by Sax Rohmer
“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. Farther opening was impossible because of iron brackets screwed firmly into the casements, which prevented the windows being raised or lowered farther.
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, 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 armoury 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, and 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 raised the ash-tray in my hand and held it immediately under the table lamp in order to examine its contents. In the little brass bowl lay a blood-stained fragment of greyish 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 colour, 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 blubber-eating Esquimaux; 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 towards me— “you have a rule there; just measure.”
Setting down the ash-tray, I opened out the rule and measured the distance from the farther 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 cannot afford to sacrifice our lives to our sense of the æsthetic. 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 straightly 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 — Kâramanèh! 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 pieces 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 Kâramanèh. 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 hitherto has 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 grey 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 programme,” 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?”
