by Sax Rohmer
It appeared to me that the only thing supporting Nayland Smith’s theory and his amazing reaction to it was the fact that the Lola had not answered those messages sent out by the French authority.
At which moment, Sir Denis dropped the glasses into their case and turned.
“Nothing!” he said grimly.
“It is true,” the commander replied; “but they have a good start.”
A man ran up to the bridge with a radio message. The commander scanned it.
“They are clever,” he reported. “But all the same they have been sighted again! They are still on their original course.”
“Who sends the report?” asked Nayland Smith.
“An American freighter.”
“The Air Arm is strangely silent.”
“We must be patient. Only two planes have been despatched; they are looking also for a submarine — and there are many miles of sea to search.”
He took up the glasses. Nayland Smith, hands thrust in his pockets, stared straight ahead.
The destroyer leaped and quivered under the lash of her merciless engines, a living, feverish thing. And this reflection crossed my mind: that the Chinese doctor, wherever he might be at that moment, was indeed a superman; for he is no ordinary criminal against whom warships are sent out...
Another message was brought to the bridge; this one from a flying officer. The Lola was laid to, less than five miles off and nearly dead on our course!
“What does this mean?” rapped Nayland Smith. “I don’t like it a bit.”
I was staring ahead, straining my eyes to pierce the distance... And now, a speck on the skyline, I saw an airplane flying towards me.
“Coming back to pilot us,” said the commander; “they know the game is up!”
A further message arrived. The Lola was putting a launch off at the time that the airman had headed back to find us. No submarine had been sighted.
“By heavens!” cried Nayland Smith, “I was right. His underwater craft is waiting for him in the event of just such an emergency as this! Instruct the plane to hurry back!”
The order was despatched.
I saw the pilot bank, go about, and set off again on a course slightly westward of our own.
The commander spoke a few more orders rapidly, and we crept into line behind the swiftly disappearing airman. We must have been making thirty-five knots or more, for it was only a matter of minutes before I saw the yacht — dead ahead.
“The launch is putting back!” said Nayland Smith. “Look!”
The little craft was just swinging around the stern of the yacht! And now we were so near that I could see the lines of the Lola, a beautiful white-and-silver ship, with a low, graceful hull and one squat, yellow funnel with a silver band.
“By heavens!” I shouted, “we’re in time!”
The naval air pilot was circling now above the yacht. That submarine was somewhere in the neighbourhood it seemed reasonable to suppose, unless it had been the purpose of the launch’s crew to head back for shore: a possibility. But no indication of an underwater craft disturbed the blue mirror of the Mediterranean.
The commander of the destroyer rang off his engines.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX. WE BOARD THE LOLA
We watched the launch return to the ladder of the yacht and saw her crew mount. The launch was already creeping up to her davits when the boat from the destroyer reached the ladder.
A lieutenant led with an armed party, Nayland Smith followed, then came the French police, and I brought up the rear.
A smart-looking officer — Portuguese, I thought — took the lieutenant’s salute as he stepped on deck. Never, I think, in the experiences which had come to me since I had found myself within the zone of the Chinese doctor, had I been conscious of quite that sense of pent-up, overpowering emotion which claimed me at this moment.
Fleurette! Petrie! Were they here?
The sea looked like a vast panel which some Titan craftsman had covered with blue enamel, and the French warship might have been a gaunt grey insect trapped inside the pigment.
“Sir Denis,” I said suddenly, in a low voice, “if the submarine is really in our neighbourhood—”
“I had thought of it,” he rapped. “It was impossible to identify the man in the stern of the launch. But unless it was Dr. Fu-Manchu, in which event he’s on board here, our safety is questionable!”
“Take us to the captain,” said the lieutenant sharply.
The yacht’s officer saluted and led the way.
Armed men were left on duty at the ladder-head and at the foot of the stair leading up to the bridge. The bridge proved to be deserted. Two men were posted there, and we followed on into the chart house.
This was small but perfectly equipped, and it had only one occupant: a tall man wearing an astrakhan cap and a fur-trimmed overcoat. His arms folded, he stood there facing us as we entered.
Emotion almost choked me; triumph, with which even yet a dreadful doubt mingled. Nayland Smith’s jaw squared as he stood beside me staring across the room.
No greetings were exchanged.
“Who commands this yacht?” the lieutenant demanded.
And in that cold guttural voice, so rarely touched by any trace of human feeling:
“I do,” Dr. Fu-Manchu replied.
“You failed to answer an official call sent out to all shipping in these waters.”
“I did.”
“You are accused of harbouring persons wanted by the police, and I have the authority to search this vessel.”
Dr. Fu-Manchu stood quite still; his immobility was mummy-like.
Nayland Smith stepped aside to make way for the senior police officer from Nice. As the man entered, Sir Denis merely pointed to that tall, dignified figure. The detective stepped forward.
“Is your name Dr. Fu-Manchu?”
“It is.”
“I hold a warrant for your arrest. You must consider yourself my prisoner.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN. DR. PETRIE
“Come in,” said a low voice.
Sir Denis stood stock still for one age-long moment, his hand resting on the door knob. Then he pulled open the white cabin door.
In a bed under an open porthole, Petrie lay! His eyes, darkly shadowed, were fixed upon us. But his expression as Nayland Smith sprang forward was one I shall never forget.
“Petrie! Petrie, old man!... Thank God for this!”
Sir Denis’s face I could not see — for he stood with his back to me, grasping Petrie’s upstretched hand. But I could see Petrie; and I knew that he was so overwhelmed by emotion as to be incapable of words. Sir Denis’s silence told the same story.
But when at last that long, silent hand-grasp was relaxed:
“Sterling!” said the invalid, smiling. “You have done more than merely to save my life. You have brought back a happiness I thought I had lost forever. Smith, old man” — he looked up at Sir Denis— “get a radio off to Kara in Cairo at the earliest possible moment! But break the news gently. She will be mad with joy!”
He looked at me again.
“I understand, Sterling, that what you have found you want to keep?”
At that Nayland Smith turned.
“I trust your financial resources are adequate to the task, Sterling?” he rapped, but with a smile on his tired face — and it was a smile of happiness.
“Does she know?” I asked, and my voice was far from steady. Petrie nodded.
“Go and find her,” he said. “She will be glad to see you.”
I went out, leaving those life-long friends together. I returned to the deck.
What must there not be that Petrie had to tell Sir Denis and he to tell Petrie? It was, I suppose, one of the most remarkable reunions in history. For Petrie had died and had been buried, and was restored again to life. And Sir Denis had crowned his remarkable career with the greatest accomplishment in criminal records — the arrest of Dr. Fu-Manchu...
The attitude of the mem
bers of the crew of the Lola strongly suggested that the vessel was used for none but legitimate purposes. One by one they were being submitted to a close interrogation by the French detective and his assistant in a forward cabin.
I had heard the evidence of the chief navigating officer and of the second officer. The vessel belonged to Santos da Cunha, an Argentine millionaire, but he frequently placed it at the disposal of his friends, of whom Dr. Fu-Manchu (known to them as the Marquis Chüan) was one. It was the Marquis’s custom sometimes to take charge, and he, according to these witnesses, was a qualified master mariner and a fine seaman!
His personal servants, of whom there were four, had come on board at Monaco; from this dehumanized quartet I anticipated that little would be learned. The ship’s officers and crew denied all knowledge of a submarine. When the engines had been stopped by Dr. Fu-Manchu and the launch ordered away, they had obeyed without knowing for what purpose those orders had been given.
Personally, I had no doubt that the underwater craft lay somewhere near, but that the doctor had decided to sacrifice himself alone rather than to order the submarine to surface when the coming of the French airman had warned him that his movements were covered.
Why?
Doubtless because he had recognized his own escape to be impossible.
I reached the cabin in which I knew Fleurette to be, rapped, opened the door, and went in.
She was standing just inside — and I knew that she had been waiting for me.
I forgot what happened immediately afterwards; I lived in another world...
When, at last, and reluctantly, I came to earth again, the first idea which I properly grasped was that of Fleurette’s almost insupportable happiness because she had learned that she really possessed a father — and had met him!
Her eagerness to meet her mother resembled a physical hunger.
It was not easy to see these strange events through her eyes. But, listening to her, watching her fascinatedly, tears on her dark lashes as she sometimes clutched me, nervously, excitedly, it dawned upon me that there is probably a great void in the life of one who has never known father or mother.
Her happiness was clouded by the knowledge that she had gained it at the price of the downfall of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I tried to divert the tide of her thoughts, but it was useless.
She, and she alone, was responsible...
It was clear to me that Petrie — sensing that exalted estimate which Fleurette had made of the character of the incalculable Chinaman — had done nothing to disturb her ideals.
How long we were there alone I don’t know; but at last:
“Really, darling,” said Fleurette, “you must go back. I am not going to move. I dare not face—”
I tore myself away; I returned to Petrie’s cabin.
Nayland Smith was there. The two were deep in conversation: they ceased speaking as I entered.
“I have solved a mystery for you,” Sir Denis began, looking up at me. “You recall, when Petrie lay in the grip of the purple plague and Fah Lo Suee was there, the voice which warned you to beware of her?”
“Yes.”
“I was the speaker, Sterling!” said Petrie.
Save for the queer blanching of his hair, he seemed to me now to be restored to something almost resembling his former self. Happiness is the medicine of the gods. He had met a beautiful girl, in whom, as in a mirror, he had seen his wife; had known that this was the daughter snatched from them in babyhood. Then, within a few hours, he had been rescued from a living death to find Nayland Smith at his bedside.
“I suspected it; but at the time I found it hard to believe.”
“Naturally!” Sir Denis was the speaker. “But I have just learned a remarkable and at the same time a ghastly thing, Sterling. Victims of the catalepsy induced by Dr. Fu-Manchu remain conscious.”
“What!”
“It is difficult to make you understand,” Petrie broke in, “what I passed through. Evidently my preparation ‘654’ is fairly efficacious. If you had known what to do next, I should have survived all right. I was insensible, but the injection of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s virus to induce catalepsy restored me to consciousness!
“How long after it had been administered, I don’t know. Incidentally, that hell-cat made the injection in my thigh, under the sheet, while she sat beside the bed. Oh! You’re not to blame, Sterling.”
“She inherits her father’s genius,” Sir Denis murmured.
“As I saw her last,” I said savagely, “she was suffering for it.”
“What? I don’t know about this.”
“He flogged her...”
Sir Denis and Petrie exchanged glances.
“Details can wait,” rapped the former. “Inhuman though the sentiment may be, I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry.”
“Can you imagine, Sterling,” Petrie went on, “that from the time I recovered consciousness and found Fah Lo Suee in the room, I was aware of everything that happened?”
“You don’t mean—”
Sir Denis nodded shortly.
“Yes... even that,” Petrie assured me. “Somehow, when I saw that she-cat coiling herself about you, I forced speech — I tried to warn you. It was the last evidence of which I was capable to show you that I still lived!
“I heard myself pronounced dead; I saw Cartier’s tears. I was hurried away — a plague case. The undertakers dealt with me, and I was put into a coffin.”
“My God!” I groaned, and wondered at the man’s fortitude.
“Do you know what I thought, Sterling, as I lay there in the mortuary? — I prayed that nothing would interfere with the plans of Dr. Fu-Manchu! For the purpose of it all was clear to me. And I knew — try to picture my frame of mind! — that if my friends should upset his plans, I should be—”
“Buried alive!”
Nayland Smith’s voice sounded like a groan.
“Exactly, old man. You have noticed my hair? That was when it happened. When I heard the screws being removed, and saw two evil-looking Burmans bending over me — or rather, I saw them at rare intervals, for it was impossible to move my eyes — I sent up a prayer of thankfulness!
“They lifted me out — my body, of course, was quite rigid, placed me in a hammock and hurried me out to a car in the lane beyond. Of the substitution of which you have told me, I saw nothing. I was taken by road to Ste Claire, carried to the room in which you found me, Sterling, and placed in the care of a Japanese doctor who informed me that his name was Yamamata.
“He gave me an injection which relaxed the rigidity, and then a draught of that preparation which looks like brandy but tastes like death.
“You and I, Smith” — he glanced aside at Sir Denis— “have met with it before!”
“Is Dr. Yamamata on board?” I asked.
“No. I was carried in a sort of litter down to that water cave which Smith tells me you have visited, across it in a collapsible boat which I assume is part of the equipment of the submarine; and from there up to a rock tunnel and down to the beach. A launch belonging to this yacht was waiting, in which I was brought on board. Dr. Fu-Manchu in person superintending. Fleurette was with us. We joined the yacht in sight of Monaco. I resigned myself to becoming a subject of the new Chinese Emperor of the World.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT. “IT MEANS EXTRADITION”
I had rarely, if ever, seen a display of Gallic emotion to equal that of Dr. Cartier when he entered Petrie’s room in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.
He beheld before him a man whom he had certified to be dead; whom he had seen buried. Perhaps his behaviour was excusable. Brisson, who was with him, controlled himself better.
“Because I am the cause of this,” said Petrie, “I naturally feel most embarrassed. But you may take it, Cartier, that weakness now is the only trouble. It’s a question of getting me on my feet again.”
“I will arrange for a nurse.”
The door opened, and Fleurette came in.
As her acce
pted lover, the incense of worship which the Frenchmen silently offered should perhaps have been flattering. Oddly enough, I resented it.
“This is my daughter, gentlemen,” said Petrie — with so much pride and such happiness in his voice that all else was forgotten.
She crossed and seated herself at his side, clasping his outstretched hand.
“This, dear, is Dr. Cartier... Dr. Brisson, my friends and allies.”
Fleurette smiled at the French doctors. That intoxicating dimple appeared for a moment in her chin, and I knew that they were her slaves.
“I shall require no other nurse,” Petrie added.
It was hard to go; but a nod from Fleurette gave me my dismissal. With a few words of explanation I left the room.
Sir Denis was waiting for me in the lobby.
“I hate to drag you away, Sterling,” he said. “But if any sort of progress has been made at Ste Claire, you can probably help.”
We joined a car which was waiting. I could not fail to recall in the early stages of the journey, that night when, learning at Quinto’s that Petrie was dead, I had launched what was meant to be a vendetta.
I had set out to seek the life of any servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu who might cross my path!
And even now, when the fact had become plain to me that the unscrupulous methods of the great Chinaman, his indifference to human life, were not dictated by any prospect of personal gain but belonged to an ideal utterly beyond my Western comprehension, I did not regret the death of that Burmese strangler with whom I had fought to a finish on the Corniche road.
“The big villa at Ste Claire,” said Nayland Smith, “has obviously been a European base of the group for many years past. It’s impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact, Sterling, that this Si-Fan movement, whatever it may embody, has gained momentum since the days when I first realized the existence of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You have told me that he claims to be responsible for that financial chaos which at the moment involves the whole world. That he has defeated age, I know. And I gather that he professes to have solved the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.”
