by Sax Rohmer
I stepped back — my fists automatically clenched. The door slid open — and Dr. Fu-Manchu stood there watching me!
His majestic calm was terrible. Those long, brilliant eyes glanced aside, and I knew that he was studying Fleurette.
“Woman — the lever which a word can bend,” he said softly.
He made a signal with his long-nailed hand, and two of his Chinese servants sprang in.
I stepped back debating my course.
“Heroics are uncalled for,” he added, “and could profit no one.”
For an instant I glanced aside at Fleurette.
Her beautiful eyes were raised to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and her expression was that of a saint who sees the Holy Vision!
He spoke rapidly in Chinese and entered the room, giving me not another glance. My arms were grasped and I found myself propelled forcibly out into the corridor. The strength of these little immobile men was amazing.
The section door at the corner where those stairs terminated which led down to the radio research room was not yet fully raised: two feet or more still protruded from the slot in the ceiling which accommodated it.
Our human brains possess very definite limitations: mine had reached the edge of endurance.
My memory registers a blank from the moment that I left Fleurette’s room to that when I found myself seated in a hard, high-backed chair in the memorable study of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Beside me, Yamamata was seated, and at the moment at which I suppose my brain began to function again — suddenly that door which I knew led into the palm house opened — and Fah Lo Suee came in.
She wore a bright green pyjama suit and was smoking a cigarette in a jade holder. One glance I received from her unfathomable eyes — but if it conveyed a message, the message failed to reach me.
She closed the door by which she had entered and dropped on to a little settee close beside it.
I glanced at Yamamata. His yellow skin was clammy with perspiration. In doing so, I noticed that the door in the archway was open — and now through the opening came Dr. Fu-Manchu; silent — with cat-like dignity.
The door closed behind him.
Yamamata stood up, and so did Fah Lo Suee. It was farcically like a court of law. I wrenched my head aside, clenching my teeth. My passion for Fleurette had thrown true perspective out of focus.
This man who assumed the airs of an emperor was, in fact, a common criminal: the hangman awaited him. And then I heard his guttural voice:
“Stand up!”
All that was me, all that I had proudly been wont to regard as my personality, fought against this command — for a command it was. Yet — the plain fact must be recorded: I stood up...
He took his seat in the dragon-carved chair behind the big table. I had kept my eyes deliberately averted, but now, in the silence which followed, I stole a glance at him. He was staring intently at Fah Lo Suee.
Suddenly he spoke:
“Companion Yamamata,” he said softly, “you may go.” Yamamata sprang up; I saw his lips move, but no sound issued from them. He bowed, and opening the door which led into the big laboratory, went out, closing it behind him.
Dr. Fu-Manchu began to speak rapidly in Chinese, and at the end of the first sentence Fah Lo Suee, dropping her jade cigarette holder into a bronze tray upon the floor, came down to her knees on the carpet and buried that evilly beautiful face in upraised hands — delicate ivory hands — patrician hands — shadows, etherialized, of those of her formidable father.
He continued to speak, and she shrank lower and lower, but spoke no word — uttered no sound. Then:
“Alan Sterling,” he said, suddenly expressing himself in English; “the ill-directed cunning of one woman and the frailty of another have taken your fate out of my control. There are men to whom women are dangerous — you, unhappily, would seem to be one of them.”
And as he spoke, the remarkable fact disclosed itself to me that, although Fah Lo Suee had spoken no word, already he knew her part in the conspiracy!
Good heavens! A suspicion sprang to my mind: Had Fah Lo Suee been watching? Was it she who had trapped me with Fleurette? Was this the end to which she had preserved my life: Fleurette’s swift ruin, my own speedy death?
In its classic simplicity the scheme was Chinese, I thought.
I looked at her where she crouched, abject.
The voice — the strange, haunting voice — spoke on:
“Millions of useless lives cumber the world today. Among them I must now include your own. The ideal state of the Greek philosopher took no count of these. There can be no human progress without selection; and already I have chosen the nucleus of my new state. The East has grown in spirit, while the West has been building machinery...
“My new state will embody the soul of the East.
“I am not ready yet for my warfare against the numerous but helpless army of the rejected. The Plagues of Egypt I hold in my hands, but I cannot control the course of the sun...
“It may be that you, a gnat on the flywheel, have checked the machinery of the gods. Alone, you could never have cast a shadow upon my path: one of my own blood is the culprit.”
He struck a little gong which hung close to his hand upon the table, and the door facing me as I sat opened instantaneously and silently. One of those white-robed, image-like Chinamen entered, to whom Fu-Manchu spoke briefly, rapidly.
The men bowed and went out. Fah Lo Suee’s slender body seemed to diminish. She sank down until her head touched the carpet.
Dr. Fu-Manchu tapped with a long nail upon the table, glancing aside at her where she crouched.
“Your Western progress, Alan Sterling,” he said, “has resulted in the folly of women finding a place in the councils of state. That myth you call ‘chivalry’ has tied your hands and stricken you mute. In the China to which I belong — a China which is not dead but only sleeping — we use older, simpler methods... We have whips...”
The door suddenly opened again, and two powerfully built negresses entered. Their attire consisted of red-and-white striped skirts fastened by girdles about their waists.
Dr. Fu-Manchu addressed them rapidly, but now, I knew, he was not speaking Chinese.
He ceased, and pointed.
One of the negresses stooped; but even as she did so, Fah Lo Suee sprang to her feet with an elastic movement, turned flaming eyes upon that dreadful figure in the high-backed chair, and then, a negress at either elbow, walked out into the palm house beyond.
I glanced at Dr. Fu-Manchu, and he caught and held that glance. I realized that I was incapable of turning my eyes away.
“Alan Sterling,” he said, “it is my purpose to save the world from itself. And to this end there must be a great purging. Today or tomorrow, my dream will be fulfilled. One of those bunglers acting for what is sometimes termed Western civilization may bring about my death by violence. There is none to succeed me... My daughter — trained for a great purpose, as few women have been trained and endowed with the physical perfections of a carefully selected mother, inherits the taint of some traitor ancestor...
“I desire that a son shall succeed to what I shall build. The mother of that son I have chosen. Sex determination is a problem which at last I have conquered. Neither love nor passion will enter into the union. But if you, Alan Sterling, have cast a shadow of either upon the unsullied mirror which I had patiently burnished to reflect my will... then the work of eighteen years is undone.”
His guttural voice sank lower and lower, and the last few words sounded like a sibilant whisper...
He struck the gong twice.
I found myself seized by my arms and lifted off the chair in which I had been seated! Two of his Chinamen — unheard, unsuspected — had entered behind me.
Brief, guttural words, and I was swung around, as Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up, tall, gaunt, satanic, and from a hook upon the wall took down a whip resembling a Russian knout.
As I was swept about to face the door which communicated with the radio researc
h room, one horrifying glimpse I had in the palm house, dimly lighted, of an ivory body hanging by the wrists...
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. THE GLASS MASK
In a frame of mind which I must leave to the imagination, I paced up and down the little sitting room of the apartment numbered eleven.
I was alone, and the door was unopenable; some ten minutes before, I had heard the section doors being closed, also. Whichever way my thoughts led me, I found stark madness lurking there.
Fleurette! What would be the fate of Fleurette? For Dr. Fu-Manchu was not human in the accepted sense of the word. He was a remorseless intelligence. What he could not use, he destroyed. Perhaps he would spare Fleurette because of her remarkable beauty. But spare her — for what?
Petrie! He was helpless indeed, desperately ill. And as for myself, I suffered those hundred deaths which the coward is said to die, during the unaccountable period that I paced up and down that small room.
My mad passion for Fleurette had brought this down upon all of us! In those feverish moments while I had been pleading with her, I should have been clear of this ghastly house. My freedom meant the safety of the world. I had sacrificed this to my own selfish desires. Only by wrecking the elaborate organization of the Si-Fan — the scope of which hitherto I had never suspected — could I hope to win Fleurette.
Fool — mad fool! — to have supposed that a newly awakened passion could upset traditions so carefully implanted and nurtured.
What was happening?
I tried to work out what Nayland Smith would be likely to do — to estimate the chances of a raid taking place before it was too late. I could not forget the imperturbable figure in the yellow robe.
That Dr. Fu-Manchu was prepared for such an emergency as this it was impossible to doubt. His manner had not been that of a criminal trapped.
I pressed my ear against the door and listened.
But I could detect no sound.
I crossed to the further wall, in which I knew there was another door, but one I had never been able to open. I listened there also, for I remembered that there was a corridor beyond.
Silence. I was shut into a narrow section of the house between barriers of steel.
I estimated that fully an hour elapsed. I knew from experience that these apartments were practically soundproof. My brain was a phantom circus, and I was rapidly approaching a state of nervous exhaustion. My frame of mind had been all but unendurable when I had thought that I was dead, when I had thought that I was in a state of delirium. But now, knowing that the horrors accumulated about me, the monstrosities, parodies of nature, the living dead men, the incalculable machines, were real and not figments of fevered imagination — now, when I should have been most sane, I was more likely to lose my mental poise than at any time during the past.
A dream which I had scarcely dared to entertain had come true — only to be shattered in the very hour of its realization. That I should ever leave this place alive, I did not believe for a moment. But surely no man had ever held so much in his hands, ever needed life as I needed it at this moment, when I knew I faced death.
I dropped down into a little armchair — one in which I remembered miserably Fleurette had sat — and buried my face in my hands.
If only I could conjure up one spark of hope — find something to think about which did not lead to insanity!
Then I sprang to my feet. It had reached me unmistakably... that dim vibration which told of the section doors being raised!
What did it mean?
That my fate had been decided upon and that they were coming for me? I crossed and pressed the control button. There was no response.
Again, as in Fleurette’s room earlier that night, I felt like a mouse in a trap. It could profit no one, myself least of all, but a determination came to me at this moment which did much to steady me.
I would die fighting.
I tested the weight of the little armchair in which I had been seated. It was about heavy enough for my purpose. I would hurl it at whoever entered.
I pulled open the drawers of a large cabinet which occupied a great portion of one wall. It contained laboratory appliances, presumably belonging to a former occupant, and including a glass mask and rubber gloves. But I found no weapon there.
A pedestal lamp stood upon the table. I wrenched the flex from it, removed the lamp and the shade, and realized that it made a very good club. Armed with this I would rush out and see what account I could give of myself in the corridors.
This useless plan made, I stood there waiting. At least, there would be action to come.
The muted rumbling of the doors continued. Once again, setting the lamp stand upon the carpet beside me, I tested the control — but without result.
That rumbling and the queer throbbing gong note which accompanied it could be heard distinctly when I pressed my head against the framework. But now, abruptly, it ceased.
The section doors were raised.
Yet again I tried the control, but uselessly. I stood there waiting, dividing my attention between the wall with its hidden entrance and the door which I knew.
But silence prevailed; nothing happened.
For fully five minutes I waited, not knowing what to expect, but full of my plan for a fighting finish. At last I determined that I could bear this waiting no longer. Again I tested the control...
The door slid noiselessly open!
What I could see of the corridor outside seemed to be more dimly lighted than usual. There was another white door nearly opposite. A faint, putrid smell reached my nostrils.
Cautiously I crept forward, and peeped out, looking along the passage.
A strange humming sound seemed to be drawing nearer to the light shining out from the room behind me. And then...
I sprang back, stifling a scream that was truly hysterical. The passage was held by an army of flies, of ants, of other nameless things which flew and crawled and scurried... And, not three feet away, watching me with its hideously intelligent eyes, crouched that monstrous black spider I had seen in the glass case...
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT. THE GLASS MASK (CONCLUDED)
Frenziedly, I closed the door, shutting out those flying and crawling horrors.
Then I began a grim fight — a fight to conquer shaken nerves. That long period of waiting had taken its toll; but the terrors of the corridor, crowned by the apparition of that giant spider “capable of primitive reasoning,” had taxed me beyond the limit.
What had happened?
Was this a plan, premeditated? — or had some action on the part of Nayland Smith resulted in a disturbance of this ghastly household?
I dismissed the idea that Dr. Fu-Manchu had released this phantom army merely to compass my own death. I had intruded — unwittingly, as he had admitted — upon the delicate machinery of his purpose. But brief though my acquaintance had been with the Chinese doctor, I was not prepared to believe him capable of stooping from that purpose, even momentarily, in response to the promptings of jealousy or of any lower human impulse.
Therefore, if what I had seen conformed to some plan, this plan was not directed against myself, although I might be included in it. If it were the result of accident, of panic on the part of a household disturbed by unexpected events, it could only mean that the doctor had departed — fled before the menace of Nayland Smith!
And by virtue of the fact that I was exercising my brain in hard reasoning, I regained control of that courage which, frankly, had been slipping. And a memory came.
In my frantic search for some weapon with which to put up a fight for life, I had hauled out the drawers of a big cabinet which occupied nearly the whole of one wall of the sitting room in which I now stood.
Among the objects, useless at the time, which I had discovered had been a glass mask of the kind chemists wear.
I formed a desperate resolution. I ran to the drawer in which the mask lay, and slipped it over my head. I saw now that my white overalls, which were made of s
ome unfamiliar material, were adapted to the wearing of this mask: the collar could be turned up and buttoned to the equipment. I fixed it in place, bending before the mirror in the bathroom and contemplating my hideous image.
The rubber gloves!
These, also, I discovered could be attached to my sleeves in a certain manner so that nothing could penetrate between glove and sleeve. My final discovery, that the trousers of the white overalls might be tucked inside the tops of the shoes to which a strap was attached for the purpose, convinced me.
Courage returned. I was equipped to face the terrors of the corridor.
I would have given much for a gun, or even a handy club, but in the end I was reduced again to the lamp standard.
Clutching this in my hand, I reopened the door. There was some system of ventilation in the curious mask which I wore — but nevertheless breathing was difficult.
I stood looking along the passage.
The black horror, the giant spider — which, for some reason, although it may have been comparatively harmless, I feared more than anything else — had disappeared. The air was thick with flies; I could hear them vaguely. Some had settled upon the walls. I saw that they were of various kinds.
One of the huge wasps flew straight against my glass mask. I ducked wildly, striking at it — not confident yet in my immunity. The thing flew by — I heard the fading buzz of its passing...
I came to the end of the corridor and looked down the stairs. My wits were far from clear. At all costs I must remember the route. I found as I stood there that I could remember only that by which Dr. Fu-Manchu had first conducted me.
Another way there was, and I had gone by it. The route I remembered would lead me through the bacteriological research room. From thence onward I knew my course.
All the doors were open.
At the entrance to the room where I had seen Sir Frank Narcomb, I pulled up. My knowledge of bacteria was limited; but if the insects were free — so presumably were the germs...
