by Sax Rohmer
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 farther 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 reconnoitre 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 windows 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 near 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 Kâramanèh ... Kâramanèh whom once we had rescued from the house of this fiendish Chinese doctor; Kâramanèh 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: — Kâramanèh!
“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, single-handed — against him?” I asked.
“Petrie — Eltham is in that house. He has been brought here to be put to the question, in the mediæval, 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 leapt 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 theatre 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 to 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 ampère 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 Kâramanèh, of lovely dark-eyed Kâramanèh, 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 towards 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 Kâramanèh 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.
“Shut the door, Petrie,” he directed.
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. Kâramanèh! 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 jewelled 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.”
“Kâramanèh,” 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 Kâramanèh 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 Kâramanèh 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 leapt 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 leapt 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 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 had only swooned, in a state of helpless incredulity.
Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and with a cry of baffled rage Smith leapt 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 whom he really is, and this, it seems, the Doctor is anxious to avoid.”
We ran back to where we had left Kâramanèh.
The room was empty!
“Defeated, Petrie!” said Smith bitterly. “The Yellow Devil is loosed on London again!”
He leant 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 Kâramanèh 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 apprehension, 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 asked curiously.
“I don’t know. Watch that clump of elms.”
Hi
s 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 high-road. 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’s 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.
