopes of escape, but

my fall was comparatively noiseless--for I fell upon the body of a man

who lay bound up with rope close against the wall!

A moment I stayed as I fell, the chest of my fellow captive rising and

falling beneath me as he breathed. Knowing that my life depended

upon retaining a firm hold upon myself, I succeeded in overcoming the

dizziness and nausea which threatened to drown my senses, and, moving

back so that I knelt upon the floor, I fumbled in my pocket for the

electric lamp which I had placed there. My raincoat had been removed

whilst I was unconscious, and with it my pistol, but the lamp was

untouched.

I took it out, pressed the button, and directed the ray upon the face of

the man beside me.

It was Nayland Smith!

Trussed up and fastened to a ring in the wall he lay, having a cork gag

strapped so tightly between his teeth that I wondered how he had escaped

suffocation.

But, although a grayish pallor showed through the tan of his skin, his

eyes were feverishly bright, and there, as I knelt beside him, I thanked

heaven, silently but fervently.

Then, in furious haste, I set to work to remove the gag. It was most

ingeniously secured by means of leather straps buckled at the back of

his head, but I unfastened these without much difficulty, and he spat

out the gag, uttering an exclamation of disgust.

“Thank God, old man!” he said, huskily. “Thank God that you are alive! I

saw them drag you in, and I thought...”

“I have been thinking the same about you for more than twenty-four

hours,” I said, reproachfully. “Why did you start without--”

“I did not want you to come, Petrie,” he replied. “I had a sort of

premonition. You see it was realized; and instead of being as helpless

as I, Fate has made you the instrument of my release. Quick! You have a

knife? Good!” The old, feverish energy was by no means extinguished

in him. “Cut the ropes about my wrists and ankles, but don’t otherwise

disturb them--”

I set to work eagerly.

“Now,” Smith continued, “put that filthy gag in place again--but you

need not strap it so tightly! Directly they find that you are alive,

they will treat you the same--you understand? She has been here three

times--”

“Karamaneh?”...

“Ssh!”

I heard a sound like the opening of a distant door.

“Quick! the straps of the gag!” whispered Smith, “and pretend to recover

consciousness just as they enter--”

Clumsily I followed his directions, for my fingers were none too steady,

replaced the lamp in my pocket, and threw myself upon the floor.

Through half-shut eyes, I saw the door open and obtained a glimpse of

a desolate, empty passage beyond. On the threshold stood Karamaneh. She

held in her hand a common tin oil lamp which smoked and flickered with

every movement, filling the already none too cleanly air with an odor of

burning paraffin. She personified the outre; nothing so incongruous as

her presence in that place could well be imagined. She was dressed as I

remembered once to have seen her two years before, in the gauzy silks of

the harem. There were pearls glittering like great tears amid the cloud

of her wonderful hair. She wore broad gold bangles upon her bare arms,

and her fingers were laden with jewelry. A heavy girdle swung from her

hips, defining the lines of her slim shape, and about one white ankle

was a gold band.

As she appeared in the doorway I almost entirely closed my eyes, but my

gaze rested fascinatedly upon the little red slippers which she wore.

Again I detected the exquisite, elusive perfume, which, like a breath

of musk, spoke of the Orient; and, as always, it played havoc with my

reason, seeming to intoxicate me as though it were the very essence of

her loveliness.

But I had a part to play, and throwing out one clenched hand so that my

fist struck upon the floor, I uttered a loud groan, and made as if to

rise upon my knees.

One quick glimpse I had of her wonderful eyes, widely opened and turned

upon me with such an enigmatical expression as set my heart leaping

wildly--then, stepping back, Karamaneh placed the lamp upon the boards

of the passage and clapped her hands.

As I sank upon the floor in assumed exhaustion, a Chinaman with

a perfectly impassive face, and a Burman, whose pock-marked, evil

countenance was set in an apparently habitual leer, came running into

the room past the girl.

With a hand which trembled violently, she held the lamp whilst the two

yellow ruffians tied me. I groaned and struggled feebly, fixing my gaze

upon the lamp-bearer in a silent reproach which was by no means without

its effect.

She lowered her eyes, and I could see her biting her lip, whilst the

color gradually faded from her cheeks. Then, glancing up again quickly,

and still meeting that reproachful stare, she turned her head aside

altogether, and rested one hand upon the wall, swaying slightly as she

did so.

It was a singular ordeal for more than one of that incongruous group;

but in order that I may not be charged with hypocrisy or with seeking

to hide my own folly, I confess, here, that when again I found myself

in darkness, my heart was leaping not because of the success of my

strategy, but because of the success of that reproachful glance which

I had directed toward the lovely, dark-eyed Karamaneh, toward the

faithless, evil Karamaneh! So much for myself.

The door had not been closed ten seconds, ere Smith again was spitting

out the gag, swearing under his breath, and stretching his cramped limbs

free from their binding. Within a minute from the time of my trussing,

I was a free man again; save that look where I would--to right, to left,

or inward, to my own conscience--two dark eyes met mine, enigmatically.

“What now?” I whispered.

“Let me think,” replied Smith. “A false move would destroy us.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since last night.”

“Is Fu-Manchu--”

“Fu-Manchu is here!” replied Smith, grimly--“and not only Fu-Manchu,

but--another.”

“Another!”

“A higher than Fu-Manchu, apparently. I have an idea of the identity of

this person, but no more than an idea. Something unusual is going on,

Petrie; otherwise I should have been a dead man twenty-four hours

ago. Something even more important than my death engages Fu-Manchu’s

attention--and this can only be the presence of the mysterious visitor.

Your seductive friend, Karamaneh, is arrayed in her very becoming

national costume in his honor, I presume.” He stopped abruptly; then

added: “I would give five hundred pounds for a glimpse of that visitor’s

face!”

“Is Burke--”

“God knows what has become of Burke, Petrie! We were both caught napping

in the establishment of the amiable Shen-Yan, where, amid a very mixed

company of poker players, we were losing our money like gentlemen.”

“But Weymouth--”

“Burke and I had both been neatly sand-bagged, my dear Petrie, and

removed elsewhere, some hours before Weymouth raided the gaming-house.

Oh! I don’t know how they smuggled us away with the police watching the

place; but my presence here is sufficient evidence of the fact. Are you

armed?”

“No; my pistol was in my raincoat, which is missing.”

In the dim light from the broken window, I could see Smith tugging

reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.

“I am without arms, too,” he mused. “We might escape from the window--”

“It’s a long drop!”

“Ah! I imagined so. If only I had a pistol, or a revolver--”

“What should you do?”

“I should present myself before the important meeting, which, I am

assured, is being held somewhere in this building; and to-night would

see the end of my struggle with the Fu-Manchu group--the end of the

whole Yellow menace! For not only is Fu-Manchu here, Petrie, with all

his gang of assassins, but he whom I believe to be the real head of the

group--a certain mandarin--is here also!”

CHAPTER XIII. THE SACRED ORDER

Smith stepped quietly across the room and tried the door. It proved to

be unlocked, and an instant later, we were both outside in the passage.

Coincident with our arrival there, arose a sudden outcry from some place

at the westward end. A high-pitched, grating voice, in which guttural

notes alternated with a serpent-like hissing, was raised in anger.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu!” whispered Smith, grasping my arm.

Indeed, it was the unmistakable voice of the Chinaman, raised

hysterically in one of those outbursts which in the past I had diagnosed

as symptomatic of dangerous mania.

The voice rose to a scream, the scream of some angry animal rather than

anything human. Then, chokingly, it ceased. Another short sharp cry

followed--but not in the voice of Fu-Manchu--a dull groan, and the sound

of a fall.

With Smith still grasping my wrist, I shrank back into the doorway, as

something that looked in the darkness like a great ball of fluff came

rapidly along the passage toward me. Just at my feet the thing stopped

and I made it out for a small animal. The tiny, gleaming eyes looked up

at me, and, chattering wickedly, the creature bounded past and was lost

from view.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu’s marmoset.

Smith dragged me back into the room which we had just left. As he partly

reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a condition of

most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous sound proclaimed

itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the passage. I heard the

opening of a trap. Exclamations in guttural voices told of a heavy task

in progress; there was a great straining and creaking--whereupon the

trap was softly reclosed.

Smith bent to my ear.

“Fu-Manchu has chastised one of his servants,” he whispered. “There will

be food for the grappling-irons to-night!”

I shuddered violently, for, without Smith’s words, I knew that a bloody

deed had been done in that house within a few yards of where we stood.

In the new silence, I could hear the drip, drip, drip of the rain

outside the window; then a steam siren hooted dismally upon the river,

and I thought how the screw of that very vessel, even as we listened,

might be tearing the body of Fu-Manchu’s servant!

“Have you some one waiting?” whispered Smith, eagerly.

“How long was I insensible?”

“About half an hour.”

“Then the cabman will be waiting.”

“Have you a whistle with you?”

I felt in my coat pocket.

“Yes,” I reported.

“Good! Then we will take a chance.”

Again we slipped out into the passage and began a stealthy progress

to the west. Ten paces amid absolute darkness, and we found ourselves

abreast of a branch corridor. At the further end, through a kind of

little window, a dim light shone.

“See if you can find the trap,” whispered Smith; “light your lamp.”

I directed the ray of the pocket-lamp upon the floor, and there at my

feet was a square wooden trap. As I stooped to examine it, I glanced

back, painfully, over my shoulder--and saw Nayland Smith tiptoeing away

from me along the passage toward the light!

Inwardly I cursed his folly, but the temptation to peep in at that

little window proved too strong for me, as it had proved too strong for

him.

Fearful that some board would creak beneath my tread, I followed; and

side by side we two crouched, looking into a small rectangular room. It

was a bare and cheerless apartment with unpapered walls and carpetless

floor. A table and a chair constituted the sole furniture.

Seated in the chair, with his back toward us, was a portly Chinaman who

wore a yellow, silken robe. His face, it was impossible to see; but he

was beating his fist upon the table, and pouring out a torrent of words

in a thin, piping voice. So much I perceived at a glance; then, into

view at the distant end of the room, paced a tall, high-shouldered

figure--a figure unforgettable, at once imposing and dreadful, stately

and sinister.

With the long, bony hands behind him, fingers twining and intertwining

serpentinely about the handle of a little fan, and with the pointed chin

resting on the breast of the yellow robe, so that the light from the

lamp swinging in the center of the ceiling gleamed upon the great,

dome-like brow, this tall man paced somberly from left to right.

He cast a sidelong, venomous glance at the voluble speaker out of

half-shut eyes; in the act they seemed to light up as with an internal

luminance; momentarily they sparkled like emeralds; then their

brilliance was filmed over as in the eyes of a bird when the membrane is

lowered.

My blood seemed to chill, and my heart to double its pulsations;

beside me Smith was breathing more rapidly than usual. I knew now

the explanation of the feeling which had claimed me when first I had

descended the stone stairs. I knew what it was that hung like a miasma

over that house. It was the aura, the glamour, which radiated from this

wonderful and evil man as light radiates from radium. It was the vril,

the force, of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

I began to move away from the window. But Smith held my wrist as in a

vise. He was listening raptly to the torrential speech of the Chinaman

who sat in the chair; and I perceived in his eyes the light of a sudden

comprehension.

As the tall figure of the Chinese doctor came pacing into view again,

Smith, his head below the level of the window, pushed me gently along

the passage.

Regaining the site of the trap, he whispered to me: “We owe our lives,

Petrie, to the national childishness of the Chinese! A race of ancestor

worshipers is capable of anything, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, the dreadful being

who has rained terror upon Europe stands in imminent peril of disgrace

for having lost a decoration.”

“What do you mean, Smith?”

“I mean that this is no time for delay, Petrie! Here, unless I am

greatly mistaken, lies the rope by means of which you made your

entrance. It shall be the means of your exit. Open the trap!”

Handling the lamp to Smith, I stooped and carefully raised the

trap-door. At which moment, a singular and dramatic thing happened.

A softly musical voice--the voice of my dreams!--spoke.

“Not that way! O God, not that way!”

In my surprise and confusion I all but let the trap fall, but I retained

sufficient presence of mind to replace it gently. Standing upright, I

turned... and there, with her little jeweled hand resting upon Smith’s

arm, stood Karamaneh!

In all my experience of him, I had never seen Nayland Smith so utterly

perplexed. Between anger, distrust and dismay, he wavered; and each

passing emotion was written legibly upon the lean bronzed features.

Rigid with surprise, he stared at the beautiful face of the girl. She,

although her hand still rested upon Smith’s arm, had her dark eyes

turned upon me with that same enigmatical expression. Her lips were

slightly parted, and her breast heaved tumultuously.

This ten seconds of silence in which we three stood looking at one

another encompassed the whole gamut of human emotion. The silence was

broken by Karamaneh.

“They will be coming back that way!” she whispered, bending eagerly

toward me. (How, in the most desperate moments, I loved to listen to

that odd, musical accent!) “Please, if you would save your life, and

spare mine, trust me!”--She suddenly clasped her hands together and

looked up into my face, passionately--“Trust me--just for once--and I

will show you the way!”

Nayland Smith never removed his gaze from her for a moment, nor did he

stir.

“Oh!” she whispered, tremulously, and stamped one little red slipper

upon the floor. “Won’t you heed me? Come, or it will be too late!”

I glanced anxiously at my friend; the voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu, now raised

in anger, was audible above the piping tones of the other Chinaman.

And as I caught Smith’s eye, in silent query--the trap at my feet began

slowly to lift!

Karamaneh stifled a little sobbing cry; but the warning came too late.

A hideous yellow face with oblique squinting eyes, appeared in the

aperture.

I found myself inert, useless; I could neither think nor act. Nayland

Smith, however, as if instinctively, delivered a pitiless kick at the

head protruding above the trap.

A sickening crushing sound, with a sort of muffled snap, spoke of a

broken jaw-bone; and with no word or cry, the Chinaman fell. As the trap

descended with a bang, I heard the thud of his body on the stone stairs

beneath.

But we were lost. Karamaneh fled along one of the passages lightly as a

bird, and disappeared as Dr. Fu-Manchu, his top lip drawn up above his

teeth in the manner of an angry jackal, appeared from the other.

“This way!” cried Smith, in a voice that rose almost to a shriek--“this

way!”--and he led toward the room overhanging the steps.

Off we dashed with panic swiftness, only to find that this retreat also

was cut off. Dimly visible in the darkness was a group of yellow men,

and despite the gloom, the curved blades of the knives which they

carried glittered menacingly. The passage was full of dacoits!

Smith and I turned, together. The trap was raised again, and the Burman,

who had helped to tie me, was just scrambling up beside Dr. Fu-Manchu,

who stood there watching us, a shadowy, sinister figure.

“The game’s up, Petrie!” muttered Smith. “It has been a long fight, but

Fu-Manchu wins!”

“Not entirely!” I cried. I whipped the police whistle from my pocket,

and raised it to my lips; but brief as the interval had been, the

dacoits were upon me.

A sinewy brown arm shot over my shoulder and the whistle was dashed from

my grasp. Then came a whirl of maelstrom fighting with Smith and myself

ever sinking lower amid a whirlpool, as it seemed, of blood-lustful

eyes, yellow fangs, and gleaming blades.

I had some vague idea that the rasping voice of Fu-Manchu broke once

through the turmoil, and when, with my wrists tied behind me, I emerged

from the strife to find myself lying beside Smith in the passage, I

could only assume that the Chinaman had ordered his bloody servants to

take us alive; for saving numerous bruises and a few superficial cuts, I

was unwounded.

The place was utterly deserted again, and we two panting captives found

ourselves alone with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The scene was unforgettable; that

dimly lighted passage, its extremities masked in shadow, and the tall,

yellow-robed figure of the Satanic Chinaman towering over us where we

lay.

He had recovered his habitual calm, and as I peered at him through the

gloom I was impressed anew with the tremendous intellectual force of the

man. He had the brow of a genius, the features of a born ruler; and even

in that moment I could find time to search my memory, and to discover

that the face, saving the indescribable evil of its expression, was

identical with that of Seti, the mighty Pharaoh who lies in the Cairo

Museum.

Down the passage came leaping and gamboling the doctor’s marmoset.

Uttering its shrill, whistling cry, it leaped onto his shoulder,

clutched with its tiny fingers at the scanty, neutral-colored hair

upon his crown, and bent forward, peering grotesquely into that still,

dreadful face.

Dr. Fu-Manchu stroked the little creature; and crooned to it, as a

mother to her infant. Only this crooning, and the labored breathing of

Smith and myself, broke that impressive stillness.

Suddenly the guttural voice began:

“You come at an opportune time, Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith, and

Dr. Petrie; at a time when the greatest man in China flatters me with

a visit. In my absence from home, a tremendous honor has been conferred

upon me, and, in the hour of this supreme honor, dishonor and calamity

have befallen! For my services to China--the New China, the China of the

future--I have been admitted by the Sublime Prince to the Sacred Order

of the White Peacock.”

Warming to his discourse, he threw wide his arms, hurling the chattering

marmoset fully five yards along the corridor.

“O god of Cathay!” he cried, sibilantly, “in what have I sinned that

this catastrophe has been visited upon my head! Learn, my two dear

friends, that the sacred white peacock brought to these misty shores for

my undying glory, has been lost to me! Death is the penalty of such a

sacrilege; death shall be my lot, since death I deserve.”

Covertly Smith nudged me with his elbow. I knew what the nudge was

designed to convey; he would remind me of his words--anent the childish

trifles which sway the life of intellectual China.

Personally, I was amazed. That Fu-Manchu’s anger, grief, sorrow and

resignation were real, no one watching him, and hearing his voice, could

doubt.

He continued:

“By one deed, and one deed alone, may I win a lighter punishment. By

one deed, and the resignation of all my titles, all my lands, and all my

honors, may I merit to be spared to my work--which has only begun.”

I knew now that we were lost, indeed; these were confidences which our

graves should hold inviolate! He suddenly opened fully those blazing

green eyes and directed their baneful glare upon Nayland Smith.

“The Director of the Universe,” he continued, softly, “has relented

toward me. To-night, you die! To-night, the arch-enemy of our caste

shall be no more. This is my offering--the price of redemption...”

My mind was working again, and actively. I managed to grasp the

stupendous truth--and the stupendous possibility.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was in the act of clapping his hands, when I spoke.

“Stop!” I cried.

He paused, and the weird film, which sometimes became visible in his

eyes, now obscured their greenness, and lent him the appearance of a

blind man.

“Dr. Petrie,” he said, softly, “I shall always listen to you with

respect.”

“I have an offer to make,” I continued, seeking to steady my voice.

“Give us our freedom, and I will restore your shattered honor--I will

restore the sacred peacock!”

Dr. Fu-Manchu bent forward until his face was so close to mine that I

could see the innumerable lines which, an intricate network, covered his

yellow skin.

“Speak!” he hissed. “You lift up my heart from a dark pit!”

“I can restore your white peacock,” I said; “I and I alone, know where

it is!”--and I strove not to shrink from the face so close to mine.

Upright shot the tall figure; high above his head Fu-Manchu threw

his arms--and a light of exaltation gleamed in the now widely opened,

catlike eyes.

“O god!” he screamed, frenziedly--“O god of the Golden Age! like a

phoenix I arise from the ashes of myself!” He turned to me. “Quick!

Quick! make your bargain! End my suspense!”

Smith stared at me like a man dazed; but, ignoring him, I went on:

“You will release me, now, immediately. In another ten minutes it will

be too late; my friend will remain. One of your--servants--can accompany

me, and give the signal when I return with the peacock. Mr. Nayland

Smith and yourself, or another, will join me at the corner of the street

where the raid took place last night. We shall then give you ten minutes

grace, after which we shall take whatever steps we choose.”

“Agreed!” cried Fu-Manchu. “I ask but one thing from an Englishman; your

word of honor?”

“I give it.”

“I, also,” said Smith, hoarsely.

* * * * *

Ten minutes later, Nayland Smith and I, standing beside the cab, whose

lights gleamed yellowly through the mist, exchanged a struggling,

frightened bird for our lives--capitulated with the enemy of the white

race.

With characteristic audacity--and characteristic trust in the British

sense of honor--Dr. Fu-Manchu came in person with Nayland Smith, in

response to the wailing signal of the dacoit who had accompanied me. No

word was spoken, save that the cabman suppressed a curse of amazement;

and the Chinaman, his sinister servant at his elbow, bowed low--and left

us, surely to the mocking laughter of the gods!

CHAPTER XIV. THE COUGHING HORROR

I leaped up in bed with a great start.

My sleep was troubled often enough in these days, which immediately

followed our almost miraculous escape, from the den of Fu-Manchu; and

now as I crouched there, nerves aquiver--listening--listening--I could

not be sure if this dank panic which possessed me had its origin in

nightmare or in something else.

Surely a scream, a choking cry for help, had reached my ears; but now,

almost holding my breath in that sort of nervous tensity peculiar to one

aroused thus, I listened, and the silence seemed complete. Perhaps I had

been dreaming...

“Help! Petrie! Help!...”

It was Nayland Smith in the room above me!

My doubts were dissolved; this was no trick of an imagination

disordered. Some dreadful menace threatened my friend. Not delaying

even to snatch my dressing-gown, I rushed out on to the landing, up the

stairs, bare-footed as I was, threw open the door of Smith’s room and

literally hurled myself in.

Those cries had been the cries of one assailed, had been uttered, I

judged, in the brief interval of a life and death struggle; had been

choked off...

A certain amount of moonlight found access to the room, without

spreading so far as the bed in which my friend lay. But at the moment

of my headlong entrance, and before I had switched on the light, my gaze

automatically was directed to the pale moonbeam streaming through the

window and down on to one corner of the sheep-skin rug beside the bed.

There came a sound of faint and muffled coughing.

What with my recent awakening and the panic at my heart, I could not

claim that my vision was true; but across this moonbeam passed a sort of

gray streak, for all the world as though some long thin shape had been

withdrawn, snakelike, from the room, through the open window... From

somewhere outside the house, and below, I heard the cough again,

followed by a sharp cracking sound like the lashing of a whip.

I depressed the switch, flooding the room with light, and as I leaped

forward to the bed a word picture of what I had seen formed in my mind;

and I found that I was thinking of a gray feather boa.

“Smith!” I cried (my voice seemed to pitch itself, unwilled, in a very

high key), “Smith, old man!”

He made no reply, and a sudden, sorrowful fear clutched at my

heart-strings. He was lying half out of bed flat upon his back, his head

at a dreadful angle with his body. As I bent over him and seized him by

the shoulders, I could see the whites of his eyes. His arms hung limply,

and his fingers touched the carpet.

“My God!” I whispered--“what has happened?”

I heaved him back onto the pillow, and looked anxiously into his face.

Habitually gaunt, the flesh so refined away by the consuming nervous

energy of the man as to reveal the cheekbones in sharp prominence, he

now looked truly ghastly. His skin was so sunbaked as to have changed

constitutionally; nothing could ever eradicate that tan. But to-night a

fearful grayness was mingled with the brown, his lips were purple... and

there were marks of strangulation upon the lean throat--ever darkening

weals made by clutching fingers.

He began to breathe stentoriously and convulsively, inhalation being

accompanied by a significant gurgling in the throat. But now my calm was

restored in face of a situation which called for professional attention.

I aided my friend’s labored respirations by the usual means, setting to

work vigorously; so that presently he began to clutch at his inflamed

throat which that murderous pressure had threatened to close.

I could hear sounds of movement about the house, showing that not I

alone had been awakened by those hoarse screams.

“It’s all right, old man,” I said, bending over him; “brace up!”

He opened his eyes--they looked bleared and bloodshot--and gave me a

quick glance of recognition.

“It’s all right, Smith!” I said--“no! don’t sit up; lie there for a

moment.”

I ran across to the dressing-table, whereon I perceived his flask to

lie, and mixed him a weak stimulant with which I returned to the bed.

As I bent over him again, my housekeeper appeared in the doorway, pale

and wide-eyed.

“There is no occasion for alarm,” I said over my shoulder; “Mr. Smith’s

nerves are overwrought and he was awakened by some disturbing dream. You

can return to bed, Mrs. Newsome.”

Nayland Smith seemed to experience much difficulty in swallowing the

contents of the tumbler which I held to his lips; and, from the way in

which he fingered the swollen glands, I could see that his throat,

which I had vigorously massaged, was occasioning him great pain. But the

danger was past, and already that glassy look was disappearing from his

eyes, nor did they protrude so unnaturally.

“God, Petrie!” he whispered, “that was a near shave! I haven’t the

strength of a kitten!”

“The weakness will pass off,” I replied; “there will be no collapse,

now. A little more fresh air...”

I stood up, glancing at the windows, then back at Smith, who forced a

wry smile in answer to my look.

“Couldn’t be done, Petrie,” he said, huskily.

His words referred to the state of the windows. Although the night was

oppressively hot, these were only opened some four inches at top and

bottom. Further opening was impossible because of iron brackets screwed

firmly into the casements which prevented the windows being raised or

lowered further.

It was a precaution adopted after long experience of the servants of Dr.

Fu-Manchu.

Now, as I stood looking from the half-strangled man upon the bed to

those screwed-up windows, the fact came home to my mind that this

precaution had proved futile. I thought of the thing which I had likened

to a feather boa; and I looked at the swollen weals made by clutching

fingers upon the throat of Nayland Smith.

The bed stood fully four feet from the nearest window.

I suppose the question was written in my face; for, as I turned again

to Smith, who, having struggled upright, was still fingering his injured

throat ruefully:

“God only knows, Petrie!” he said; “no human arm could have reached

me...”

For us, the night was ended so far as sleep was concerned. Arrayed in

his dressing-gown, Smith sat in the white cane chair in my study with

a glass of brandy-and-water beside him, and (despite my official

prohibition) with the cracked briar which had sent up its incense in

many strange and dark places of the East and which yet survived to

perfume these prosy rooms in suburban London, steaming between his

teeth. I stood with my elbow resting upon the mantelpiece looking down

at him where he sat.

“By God! Petrie,” he said, yet again, with his fingers straying gently

over the surface of his throat, “that was a narrow shave--a damned

narrow shave!”

“Narrower than perhaps you appreciate, old man,” I replied. “You were a

most unusual shade of blue when I found you...”

“I managed,” said Smith evenly, “to tear those clutching fingers away

for a moment and to give a cry for help. It was only for a moment,

though. Petrie! they were fingers of steel--of steel!”

“The bed,” I began...

“I know that,” rapped Smith. “I shouldn’t have been sleeping in it, had

it been within reach of the window; but, knowing that the doctor avoids

noisy methods, I had thought myself fairly safe so long as I made it

impossible for any one actually to enter the room...”

“I have always insisted, Smith,” I cried, “that there was danger! What

of poisoned darts? What of the damnable reptiles and insects which form

part of the armory of Fu-Manchu?”

“Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose,” he replied. “But as it

happened none of those agents was employed. The very menace that I

sought to avoid reached me somehow. It would almost seem that Dr.

Fu-Manchu deliberately accepted the challenge of those screwed-up

windows! Hang it all, Petrie! one cannot sleep in a room hermetically

sealed, in weather like this! It’s positively Burmese; and although I

can stand tropical heat, curiously enough the heat of London gets me

down almost immediately.”

“The humidity; that’s easily understood. But you’ll have to put up with

it in the future. After nightfall our windows must be closed entirely,

Smith.”

Nayland Smith knocked out his pipe upon the side of the fireplace. The

bowl sizzled furiously, but without delay he stuffed broad-cut mixture

into the hot pipe, dropping a liberal quantity upon the carpet during

the process. He raised his eyes to me, and his face was very grim.

“Petrie,” he said, striking a match on the heel of his slipper, “the

resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu are by no means exhausted. Before we quit

this room it is up to us to come to a decision upon a certain point.” He

got his pipe well alight. “What kind of thing, what unnatural, distorted

creature, laid hands upon my throat to-night? I owe my life, primarily,

to you, old man, but, secondarily, to the fact that I was awakened, just

before the attack--by the creature’s coughing--by its vile, high-pitched

coughing...”

I glanced around at the books upon my shelves. Often enough, following

some outrage by the brilliant Chinese doctor whose genius was directed

to the discovery of new and unique death agents, we had obtained a clue

in those works of a scientific nature which bulk largely in the

library of a medical man. There are creatures, there are drugs, which,

ordinarily innocuous, may be so employed as to become inimical to human

life; and in the distorting of nature, in the disturbing of balances and

the diverting of beneficent forces into strange and dangerous channels,

Dr. Fu-Manchu excelled. I had known him to enlarge, by artificial

culture, a minute species of fungus so as to render it a powerful agent

capable of attacking man; his knowledge of venomous insects has probably

never been paralleled in the history of the world; whilst, in the sphere

of pure toxicology, he had, and has, no rival; the Borgias were children

by comparison. But, look where I would, think how I might, no adequate

explanation of this latest outrage seemed possible along normal lines.

“There’s the clue,” said Nayland Smith, pointing to a little ash-tray

upon the table near by. “Follow it if you can.”

But I could not.

“As I have explained,” continued my friend, “I was awakened by a sound

of coughing; then came a death grip on my throat, and instinctively my

hands shot out in search of my attacker. I could not reach him; my

hands came in contact with nothing palpable. Therefore I clutched at the

fingers which were dug into my windpipe, and found them to be small--as

the marks show--and hairy. I managed to give that first cry for

help, then with all my strength I tried to unfasten the grip that was

throttling the life out of me. At last I contrived to move one of the

hands, and I called out again, though not so loudly. Then both the hands

were back again; I was weakening; but I clawed like a madman at the

thin, hairy arms of the strangling thing, and with a blood-red mist

dancing before my eyes, I seemed to be whirling madly round and round

until all became a blank. Evidently I used my nails pretty freely--and

there’s the trophy.”

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.

“God!” he said, and started back in the doorway.

“Have you got it, Smith?” I demanded hoarsely. “In sanity’s name what is

it--what is it?”

“Come downstairs,” replied Smith quietly, “and see for yourself.” He

turned his head aside from the bed.

Very unsteadily I followed him down the stairs and through the rambling

old house out into the stone-paved courtyard. There were figures

moving at the end of a long alleyway between the glass houses, and one,

carrying a lantern, stooped over something which lay upon the ground.

“That’s Burke’s cousin with the lantern,” whispered Smith in my ear;

“don’t tell him yet.”

I nodded, and we hurried up to join the group. I found myself looking

down at one of those thick-set Burmans whom I always associated with

Fu-Manchu’s activities. He lay quite flat, face downward; but the back

of his head was a shapeless blood-dotted mass, and a heavy stock-whip,

the butt end ghastly because of the blood and hair which clung to it,

lay beside him. I started back appalled as Smith caught my arm.

“It turned on its keeper!” he hissed in my ear. “I wounded it twice from

below, and you severed one arm; in its insensate fury, its unreasoning

malignity, it returned--and there lies its second victim...”

“Then...”

“It’s gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!”

He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the dead Burman,

extracted a piece of paper and opened it.

“Hold the lantern a moment,” he said.

In the yellow light he glanced at the scrap of paper.

“As I expected--a leaf of Burke’s notebook; it worked by scent.” He

turned to me with an odd expression in his gray eyes. “I wonder what

piece of my personal property Fu-Manchu has pilfered,” he said, “in

order to enable it to sleuth me?”

He met the gaze of the man holding the lantern.

“Perhaps you had better return to the house,” he said, looking him

squarely in the eyes.

The other’s face blanched.

“You don’t mean, sir--you don’t mean...”

“Brace up!” said Smith, laying his hand upon his shoulder. “Remember--he

chose to play with fire!”

One wild look the man cast from Smith to me, then went off, staggering,

toward the farm.

“Smith,” I began...

He turned to me with an impatient gesture.

“Weymouth has driven into Upminster,” he snapped; “and the whole

district will be scoured before morning. They probably motored here, but

the sounds of the shots will have enabled whoever was with the car to

make good his escape. And exhausted from loss of blood, its capture is

only a matter of time, Petrie.”

CHAPTER XVII. ONE DAY IN RANGOON

Nayland Smith returned from the telephone. Nearly twenty-four hours had

elapsed since the awful death of Burke.

“No news, Petrie,” he said, shortly. “It must have crept into some

inaccessible hole to die.”

I glanced up from my notes. Smith settled into the white cane armchair,

and began to surround himself with clouds of aromatic smoke. I took up

a half-sheet of foolscap covered with penciled writing in my friend’s

cramped characters, and transcribed the following, in order to complete

my account of the latest Fu-Manchu outrage:

“The Amharun, a Semitic tribe allied to the Falashas, who have

been settled for many generations in the southern province of Shoa

(Abyssinia) have been regarded as unclean and outcast, apparently since

the days of Menelek--son of Suleyman and the Queen of Sheba--from whom

they claim descent. Apart from their custom of eating meat cut from

living beasts, they are accursed because of their alleged association

with the Cynocephalus hamadryas (Sacred Baboon). I, myself, was taken

to a hut on the banks of the Hawash and shown a creature... whose

predominant trait was an unreasoning malignity toward... and a ferocious

tenderness for the society of its furry brethren. Its powers of scent

were fully equal to those of a bloodhound, whilst its abnormally long

forearms possessed incredible strength... a Cynocephalyte such as this,

contracts phthisis even in the more northern provinces of Abyssinia...”

“You have not explained to me, Smith,” I said, having completed this

note, “how you got in touch with Fu-Manchu; how you learnt that he was

not dead, as we had supposed, but living--active.”

Nayland Smith stood up and fixed his steely eyes upon me with an

indefinable expression in them. Then:

“No,” he replied; “I haven’t. Do you wish to know?”

“Certainly,” I said with surprise; “is there any reason why I should

not?”

“There is no real reason,” said Smith; “or”--staring at me very hard--“I

hope there is no real reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well”--he grabbed up his pipe from the table and began furiously to

load it--“I blundered upon the truth one day in Rangoon. I was walking

out of a house which I occupied there for a time, and as I swung around

the corner into the main street, I ran into--literally ran into...”

Again he hesitated oddly; then closed up his pouch and tossed it into

the cane chair. He struck a match.

“I ran into Karamaneh,” he continued abruptly, and began to puff away at

his pipe, filling the air with clouds of tobacco smoke.

I caught my breath. This was the reason why he had kept me so long in

ignorance of the story. He knew of my hopeless, uncrushable sentiments

toward the gloriously beautiful but utterly hypocritical and evil

Eastern girl who was perhaps the most dangerous of all Dr. Fu-Manchu’s

servants; for the power of her loveliness was magical, as I knew to my

cost.

“What did you do?” I asked quietly, my fingers drumming upon the table.

“Naturally enough,” continued Smith, “with a cry of recognition I

held out both my hands to her, gladly. I welcomed her as a dear friend

regained; I thought of the joy with which you would learn that I had

found the missing one; I thought how you would be in Rangoon just as

quickly as the fastest steamer could get you there...”

“Well?”

“Karamaneh started back and treated me to a glance of absolute

animosity. No recognition was there, and no friendliness--only a sort of

scornful anger.”

He shrugged his shoulders and began to walk up and down the room.

“I do not know what you would have done in the circumstances, Petrie,

but I--”

“Yes?”

“I dealt with the situation rather promptly, I think. I simply picked

her up without another word, right there in the public street, and raced

back into the house, with her kicking and fighting like a little demon!

She did not shriek or do anything of that kind, but fought silently like

a vicious wild animal. Oh! I had some scars, I assure you; but I carried

her up into my office, which fortunately was empty at the time, plumped

her down in a chair, and stood looking at her.”

“Go on,” I said rather hollowly; “what next?”

“She glared at me with those wonderful eyes, an expression of implacable

hatred in them! Remembering all that we had done for her; remembering

our former friendship; above all, remembering you--this look of hers

almost made me shiver. She was dressed very smartly in European fashion,

and the whole thing had been so sudden that as I stood looking at her I

half expected to wake up presently and find it all a day-dream. But it

was real--as real as her enmity. I felt the need for reflection, and

having vainly endeavored to draw her into conversation, and elicited no

other answer than this glare of hatred--I left her there, going out and

locking the door behind me.”

“Very high-handed?”

“A commissioner has certain privileges, Petrie, and any action I might

choose to take was not likely to be questioned. There was only one

window to the office, and it was fully twenty feet above the level; it

overlooked a narrow street off the main thoroughfare (I think I have

explained that the house stood on a corner) so I did not fear her

escaping. I had an important engagement which I had been on my way to

fulfil when the encounter took place, and now, with a word to my native

servant--who chanced to be downstairs--I hurried off.”

Smith’s pipe had gone out as usual, and he proceeded to relight it,

whilst, with my eyes lowered, I continued to drum upon the table.

“This boy took her some tea later in the afternoon,” he continued,

“and apparently found her in a more placid frame of mind. I returned

immediately after dusk, and he reported that when last he had looked in,

about half an hour earlier, she had been seated in an armchair reading

a newspaper (I may mention that everything of value in the office was

securely locked up!) I was determined upon a certain course by this

time, and I went slowly upstairs, unlocked the door, and walked into the

darkened office. I turned up the light... the place was empty!”

“Empty!”

“The window was open, and the bird flown! Oh! it was not so simple a

flight--as you would realize if you knew the place. The street, which

the window overlooked, was bounded by a blank wall, on the opposite

side, for thirty or forty yards along; and as we had been having heavy

rains, it was full of glutinous mud. Furthermore, the boy whom I had

left in charge had been sitting in the doorway immediately below the

office window watching for my return ever since his last visit to the

room above...”

“She must have bribed him,” I said bitterly--“or corrupted him with her

infernal blandishments.”

“I’ll swear she did not,” rapped Smith decisively. “I know my man, and

I’ll swear she did not. There were no marks in the mud of the road to

show that a ladder had been placed there; moreover, nothing of the kind

could have been attempted whilst the boy was sitting in the doorway;

that was evident. In short, she did not descend into the roadway and did

not come out by the door...”

“Was there a gallery outside the window?”

“No; it was impossible to climb to right or left of the window or up on

to the roof. I convinced myself of that.”

“But, my dear man!” I cried, “you are eliminating every natural mode of

egress! Nothing remains but flight.”

“I am aware, Petrie, that nothing remains but flight; in other words I

have never to this day understood how she quitted the room. I only know

that she did.”

“And then?”

“I saw in this incredible escape the cunning hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu--saw

it at once. Peace was ended; and I set to work along certain channels

without delay. In this manner I got on the track at last, and learned,

beyond the possibility of doubt, that the Chinese doctor lived--nay! was

actually on his way to Europe again!”

There followed a short silence. Then:

“I suppose it’s a mystery that will be cleared up some day,” concluded

Smith; “but to date the riddle remains intact.” He glanced at the clock.

“I have an appointment with Weymouth; therefore, leaving you to the task

of solving this problem which thus far has defied my own efforts, I will

get along.”

He read a query in my glance.

“Oh! I shall not be late,” he added; “I think I may venture out alone on

this occasion without personal danger.”

Nayland Smith went upstairs to dress, leaving me seated at my writing

table, deep in thought. My notes upon the renewed activity of Dr.

Fu-Manchu were stacked at my left hand, and, opening a new writing

block, I commenced to add to them particulars of this surprising event

in Rangoon which properly marked the opening of the Chinaman’s second

campaign. Smith looked in at the door on his way out, but seeing me thus

engaged, did not disturb me.

I think I have made it sufficiently evident in these records that my

practice was not an extensive one, and my hour for receiving patients

arrived and passed with only two professional interruptions.

My task concluded, I glanced at the clock, and determined to devote the

remainder of the evening to a little private investigation of my own.

From Nayland Smith I had preserved the matter a secret, largely because

I feared his ridicule; but I had by no means forgotten that I had seen,

or had strongly imagined that I had seen, Karamaneh--that beautiful

anomaly, who (in modern London) asserted herself to be a slave--in the

shop of an antique dealer not a hundred yards from the British Museum!

A theory was forming in my brain, which I was burningly anxious to put

to the test. I remembered how, two years before, I had met Karamaneh

near to this same spot; and I had heard Inspector Weymouth assert

positively that Fu-Manchu’s headquarters were no longer in the East

End, as of yore. There seemed to me to be a distinct probability that a

suitable center had been established for his reception in this place, so

much less likely to be suspected by the authorities. Perhaps I attached

too great a value to what may have been a delusion; perhaps my theory

rested upon no more solid foundation than the belief that I had seen

Karamaneh in the shop of the curio dealer. If her appearance there

should prove to have been phantasmal, the structure of my theory would

be shattered at its base. To-night I should test my premises, and upon

the result of my investigations determine my future action.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE SILVER BUDDHA

Museum Street certainly did not seem a likely spot for Dr. Fu-Manchu to

establish himself, yet, unless my imagination had strangely deceived me,

from the window of the antique dealer who traded under the name of J.

Salaman, those wonderful eyes of Karamaneh like the velvet midnight of

the Orient, had looked out at me.

As I paced slowly along the pavement toward that lighted window, my

heart was beating far from normally, and I cursed the folly which,

in spite of all, refused to die, but lingered on, poisoning my

life. Comparative quiet reigned in Museum Street, at no time a busy

thoroughfare, and, excepting another shop at the Museum end, commercial

activities had ceased there. The door of a block of residential chambers

almost immediately opposite to the shop which was my objective, threw

out a beam of light across the pavement, but not more than two or three

people were visible upon either side of the street.

I turned the knob of the door and entered the shop.

The same dark and immobile individual whom I had seen before, and whose

nationality defied conjecture, came out from the curtained doorway at

the back to greet me.

“Good evening, sir,” he said monotonously, with a slight inclination of

the head; “is there anything which you desire to inspect?”

“I merely wish to take a look around,” I replied. “I have no particular

item in view.”

The shop man inclined his head again, swept a yellow hand

comprehensively about, as if to include the entire stock, and seated

himself on a chair behind the counter.

I lighted a cigarette with such an air of nonchalance as I could summon

to the operation, and began casually to inspect the varied objects of

interest loading the shelves and tables about me. I am bound to confess

that I retain no one definite impression of this tour. Vases I handled,

statuettes, Egyptian scarabs, bead necklaces, illuminated missals,

portfolios of old prints, jade ornaments, bronzes, fragments of rare

lace, early printed books, Assyrian tablets, daggers, Roman rings, and

a hundred other curiosities, leisurely, and I trust with apparent

interest, yet without forming the slightest impression respecting any

one of them.

Probably I employed myself in this way for half an hour or more, and

whilst my hands busied themselves among the stock of J. Salaman, my mind

was occupied entirely elsewhere. Furtively I was studying the shopman

himself, a human presentment of a Chinese idol; I was listening and

watching; especially I was watching the curtained doorway at the back of

the shop.

“We close at about this time, sir,” the man interrupted me, speaking in

the emotionless, monotonous voice which I had noted before.

I replaced upon the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood

and highly colored, and glanced up with a start. Truly my methods were

amateurish; I had learnt nothing; I was unlikely to learn anything. I

wondered how Nayland Smith would have conducted such an inquiry, and I

racked my brains for some means of penetrating into the recesses of the

establishment. Indeed, I had been seeking such a plan for the past half

an hour, but my mind had proved incapable of suggesting one.

Why I did not admit failure I cannot imagine, but, instead, I began to

tax my brains anew for some means of gaining further time; and, as

I looked about the place, the shopman very patiently awaiting my

departure, I observed an open case at the back of the counter. The three

lower shelves were empty, but upon the fourth shelf squatted a silver

Buddha.

“I should like to examine the silver image yonder,” I said; “what price

are you asking for it?”

“It is not for sale, sir,” replied the man, with a greater show of

animation than he had yet exhibited.

“Not for sale!” I said, my eyes ever seeking the curtained doorway;

“how’s that?”

“It is sold.”

“Well, even so, there can be no objection to my examining it?”

“It is not for sale, sir.”

Such a rebuff from a tradesman would have been more than sufficient

to call for a sharp retort at any other time, but now it excited the

strangest suspicions. The street outside looked comparatively deserted,

and prompted, primarily, by an emotion which I did not pause to analyze,

I adopted a singular measure; without doubt I relied upon the unusual

powers vested in Nayland Smith to absolve me in the event of error.

I made as if to go out into the street, then turned, leaped past the

shopman, ran behind the counter, and grasped at the silver Buddha!

That I was likely to be arrested for attempted larceny I cared not;

the idea that Karamaneh was concealed somewhere in the building

ruled absolutely, and a theory respecting this silver image had taken

possession of my mind. Exactly what I expected to happen at that moment

I cannot say, but what actually happened was far more startling than

anything I could have imagined.

At the instant that I grasped the figure I realized that it was attached

to the woodwork; in the next I knew that it was a handle ... as I tried

to pull it toward me I became aware that this handle was the handle of a

door. For that door swung open before me, and I found myself at the foot

of a flight of heavily carpeted stairs.

Anxious as I had been to proceed a moment before, I was now trebly

anxious to retire, and for this reason: on the bottom step of the stair,

facing me, stood Dr. Fu-Manchu!

CHAPTER XIX. DR. FU-MANCHU’S LABORATORY

I cannot conceive that any ordinary mortal ever attained to anything

like an intimacy with Dr. Fu-Manchu; I cannot believe that any man could

ever grow used to his presence, could ever cease to fear him. I suppose

I had set eyes upon Fu-Manchu some five or six times prior to this

occasion, and now he was dressed in the manner which I always associated

with him, probably because it was thus I first saw him. He wore a plain

yellow robe, and, with his pointed chin resting upon his bosom, he

looked down at me, revealing a great expanse of the marvelous brow with

its sparse, neutral-colored hair.

Never in my experience have I known such force to dwell in the glance

of any human eye as dwelt in that of this uncanny being. His singular

affliction (if affliction it were), the film or slight membrane which

sometimes obscured the oblique eyes, was particularly evident at the

moment that I crossed the threshold, but now, as I looked up at Dr.

Fu-Manchu, it lifted--revealing the eyes in all their emerald greenness.

The idea of physical attack upon this incredible being seemed

childish--inadequate. But, following that first instant of stupefaction,

I forced myself to advance upon him.

A dull, crushing blow descended on the top of my skull, and I became

oblivious of all things.

My return to consciousness was accompanied by tremendous pains in my

head, whereby, from previous experience, I knew that a sandbag had been

used against me by some one in the shop, presumably by the immobile

shopman. This awakening was accompanied by none of those hazy doubts

respecting previous events and present surroundings which are the usual

symptoms of revival from sudden unconsciousness; even before I opened

my eyes, before I had more than a partial command of my senses, I knew

that, with my wrists handcuffed behind me, I lay in a room which

was also occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu. This absolute certainty of the

Chinaman’s presence was evidenced, not by my senses, but only by an

inner consciousness, and the same that always awoke into life at the

approach not only of Fu-Manchu in person but of certain of his uncanny

servants.

A faint perfume hung in the air about me; I do not mean that of any

essence or of any incense, but rather the smell which is suffused

by Oriental furniture, by Oriental draperies; the indefinable but

unmistakable perfume of the East.

Thus, London has a distinct smell of its own, and so has Paris, whilst

the difference between Marseilles and Suez, for instance, is even more

marked.

Now, the atmosphere surrounding me was Eastern, but not of the East that

I knew; rather it was Far Eastern. Perhaps I do not make myself very

clear, but to me there was a mysterious significance in that perfumed

atmosphere. I opened my eyes.

I lay upon a long low settee, in a fairly large room which was furnished

as I had anticipated in an absolutely Oriental fashion. The two windows

were so screened as to have lost, from the interior point of view, all

resemblance to European windows, and the whole structure of the room had

been altered in conformity, bearing out my idea that the place had been

prepared for Fu-Manchu’s reception some time before his actual return. I

doubt if, East or West, a duplicate of that singular apartment could be

found.

The end in which I lay, was, as I have said, typical of an Eastern

house, and a large, ornate lantern hung from the ceiling almost directly

above me. The further end of the room was occupied by tall cases,

some of them containing books, but the majority filled with scientific

paraphernalia; rows of flasks and jars, frames of test-tubes, retorts,

scales, and other objects of the laboratory. At a large and very finely

carved table sat Dr. Fu-Manchu, a yellow and faded volume open before

him, and some dark red fluid, almost like blood, bubbling in a test-tube

which he held over the flame of a Bunsen-burner.

The enormously long nail of his right index finger rested upon the

opened page of the book to which he seemed constantly to refer, dividing

his attention between the volume, the contents of the test-tube, and the

progress of a second experiment, or possibly a part of the same, which

was taking place upon another corner of the littered table.

A huge glass retort (the bulb was fully two feet in diameter), fitted

with a Liebig’s Condenser, rested in a metal frame, and within the bulb,

floating in an oily substance, was a fungus some six inches high, shaped

like a toadstool, but of a brilliant and venomous orange color. Three

flat tubes of light were so arranged as to cast violet rays upward into

the retort, and the receiver, wherein condensed the product of this

strange experiment, contained some drops of a red fluid which may have

been identical with that boiling in the test-tube.

These things I perceived at a glance: then the filmy eyes of Dr.

Fu-Manchu were raised from the book, turned in my direction, and all

else was forgotten.

“I regret,” came the sibilant voice, “that unpleasant measures were

necessary, but hesitation would have been fatal. I trust, Dr. Petrie,

that you suffer no inconvenience?”

To this speech no reply was possible, and I attempted none.

“You have long been aware of my esteem for your acquirements,” continued

the Chinaman, his voice occasionally touching deep guttural notes, “and

you will appreciate the pleasure which this visit affords me. I kneel

at the feet of my silver Buddha. I look to you, when you shall have

overcome your prejudices--due to ignorance of my true motives--to assist

me in establishing that intellectual control which is destined to be the

new World Force. I bear you no malice for your ancient enmity, and even

now”--he waved one yellow hand toward the retort--“I am conducting an

experiment designed to convert you from your misunderstanding, and to

adjust your perspective.”

Quite unemotionally he spoke, then turned again to his book, his

test-tube and retort, in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable. I do

not think the most frenzied outburst on his part, the most fiendish

threats, could have produced such effect upon me as those cold and

carefully calculated words, spoken in that unique voice which rang about

the room sibilantly. In its tones, in the glance of the green eyes,

in the very pose of the gaunt, high-shouldered body, there was

power--force.

I counted myself lost, and in view of the doctor’s words, studied the

progress of the experiment with frightful interest. But a few moments

sufficed in which to realize that, for all my training, I knew as little

of chemistry--of chemistry as understood by this man’s genius--as a

junior student in surgery knows of trephining. The process in

operation was a complete mystery to me; the means and the end alike

incomprehensible.

Thus, in the heavy silence of that room, a silence only broken by the

regular bubbling from the test tube, I found my attention straying from

the table to the other objects surrounding it; and at one of them my

gaze stopped and remained chained with horror.

It was a glass jar, some five feet in height and filled with viscous

fluid of a light amber color. Out from this peered a hideous, dog-like

face, low browed, with pointed ears and a nose almost hoggishly flat.

By the death-grin of the face the gleaming fangs were revealed; and the

body, the long yellow-gray body, rested, or seemed to rest, upon

short, malformed legs, whilst one long limp arm, the right, hung down

straightly in the preservative. The left arm had been severed above the

elbow.

Fu-Manchu, finding his experiment to be proceeding favorably, lifted his

eyes to me again.

“You are interested in my poor Cynocephalyte?” he said; and his eyes

were filmed like the eyes of one afflicted with cataract. “He was a

devoted servant, Dr. Petrie, but the lower influences in his genealogy,

sometimes conquered. Then he got out of hand; and at last he was so

ungrateful toward those who had educated him, that, in one of those

paroxysms of his, he attacked and killed a most faithful Burman, one of

my oldest followers.”

Fu-Manchu returned to his experiment.

Not the slightest emotion had he exhibited thus far, but had chatted

with me as any other scientist might chat with a friend who casually

visits his laboratory. The horror of the thing was playing havoc with

my own composure, however. There I lay, fettered, in the same room with

this man whose existence was a menace to the entire white race, whilst

placidly he pursued an experiment designed, if his own words were

believable, to cut me off from my kind--to wreak some change,

psychological or physiological I knew not; to place me, it might

be, upon a level with such brute-things as that which now hung, half

floating, in the glass jar!

Something I knew of the history of that ghastly specimen, that thing

neither man nor ape; for within my own knowledge had it not attempted

the life of Nayland Smith, and was it not I who, with an ax, had maimed

it in the instant of one of its last slayings?

Of these things Dr. Fu-Manchu was well aware, so that his placid speech

was doubly, trebly horrible to my ears. I sought, furtively, to move

my arms, only to realize that, as I had anticipated, the handcuffs

were chained to a ring in the wall behind me. The establishments of Dr.

Fu-Manchu were always well provided with such contrivances as these.

I uttered a short, harsh laugh. Fu-Manchu stood up slowly from the

table, and, placing the test-tube in a rack, stood the latter carefully

upon a shelf at his side.

“I am happy to find you in such good humor,” he said softly. “Other

affairs call me; and, in my absence, that profound knowledge of

chemistry, of which I have had evidence in the past, will enable you to

follow with intelligent interest the action of these violet rays upon

this exceptionally fine specimen of Siberian amanita muscaria. At some

future time, possibly when you are my guest in China--which country I am

now making arrangements for you to visit--I shall discuss with you some

lesser-known properties of this species; and I may say that one of your

first tasks when you commence your duties as assistant in my laboratory

in Kiang-su, will be to conduct a series of twelve experiments, which I

have outlined, into other potentialities of this unique fungus.”

He walked quietly to a curtained doorway, with his cat-like yet awkward

gait, lifted the drapery, and, with a slight nod in my direction, went

out of the room.

CHAPTER XX. THE CROSS BAR

How long I lay there alone I had no means of computing. My mind was

busy with many matters, but principally concerned with my fate in the

immediate future. That Dr. Fu-Manchu entertained for me a singular

kind of regard, I had had evidence before. He had formed the erroneous

opinion that I was an advanced scientist who could be of use to him

in his experiments and I was aware that he cherished a project of

transporting me to some place in China where his principal laboratory

was situated. Respecting the means which he proposed to employ, I was

unlikely to forget that this man, who had penetrated further along

certain byways of science than seemed humanly possible, undoubtedly was

master of a process for producing artificial catalepsy. It was my lot,

then, to be packed in a chest (to all intents and purposes a dead man

for the time being) and despatched to the interior of China!

What a fool I had been. To think that I had learned nothing from my long

and dreadful experience of the methods of Dr. Fu-Manchu; to think that I

had come alone in quest of him; that, leaving no trace behind me, I had

deliberately penetrated to his secret abode!

I have said that my wrists were manacled behind me, the manacles being

attached to a chain fastened in the wall. I now contrived, with extreme

difficulty, to reverse the position of my hands; that is to say, I

climbed backward through the loop formed by my fettered arms, so that

instead of their being locked behind me, they now were locked in front.

Then I began to examine the fetters, learning, as I had anticipated,

that they fastened with a lock. I sat gazing at the steel bracelets in

the light of the lamp which swung over my head, and it became apparent

to me that I had gained little by my contortion.

A slight noise disturbed these unpleasant reveries. It was nothing less

than the rattling of keys!

For a moment I wondered if I had heard aright, or if the sound portended

the coming of some servant of the doctor, who was locking up the

establishment for the night. The jangling sound was repeated, and in

such a way that I could not suppose it to be accidental. Some one was

deliberately rattling a small bunch of keys in an adjoining room.

And now my heart leaped wildly--then seemed to stand still.

With a low whistling cry a little gray shape shot through the doorway by

which Fu-Manchu had retired, and rolled, like a ball of fluff blown by

the wind, completely under the table which bore the weird scientific

appliances of the Chinaman; the advent of the gray object was

accompanied by a further rattling of keys.

My fear left me, and a mighty anxiety took its place. This creature

which now crouched chattering at me from beneath the big table was

Fu-Manchu’s marmoset, and in the intervals of its chattering and

grimacing, it nibbled, speculatively, at the keys upon the ring which

it clutched in its tiny hands. Key after key it sampled in this manner,

evincing a growing dissatisfaction with the uncrackable nature of its

find.

One of those keys might be that of the handcuffs!

I could not believe that the tortures of Tantulus were greater than

were mine at this moment. In all my hopes of rescue or release, I

had included nothing so strange, so improbable as this. A sort of awe

possessed me; for if by this means the key which should release me

should come into my possession, how, ever again, could I doubt a

beneficent Providence?

But they were not yet in my possession; moreover, the key of the

handcuffs might not be amongst the bunch.

Were there no means whereby I could induce the marmoset to approach me?

Whilst I racked my brains for some scheme, the little animal took the

matter out of my hands. Tossing the ring with its jangling contents

a yard or so across the carpet in my direction, it leaped in pursuit,

picked up the ring, whirled it over its head, and then threw a complete

somersault around it. Now it snatched up the keys again, and holding

them close to its ear, rattled them furiously. Finally, with an

incredible spring, it leaped onto the chain supporting the lamp above

my head, and with the garish shade swinging and spinning wildly, clung

there looking down at me like an acrobat on a trapeze. The tiny, bluish

face, completely framed in grotesque whiskers, enhanced the illusion of

an acrobatic comedian. Never for a moment did it release its hold upon

the key-ring.

My suspense now was intolerable. I feared to move, lest, alarming the

marmoset, it should run off again, taking the keys with it. So as I lay

there, looking up at the little creature swinging above me, the second

wonder of the night came to pass.

A voice that I could never forget, strive how I would, a voice that

haunted my dreams by night, and for which by day I was ever listening,

cried out from some adjoining room.

“Ta’ala hina!” it called. “Ta’ala hina, Peko!”

It was Karamaneh!

The effect upon the marmoset was instantaneous. Down came the bunch of

keys upon one side of the shade, almost falling on my head, and down

leaped the ape upon the other. In two leaps it had traversed the room

and had vanished through the curtained doorway.

If ever I had need of coolness it was now; the slightest mistake would

be fatal. The keys had slipped from the mattress of the divan, and now

lay just beyond reach of my fingers. Rapidly I changed my position, and

sought, without undue noise, to move the keys with my foot.

I had actually succeeded in sliding them back on to the mattress, when,

unheralded by any audible footstep, Karamaneh came through the doorway,

holding the marmoset in her arms. She wore a dress of fragile muslin

material, and out from its folds protruded one silk-stockinged foot,

resting in a high-heeled red shoe....

For a moment she stood watching me, with a sort of enforced composure;

then her glance strayed to the keys lying upon the floor. Slowly, and

with her eyes fixed again upon my face, she crossed the room, stooped,

and took up the key-ring.

It was one of the poignant moments of my life; for by that simple act

all my hopes had been shattered!

Any poor lingering doubt that I may have had, left me now. Had the

slightest spark of friendship animated the bosom of Karamaneh most

certainly she would have overlooked the presence of the keys--of the

keys which represented my one hope of escape from the clutches of the

fiendish Chinaman.

There is a silence more eloquent than words. For half a minute or more,

Karamaneh stood watching me--forcing herself to watch me--and I looked

up at her with a concentrated gaze in which rage and reproach must have

been strangely mingled. What eyes she had!--of that blackly lustrous

sort nearly always associated with unusually dark complexions; but

Karamaneh’s complexion was peachlike, or rather of an exquisite and

delicate fairness which reminded me of the petal of a rose. By some I

had been accused of raving about this girl’s beauty, but only by those

who had not met her; for indeed she was astonishingly lovely.

At last her eyes fell, the long lashes drooped upon her cheeks. She

turned and walked slowly to the chair in which Fu-Manchu had sat.

Placing the keys upon the table amid the scientific litter, she rested

one dimpled elbow upon the yellow page of the book, and with her chin in

her palm, again directed upon me that enigmatical gaze.

I dared not think of the past, of the past in which this beautiful,

treacherous girl had played a part; yet, watching her, I could not

believe, even now, that she was false! My state was truly a pitiable

one; I could have cried out in sheer anguish. With her long lashes

partly lowered, she watched me awhile, then spoke; and her voice was

music which seemed to mock me; every inflection of that elusive accent

reopened, lancet-like, the ancient wound.

“Why do you look at me so?” she said, almost in a whisper. “By what

right do you reproach me?--Have you ever offered me friendship, that I

should repay you with friendship? When first you came to the house where

I was, by the river--came to save some one from” (there was the familiar

hesitation which always preceded the name of Fu-Manchu) “from--him, you

treated me as your enemy, although--I would have been your friend...”

There was appeal in the soft voice, but I laughed mockingly, and threw

myself back upon the divan.

Karamaneh stretched out her hands toward me, and I shall never forget

the expression which flashed into those glorious eyes; but, seeing me

intolerant of her appeal, she drew back and quickly turned her head

aside. Even in this hour of extremity, of impotent wrath, I could find

no contempt in my heart for her feeble hypocrisy; with all the

old wonder I watched that exquisite profile, and Karamaneh’s very

deceitfulness was a salve--for had she not cared she would not have

attempted it!

Suddenly she stood up, taking the keys in her hands, and approached me.

“Not by word, nor by look,” she said, quietly, “have you asked for my

friendship, but because I cannot bear you to think of me as you do, I

will prove that I am not the hypocrite and the liar you think me. You

will not trust me, but I will trust you.”

I looked up into her eyes, and knew a pagan joy when they faltered

before my searching gaze. She threw herself upon her knees beside me,

and the faint exquisite perfume inseparable from my memories of her,

became perceptible, and seemed as of old to intoxicate me. The lock

clicked... and I was free.

Karamaneh rose swiftly to her feet as I stood upright and outstretched

my cramped arms. For one delirious moment her bewitching face was close

to mine, and the dictates of madness almost ruled; but I clenched my

teeth and turned sharply aside. I could not trust myself to speak.

With Fu-Manchu’s marmoset again gamboling before us, she walked through

the curtained doorway into the room beyond. It was in darkness, but

I could see the slave-girl in front of me, a slim silhouette, as she

walked to a screened window, and, opening the screen in the manner of a

folding door, also threw up the window.

“Look!” she whispered.

I crept forward and stood beside her. I found myself looking down into

Museum Street from a first-floor window! Belated traffic still passed

along New Oxford Street on the left, but not a solitary figure was

visible to the right, as far as I could see, and that was nearly to the

railings of the Museum. Immediately opposite, in one of the flats which

I had noticed earlier in the evening, another window was opened. I

turned, and in the reflected light saw that Karamaneh held a cord in her

hand. Our eyes met in the semi-darkness.

She began to haul the cord into the window, and, looking upward, I

perceived that it was looped in some way over the telegraph cables which

crossed the street at that point. It was a slender cord, and it appeared

to be passed across a joint in the cables almost immediately above the

center of the roadway. As it was hauled in, a second and stronger line

attached to it was pulled, in turn, over the cables, and thence in by

the window. Karamaneh twisted a length of it around a metal bracket

fastened in the wall, and placed a light wooden crossbar in my hand.

“Make sure that there is no one in the street,” she said, craning out

and looking to right and left, “then swing across. The length of the

rope is just sufficient to enable you to swing through the open window

opposite, and there is a mattress inside to drop upon. But release the

bar immediately, or you may be dragged back. The door of the room in

which you will find yourself is unlocked, and you have only to walk down

the stairs and out into the street.”

I peered at the crossbar in my hand, then looked hard at the girl beside

me. I missed something of the old fire of her nature; she was very

subdued, tonight.

“Thank you, Karamaneh,” I said, softly.

She suppressed a little cry as I spoke her name, and drew back into the

shadows.

“I believe you are my friend,” I said, “but I cannot understand. Won’t

you help me to understand?”

I took her unresisting hand, and drew her toward me. My very soul seemed

to thrill at the contact of her lithe body...

She was trembling wildly and seemed to be trying to speak, but although

her lips framed the words no sound followed. Suddenly comprehension came

to me. I looked down into the street, hitherto deserted... and into the

upturned face of Fu-Manchu.

Wearing a heavy fur-collared coat, and with his yellow, malignant

countenance grotesquely horrible beneath the shade of a large tweed

motor cap, he stood motionless, looking up at me. That he had seen me, I

could not doubt; but had he seen my companion?

In a choking whisper Karamaneh answered my unspoken question.

“He has not seen me! I have done much for you; do in return a small

thing for me. Save my life!”

She dragged me back from the window and fled across the room to the

weird laboratory where I had lain captive. Throwing herself upon the

divan, she held out her white wrists and glanced significantly at the

manacles.

“Lock them upon me!” she said, rapidly. “Quick! quick!”

Great as was my mental disturbance, I managed to grasp the purpose of

this device. The very extremity of my danger found me cool. I fastened

the manacles, which so recently had confined my own wrists, upon the

slim wrists of Karamaneh. A faint and muffled disturbance, doubly

ominous because there was nothing to proclaim its nature, reached me

from some place below, on the ground floor.

“Tie something around my mouth!” directed Karamaneh with nervous

rapidity. As I began to look about me:--“Tear a strip from my dress,”

she said; “do not hesitate--be quick! be quick!”

I seized the flimsy muslin and tore off half a yard or so from the hem

of the skirt. The voice of Dr Fu-Manchu became audible. He was speaking

rapidly, sibilantly, and evidently was approaching--would be upon me

in a matter of moments. I fastened the strip of fabric over the girl’s

mouth and tied it behind, experiencing a pang half pleasurable and half

fearful as I found my hands in contact with the foamy luxuriance of her

hair.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was entering the room immediately beyond.

Snatching up the bunch of keys, I turned and ran, for in another instant

my retreat would be cut off. As I burst once more into the darkened

room I became aware that a door on the further side of it was open;

and framed in the opening was the tall, high-shouldered figure of the

Chinaman, still enveloped in his fur coat and wearing the grotesque

cap. As I saw him, so he perceived me; and as I sprang to the window, he

advanced.

I turned desperately and hurled the bunch of keys with all my force into

the dimly-seen face...

Either because they possessed a chatoyant quality of their own (as I had

often suspected), or by reason of the light reflected through the open

window, the green eyes gleamed upon me vividly like those of a giant

cat. One short guttural exclamation paid tribute to the accuracy of

my aim; then I had the crossbar in my hand. I threw one leg across

the sill, and dire as was my extremity, hesitated for an instant ere

trusting myself to the flight...

A vise-like grip fastened upon my left ankle.

Hazily I became aware that the dark room was flooded with figures. The

whole yellow gang were upon me--the entire murder-group composed of

units recruited from the darkest place of the East!

I have never counted myself a man of resource, and have always envied

Nayland Smith his possession of that quality, in him extraordinarily

developed; but on this occasion the gods were kind to me, and I

resorted to the only device, perhaps, which could have saved me. Without

releasing my hold upon the crossbar, I clutched at the ledge with the

fingers of both hands and swung back into the room my right leg, which

was already across the sill. With all my strength I kicked out. My heel

came in contact, in sickening contact, with a human head; beyond doubt

that I had split the skull of the man who held me.

The grip upon my ankle was released automatically; and now consigning

all my weight to the rope I slipped forward, as a diver, across the

broad ledge and found myself sweeping through the night like a winged

thing...

The line, as Karamaneh had assured me, was of well-judged length. Down I

swept to within six or seven feet of the street level, then up, at ever

decreasing speed, toward the vague oblong of the open window beyond.

I hope I have been successful, in some measure, in portraying the varied

emotions which it was my lot to experience that night, and it may well

seem that nothing more exquisite could remain for me. Yet it was written

otherwise; for as I swept up to my goal, describing the inevitable arc

which I had no power to check, I saw that one awaited me.

Crouching forward half out of the open window was a Burmese dacoit, a

cross-eyed, leering being whom I well remembered to have encountered

two years before in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu. One bare, sinewy

arm held rigidly at right angles before his breast, he clutched a long

curved knife and waited--waited--for the critical moment when my throat

should be at his mercy!

I have said that a strange coolness had come to my aid; even now it did

not fail me, and so incalculably rapid are the workings of the human

mind that I remember complimenting myself upon an achievement which

Smith himself could not have bettered, and this in the immeasurable

interval which intervened between the commencement of my upward swing

and my arrival on a level with the window.

I threw my body back and thrust my feet forward. As my legs went through

the opening, an acute pain in one calf told me that I was not to escape

scatheless from the night’s melee. But the dacoit went rolling over in

the darkness of the room, as helpless in face of that ramrod stroke as

the veriest infant...

Back I swept upon my trapeze, a sight to have induced any passing

citizen to question his sanity. With might and main I sought to check

the swing of the pendulum, for if I should come within reach of the

window behind I doubted not that other knives awaited me. It was no

difficult feat, and I succeeded in checking my flight. Swinging there

above Museum Street I could even appreciate, so lucid was my mind, the

ludicrous element of the situation.

I dropped. My wounded leg almost failed me; and greatly shaken, but

with no other serious damage, I picked myself up from the dust of the

roadway. It was a mockery of Fate that the problem which Nayland Smith

had set me to solve, should have been solved thus; for I could not doubt

that by means of the branch of a tall tree or some other suitable object

situated opposite to Smith’s house in Rangoon, Karamaneh had made her

escape as tonight I had made mine.

Apart from the acute pain in my calf I knew that the dacoit’s knife had

bitten deeply, by reason of the fact that a warm liquid was trickling

down into my boot. Like any drunkard I stood there in the middle of the

road looking up at the vacant window where the dacoit had been, and up

at the window above the shop of J. Salaman where I knew Fu-Manchu to be.

But for some reason the latter window had been closed or almost closed,

and as I stood there this reason became apparent to me.

The sound of running footsteps came from the direction of New Oxford

Street. I turned--to see two policemen bearing down upon me!

This was a time for quick decisions and prompt action. I weighed all

the circumstances in the balance, and made the last vital choice of the

night; I turned and ran toward the British Museum as though the worst of

Fu-Manchu’s creatures, and not my allies the police, were at my heels!

No one else was in sight, but, as I whirled into the Square, the red

lamp of a slowly retreating taxi became visible some hundred yards to

the left. My leg was paining me greatly, but the nature of the wound

did not interfere with my progress; therefore I continued my headlong

career, and ere the police had reached the end of Museum Street I had my

hand upon the door handle of the cab--for, the Fates being persistently

kind to me, the vehicle was for hire.

“Dr. Cleeve’s, Harley Street!” I shouted at the man. “Drive like hell!

It’s an urgent case.”

I leaped into the cab.

Within five seconds from the time that I slammed the door and dropped

back panting upon the cushions, we were speeding westward toward the

house of the famous pathologist, thereby throwing the police hopelessly

off the track.

Faintly to my ears came the purr of a police whistle. The taxi-man

evidently did not hear the significant sound. Merciful Providence had

rung down the curtain; for to-night my role in the yellow drama was

finished.

CHAPTER XXI. CRAGMIRE TOWER

Less than two hours later, Inspector Weymouth and a party of men from

Scotland Yard raided the house in Museum Street. They found the stock

of J. Salaman practically intact, and, in the strangely appointed rooms

above, every evidence of a hasty outgoing. But of the instruments, drugs

and other laboratory paraphernalia not one item remained. I would gladly

have given my income for a year, to have gained possession of the books,

alone; for, beyond all shadow of doubt, I knew them to contain formula

calculated to revolutionize the science of medicine.

Exhausted, physically and mentally, and with my mind a

whispering-gallery of conjectures (it were needless for me to mention

whom respecting) I turned in, gratefully, having patched up the slight

wound in my calf.

I seemed scarcely to have closed my eyes, when Nayland Smith was shaking

me into wakefulness.

“You are probably tired out,” he said; “but your crazy expedition of

last night entitles you to no sympathy. Read this; there is a train

in an hour. We will reserve a compartment and you can resume your

interrupted slumbers in a corner seat.”

As I struggled upright in bed, rubbing my eyes sleepily, Smith handed

me the Daily Telegraph, pointing to the following paragraph upon the

literary page:

Messrs. M---- announce that they will publish shortly the long delayed

work of Kegan Van Roon, the celebrated American traveler, Orientalist

and psychic investigator, dealing with his recent inquiries in China. It

will be remembered that Mr. Van Roon undertook to motor from Canton

to Siberia last winter, but met with unforeseen difficulties in the

province of Ho-Nan. He fell into the hands of a body of fanatics and was

fortunate to escape with his life. His book will deal in particular with

his experiences in Ho-Nan, and some sensational revelations regarding

the awakening of that most mysterious race, the Chinese, are promised.

For reasons of his own he has decided to remain in England until the

completion of his book (which will be published simultaneously in New

York and London) and has leased Cragmire Tower, Somersetshire, in which

romantic and historical residence he will collate his notes and

prepare for the world a work ear-marked as a classic even before it is

published.

I glanced up from the paper, to find Smith’s eyes fixed upon me,

inquiringly.

“From what I have been able to learn,” he said, evenly, “we should reach

Saul, with decent luck, just before dusk.”

As he turned, and quitted the room without another word, I realized, in

a flash, the purport of our mission; I understood my friend’s ominous

calm, betokening suppressed excitement.

The Fates were with us (or so it seemed); and whereas we had not hoped

to gain Saul before sunset, as a matter of fact, the autumn afternoon

was in its most glorious phase as we left the little village with its

oldtime hostelry behind us and set out in an easterly direction, with

the Bristol Channel far away on our left and a gently sloping upland on

our right.

The crooked high-street practically constituted the entire hamlet of

Saul, and the inn, “The Wagoners,” was the last house in the street.

Now, as we followed the ribbon of moor-path to the top of the rise, we

could stand and look back upon the way we had come; and although we had

covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the sunlight

gleaming now and then upon the gilt lettering of the inn sign as it

swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm, but was

relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had in it

the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us, then, the foot-path sloped

down to Saul, unpeopled by any living thing; east and northeast swelled

the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy distance where the sky

began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west fell the gentle gradient

from the top of the slope which we had mounted, and here, as far as the

eye could reach, the country had an appearance suggestive of a huge

and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for

sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then

a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that

bird’s-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which

merged into a dun-colored smudge and again into the brilliant green;

then the moor would begin once more.

“That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose,” said Smith, suddenly

peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction; “and yonder,

unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire Tower.”

Shading my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead, and saw the place for

which we were bound; one of those round towers, more common in Ireland,

which some authorities have declared to be of Phoenician origin.

Ramshackle buildings clustered untidily about its base, and to it a sort

of tongue of that oddly venomous green which patched the lowlands, shot

out and seemed almost to reach the towerbase. The land for miles around

was as flat as the palm of my hand, saving certain hummocks, lesser

tors, and irregular piles of boulders which dotted its expanse. Hills

and uplands there were in the hazy distance, forming a sort of mighty

inland bay which I doubted not in some past age had been covered by

the sea. Even in the brilliant sunlight the place had something of

a mournful aspect, looking like a great dried-up pool into which the

children of giants had carelessly cast stones.

We met no living soul upon the moor. With Cragmire Tower but a quarter

of a mile off, Smith paused again, and raising his powerful glasses

swept the visible landscape.

“Not a sign. Petrie,” he said, softly; “yet...”

Dropping the glasses back into their case, my companion began to tug at

his left ear.

“Have we been over-confident?” he said, narrowing his eyes in

speculative fashion. “No less than three times I have had the idea that

something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind me, as I

focused...”

“What do you mean, Smith?”

“Are we”--he glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled with

listening Chinamen--“followed?”

Silently we looked into one another’s eyes, each seeking for the dread

which neither had named. Then:

“Come on Petrie!” said Smith, grasping my arm; and at quick march we

were off again.

Cragmire Tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had looked

like a green tongue, from the moorland slopes above, was in fact a

creek, flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the sea.

The house which we were come to visit consisted in a low, two-story

building, joining the ancient tower on the east with two smaller

outbuildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden, and a few stunted

fruit trees in the northwest corner; the whole being surrounded by a

gray stone wall.

The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path, which ran up

almost alongside of it. We were both extremely warm by reason of our

long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have been

grateful to us. In short, I find it difficult to account for the

unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found myself

at the foot of the time-worn monument. I know that we both pulled up

sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by some mutual

disturbance.

But not a sound broke the stillness save a remote murmuring, until a

solitary sea gull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower,

uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically to my mind sprang

the lines of the poem:

Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen,

With God’s creatures I bide, ‘mid the birds that I ken;

Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea

Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.

Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human

activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced

back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I

beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we walked

up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows of the

house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above. Those on

the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though glazed,

boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not the

slightest evidence of tenancy.

We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken

door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the

door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring and tugged it.

From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clangor, a

cracked and toneless jangle, which, seeming to echo through empty

apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of the

openings in the round tower; for it was from above our heads that the

noise came to us.

It died away, that eerie ringing--that clanging so dismal that it could

chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming down out of

the blue; it awoke no other response than the mournful cry of the sea

gull circling over our heads. Silence fell. We looked at one another,

and we were both about to express a mutual doubt when, unheralded by

any unfastening of bolts or bars, the oaken door was opened, and a huge

mulatto, dressed in white, stood there regarding us.

I started nervously, for the apparition was so unexpected, but Nayland

Smith, without evidence of surprise, thrust a card into the man’s hand.

“Take my card to Mr. Van Roon, and say that I wish to see him on

important business,” he directed, authoritatively.

The mulatto bowed and retired. His white figure seemed to be swallowed

up by the darkness within, for beyond the patch of uncarpeted floor

revealed by the peeping sunlight, was a barn-like place of densest

shadow. I was about to speak, but Smith laid his hand upon my arm

warningly, as, out from the shadows the mulatto returned. He stood on

the right of the door and bowed again.

“Be pleased to enter,” he said, in his harsh, negro voice. “Mr. Van Roon

will see you.”

The gladness of the sun could no longer stir me; a chill and sense of

foreboding bore me company, as beside Nayland Smith I entered Cragmire

Tower.

CHAPTER XXII. THE MULATTO

The room in which Van Roon received us was roughly of the shape of an

old-fashioned keyhole; one end of it occupied the base of the tower,

upon which the remainder had evidently been built. In many respects

it was a singular room, but the feature which caused me the greatest

amazement was this:--it had no windows!

In the deep alcove formed by the tower sat Van Roon at a littered table,

upon which stood an oil reading-lamp, green shaded, of the “Victoria”

pattern, to furnish the entire illumination of the apartment. That

bookshelves lined the rectangular portion of this strange study I

divined, although that end of the place was dark as a catacomb. The

walls were wood-paneled, and the ceiling was oaken beamed. A small

bookshelf and tumble-down cabinet stood upon either side of the table,

and the celebrated American author and traveler lay propped up in a long

split-cane chair. He wore smoked glasses, and had a clean-shaven, olive

face, with a profusion of jet black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red

dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar smoke hung in the room. He did

not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand, between two

fingers whereof he held Smith’s card.

“You will excuse the seeming discourtesy of an invalid, gentlemen?” he

said; “but I am suffering from undue temerity in the interior of China!”

He waved his hand vaguely, and I saw that two rough deal chairs stood

near the table. Smith and I seated ourselves, and my friend, leaning his

elbow upon the table, looked fixedly at the face of the man whom we

had come from London to visit. Although comparatively unfamiliar to the

British public, the name of Van Roon was well-known in American literary

circles; for he enjoyed in the United States a reputation somewhat

similar to that which had rendered the name of our mutual friend,

Sir Lionel Barton, a household word in England. It was Van Roon who,

following in the footsteps of Madame Blavatsky, had sought out the

haunts of the fabled mahatmas in the Himalayas, and Van Roon who had

essayed to explore the fever swamps of Yucatan in quest of the secret

of lost Atlantis; lastly, it was Van Roon, who, with an overland car

specially built for him by a celebrated American firm, had undertaken

the journey across China.

I studied the olive face with curiosity. Its natural impassivity was

so greatly increased by the presence of the colored spectacles that my

study was as profitless as if I had scrutinized the face of a carven

Buddha. The mulatto had withdrawn, and in an atmosphere of gloom and

tobacco smoke, Smith and I sat staring, perhaps rather rudely, at the

object of our visit to the West Country.

“Mr. Van Roon,” began my friend abruptly, “you will no doubt have seen

this paragraph. It appeared in this morning’s Daily Telegraph.”

He stood up, and taking out the cutting from his notebook, placed it on

the table.

“I have seen this--yes,” said Van Roon, revealing a row of even, white

teeth in a rapid smile. “Is it to this paragraph that I owe the pleasure

of seeing you here?”

“The paragraph appeared in this morning’s issue,” replied Smith. “An

hour from the time of seeing it, my friend, Dr. Petrie, and I were

entrained for Bridgewater.”

“Your visit delights me, gentlemen, and I should be ungrateful to

question its cause; but frankly I am at a loss to understand why you

should have honored me thus. I am a poor host, God knows; for what

with my tortured limb, a legacy from the Chinese devils whose secrets I

surprised, and my semi-blindness, due to the same cause, I am but sorry

company.”

Nayland Smith held up his right hand deprecatingly. Van Roon tendered a

box of cigars and clapped his hands, whereupon the mulatto entered.

“I see that you have a story to tell me, Mr. Smith,” he said; “therefore

I suggest whisky-and-soda--or you might prefer tea, as it is nearly tea

time?”

Smith and I chose the former refreshment, and the soft-footed half-breed

having departed upon his errand, my companion, leaning forward earnestly

across the littered table, outlined for Van Roon the story of Dr.

Fu-Manchu, the great and malign being whose mission in England at that

moment was none other than the stoppage of just such information as our

host was preparing to give to the world.

“There is a giant conspiracy, Mr. Van Roon,” he said, “which had its

birth in this very province of Ho-Nan, from which you were so fortunate

to escape alive; whatever its scope or limitations, a great secret

society is established among the yellow races. It means that China,

which has slumbered for so many generations, now stirs in that age-long

sleep. I need not tell you how much more it means, this seething in the

pot...”

“In a word,” interrupted Van Roon, pushing Smith’s glass across the

table “you would say?--”

“That your life is not worth that!” replied Smith, snapping his fingers

before the other’s face.

A very impressive silence fell. I watched Van Roon curiously as he sat

propped up among his cushions, his smooth face ghastly in the green

light from the lamp-shade. He held the stump of a cigar between his

teeth, but, apparently unnoticed by him, it had long since gone out.

Smith, out of the shadows, was watching him, too. Then:

“Your information is very disturbing,” said the American. “I am the more

disposed to credit your statement because I am all too painfully aware

of the existence of such a group as you mention, in China, but that they

had an agent here in England is something I had never conjectured. In

seeking out this solitary residence I have unwittingly done much to

assist their designs... But--my dear Mr. Smith, I am very remiss! Of

course you will remain tonight, and I trust for some days to come?”

Smith glanced rapidly across at me, then turned again to our host.

“It seems like forcing our company upon you,” he said, “but in your

own interests I think it will be best to do as you are good enough to

suggest. I hope and believe that our arrival here has not been noticed

by the enemy; therefore it will be well if we remain concealed as much

as possible for the present, until we have settled upon some plan.”

“Hagar shall go to the station for your baggage,” said the American

rapidly, and clapped his hands, his usual signal to the mulatto.

Whilst the latter was receiving his orders I noticed Nayland Smith

watching him closely; and when he had departed:

“How long has that man been in your service?” snapped my friend.

Van Roon peered blindly through his smoked glasses.

“For some years,” he replied; “he was with me in India--and in China.”

“Where did you engage him?”

“Actually, in St. Kitts.”

“H’m,” muttered Smith, and automatically he took out and began to fill

his pipe.

“I can offer you no company but my own, gentlemen,” continued Van Roon,

“but unless it interferes with your plans, you may find the surrounding

district of interest and worthy of inspection, between now and dinner

time. By the way, I think I can promise you quite a satisfactory meal,

for Hagar is a model chef.”

“A walk would be enjoyable,” said Smith, “but dangerous.”

“Ah! perhaps you are right. Evidently you apprehend some attempt upon

me?”

“At any moment!”

“To one in my crippled condition, an alarming outlook! However, I place

myself unreservedly in your hands. But really, you must not leave this

interesting district before you have made the acquaintance of some of

its historical spots. To me, steeped as I am in what I may term the lore

of the odd, it is a veritable wonderland, almost as interesting, in

its way, as the caves and jungles of Hindustan depicted by Madame

Blavatsky.”

His high-pitched voice, with a certain labored intonation, not quite

so characteristically American as was his accent, rose even higher; he

spoke with the fire of the enthusiast.

“When I learned that Cragmire Tower was vacant,” he continued, “I leaped

at the chance (excuse the metaphor, from a lame man!). This is a

ghost hunter’s paradise. The tower itself is of unknown origin, though

probably Phoenician, and the house traditionally sheltered Dr. Macleod,

the necromancer, after his flight from the persecution of James of

Scotland. Then, to add to its interest, it borders on Sedgemoor,

the scene of the bloody battle during the Monmouth rising, whereat a

thousand were slain on the field. It is a local legend that the unhappy

Duke and his staff may be seen, on stormy nights, crossing the path

which skirts the mire, after which this building is named, with flaming

torches held aloft.”

“Merely marsh-lights, I take it?” interjected Smith, gripping his pipe

hard between his teeth.

“Your practical mind naturally seeks a practical explanation,” smiled

Van Roon, “but I myself have other theories. Then in addition to the

charms of Sedgemoor--haunted Sedgemoor--on a fine day it is quite

possible to see the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey from here; and

Glastonbury Abbey, as you may know, is closely bound up with the history

of alchemy. It was in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey that the adept

Kelly, companion of Dr. Dee, discovered, in the reign of Elizabeth, the

famous caskets of St. Dunstan, containing the two tinctures...”

So he ran on, enumerating the odd charms of his residence, charms which

for my part I did not find appealing. Finally:

“We cannot presume further upon your kindness,” said Nayland Smith,

standing up. “No doubt we can amuse ourselves in the neighborhood of the

house until the return of your servant.”

“Look upon Cragmire Tower as your own, gentlemen!” cried Van Roon. “Most

of the rooms are unfurnished, and the garden is a wilderness, but

the structure of the brickwork in the tower may interest you

archaeologically, and the view across the moor is at least as fine as

any in the neighborhood.”

So, with his brilliant smile and a gesture of one thin yellow hand, the

crippled traveler made us free of his odd dwelling. As I passed out from

the room close at Smith’s heels, I glanced back, I cannot say why.

Van Roon already was bending over his papers, in his green shadowed

sanctuary, and the light shining down upon his smoked glasses created

the odd illusion that he was looking over the tops of the lenses and not

down at the table as his attitude suggested. However, it was probably

ascribable to the weird chiaroscuro of the scene, although it gave the

seated figure an oddly malignant appearance, and I passed out through

the utter darkness of the outer room to the front door. Smith opening

it, I was conscious of surprise to find dusk come--to meet darkness

where I had looked for sunlight.

The silver wisps which had raced along the horizon, as we came to

Cragmire Tower, had been harbingers of other and heavier banks. A stormy

sunset smeared crimson streaks across the skyline, where a great range

of clouds, like the oily smoke of a city burning, was banked, mountain

topping mountain, and lighted from below by this angry red. As we came

down the steps and out by the gate, I turned and looked across the moor

behind us. A sort of reflection from this distant blaze encrimsoned the

whole landscape. The inland bay glowed sullenly, as if internal fires

and not reflected light were at work; a scene both wild and majestic.

Nayland Smith was staring up at the cone-like top of the ancient tower

in a curious, speculative fashion. Under the influence of our host’s

conversation I had forgotten the reasonless dread which had touched me

at the moment of our arrival, but now, with the red light blazing over

Sedgemoor, as if in memory of the blood which had been shed there,

and with the tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very

uncomfortable again, nor did I envy Van Roon his eerie residence. The

proximity of a tower of any kind, at night, makes in some inexplicable

way for awe, and to-night there were other agents, too.

“What’s that?” snapped Smith suddenly, grasping my arm.

He was peering southward, toward the distant hamlet, and, starting

violently at his words and the sudden grasp of his hand, I, too, stared

in that direction.

“We were followed, Petrie,” he almost whispered. “I never got a sight of

our follower, but I’ll swear we were followed. Look! there’s something

moving over yonder!”

Together we stood staring into the dusk; then Smith burst abruptly into

one of his rare laughs, and clapped me upon the shoulder.

“It’s Hagar, the mulatto!” he cried--“and our grips. That extraordinary

American with his tales of witch-lights and haunted abbeys has been

playing the devil with our nerves.”

Together we waited by the gate until the half-caste appeared on the bend

of the path with a grip in either hand. He was a great, muscular fellow

with a stoic face, and, for the purpose of visiting Saul, presumably,

he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of livery, with a

peaked cap.

Smith watched him enter the house. Then:

“I wonder where Van Roon obtains his provisions and so forth,” he

muttered. “It’s odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Cragmire

Tower at ‘The Wagoners.’”

There came a sort of sudden expectancy into his manner for which I found

myself at a loss to account. He turned his gaze inland and stood there

tugging at his left ear and clicking his teeth together. He stared at

me, and his eyes looked very bright in the dusk, for a sort of red glow

from the sunset touched them; but he spoke no word, merely taking my

arm and leading me off on a rambling walk around and about the house.

Neither of us spoke a word until we stood at the gate of Cragmire Tower

again; then:

“I’ll swear, now, that we were followed here today!” muttered Smith.

The lofty place immediately within the doorway proved, in the light of a

lamp now fixed in an iron bracket, to be a square entrance hall meagerly

furnished. The closed study door faced the entrance, and on the left of

it ascended an open staircase up which the mulatto led the way. We found

ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing the house from

back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was indicated by the

mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of fair size, furnished

quite simply but boasting a wardrobe cupboard, and Smith’s grip stood

beside the white enameled bed. I glanced around, and then prepared to

follow the man, who had awaited me in the doorway.

He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the lithe,

broad-shouldered figure along the corridor, I found myself considering

critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of

his neck.

I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding, an elusive stirring in

the depths of my being of which I became conscious at certain times

in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his murderous servants. This

sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now, unaccountably, as

I stood looking into the neat bedroom, on the same side of the corridor

but at the extreme end, wherein I was to sleep.

A voiceless warning urged me to return; a kind of childish panic came

fluttering about my heart, a dread of entering the room, of allowing the

mulatto to come behind me.

Doubtless this was no more than a sub-conscious product of my

observations respecting his abnormal breadth of shoulder. But whatever

the origin of the impulse, I found myself unable to disobey it.

Therefore, I merely nodded, turned on my heel and went back to Smith’s

room.

I closed the door, then turned to face Smith, who stood regarding me.

“Smith,” I said, “that man sends cold water trickling down my spine!”

Still regarding me fixedly, my friend nodded his head.

“You are curiously sensitive to this sort of thing,” he replied slowly;

“I have noticed it before as a useful capacity. I don’t like the look of

the man myself. The fact that he has been in Van Roon’s employ for some

years goes for nothing. We are neither of us likely to forget Kwee,

the Chinese servant of Sir Lionel Barton, and it is quite possible that

Fu-Manchu has corrupted this man as he corrupted the other. It is quite

possible...”

His voice trailed off into silence, and he stood looking across the room

with unseeing eyes, meditating deeply. It was quite dark now outside, as

I could see through the uncurtained window, which opened upon the dreary

expanse stretching out to haunted Sedgemoor. Two candles were burning

upon the dressing table; they were but recently lighted, and so intense

was the stillness that I could distinctly hear the spluttering of one of

the wicks, which was damp. Without giving the slightest warning of his

intention, Smith suddenly made two strides forward, stretched out his

long arms, and snuffed the pair of candles in a twinkling.

The room became plunged in impenetrable darkness.

“Not a word, Petrie!” whispered my companion.

I moved cautiously to join him, but as I did so, perceived that he was

moving too. Vaguely, against the window I perceived him silhouetted. He

was looking out across the moor, and:

“See! see!” he hissed.

With my heart thumping furiously in my breast, I bent over him; and for

the second time since our coming to Cragmire Tower, my thoughts flew to

“The Fenman.”

There are shades in the fen; ghosts of women and men

Who have sinned and have died, but are living again.

O’er the waters they tread, with their lanterns of dread,

And they peer in the pools--in the pools of the dead...

A light was dancing out upon the moor, a witchlight that came and went

unaccountably, up and down, in and out, now clearly visible, now masked

in the darkness!

“Lock the door!” snapped my companion--“if there’s a key.”

I crept across the room and fumbled for a moment; then:

“There is no key,” I reported.

“Then wedge the chair under the knob and let no one enter until I

return!” he said, amazingly.

With that he opened the window to its fullest extent, threw his leg over

the sill, and went creeping along a wide concrete ledge, in which ran a

leaded gutter, in the direction of the tower on the right!

Not pausing to follow his instructions respecting the chair, I craned

out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden

madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not

believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on

the moor moved the will-o’-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter

crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have

prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge

terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it

was possible for an agile climber to step from it to the edge of the

unglazed window some four feet below, and to scramble from that point

to the stone fence and thence on to the path by which we had come from

Saul.

This difficult operation Nayland Smith successfully performed, and, to

my unbounded amazement, went racing into the darkness toward the dancing

light, headlong, like a madman! The night swallowed him up, and between

my wonder and my fear my hands trembled so violently that I could scarce

support myself where I rested, with my full weight upon the sill.

I seemed now to be moving through the fevered phases of a nightmare.

Around and below me Cragmire Tower was profoundly silent, but a faint

odor of cookery was now perceptible. Outside, from the night, came

a faint whispering as of the distant sea, but no moon and no stars

relieved the impenetrable blackness. Only out over the moor the

mysterious light still danced and moved.

One--two--three--four--five minutes passed. The light vanished and

did not appear again. Five more age-long minutes elapsed in absolute

silence, whilst I peered into the darkness of the night and listened,

every nerve in my body tense, for the return of Nayland Smith. Yet two

more minutes, which embraced an agony of suspense, passed in the same

fashion; then a shadowy form grew, phantomesque, out of the gloom; a

moment more, and I distinctly heard the heavy breathing of a man nearly

spent, and saw my friend scrambling up toward the black embrasure in the

tower. His voice came huskily, pantingly:

“Creep along and lend me a hand, Petrie! I am nearly winded.”

I crept through the window, steadied my quivering nerves by an effort

of the will, and reached the end of the ledge in time to take Smith’s

extended hand and to draw him up beside me against the wall of the

tower. He was shaking with his exertions, and must have fallen, I think,

without my assistance. Inside the room again:

“Quick! light the candles!” he breathed hoarsely.

“Did any one come?”

“No one--nothing.”

Having expended several matches in vain, for my fingers twitched

nervously, I ultimately succeeded in relighting the candles.

“Get along to your room!” directed Smith. “Your apprehensions are

unfounded at the moment, but you may as well leave both doors wide

open!”

I looked into his face--it was very drawn and grim, and his brow was wet

with perspiration, but his eyes had the fighting glint, and I knew that

we were upon the eve of strange happenings.

CHAPTER XXIII. A CRY ON THE MOOR

Of the events intervening between this moment and that when death called

to us out of the night, I have the haziest recollections. An excellent

dinner was served in the bleak and gloomy dining-room by the mulatto,

and the crippled author was carried to the head of the table by this

same Herculean attendant, as lightly as though he had but the weight of

a child.

Van Roon talked continuously, revealing a deep knowledge of all sorts of

obscure matters; and in the brief intervals, Nayland Smith talked also,

with almost feverish rapidity. Plans for the future were discussed. I

can recall no one of them.

I could not stifle my queer sentiments in regard to the mulatto, and

every time I found him behind my chair I was hard put to repress

a shudder. In this fashion the strange evening passed; and to the

accompaniment of distant, muttering thunder, we two guests retired

to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to give me my

instructions in a whisper, and five minutes after entering my own room,

I had snuffed the candles, slipped a wedge, which he had given me, under

the door, crept out through the window onto the guttered ledge, and

joined Smith in his room. He, too, had extinguished his candles, and the

place was in darkness. As I climbed in, he grasped my wrist to silence

me, and turned me forcibly toward the window.

“Listen!” he said.

I turned and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for

the witch scene in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but

through them ran a sort of chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light

to stretch across the drear, from east to west--a sort of lane walled by

darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a troubled sea--a hushed

and distant chorus; and sometimes in upon it broke the drums of heaven.

In the west lightning flickered, though but faintly, intermittently.

Then came the call.

Out of the blackness of the moor it came, wild and distant--“Help!

help!”

“Smith!” I whispered--“what is it? What...”

“Mr. Smith!” came the agonized cry... “Nayland Smith, help! for God’s

sake....”

“Quick, Smith!” I cried, “quick, man! It’s Van Roon--he’s been dragged

out... they are murdering him...”

Nayland Smith held me in a vise-like grip, silent, unmoved!

Louder and more agonized came the cry for aid, and I became more than

ever certain that it was poor Van Roon who uttered it.

“Mr. Smith! Dr. Petrie! for God’s sake come... or... it will be ...

too... late...”

“Smith!” I said, turning furiously upon my friend, “if you are going to

remain here whilst murder is done, I am not!”

My blood boiled now with hot resentment. It was incredible, inhuman,

that we should remain there inert whilst a fellow man, and our host to

boot, was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all

my strength to break away; but although my efforts told upon him, as his

loud breathing revealed, Nayland Smith clung to me tenaciously. Had my

hands been free, in my fury, I could have struck him, for the pitiable

cries, growing fainter, now, told their own tale. Then Smith spoke

shortly and angrily--breathing hard between the words.

“Be quiet, you fool!” he snapped; “it’s little less than an insult,

Petrie, to think me capable of refusing help where help is needed!”

Like a cold douche his words acted; in that instant I knew myself a

fool.

“You remember the Call of Siva?” he said, thrusting me away irritably,

“--two years ago, and what it meant to those who obeyed it?”

“You might have told me...”

“Told you! You would have been through the window before I had uttered

two words!”

I realized the truth of his assertion, and the justness of his anger.

“Forgive me, old man,” I said, very crestfallen, “but my impulse was a

natural one, you’ll admit. You must remember that I have been trained

never to refuse aid when aid is asked.”

“Shut up, Petrie!” he growled; “forget it.”

The cries had ceased now, entirely, and a peal of thunder, louder than

any yet, echoed over distant Sedgemoor. The chasm of light splitting the

heavens closed in, leaving the night wholly black.

“Don’t talk!” rapped Smith; “act! You wedged your door?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get into that cupboard, have your Browning ready, and keep the

door very slightly ajar.”

He was in that mood of repressed fever which I knew and which always

communicated itself to me. I spoke no further word, but stepped into

the wardrobe indicated and drew the door nearly shut. The recess just

accommodated me, and through the aperture I could see the bed, vaguely,

the open window, and part of the opposite wall. I saw Smith cross the

floor, as a mighty clap of thunder boomed over the house.

A gleam of lightning flickered through the gloom.

I saw the bed for a moment, distinctly, and it appeared to me that Smith

lay therein, with the sheets pulled up over his head. The light was

gone, and I could hear big drops of rain pattering upon the leaden

gutter below the open window.

My mood was strange, detached, and characterized by vagueness. That Van

Roon lay dead upon the moor I was convinced; and--although I recognized

that it must be a sufficient one--I could not even dimly divine the

reason why we had refrained from lending him aid. To have failed to save

him, knowing his peril, would have been bad enough; to have refused, I

thought was shameful. Better to have shared his fate--yet...

The downpour was increasing, and beating now a regular tattoo upon the

gutterway. Then, splitting the oblong of greater blackness which marked

the casement, quivered dazzlingly another flash of lightning in which

I saw the bed again, with that impression of Smith curled up in it. The

blinding light died out; came the crash of thunder, harsh and fearsome,

more imminently above the tower than ever. The building seemed to shake.

Coming as they did, horror and the wrath of heaven together, suddenly,

crashingly, black and angry after the fairness of the day, these

happenings and their setting must have terrorized the stoutest heart;

but somehow I seemed detached, as I have said, and set apart from the

whirl of events; a spectator. Even when a vague yellow light crept

across the room from the direction of the door, and flickered unsteadily

on the bed, I remained unmoved to a certain degree, although passively

alive to the significance of the incident. I realized that the ultimate

issue was at hand, but either because I was emotionally exhausted, or

from some other cause, the pending climax failed to disturb me.

Going on tiptoe, in stockinged feet, across my field of vision, passed

Kegan Van Roon! He was in his shirt-sleeves and held a lighted candle in

one hand whilst with the other he shaded it against the draught from

the window. He was a cripple no longer, and the smoked glasses were

discarded; most of the light, at the moment when first I saw him, shone

upon his thin, olive face, and at sight of his eyes much of the mystery

of Cragmire Tower was resolved. For they were oblique, very slightly,

but nevertheless unmistakably oblique. Though highly educated, and

possibly an American citizen, Van Roon was a Chinaman!

Upon the picture of his face as I saw it then, I do not care to

dwell. It lacked the unique horror of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s unforgettable

countenance, but possessed a sort of animal malignancy which the

latter lacked... He approached within three or four feet of the bed,

peering--peering. Then, with a timidity which spoke well for Nayland

Smith’s reputation, paused and beckoned to some one who evidently stood

in the doorway behind him. As he did so I noted that the legs of his

trousers were caked with greenish brown mud nearly up to the knees.

The huge mulatto, silent-footed, crossed to the bed in three strides.

He was stripped to the waist, and, excepting some few professional

athletes, I had never seen a torso to compare with that which, brown and

glistening, now bent over Nayland Smith. The muscular development was

simply enormous; the man had a neck like a column, and the thews around

his back and shoulders were like ivy tentacles wreathing some gnarled

oak.

Whilst Van Roon, his evil gaze upon the bed, held the candle aloft,

the mulatto, with a curious preparatory writhing movement of the mighty

shoulders, lowered his outstretched fingers to the disordered bed

linen...

I pushed open the cupboard door and thrust out the Browning. As I did

so a dramatic thing happened. A tall, gaunt figure shot suddenly upright

from beyond the bed. It was Nayland Smith!

Upraised in his hand he held a heavy walking cane. I knew the handle to

be leaded, and I could judge of the force with which he wielded it by

the fact that it cut the air with a keen swishing sound. It descended

upon the back of the mulatto’s skull with a sickening thud, and the

great brown body dropped inert upon the padded bed--in which not Smith,

but his grip, reposed. There was no word, no cry. Then:

“Shoot, Petrie! Shoot the fiend! Shoot...”

Van Roon, dropping the candle, in the falling gleam of which I saw the

whites of the oblique eyes turned and leaped from the room with the

agility of a wild cat. The ensuing darkness was split by a streak of

lightning... and there was Nayland Smith scrambling around the foot of

the bed and making for the door in hot pursuit.

We gained it almost together. Smith had dropped the cane, and now

held his pistol in his hand. Together we fired into the chasm of the

corridor, and in the flash, saw Van Roon hurling himself down the

stairs. He went silently in his stockinged feet, and our own clatter

was drowned by the awful booming of the thunder which now burst over us

again.

Crack!--crack!--crack! Three times our pistols spat venomously after

the flying figure... then we had crossed the hall below and were in

the wilderness of the night with the rain descending upon us in sheets.

Vaguely I saw the white shirt-sleeves of the fugitive near the corner

of the stone fence. A moment he hesitated, then darted away inland, not

toward Saul, but toward the moor and the cup of the inland bay.

“Steady, Petrie! steady!” cried Nayland Smith. He ran, panting, beside

me. “It is the path to the mire.” He breathed sibilantly between every

few words. “It was out there... that he hoped to lure us... with the cry

for help.”

A great blaze of lightning illuminated the landscape as far as the eye

could see. Ahead of us a flying shape, hair lank and glistening in the

downpour, followed a faint path skirting that green tongue of morass

which we had noted from the upland. It was Kegan Van Roon. He glanced

over his shoulder, showing a yellow, terror-stricken face. We were

gaining upon him. Darkness fell, and the thunder cracked and boomed as

though the very moor were splitting about us.

“Another fifty yards, Petrie,” breathed Nayland Smith, “and after that

it’s unchartered ground.”

On we went through the rain and the darkness; then:

“Slow up! slow up!” cried Smith. “It feels soft!”

Indeed, already I had made one false step--and the hungry mire had

fastened upon my foot, almost tripping me.

“Lost the path!”

We stopped dead. The falling rain walled us in. I dared not move, for I

knew that the mire, the devouring mire, stretched, eager, close about

my feet. We were both waiting for the next flash of lightning, I think,

but, before it came, out of the darkness ahead of us rose a cry that

sometimes rings in my ears to this hour. Yet it was no more than a

repetition of that which had called to us, deathfully, awhile before.

“Help! help! for God’s sake help! Quick! I am sinking...”

Nayland Smith grasped my arm furiously.

“We dare not move, Petrie--we dare not move!” he breathed. “It’s God’s

justice--visible for once.”

Then came the lightning; and--ignoring a splitting crash behind us--we

both looked ahead, over the mire.

Just on the edge of the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I

saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon.

Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one

last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea

gull, he was gone!

That eerie light died, and in the instant before the sound of the

thunder came shatteringly, we turned about... in time to see Cragmire

Tower, a blacker silhouette against the night, topple and fall! A

red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came

booming through the caverns of space. Nayland Smith lowered his wet face

close to mine and shouted in my ear:

“Kegan Van Roon never returned from China. It was a trap. Those were two

creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu...”

The thunder died away, hollowly, echoing over the distant sea...

“That light on the moor to-night?”

“You have not learned the Morse Code, Petrie. It was a signal, and it

read:--S M I T H... SOS.”

“Well?”

“I took the chance, as you know. And it was Karamaneh! She knew of the

plot to bury us in the mire. She had followed from London, but could do

nothing until dusk. God forgive me if I’ve misjudged her--for we owe her

our lives to-night.”

Flames were bursting up from the building beside the ruin of the ancient

tower which had faced the storms of countless ages only to succumb at

last. The lightning literally had cloven it in twain.

“The mulatto?...”

Again the lightning flashed, and we saw the path and began to retrace

our steps. Nayland Smith turned to me; his face was very grim in that

unearthly light, and his eyes shone like steel.

“I killed him, Petrie... as I meant to do.”

From out over Sedgemoor it came, cracking and rolling and booming toward

us, swelling in volume to a stupendous climax, that awful laughter of

Jove the destroyer of Cragmire Tower.

CHAPTER XXIV. STORY OF THE GABLES

In looking over my notes dealing with the second phase of Dr.

Fu-Manchu’s activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours

of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent

adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging

you to bear with me if I seem to digress.

Inspector Weymouth called one morning, shortly after the Van Roon

episode, and entered upon a surprising account of a visit to a house at

Hampstead which enjoyed the sinister reputation of being uninhabitable.

“But in what way does the case enter into your province?” inquired

Nayland Smith, idly tapping out his pipe on a bar of the grate.

We had not long finished breakfast, but from an early hour Smith had

been at his eternal smoking, which only the advent of the meal had

interrupted.

“Well,” replied the inspector, who occupied a big armchair near the

window, “I was sent to look into it, I suppose, because I had nothing

better to do at the moment.”

“Ah!” jerked Smith, glancing over his shoulder.

The ejaculation had a veiled significance; for our quest of Dr.

Fu-Manchu had come to an abrupt termination by reason of the fact that

all trace of that malignant genius, and of the group surrounding him,

had vanished with the destruction of Cragmire Tower.

“The house is called the Gables,” continued the Scotland Yard man, “and

I knew I was on a wild goose chase from the first--”

“Why?” snapped Smith.

“Because I was there before, six months ago or so--just before your

present return to England--and I knew what to expect.”

Smith looked up with some faint dawning of interest perceptible in his

manner.

“I was unaware,” he said with a slight smile, “that the cleaning-up

of haunted houses came within the jurisdiction of Scotland Yard. I am

learning something.”

“In the ordinary way,” replied the big man good-humoredly, “it doesn’t.

But a sudden death always excites suspicion, and--”

“A sudden death?” I said, glancing up; “you didn’t explain that the

ghost had killed any one!”

“I’m afraid I’m a poor hand at yarn-spinning, Doctor,” said Weymouth,

turning his blue, twinkling eyes in my direction. “Two people have died

at the Gables within the last six months.”

“You begin to interest me,” declared Smith, and there came something of

the old, eager look into his gaunt face, as, having lighted his pipe, he

tossed the match-end into the hearth.

“I had hoped for some little excitement, myself,” confessed the

inspector. “This dead-end, with not a ghost of a clue to the whereabouts

of the yellow fiend, has been getting on my nerves--”

Nayland Smith grunted sympathetically.

“Although Dr. Fu-Manchu has been in England for some months, now,”

continued Weymouth, “I have never set eyes upon him; the house we raided

in Museum Street proved to be empty; in a word, I am wasting my time.

So that I volunteered to run up to Hampstead and look into the matter

of the Gables, principally as a distraction. It’s a queer business, but

more in the Psychical Research Society’s line than mine, I’m afraid.

Still, if there were no Dr. Fu-Manchu it might be of interest to

you--and to you, Dr. Petrie, because it illustrates the fact, that,

given the right sort of subject, death can be brought about without any

elaborate mechanism--such as our Chinese friends employ.”

“You interest me more and more,” declared Smith, stretching himself in

the long, white cane rest-chair.

“Two men, both fairly sound, except that the first one had an asthmatic

heart, have died at the Gables without any one laying a little finger

upon them. Oh! there was no jugglery! They weren’t poisoned, or bitten

by venomous insects, or suffocated, or anything like that. They just

died of fear--stark fear.”

With my elbows resting upon the table cover, and my chin in my hands, I

was listening attentively, now, and Nayland Smith, a big cushion behind

his head, was watching the speaker with a keen and speculative look in

those steely eyes of his.

“You imply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has something to learn from the Gables?”

he jerked.

Weymouth nodded stolidly.

“I can’t work up anything like amazement in these days,” continued the

latter; “every other case seems stale and hackneyed alongside the case.

But I must confess that when the Gables came on the books of the Yard

the second time, I began to wonder. I thought there might be some

tangible clue, some link connecting the two victims; perhaps some

evidence of robbery or of revenge--of some sort of motive. In short, I

hoped to find evidence of human agency at work, but, as before, I was

disappointed.”

“It’s a legitimate case of a haunted house, then?” said Smith.

“Yes; we find them occasionally, these uninhabitable places, where

there is something, something malignant and harmful to human life, but

something that you cannot arrest, that you cannot hope to bring into

court.”

“Ah,” replied Smith slowly; “I suppose you are right. There are historic

instances, of course: Glamys Castle and Spedlins Tower in Scotland,

Peel Castle, Isle of Man, with its Maudhe Dhug, the gray lady of Rainham

Hall, the headless horses of Caistor, the Wesley ghost of Epworth

Rectory, and others. But I have never come in personal contact with such

a case, and if I did I should feel very humiliated to have to

confess that there was any agency which could produce a physical

result--death--but which was immune from physical retaliation.”

Weymouth nodded his head again.

“I might feel a bit sour about it, too,” he replied, “if it were not

that I haven’t much pride left in these days, considering the show of

physical retaliation I have made against Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

“A home thrust, Weymouth!” snapped Nayland Smith, with one of those

rare, boyish laughs of his. “We’re children to that Chinese doctor,

Inspector, to that weird product of a weird people who are as old in

evil as the pyramids are old in mystery. But about the Gables?”

“Well, it’s an uncanny place. You mentioned Glamys Castle a moment

ago, and it’s possible to understand an old stronghold like that being

haunted, but the Gables was only built about 1870; it’s quite a modern

house. It was built for a wealthy Quaker family, and they occupied it,

uninterruptedly and apparently without anything unusual occurring, for

over forty years. Then it was sold to a Mr. Maddison--and Mr. Maddison

died there six months ago.”

“Maddison?” said Smith sharply, staring across at Weymouth. “What was

he? Where did he come from?”

“He was a retired tea-planter from Colombo,” replied the inspector.

“Colombo?”

“There was a link with the East, certainly, if that’s what you are

thinking; and it was this fact which interested me at the time, and

which led me to waste precious days and nights on the case. But there

was no mortal connection between this liverish individual and the

schemes of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I’m certain of that.”

“And how did he die?” I asked, interestedly.

“He just died in his chair one evening, in the room which he used as a

library. It was his custom to sit there every night, when there were no

visitors, reading, until twelve o’clock--or later. He was a bachelor,

and his household consisted of a cook, a housemaid, and a man who had

been with him for thirty years, I believe. At the time of Mr. Maddison’s

death, his household had recently been deprived of two of its members.

The cook and housemaid both resigned one morning, giving as their reason

the fact that the place was haunted.”

“In what way?”

“I interviewed the precious pair at the time, and they told me absurd

and various tales about dark figures wandering along the corridors and

bending over them in bed at night, whispering; but their chief trouble

was a continuous ringing of bells about the house.”

“Bells?”

“They said that it became unbearable. Night and day there were bells

ringing all over the house. At any rate, they went, and for three or

four days the Gables was occupied only by Mr. Maddison and his man,

whose name was Stevens. I interviewed the latter also, and he was an

altogether more reliable witness; a decent, steady sort of man whose

story impressed me very much at the time.”

“Did he confirm the ringing?”

“He swore to it--a sort of jangle, sometimes up in the air, near the

ceilings, and sometimes under the floor, like the shaking of silver

bells.”

Nayland Smith stood up abruptly and began to pace the room, leaving

great trails of blue-gray smoke behind him.

“Your story is sufficiently interesting, Inspector,” he declared,

“even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu-Manchu

problem. This would appear to be distinctly a case of an ‘astral bell’

such as we sometimes hear of in India.”

“It was Stevens,” continued Weymouth, “who found Mr. Maddison. He

(Stevens) had been out on business connected with the household

arrangements, and at about eleven o’clock he returned, letting himself

in with a key. There was a light in the library, and getting no response

to his knocking, Stevens entered. He found his master sitting bolt

upright in a chair, clutching the arms with rigid fingers and staring

straight before him with a look of such frightful horror on his face,

that Stevens positively ran from the room and out of the house. Mr.

Maddison was stone dead. When a doctor, who lives at no great distance

away, came and examined him, he could find no trace of violence

whatever; he had apparently died of fright, to judge from the expression

on his face.”

“Anything else?”

“Only this: I learnt, indirectly, that the last member of the Quaker

family to occupy the house had apparently witnessed the apparition,

which had led to his vacating the place. I got the story from the wife

of a man who had been employed as gardener there at that time.

The apparition--which he witnessed in the hallway, if I remember

rightly--took the form of a sort of luminous hand clutching a long,

curved knife.”

“Oh, Heavens!” cried Smith, and laughed shortly; “that’s quite in

order!”

“This gentleman told no one of the occurrence until after he had left

the house, no doubt in order that the place should not acquire an evil

reputation. Most of the original furniture remained, and Mr. Maddison

took the house furnished. I don’t think there can be any doubt that what

killed him was fear at seeing a repetition--”

“Of the fiery hand?” concluded Smith.

“Quite so. Well, I examined the Gables pretty closely, and, with another

Scotland Yard man, spent a night in the empty house. We saw nothing; but

once, very faintly, we heard the ringing of bells.”

Smith spun around upon him rapidly.

“You can swear to that?” he snapped.

“I can swear to it,” declared Weymouth stolidly. “It seemed to be over

our heads. We were sitting in the dining-room. Then it was gone, and we

heard nothing more whatever of an unusual nature. Following the death of

Mr. Maddison, the Gables remained empty until a while ago, when a French

gentleman, name Lejay, leased it--”

“Furnished?”

“Yes; nothing was removed--”

“Who kept the place in order?”

“A married couple living in the neighborhood undertook to do so. The

man attended to the lawn and so forth, and the woman came once a week, I

believe, to clean up the house.”

“And Lejay?”

“He came in only last week, having leased the house for six months. His

family were to have joined him in a day or two, and he, with the aid

of the pair I have just mentioned, and assisted by a French servant he

brought over with him, was putting the place in order. At about twelve

o’clock on Friday night this servant ran into a neighboring house

screaming ‘the fiery hand!’ and when at last a constable arrived and a

frightened group went up the avenue of the Gables, they found M. Lejay,

dead in the avenue, near the steps just outside the hall door! He had

the same face of horror...”

“What a tale for the press!” snapped Smith.

“The owner has managed to keep it quiet so far, but this time I think it

will leak into the press--yes.”

There was a short silence; then:

“And you have been down to the Gables again?”

“I was there on Saturday, but there’s not a scrap of evidence. The man

undoubtedly died of fright in the same way as Maddison. The place ought

to be pulled down; it’s unholy.”

“Unholy is the word,” I said. “I never heard anything like it. This M.

Lejay had no enemies?--there could be no possible motive?”

“None whatever. He was a business man from Marseilles, and his affairs

necessitated his remaining in or near London for some considerable time;

therefore, he decided to make his headquarters here, temporarily, and

leased the Gables with that intention.”

Nayland Smith was pacing the floor with increasing rapidity; he was

tugging at the lobe of his left ear and his pipe had long since gone

out.

CHAPTER XXV. THE BELLS

I started to my feet as a tall, bearded man swung open the door and

hurled himself impetuously into the room. He wore a silk hat, which

fitted him very ill, and a black frock coat which did not fit him at

all.

“It’s all right, Petrie!” cried the apparition; “I’ve leased the

Gables!”

It was Nayland Smith! I stared at him in amazement

“The first time I have employed a disguise,” continued my friend

rapidly, “since the memorable episode of the false pigtail.” He threw

a small brown leather grip upon the floor. “In case you should care

to visit the house, Petrie, I have brought these things. My tenancy

commences to-night!”

Two days had elapsed, and I had entirely forgotten the strange story of

the Gables which Inspector Weymouth had related to us; evidently it was

otherwise with my friend, and utterly at a loss for an explanation of

his singular behavior, I stooped mechanically and opened the grip.

It contained an odd assortment of garments, and amongst other things

several gray wigs and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

Kneeling there with this strange litter about me, I looked up amazedly.

Nayland Smith, with the unsuitable silk hat set right upon the back of

his head, was pacing the room excitedly, his fuming pipe protruding from

the tangle of factitious beard.

“You see, Petrie,” he began again, rapidly, “I did not entirely trust

the agent. I’ve leased the house in the name of Professor Maxton...”

“But, Smith,” I cried, “what possible reason can there be for disguise?”

“There’s every reason,” he snapped.

“Why should you interest yourself in the Gables?”

“Does no explanation occur to you?”

“None whatever; to me the whole thing smacks of stark lunacy.”

“Then you won’t come?”

“I’ve never stuck at anything, Smith,” I replied, “however undignified,

when it has seemed that my presence could be of the slightest use.”

As I rose to my feet, Smith stepped in front of me, and the steely gray

eyes shone out strangely from the altered face. He clapped his hands

upon my shoulders.

“If I assure you that your presence is necessary to my safety,” he

said--“that if you fail me I must seek another companion--will you

come?”

Intuitively, I knew that he was keeping something back, and I was

conscious of some resentment, but nevertheless my reply was a foregone

conclusion, and--with the borrowed appearance of an extremely untidy

old man--I crept guiltily out of my house that evening and into the cab

which Smith had waiting.

The Gables was a roomy and rambling place lying back a considerable

distance from the road. A semicircular drive gave access to the door,

and so densely wooded was the ground, that for the most part the drive

was practically a tunnel--a verdant tunnel. A high brick wall concealed

the building from the point of view of any one on the roadway, but

either horn of the crescent drive terminated at a heavy, wrought-iron

gateway.

Smith discharged the cab at the corner of the narrow and winding road

upon which the Gables fronted. It was walled in on both sides; on

the left the wall being broken by tradesmen’s entrances to the

houses fronting upon another street, and on the right following,

uninterruptedly, the grounds of the Gables. As we came to the gate:

“Nothing now,” said Smith, pointing into the darkness of the road before

us, “except a couple of studios, until one comes to the Heath.”

He inserted the key in the lock of the gate and swung it creakingly

open. I looked into the black arch of the avenue, thought of the haunted

residence that lay hidden somewhere beyond, of those who had died in

it--especially of the one who had died there under the trees--and found

myself out of love with the business of the night.

“Come on!” said Nayland Smith briskly, holding the gate open; “there

should be a fire in the library and refreshments, if the charwoman has

followed instructions.”

I heard the great gate clang to behind us. Even had there been any moon

(and there was none) I doubted if more than a patch or two of light

could have penetrated there. The darkness was extraordinary. Nothing

broke it, and I think Smith must have found his way by the aid of some

sixth sense. At any rate, I saw nothing of the house until I stood some

five paces from the steps leading up to the porch. A light was burning

in the hallway, but dimly and inhospitably; of the facade of the

building I could perceive little.

When we entered the hall and the door was closed behind us, I began

wondering anew what purpose my friend hoped to serve by a vigil in this

haunted place. There was a light in the library, the door of which was

ajar, and on the large table were decanters, a siphon, and some biscuits

and sandwiches. A large grip stood upon the floor, also. For some reason

which was a mystery to me, Smith had decided that we must assume false

names whilst under the roof of the Gables; and:

“Now, Pearce,” he said, “a whisky-and-soda before we look around?”

The proposal was welcome enough, for I felt strangely dispirited, and,

to tell the truth, in my strange disguise, not a little ridiculous.

All my nerves, no doubt, were highly strung, and my sense of hearing

unusually acute, for I went in momentary expectation of some uncanny

happening. I had not long to wait. As I raised the glass to my lips and

glanced across the table at my friend, I heard the first faint sound

heralding the coming of the bells.

It did not seem to proceed from anywhere within the library, but from

some distant room, far away overhead. A musical sound it was, but

breaking in upon the silence of that ill-omened house, its music was the

music of terror. In a faint and very sweet cascade it rippled; a ringing

as of tiny silver bells.

I set down my glass upon the table, and rising slowly from the chair in

which I had been seated, stared fixedly at my companion, who was staring

with equal fixity at me. I could see that I had not been deluded;

Nayland Smith had heard the ringing, too.

“The ghosts waste no time!” he said softly. “This is not new to me; I

spent an hour here last night and heard the same sound...”

I glanced hastily around the room. It was furnished as a library, and

contained a considerable collection of works, principally novels. I was

unable to judge of the outlook, for the two lofty windows were draped

with heavy purple curtains which were drawn close. A silk shaded lamp

swung from the center of the ceiling, and immediately over the table by

which I stood. There was much shadow about the room; and now I glanced

apprehensively about me, but especially toward the open door.

In that breathless suspense of listening we stood awhile; then:

“There it is again!” whispered Smith, tensely.

The ringing of bells was repeated, and seemingly much nearer to us; in

fact it appeared to come from somewhere above, up near the ceiling of

the room in which we stood. Simultaneously, we looked up, then Smith

laughed, shortly.

“Instinctive, I suppose,” he snapped; “but what do we expect to see in

the air?”

The musical sound now grew in volume; the first tiny peal seemed to be

reinforced by others and by others again, until the air around about us

was filled with the pealings of these invisible bell-ringers.

Although, as I have said, the sound was rather musical than horrible, it

was, on the other hand, so utterly unaccountable as to touch the

supreme heights of the uncanny. I could not doubt that our presence had

attracted these unseen ringers to the room in which we stood, and I knew

quite well that I was growing pale. This was the room in which at least

one unhappy occupant of the Gables had died of fear. I recognized the

fact that if this mere overture were going to affect my nerves to such

an extent, I could not hope to survive the ordeal of the night; a great

effort was called for. I emptied my glass at a gulp, and stared across

the table at Nayland Smith with a sort of defiance. He was standing

very upright and motionless, but his eyes were turning right and left,

searching every visible corner of the big room.

“Good!” he said in a very low voice. “The terrorizing power of the

Unknown is boundless, but we must not get in the grip of panic, or we

could not hope to remain in this house ten minutes.”

I nodded without speaking. Then Smith, to my amazement, suddenly began

to speak in a loud voice, a marked contrast to that, almost a whisper,

in which he had spoken formerly.

“My dear Pearce,” he cried, “do you hear the ringing of bells?”

Clearly the latter words were spoken for the benefit of the unseen

intelligence controlling these manifestations; and although I regarded

such finesse as somewhat wasted, I followed my friend’s lead and replied

in a voice as loud as his own:

“Distinctly, Professor!”

Silence followed my words, a silence in which both stood watchful and

listening. Then, very faintly, I seemed to detect the silvern ringing

receding away through distant rooms. Finally it became inaudible, and

in the stillness of the Gables I could distinctly hear my companion

breathing. For fully ten minutes we two remained thus, each momentarily

expecting a repetition of the ringing, or the coming of some new and

more sinister manifestation. But we heard nothing and saw nothing.

“Hand me that grip, and don’t stir until I come back!” hissed Smith in

my ear.

He turned and walked out of the library, his boots creaking very loudly

in that awe-inspiring silence.

Standing beside the table, I watched the open door for his return,

crushing down a dread that another form than his might suddenly appear

there.

I could hear him moving from room to room, and presently, as I waited

in hushed, tense watchfulness, he came in, depositing the grip upon the

table. His eyes were gleaming feverishly.

“The house is haunted, Pearce!” he cried. “But no ghost ever frightened

me! Come, I will show you your room.”

CHAPTER XXVI. THE FIERY HAND

Smith walked ahead of me upstairs; he had snapped up the light in the

hallway, and now he turned and cried back loudly:

“I fear we should never get servants to stay here.”

Again I detected the appeal to a hidden Audience; and there was

something very uncanny in the idea. The house now was deathly still; the

ringing had entirely subsided. In the upper corridor my companion, who

seemed to be well acquainted with the position of the switches, again

turned up all the lights, and in pursuit of the strange comedy which he

saw fit to enact, addressed me continuously in the loud and unnatural

voice which he had adopted as part of his disguise.

We looked into a number of rooms all well and comfortably furnished, but

although my imagination may have been responsible for the idea, they

all seemed to possess a chilly and repellent atmosphere. I felt that to

essay sleep in any one of them would be the merest farce, that the

place to all intents and purposes was uninhabitable, that something

incalculably evil presided over the house.

And through it all, so obtuse was I, that no glimmer of the truth

entered my mind. Outside again in the long, brightly lighted corridor,

we stood for a moment as if a mutual anticipation of some new event

pending had come to us. It was curious that sudden pulling up and silent

questioning of one another; because, although we acted thus, no sound

had reached us. A few seconds later our anticipation was realized. From

the direction of the stairs it came--a low wailing in a woman’s voice;

and the sweetness of the tones added to the terror of the sound. I

clutched at Smith’s arm convulsively whilst that uncanny cry rose and

fell--rose and fell--and died away.

Neither of us moved immediately. My mind was working with feverish

rapidity and seeking to run down a memory which the sound had stirred

into faint quickness. My heart was still leaping wildly when the wailing

began again, rising and falling in regular cadence. At that instant I

identified it.

During the time Smith and I had spent together in Egypt, two years

before, searching for Karamaneh, I had found myself on one occasion in

the neighborhood of a native cemetery near to Bedrasheen. Now, the

scene which I had witnessed there rose up again vividly before me, and

I seemed to see a little group of black-robed women clustered together

about a native grave; for the wailing which now was dying away again

in the Gables was the same, or almost the same, as the wailing of those

Egyptian mourners.

The house was very silent again, now. My forehead was damp with

perspiration, and I became more and more convinced that the uncanny

ordeal must prove too much for my nerves. Hitherto, I had accorded

little credence to tales of the supernatural, but face to face with such

manifestations as these, I realized that I would have faced rather a

group of armed dacoits, nay! Dr. Fu-Manchu himself, than have remained

another hour in that ill-omened house.

My companion must have read as much in my face. But he kept up the

strange, and to me, purposeless comedy, when presently he spoke.

“I feel it to be incumbent upon me to suggest,” he said, “that we spend

the night at a hotel after all.”

He walked rapidly downstairs and into the library and began to strap up

the grip.

“After all,” he said, “there may be a natural explanation of what we’ve

heard; for it is noteworthy that we have actually seen nothing. It might

even be possible to get used to the ringing and the wailing after a

time. Frankly, I am loath to go back on my bargain!”

Whilst I stared at him in amazement, he stood there indeterminate as it

seemed, Then:

“Come, Pearce!” he cried loudly, “I can see that you do not share my

views; but for my own part I shall return to-morrow and devote further

attention to the phenomena.”

Extinguishing the light, he walked out into the hallway, carrying the

grip in his hand. I was not far behind him. We walked toward the door

together, and:

“Turn the light out, Pearce,” directed Smith; “the switch is at your

elbow. We can see our way to the door well enough, now.”

In order to carry out these instructions, it became necessary for me to

remain a few paces in the rear of my companion, and I think I have never

experienced such a pang of nameless terror as pierced me at the moment

of extinguishing the light; for Smith had not yet opened the door, and

the utter darkness of the Gables was horrible beyond expression. Surely

darkness is the most potent weapon of the Unknown. I know that at the

moment my hand left the switch, I made for the door as though the hosts

of hell pursued me. I collided violently with Smith. He was evidently

facing toward me in the darkness, for at the moment of our collision, he

grasped my shoulder as in a vise.

“My God, Petrie! look behind you!” he whispered.

I was enabled to judge of the extent and reality of his fear by the

fact that the strange subterfuge of addressing me always as Pearce was

forgotten. I turned, in a flash....

Never can I forget what I saw. Many strange and terrible memories are

mine, memories stranger and more terrible than those of the average

man; but this thing which now moved slowly down upon us through

the impenetrable gloom of that haunted place, was (if the term be

understood) almost absurdly horrible. It was a medieval legend come to

life in modern London; it was as though some horrible chimera of the

black and ignorant past was become create and potent in the present.

A luminous hand--a hand in the veins of which fire seemed to run so

that the texture of the skin and the shape of the bones within were

perceptible--in short a hand of glowing, fiery flesh clutching a short

knife or dagger which also glowed with the same hellish, internal

luminance, was advancing upon us where we stood--was not three paces

removed!

What I did or how I came to do it, I can never recall. In all my years

I have experienced nothing to equal the stark panic which seized upon me

then. I know that I uttered a loud and frenzied cry; I know that I tore

myself like a madman from Smith’s restraining grip...

“Don’t touch it! Keep away, for your life!” I heard...

But, dimly I recollect that, finding the thing approaching yet nearer,

I lashed out with my fists--madly, blindly--and struck something

palpable...

What was the result, I cannot say. At that point my recollections

merge into confusion. Something or some one (Smith, as I afterwards

discovered) was hauling me by main force through the darkness; I fell a

considerable distance onto gravel which lacerated my hands and gashed

my knees. Then, with the cool night air fanning my brow, I was running,

running--my breath coming in hysterical sobs. Beside me fled another

figure.... And my definite recollections commence again at that point.

For this companion of my flight from the Gables threw himself roughly

against me to alter my course.

“Not that way! not that way!” came pantingly.

“Not on to the Heath... we must keep to the roads...”

It was Nayland Smith. That healing realization came to me, bringing such

a gladness as no words of mine can express nor convey. Still we ran on.

“There’s a policeman’s lantern,” panted my companion. “They’ll attempt

nothing, now!”

* * * * *

I gulped down the stiff brandy-and-soda, then glanced across to where

Nayland Smith lay extended in the long, cane chair.

“Perhaps you will explain,” I said, “for what purpose you submitted

me to that ordeal. If you proposed to correct my skepticism concerning

supernatural manifestations, you have succeeded.”

“Yes,” said my companion, musingly, “they are devilishly clever; but we

knew that already.”

I stared at him, fatuously.

“Have you ever known me to waste my time when there was important work

to do?” he continued. “Do you seriously believe that my ghost-hunting

was undertaken for amusement? Really, Petrie, although you are very fond

of assuring me that I need a holiday, I think the shoe is on the other

foot!”

From the pocket of his dressing-gown, he took out a piece of silk fringe

which had apparently been torn from a scarf, and rolling it into a ball,

tossed it across to me.

“Smell!” he snapped.

I did as he directed--and gave a great start. The silk exhaled a

faint perfume, but its effect upon me was as though some one had cried

aloud:--

“Karamaneh!”

Beyond doubt the silken fragment had belonged to the beautiful servant

of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to the dark-eyed, seductive Karamaneh. Nayland Smith

was watching me keenly.

“You recognize it--yes?”

I placed the piece of silk upon the table, slightly shrugging my

shoulders.

“It was sufficient evidence in itself,” continued my friend, “but I

thought it better to seek confirmation, and the obvious way was to pose

as a new lessee of the Gables...”

“But, Smith,” I began...

“Let me explain, Petrie. The history of the Gables seemed to be

susceptible of only one explanation; in short it was fairly evident to

me that the object of the manifestations was to insure the place being

kept empty. This idea suggested another, and with them both in mind, I

set out to make my inquiries, first taking the precaution to disguise my

identity, to which end Weymouth gave me the freedom of Scotland Yard’s

fancy wardrobe. I did not take the agent into my confidence, but posed

as a stranger who had heard that the house was to let furnished and

thought it might suit his purpose. My inquiries were directed to a

particular end, but I failed to achieve it at the time. I had theories,

as I have said, and when, having paid the deposit and secured possession

of the keys, I was enabled to visit the place alone, I was fortunate

enough to obtain evidence to show that my imagination had not misled me.

“You were very curious the other morning, I recall, respecting my object

in borrowing a large brace and bit. My object, Petrie, was to bore a

series of holes in the wainscoating of various rooms at the Gables--in

inconspicuous positions, of course...”

“But, my dear Smith!” I cried, “you are merely adding to my

mystification.”

He stood up and began to pace the room in his restless fashion.

“I had cross-examined Weymouth closely regarding the phenomenon of

the bell-ringing, and an exhaustive search of the premises led to the

discovery that the house was in such excellent condition that, from

ground-floor to attic, there was not a solitary crevice large enough to

admit of the passage of a mouse.”

I suppose I must have been staring very foolishly indeed, for Nayland

Smith burst into one of his sudden laughs.

“A mouse, I said, Petrie!” he cried. “With the brace-and-bit I rectified

that matter. I made the holes I have mentioned, and before each set a

trap baited with a piece of succulent, toasted cheese. Just open that

grip!”

The light at last was dawning upon my mental darkness, and I pounced

upon the grip, which stood upon a chair near the window, and opened it.

A sickly smell of cooked cheese assailed my nostrils.

“Mind your fingers!” cried Smith; “some of them are still set,

possibly.”

Out from the grip I began to take mouse-traps! Two or three of them were

still set but in the case of the greater number the catches had slipped.

Nine I took out and placed upon the table, and all were empty. In

the tenth there crouched, panting, its soft furry body dank with

perspiration, a little white mouse!

“Only one capture!” cried my companion, “showing how well-fed the

creatures were. Examine his tail!”

But already I had perceived that to which Smith would draw my attention,

and the mystery of the “astral bells” was a mystery no longer. Bound to

the little creature’s tail, close to the root, with fine soft wire

such as is used for making up bouquets, were three tiny silver bells. I

looked across at my companion in speechless surprise.

“Almost childish, is it not?” he said; “yet by means of this simple

device the Gables has been emptied of occupant after occupant. There was

small chance of the trick being detected, for, as I have said, there was

absolutely no aperture from roof to basement by means of which one of

them could have escaped into the building.”

“Then...”

“They were admitted into the wall cavities and the rafters, from some

cellar underneath, Petrie, to which, after a brief scamper under the

floors and over the ceilings, they instinctively returned for the

food they were accustomed to receive, and for which, even had it been

possible (which it was not) they had no occasion to forage.”

I, too, stood up; for excitement was growing within me. I took up the

piece of silk from the table.

“Where did you find this?” I asked, my eyes upon Smith’s keen face.

“In a sort of wine cellar, Petrie,” he replied, “under the stair. There

is no cellar proper to the Gables--at least no such cellar appears in

the plans.”

“But...”

“But there is one beyond doubt--yes! It must be part of some older

building which occupied the site before the Gables was built. One can

only surmise that it exists, although such a surmise is a fairly safe

one, and the entrance to the subterranean portion of the building is

situated beyond doubt in the wine cellar. Of this we have at least two

evidences:--the finding of the fragment of silk there, and the fact that

in one case at least--as I learned--the light was extinguished in the

library unaccountably. This could only have been done in one way: by

manipulating the main switch, which is also in the wine cellar.”

“But Smith!” I cried, “do you mean that Fu-Manchu...”

Nayland Smith turned in his promenade of the floor, and stared into my

eyes.

“I mean that Dr. Fu-Manchu has had a hiding-place under the Gables for

an indefinite period!” he replied. “I always suspected that a man of his

genius would have a second retreat prepared for him, anticipating the

event of the first being discovered. Oh! I don’t doubt it! The place

probably is extensive, and I am almost certain--though the point has

to be confirmed--that there is another entrance from the studio further

along the road. We know, now, why our recent searchings in the East End

have proved futile; why the house in Museum Street was deserted; he has

been lying low in this burrow at Hampstead!”

“But the hand, Smith, the luminous hand...”

Nayland Smith laughed shortly.

“Your superstitious fears overcame you to such an extent, Petrie--and I

don’t wonder at it; the sight was a ghastly one--that probably you don’t

remember what occurred when you struck out at that same ghostly hand?”

“I seemed to hit something.”

“That was why we ran. But I think our retreat had all the appearance of

a rout, as I intended that it should. Pardon my playing upon your very

natural fears, old man, but you could not have simulated panic half so

naturally! And if they had suspected that the device was discovered,

we might never have quitted the Gables alive. It was touch-and-go for a

moment.”

“But...”

“Turn out the light!” snapped my companion.

Wondering greatly, I did as he desired. I turned out the light... and

in the darkness of my own study I saw a fiery fist being shaken at me

threateningly!... The bones were distinctly visible, and the luminosity

of the flesh was truly ghastly.

“Turn on the light, again!” cried Smith.

Deeply mystified, I did so... and my friend tossed a little electric

pocket-lamp on to the writing-table.

“They used merely a small electric lamp fitted into the handle of a

glass dagger,” he said with a sort of contempt. “It was very effective,

but the luminous hand is a phenomenon producible by any one who

possesses an electric torch.”

“The Gables--will be watched?”

“At last, Petrie, I think we have Fu-Manchu--in his own trap!”

CHAPTER XXVII. THE NIGHT OF THE RAID

“Dash it all, Petrie!” cried Smith, “this is most annoying!”

The bell was ringing furiously, although midnight was long past. Whom

could my late visitor be? Almost certainly this ringing portended an

urgent case. In other words, I was not fated to take part in what I

anticipated would prove to be the closing scene of the Fu-Manchu drama.

“Every one is in bed,” I said, ruefully; “and how can I possibly see a

patient--in this costume?”

Smith and I were both arrayed in rough tweeds, and anticipating the

labors before us, had dispensed with collars and wore soft mufflers.

It was hard to be called upon to face a professional interview dressed

thus, and having a big tweed cap pulled down over my eyes.

Across the writing-table we confronted one another in dismayed silence,

whilst, below, the bell sent up its ceaseless clangor.

“It has to be done, Smith,” I said, regretfully. “Almost certainly it

means a journey and probably an absence of some hours.”

I threw my cap upon the table, turned up my coat to hide the absence

of collar, and started for the door. My last sight of Smith showed him

standing looking after me, tugging at the lobe of his ear and clicking

his teeth together with suppressed irritability. I stumbled down the

dark stairs, along the hall, and opened the front door. Vaguely visible

in the light of a street lamp which stood at no great distance away,

I saw a slender man of medium height confronting me. From the shadowed

face two large and luminous eyes looked out into mine. My visitor,

who, despite the warmth of the evening, wore a heavy greatcoat, was an

Oriental!

I drew back, apprehensively; then:

“Ah! Dr. Petrie!” he said in a softly musical voice which made me start

again, “to God be all praise that I have found you!”

Some emotion, which at present I could not define, was stirring within

me. Where had I seen this graceful Eastern youth before? Where had I

heard that soft voice?

“Do you wish to see me professionally?” I asked--yet even as I put the

question, I seemed to know it unnecessary.

“So you know me no more?” said the stranger--and his teeth gleamed in a

slight smile.

Heavens! I knew now what had struck that vibrant chord within me! The

voice, though infinitely deeper, yet had an unmistakable resemblance

to the dulcet tones of Karamaneh--of Karamaneh whose eyes haunted my

dreams, whose beauty had done much to embitter my years.

The Oriental youth stepped forward, with outstretched hand.

“So you know me no more?” he repeated; “but I know you, and give praise

to Allah that I have found you!”

I stepped back, pressed the electric switch, and turned, with leaping

heart, to look into the face of my visitor. It was a face of the purest

Greek beauty, a face that might have served as a model for Praxiteles;

the skin had a golden pallor, which, with the crisp black hair and

magnetic yet velvety eyes, suggested to my fancy that this was the young

Antinious risen from the Nile, whose wraith now appeared to me out of

the night. I stifled a cry of surprise, not unmingled with gladness.

It was Aziz--the brother of Karamaneh!

Never could the entrance of a figure upon the stage of a drama have been

more dramatic than the coming of Aziz upon this night of all nights.

I seized the outstretched hand and drew him forward, then reclosed the

door and stood before him a moment in doubt.

A vaguely troubled look momentarily crossed the handsome face; with

the Oriental’s unerring instinct, he had detected the reserve of my

greeting. Yet, when I thought of the treachery of Karamaneh, when I

remember how she, whom we had befriended, whom we had rescued from the

house of Fu-Manchu, now had turned like the beautiful viper that she was

to strike at the hand that caressed her; when I thought how to-night we

were set upon raiding the place where the evil Chinese doctor lurked in

hiding, were set upon the arrest of that malignant genius and of all his

creatures, Karamaneh amongst them, is it strange that I hesitated? Yet,

again, when I thought of my last meeting with her, and of how, twice,

she had risked her life to save me...

So, avoiding the gaze of the lad, I took his arm, and in silence we two

ascended the stairs and entered my study... where Nayland Smith stood

bolt upright beside the table, his steely eyes fixed upon the face of

the new arrival.

No look of recognition crossed the bronzed features, and Aziz who had

started forward with outstretched hands, fell back a step and looked

pathetically from me to Nayland Smith, and from the grim commissioner

back again to me. The appeal in the velvet eyes was more than I could

tolerate, unmoved.

“Smith,” I said shortly, “you remember Aziz?”

Not a muscle visibly moved in Smith’s face, as he snapped back:

“I remember him perfectly.”

“He has come, I think, to seek our assistance.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Aziz laying his hand upon my arm with a gesture

painfully reminiscent of Karamaneh--“I came only to-night to London. Oh,

my gentlemen! I have searched, and searched, and searched, until I

am weary. Often I have wished to die. And then at last I come to

Rangoon...”

“To Rangoon!” snapped Smith, still with the gray eyes fixed almost

fiercely upon the lad’s face.

“To Rangoon--yes; and there I heard news at last. I hear that you have

seen her--have seen Karamaneh--that you are back in London.” He was not

entirely at home with his English. “I know then that she must be here,

too. I ask them everywhere, and they answer ‘yes.’ Oh, Smith Pasha!”--he

stepped forward and impulsively seized both Smith’s hands--“You know

where she is--take me to her!”

Smith’s face was a study in perplexity, now. In the past we had

befriended the young Aziz, and it was hard to look upon him in the light

of an enemy. Yet had we not equally befriended his sister?--and she...

At last Smith glanced across at me where I stood just within the

doorway.

“What do you make of it, Petrie?” he said harshly. “Personally I take

it to mean that our plans have leaked out.” He sprang suddenly back from

Aziz and I saw his glance traveling rapidly over the slight figure as if

in quest of concealed arms. “I take it to be a trap!”

A moment he stood so, regarding him, and despite my well-grounded

distrust of the Oriental character, I could have sworn that the

expression of pained surprise upon the youth’s face was not simulated

but real. Even Smith, I think, began to share my view; for suddenly

he threw himself into the white cane rest-chair, and, still fixedly

regarding Aziz:

“Perhaps I have wronged you,” he said. “If I have, you shall know the

reason presently. Tell your own story!”

There was a pathetic humidity in the velvet eyes of Aziz--eyes so like

those others that were ever looking into mine in dreams--as glancing

from Smith to me he began, hands outstretched, characteristically, palms

upward and fingers curling, to tell in broken English the story of his

search for Karamaneh...

“It was Fu-Manchu, my kind gentlemen--it was the hakim who is really not

a man at all, but an efreet. He found us again less than four days after

you had left us, Smith Pasha!... He found us in Cairo, and to Karamaneh

he made the forgetting of all things--even of me--even of me...”

Nayland Smith snapped his teeth together sharply; then:

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

For my own part I understood well enough, remembering how the brilliant

Chinese doctor once had performed such an operation as this upon poor

Inspector Weymouth; how, by means of an injection of some serum prepared

(as Karamaneh afterwards told us) from the venom of a swamp adder or

similar reptile, he had induced amnesia, or complete loss of memory. I

felt every drop of blood recede from my cheeks.

“Smith!” I began...

“Let him speak for himself,” interrupted my friend sharply.

“They tried to take us both,” continued Aziz still speaking in that

soft, melodious manner, but with deep seriousness. “I escaped, I, who

am swift of foot, hoping to bring help.”--He shook his head sadly--“But,

except the All Powerful, who is so powerful as the Hakim Fu-Manchu? I

hid, my gentlemen, and watched and waited, one--two--three weeks. At

last I saw her again, my sister, Karamaneh; but ah! she did not know me,

did not know me, Aziz her brother! She was in an arabeeyeh, and passed

me quickly along the Sharia en-Nahhasin. I ran, and ran, and ran, crying

her name, but although she looked back, she did not know me--she did not

know me! I felt that I was dying, and presently I fell--upon the steps

of the Mosque of Abu.”

He dropped the expressive hands wearily to his sides and sank his chin

upon his breast.

“And then?” I said, huskily--for my heart was fluttering like a captive

bird.

“Alas! from that day to this I see her no more, my gentlemen. I travel,

not only in Egypt, but near and far, and still I see her no more until

in Rangoon I hear that which brings me to England again”--he extended

his palms naively--“and here I am--Smith Pasha.”

Smith sprang upright again and turned to me.

“Either I am growing over-credulous,” he said, “or Aziz speaks the

truth. But”--he held up his hand--“you can tell me all that at some

other time, Petrie! We must take no chances. Sergeant Carter is

downstairs with the cab; you might ask him to step up. He and Aziz can

remain here until our return.”

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SAMURAI’S SWORD

The muffled drumming of sleepless London seemed very remote from us,

as side by side we crept up the narrow path to the studio. This was a

starry but moonless night, and the little dingy white building with a

solitary tree peeping, in silhouette, above the glazed roof, bore an odd

resemblance to one of those tombs which form a city of the dead so near

to the city of feverish life on the slopes of the Mokattam Hills. This

line of reflection proved unpleasant, and I dismissed it sternly from my

mind.

The shriek of a train-whistle reached me, a sound which breaks the

stillness of the most silent London night, telling of the ceaseless,

febrile life of the great world-capital whose activity ceases not with

the coming of darkness. Around and about us a very great stillness

reigned, however, and the velvet dusk which, with the star-jeweled sky,

was strongly suggestive of an Eastern night--gave up no sign to show

that it masked the presence of more than twenty men. Some distance away

on our right was the Gables, that sinister and deserted mansion which

we assumed, and with good reason, to be nothing less than the gateway

to the subterranean abode of Dr. Fu-Manchu; before us was the studio,

which, if Nayland Smith’s deductions were accurate, concealed a second

entrance to the same mysterious dwelling.

As my friend, glancing cautiously all about him, inserted the key in

the lock, an owl hooted dismally almost immediately above our heads. I

caught my breath sharply, for it might be a signal; but, looking upward,

I saw a great black shape float slantingly from the tree beyond the

studio into the coppice on the right which hemmed in the Gables.

Silently the owl winged its uncanny flight into the greater darkness of

the trees, and was gone. Smith opened the door and we stepped into

the studio. Our plans had been well considered, and in accordance with

these, I now moved up beside my friend, who was dimly perceptible to me

in the starlight which found access through the glass roof, and pressed

the catch of my electric pocket-lamp...

I suppose that by virtue of my self-imposed duty as chronicler of the

deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu--the greatest and most evil genius whom the

later centuries have produced, the man who dreamt of an universal Yellow

Empire--I should have acquired a certain facility in describing bizarre

happenings. But I confess that it fails me now as I attempt in cold

English to portray my emotions when the white beam from the little

lamp cut through the darkness of the studio, and shone fully upon the

beautiful face of Karamaneh!

Less than six feet away from me she stood, arrayed in the gauzy dress of

the harem, her fingers and slim white arms laden with barbaric jewelry!

The light wavered in my suddenly nerveless hand, gleaming momentarily

upon bare ankles and golden anklets, upon little red leather shoes.

I spoke no word, and Smith was as silent as I; both of us, I think, were

speechless rather from amazement than in obedience to the evident wishes

of Fu-Manchu’s slave-girl. Yet I have only to close my eyes at this

moment to see her as she stood, one finger raised to her lips, enjoining

us to silence. She looked ghastly pale in the light of the lamp, but so

lovely that my rebellious heart threatened already, to make a fool of

me.

So we stood in that untidy studio, with canvases and easels heaped

against the wall and with all sorts of litter about us, a trio strangely

met, and one to have amused the high gods watching through the windows

of the stars.

“Go back!” came in a whisper from Karamaneh.

I saw the red lips moving and read a dreadful horror in the widely

opened eyes, in those eyes like pools of mystery to taunt the thirsty

soul. The world of realities was slipping past me; I seemed to be losing

my hold on things actual; I had built up an Eastern palace about myself

and Karamaneh wherein, the world shut out, I might pass the hours in

reading the mystery of those dark eyes. Nayland Smith brought me sharply

to my senses.

“Steady with the light, Petrie!” he hissed in my ear. “My skepticism has

been shaken, to-night, but I am taking no chances.”

He moved from my side and forward toward that lovely, unreal figure

which stood immediately before the model’s throne and its background

of plush curtains. Karamaneh started forward to meet him, suppressing a

little cry, whose real anguish could not have been simulated.

“Go back! go back!” she whispered urgently, and thrust out her hands

against Smith’s breast. “For God’s sake, go back! I have risked my life

to come here to-night. He knows, and is ready!”...

The words were spoken with passionate intensity, and Nayland Smith

hesitated. To my nostrils was wafted that faint, delightful perfume

which, since one night, two years ago, it had come to disturb my senses,

had taunted me many times as the mirage taunts the parched Sahara

traveler. I took a step forward.

“Don’t move!” snapped Smith.

Karamaneh clutched frenziedly at the lapels of his coat.

“Listen to me!” she said, beseechingly and stamped one little foot upon

the floor--“listen to me! You are a clever man, but you know nothing of

a woman’s heart--nothing--nothing--if seeing me, hearing me, knowing,

as you do know, I risk, you can doubt that I speak the truth. And I tell

you that it is death to go behind those curtains--that he...”

“That’s what I wanted to know!” snapped Smith. His voice quivered with

excitement.

Suddenly grasping Karamaneh by the waist, he lifted her and set her

aside; then in three bounds he was on to the model’s throne and had torn

the Plush curtains bodily from their fastenings.

How it occurred I cannot hope to make dear, for here my recollections

merge into a chaos. I know that Smith seemed to topple forward amid the

purple billows of velvet, and his muffled cry came to me:

“Petrie! My God, Petrie!”...

The pale face of Karamaneh looked up into mine and her hands were

clutching me, but the glamour of her personality had lost its hold,

for I knew--heavens, how poignantly it struck home to me!--that Nayland

Smith was gone to his death. What I hoped to achieve, I know not, but

hurling the trembling girl aside, I snatched the Browning pistol from my

coat pocket, and with the ray of the lamp directed upon the purple mound

of velvet, I leaped forward.

I think I realized that the curtains had masked a collapsible trap, a

sheer pit of blackness, an instant before I was precipitated into it,

but certainly the knowledge came too late. With the sound of a soft,

shuddering cry in my ears, I fell, dropping lamp and pistol, and

clutching at the fallen hangings. But they offered me no support. My

head seemed to be bursting; I could utter only a hoarse groan, as I

fell--fell--fell...

When my mind began to work again, in returning consciousness, I found it

to be laden with reproach. How often in the past had we blindly hurled

ourselves into just such a trap as this? Should we never learn that

where Fu-Manchu was, impetuosity must prove fatal? On two distinct

occasions in the past we had been made the victims of this device,

yet even although we had had practically conclusive evidence that this

studio was used by Dr. Fu-Manchu, we had relied upon its floor being as

secure as that of any other studio, we had failed to sound every foot of

it ere trusting our weight to its support....

“There is such a divine simplicity in the English mind that one may

lay one’s plans with mathematical precision, and rely upon the Nayland

Smiths and Dr. Petries to play their allotted parts. Excepting two

faithful followers, my friends are long since departed. But here, in

these vaults which time has overlooked and which are as secret and as

serviceable to-day as they were two hundred years ago, I wait patiently,

with my trap set, like the spider for the fly!...”

To the sound of that taunting voice, I opened my eyes. As I did so I

strove to spring upright--only to realize that I was tied fast to a

heavy ebony chair inlaid with ivory, and attached by means of two iron

brackets to the floor.

“Even children learn from experience,” continued the unforgettable

voice, alternately guttural and sibilant, but always as deliberate as

though the speaker were choosing with care words which should perfectly

clothe his thoughts. “For ‘a burnt child fears the fire,’ says your

English adage. But Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith, who enjoys the

confidence of the India Office, and who is empowered to control the

movements of the Criminal Investigation Department, learns nothing

from experience. He is less than a child, since he has twice rashly

precipitated himself into a chamber charged with an anesthetic prepared,

by a process of my own, from the lycoperdon or Common Puff-ball.”

I became fully master of my senses, and I became fully alive to a

stupendous fact. At last it was ended; we were utterly in the power of

Dr. Fu-Manchu; our race was run.

I sat in a low vaulted room. The roof was of ancient brickwork, but the

walls were draped with exquisite Chinese fabric having a green ground

whereon was a design representing a grotesque procession of white

peacocks. A green carpet covered the floor, and the whole of the

furniture was of the same material as the chair to which I was strapped,

viz:--ebony inlaid with ivory. This furniture was scanty. There was a

heavy table in one corner of the dungeonesque place, on which were a

number of books and papers. Before this table was a high-backed, heavily

carven chair. A smaller table stood upon the right of the only visible

opening, a low door partially draped with bead work curtains, above

which hung a silver lamp. On this smaller table, a stick of incense, in

a silver holder, sent up a pencil of vapor into the air, and the

chamber was loaded with the sickly sweet fumes. A faint haze from the

incense-stick hovered up under the roof.

In the high-backed chair sat Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a green robe upon

which was embroidered a design, the subject of which at first glance

was not perceptible, but which presently I made out to be a huge white

peacock. He wore a little cap perched upon the dome of his amazing

skull, and with one clawish hand resting upon the ebony of the table, he

sat slightly turned toward me, his emotionless face a mask of incredible

evil. In spite of, or because of, the high intellect written upon it,

the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu was more utterly repellent than any I have

ever known, and the green eyes, eyes green as those of a cat in the

darkness, which sometimes burned like witch lamps, and sometimes were

horribly filmed like nothing human or imaginable, might have mirrored

not a soul, but an emanation of hell, incarnate in this gaunt,

high-shouldered body.

Stretched flat upon the floor lay Nayland Smith, partially stripped, his

arms thrown back over his head and his wrists chained to a stout iron

staple attached to the wall; he was fully conscious and staring intently

at the Chinese doctor. His bare ankles also were manacled, and fixed to

a second chain, which quivered tautly across the green carpet and passed

out through the doorway, being attached to something beyond the curtain,

and invisible to me from where I sat.

Fu-Manchu was now silent. I could hear Smith’s heavy breathing and hear

my watch ticking in my pocket. I suddenly realized that although my

body was lashed to the ebony chair, my hands and arms were free. Next,

looking dazedly about me, my attention was drawn to a heavy sword which

stood hilt upward against the wall within reach of my hand. It was a

magnificent piece, of Japanese workmanship; a long, curved Damascened

blade having a double-handed hilt of steel, inlaid with gold, and

resembling fine Kuft work. A host of possibilities swept through my

mind. Then I perceived that the sword was attached to the wall by a thin

steel chain some five feet in length.

“Even if you had the dexterity of a Mexican knife-thrower,” came the

guttural voice of Fu-Manchu, “you would be unable to reach me, dear Dr.

Petrie.”

The Chinaman had read my thoughts.

Smith turned his eyes upon me momentarily, only to look away again in

the direction of Fu-Manchu. My friend’s face was slightly pale beneath

the tan, and his jaw muscles stood out with unusual prominence. By this

fact alone did he reveal his knowledge that he lay at the mercy of

this enemy of the white race, of this inhuman being who himself knew

no mercy, of this man whose very genius was inspired by the cool,

calculated cruelty of his race, of that race which to this day disposes

of hundreds, nay! thousands, of its unwanted girl-children by the simple

measure of throwing them down a well specially dedicated to the purpose.

“The weapon near your hand,” continued the Chinaman, imperturbably, “is

a product of the civilization of our near neighbors, the Japanese, a

race to whose courage I prostrate myself in meekness. It is the sword

of a samurai, Dr. Petrie. It is of very great age, and was, until an

unfortunate misunderstanding with myself led to the extinction of the

family, a treasured possession of a noble Japanese house...”

The soft voice, into which an occasional sibilance crept, but which

never rose above a cool monotone, gradually was lashing me into fury,

and I could see the muscles moving in Smith’s jaws as he convulsively

clenched his teeth; whereby I knew that, impotent, he burned with a rage

at least as great as mine. But I did not speak, and did not move.

“The ancient tradition of seppuku,” continued the Chinaman, “or

hara-kiri, still rules, as you know, in the great families of Japan.

There is a sacred ritual, and the samurai who dedicates himself to this

honorable end, must follow strictly the ritual. As a physician, the

exact nature of the ceremony might possibly interest you, Dr. Petrie,

but a technical account of the two incisions which the sacrificant

employs in his self-dismissal, might, on the other hand, bore Mr.

Nayland Smith. Therefore I will merely enlighten you upon one little

point, a minor one, but interesting to the student of human nature.

In short, even a samurai--and no braver race has ever honored the

world--sometimes hesitates to complete the operation. The weapon near to

your hand, my dear Dr. Petrie, is known as the Friend’s Sword. On such

occasions as we are discussing, a trusty friend is given the post--an

honored one of standing behind the brave man who offers himself to his

gods, and should the latter’s courage momentarily fail him, the friend

with the trusty blade (to which now I especially direct your attention)

diverts the hierophant’s mind from his digression, and rectifies his

temporary breach of etiquette by severing the cervical vertebrae of the

spinal column with the friendly blade--which you can reach quite easily,

Dr. Petrie, if you care to extend your hand.”

Some dim perceptions of the truth was beginning to creep into my mind.

When I say a perception of the truth, I mean rather of some part of the

purpose of Dr. Fu-Manchu; of the whole horrible truth, of the scheme

which had been conceived by that mighty, evil man, I had no glimmering,

but I foresaw that a frightful ordeal was before us both.

“That I hold you in high esteem,” continued Fu-Manchu, “is a fact which

must be apparent to you by this time, but in regard to your companion, I

entertain very different sentiments....”

Always underlying the deliberate calm of the speaker, sometimes

showing itself in an unusually deep guttural, sometimes in an unusually

serpentine sibilance, lurked the frenzy of hatred which in the past had

revealed itself occasionally in wild outbursts. Momentarily I expected

such an outburst now, but it did not come.

“One quality possessed by Mr. Nayland Smith,” resumed the Chinaman, “I

admire; I refer to his courage. I would wish that so courageous a man

should seek his own end, should voluntarily efface himself from the path

of that world-movement which he is powerless to check. In short, I would

have him show himself a samurai. Always his friend, you shall remain so

to the end, Dr. Petrie. I have arranged for this.”

He struck lightly a little silver gong, dependent from the corner of

the table, whereupon, from the curtained doorway, there entered a short,

thickly built Burman whom I recognized for a dacoit. He wore a shoddy

blue suit, which had been made for a much larger man; but these things

claimed little of my attention, which automatically was directed to the

load beneath which the Burman labored.

Upon his back he carried a sort of wire box rather less than six feet

long, some two feet high, and about two feet wide. In short, it was a

stout framework covered with fine wire-netting on the top, sides

and ends, but being open at the bottom. It seemed to be made in five

sections or to contain four sliding partitions which could be raised or

lowered at will. These were of wood, and in the bottom of each was cut

a little arch. The arches in the four partitions varied in size, so that

whereas the first was not more than five inches high, the fourth opened

almost to the wire roof of the box or cage; and a fifth, which was

but little higher than the first, was cut in the actual end of the

contrivance.

So intent was I upon this device, the purpose of which I was wholly

unable to divine, that I directed the whole of my attention upon it.

Then, as the Burman paused in the doorway, resting a corner of the cage

upon the brilliant carpet, I glanced toward Fu-Manchu. He was watching

Nayland Smith, and revealing his irregular yellow teeth--the teeth of an

opium smoker--in the awful mirthless smile which I knew.

“God!” whispered Smith--“the Six Gates!”

“The knowledge of my beautiful country serves you well,” replied

Fu-Manchu gently.

Instantly I looked to my friend... and every drop of blood seemed to

recede from my heart, leaving it cold in my breast. If I did not know

the purpose of the cage, obviously Smith knew it all too well. His

pallor had grown more marked, and although his gray eyes stared

defiantly at the Chinaman, I, who knew him, could read a deathly horror

in their depths.

The dacoit, in obedience to a guttural order from Dr. Fu-Manchu, placed

the cage upon the carpet, completely covering Smith’s body, but leaving

his neck and head exposed. The seared and pock-marked face set in a sort

of placid leer, the dacoit adjusted the sliding partitions to Smith’s

recumbent form, and I saw the purpose of the graduated arches. They

were intended to divide a human body in just such fashion, and, as I

realized, were most cunningly shaped to that end. The whole of Smith’s

body lay now in the wire cage, each of the five compartments whereof was

shut off from its neighbor.

The Burman stepped back and stood waiting in the doorway. Dr. Fu-Manchu,

removing his gaze from the face of my friend, directed it now upon me.

“Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith shall have the honor of acting as

hierophant, admitting himself to the Mysteries,” said Fu-Manchu softly,

“and you, Dr. Petrie, shall be the Friend.”

CHAPTER XXIX. THE SIX GATES

He glanced toward the Burman, who retired immediately, to re-enter a

moment later carrying a curious leather sack, in shape not unlike that

of a sakka or Arab water-carrier. Opening a little trap in the top

of the first compartment of the cage (that is, the compartment which

covered Smith’s bare feet and ankles) he inserted the neck of the sack,

then suddenly seized it by the bottom and shook it vigorously. Before

my horrified gaze four huge rats came tumbling out from the bag into the

cage! The dacoit snatched away the sack and snapped the shutter fast. A

moving mist obscured my sight, a mist through which I saw the green

eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu fixed upon me, and through which, as from a great

distance, his voice, sunk to a snake-like hiss, came to my ears.

“Cantonese rats, Dr. Petrie, the most ravenous in the world... they have

eaten nothing for nearly a week!”

Then all became blurred as though a painter with a brush steeped in red

had smudged out the details of the picture. For an indefinite period,

which seemed like many minutes yet probably was only a few seconds, I

saw nothing and heard nothing; my sensory nerves were dulled entirely.

From this state I was awakened and brought back to the realities by a

sound which ever afterward I was doomed to associate with that ghastly

scene.

This was the squealing of the rats.

The red mist seemed to disperse at that, and with frightfully intense

interest, I began to study the awful torture to which Nayland Smith was

being subjected. The dacoit had disappeared, and Fu-Manchu placidly was

watching the four lean and hideous animals in the cage. As I also turned

my eyes in that direction, the rats overcame their temporary fear, and

began...

“You have been good enough to notice,” said the Chinaman, his voice

still sunk in that sibilant whisper, “my partiality for dumb allies. You

have met my scorpions, my death-adders, my baboon-man. The uses of such

a playful little animal as a marmoset have never been fully appreciated

before, I think, but to an indiscretion of this last-named pet of mine,

I seem to remember that you owed something in the past, Dr. Petrie...”

Nayland Smith stifled a deep groan. One rapid glance I ventured at his