by Sax Rohmer
They had reached the masked door in Sam Pak’s kitchen when the furnace exploded. Steam belched out of the corridor as from a huge exhaust. The ancient building shook.
Nayland Smith turned to Gallaho and very solemnly held out his hand.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE. WAITING
“Nothing to report,” said Inspector Gallaho.
Nayland Smith nodded and glanced at Alan Sterling seated smoking in the armchair. It was the evening of the sixth day after the subterranean explosion in Chinatown, an explosion which had had several remarkable results.
The top of that forgotten pit leading down to the abandoned tunnel was actually covered, as later investigations showed, by the paved yard which adjoined Sam Pak’s restaurant. The ventilation shaft passed right through his premises; and there seemed to be a distinct possibility that the old house as well as the wooden superstructure, were actually part of the abandoned workings, modified and adapted to their later purpose.
A great crack had appeared in one wall of the restaurant. But no other visible damage appeared upon the surface.
Something resembling a phenomenal tide had disturbed Limehouse Reach that night and was widely reported from crafts upon the river. The shaft with its horrible secrets was filled to within fifteen feet of the top.
Even allowing for secret getaways communicating with adjoining premises, it was reasonable to assume that neither Dr. Fu-Manchu nor any of those attached to his service had escaped alive from the fire and flood.
A cordon had been thrown around the entire area with the cooperation of the River Police. Of old Sam Pak and the other Asiatics who had been in the Sailors’ Club, nothing had been seen. A house to house search in the yellow light of dawn satisfied Gallaho that they were not concealed in the neighborhood. Nothing came of these researches to afford a clue to the mystery.
A guarded communication was issued to the newspapers under the Commissioner’s direction, to the effect that in forcing a way into suspected premises a buttress had collapsed and an old tunnel working been flooded by the river.
Fleet Street suspected that there was a wonderful story behind this communique, but the real story if ever discovered was never published.
Mrs. Sam Pak was let off with a fine and had been covered assiduously ever since. Her movements had afforded no clue to those who watched her. She accepted the disappearance of her aged husband as philosophically as she had accepted his presence. She was permitted to re-open the shop but not the Sailors’ Club.
Enquiries at Dovelands Cottage, Lower Kingswood, revealed the fact that the place belonged to a Mrs. Ryatt, who lived in Streatham and who used it in the summer but let it when possible during the winter months.
The place had been vacant for a long time, but had recently been leased by a gentleman whose address proved to be untraceable, for the convalescence of his daughter who had had a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Ryatt had actually visited the cottage on the evening that her new tenant entered into occupation, and reported that the daughter was an uncommonly pretty girl whose manner was very strange; and the nurse in charge an elderly foreign woman of rather forbidding appearance.
She had been satisfied, however, of the respectability of her tenant and had returned to London.
No trace of the woman described by Mrs. Ryatt and by Fleurette could be found...
Nayland Smith, tugging at the lobe of his ear, walked up and down the room. He glanced several times at a large clock upon the mantelpiece; then:
“I expected no news, Gallaho,” he said, rapidly. “Yet—”
“Surely you have no doubts left, sir?”
Sterling stared eagerly at Sir Denis, awaiting his reply.
“Fleurette’s manner disturbs me,” snapped the latter. “She seems to have inherited from her mother a sort of extra sense where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned. It is no doubt due, in both cases, to the fact that he has subjected Fleurette — as he subjected Karamaneh — to hypnotic influence at various times.”
Sterling moved cautiously in the armchair. He was nursing an injured rib.
“In fact,” Smith went on, “I never feel entirely happy about her, when she is not here, actually under my own eyes.”
“Dr. Petrie, her father, is with her,” Gallaho growled.
“I agree, she could not be in better hands. It’s just an instinctive distrust.”
“Based upon her queer ideas, sir?” Gallaho went on in a puzzled way.
He had assumed his favorite pose, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece.
“Surely her manner is to be expected in one who has suffered the sort of things that she has suffered. I mean—” he hesitated, seeking for words— “it will naturally take some little time before she gets over the idea that her movements are controlled. Now that I know her history, I think she is simply wonderful.”
“You are right, Inspector,” said Sterling, warmly. “She is wonderful. If you or I had been through what Fleurette has been through I wager we should be stretcher cases.”
“You are probably right,” said Gallaho.
Nayland Smith, his back to the room, stood staring out of the window. He was thinking of the itinerant match seller, who beyond any shadow of doubt had been a spy of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Fey’s report of what had happened down there on the Embankment on the night of the destruction of the Thames tunnel, frequently recurred to his mind, but the match seller — like the other mysterious servants of the Chinese doctor — had disappeared; all enquiries had failed to establish his identity.
He was said to have traded there for many years, but there was some difference of opinion on this point between constables patrolling that part of the Embankment. Nayland Smith was inclined to believe that the original vendor had been bought out, or driven out, and that an understudy made up to resemble him had taken his place.
Suddenly turning:
“Switch the lights up, Gallaho, if you don’t mind,” he said.
The lofty, homely room became brilliantly illuminated.
“Ah!” muttered Gallaho— “this will be the doctor and the young lady.”
The faint but familiar sound of the lift gate had arrested his attention. A moment later, Fey opened the outer door. The voice of Fleurette was heard — as she came running in, followed by Dr. Petrie.
She was very lovely, and ignoring Petrie’s frown, Sterling struggled to his feet.
“Please sit down, dear!” Fleurette pressed her hands on his shoulders. “No! You must rest.”
“But I feel so rottenly guilty.”
“I know it’s a shame that this big darling has to come pottering around all the shops with me,” said Fleurette, laughingly. “But there are so many things I want before we leave for Egypt. The longer we stay the more I shall want! And I don’t believe he really minds.” She linked her arm in Petrie’s and leaned her head upon his shoulder. “Do you?”
“Mind?” he said, and hugged her. “It’s a joy to be with you, dear. And although Alan is temporarily crocked, it’s only right that you should get out sometimes, after all.”
“I suggest cocktails,” said Sir Denis, his good humor quite restored; and was about to press a bell when the ringing of the telephone in the lobby arrested him in the act.
“I can make cocktails,” said Fleurette, gaily. “I’ll make you one none of you has ever tasted before, if you’ll just wait until I take my hat off.”
She ran out. Petrie watched her with gleaming eyes. This miraculous double of his beautiful wife had brought a new happiness into his life, keen as only a joy can be which one has relinquished for ever.
Fey rapped upon the door, and in response to Nayland Smith’s snappy “Come in,” entered.
“Yes, Fey, what is it?”
“There’s a P.C. Ireland on the telephone, sir; he says you know him — and he has something which he believes to be important to tell you.”
“Ireland?” Gallaho growled. “That’s the constable who was on duty at Professor Ambroso’s house on the night this business sta
rted.”
“A good man,” snapped Nayland Smith. “I marked him at the time.”
He went out into the lobby.
CHAPTER FIFTY. THE NIGHT WATCHMAN
“Strangely like old times, Smith!”
Nayland Smith stared at Petrie. Gallaho, bowler worn at a rakish angle, sat on the seat before them in the Scotland Yard car.
This was one of those nondescript nights which marked the gradual dispersal of the phenomenal fog of 1934. There was a threat in the air that the monster might at any moment return. The car was speeding along beside a Common. Lamps gleamed yellowly where roads crossed it. One could see, through gaunt, unclothed trees, a distant highroad.
“Yes,” Smith returned. “Some queer things have happened to us, Petrie, on that Common.”
“The queerest thing of all is happening now,” Petrie went on. “The inevitable cycle of it is almost appalling. Here we are, after all the years, back again in the same old spot.”
“Sir Denis pointed out to me this queer cycle, Doctor, which seems to run through our lives,” Gallaho said, glancing back over his shoulder. “I’ve thought about it a lot since. And I can see, now that over and over again it crops up. I suppose Sir Denis has told you that we were actually in your old room early last week?”
“Yes,” said Petrie, and stared vaguely from the window.
There came a silent interval.
Sterling had been deposited in his apartment at a hotel in Northumberland Avenue. “You are under my orders, now,” Petrie had said, “and I don’t want you out on this foul night. I dislike that cough. Lie down when you have had something to eat. I shall of course come and see you when I return...”
The doctor had been loath to leave his daughter at Sir Denis’s flat where they were staying. But recognizing how keenly he wanted to go, Fleurette had insisted. “I have victimized you all the afternoon, dear; I think you deserve an hour off. I shall read until you come back...”
“This may be a wild-goose chase,” growled Gallaho suddenly, “but on the other hand, it may not. We’ve got to remember the old bloke may have been drunk or he may have been barmy...”
“From what Ireland told me,” said Nayland Smith, “I don’t think either of those possibilities calls for consideration. Hello! Isn’t this where we get out?”
The driver pulled up on a street corner and the three alighted.
This street, lined with small suburban houses, so characteristic of the outlying parts of London, vividly recalled to Petrie the days when he had practised in this very district, and when his patients had inhabited just such houses. There was a considerable stream of traffic and at some points beyond it seemed to be badly congested.
P.C. Ireland was standing in the shadow of a wall which lined the street for twenty yards or so on one side, bordering the garden of a larger house situated upon a corner facing the Common.
“Ah, there you are, Constable,” Gallaho said gruffly.
“Good evening,” said Sir Denis. “All luck comes your way in this case, Constable.”
“Yes, sir. It looks like it.”
“Repeat,” Smith directed tersely, “in your own words, what you told me on the telephone.”
“Very good, sir.” The man paused for a moment; then:
“There’s some cable-laying job going on at the corner of the lane there which cuts across the Common; a big hole in the road and a lot of drain pipes stacked up. When the gang ceased work this evening, and the night watchman came on, I thought there was likely to be a jam with the traffic, and so I stepped across and asked him to put another red lamp on this side to show where drivers should pull out. That’s how I got into conversation with him, sir. He’s a bit of a character and he said — I’m sticking as nearly as possible to his own words — if all coppers were human, it might be better for some of them. I asked him what he meant by that; but when he told me the story, which I thought it was my duty to report to you—”
“You were quite right,” snapped Nayland Smith.
“ — I called up the inspector, and he told me to stand-by as you suggested, sir; there’s another man on my beat.”
“We’ll get the rest of the story from the night watchman,” growled Gallaho.
“He’s no friend of the Force, Inspector,” Ireland nodded. “He might talk more if you said you were newspaper men.”
“Bright lad!” growled Gallaho. He turned to Sir Denis. “Will you do the talking, sir?”
Nayland Smith nodded.
“Leave it to me.”
The hole in the road with its parapets of gravel and wood blocks protected by an outer defense of red poles from which lanterns were suspended, was certainly obstructing traffic. But at the moment that the party of three reached it, a temporary clearance had been effected, and the night watchman surveyed an empty street.
His quarters, a sort of tarpaulin cave constructed amidst a mass of large iron piping, housed a plank seat and some other mysterious items of furniture. A fire in a brazier glowed redly in the darkness, and added additional color to that already possessed by the night watchman.
This peculiar character, who favored a short gray beard but no mustache — his upper lip appearing to possess a blue tinge in contrast to the redness of his nose — wore the most dilapidated bowler hat which Nayland Smith had ever seen in his life, and this at an angle which startled even Inspector Gallaho. He also wore two overcoats; the outer garment being several inches shorter than the inner.
He was engaged at the moment upon the task of frying bacon in the square lid of a biscuit tin which he manipulated very adroitly with a pair of enormous pincers, obviously designed for some much less delicate task. He looked up as the three men paused, leaning on one of the red poles.
“Upon my word!” Nayland Smith exclaimed. Importing a faint trace of Cockney into his accent. “You blokes do get about, don’t you?” He turned to Gallaho. “Funny I should see this chap here, tonight. Last week I saw him down in Limehouse.”
“Did you, now?” said the watchman, evidently much gratified. “I’d say that’s funny; I’ll say more, I’ll say it’s bloody funny!”
He removed the biscuit tin skilfully, and tipped the rashers with their succulent fat on to a cracked enamel plate. He produced a knife and fork and a great chunk of bread. Standing up, he set a kettle on the fire, then sat down again, and, the plate on the plank beside him, began very composedly to eat his supper.
“Yes, it is funny,” Nayland Smith went on. “I was down there for my paper on the story of that raid in Chinatown. But all the suspects slipped away. It would be last Saturday night wouldn’t it?”
“It would,” said the night watchman, his mouth full of hot bacon. “That would be the night.”
He dropped some tea into a tin pot, set it on the ground beside him, and continued stolidly to eat his bacon.
“A night wasted,” Nayland Smith mused aloud. “And what a night it was! What ho! The fog.”
“It certainly were foggy.”
“The blooming coppers had something up their sleeve; they kept it to themselves.”
“You’re right, mister.” He spat out a piece of bacon rind, picked it up, contemplated it critically and then threw it on the fire. “Coppers is a lousy lot!”
“Wish I’d stopped for a chat with you, that night, and a spot over the fire.” Nayland Smith leaned across the rail and passed a flask to the night watchman. “Slip a gill in your tea. I’m homeward bound with a couple of pals. I shan’t need it.”
“Blimey!” cried the night watchman, unscrewed the flask and sniffed the contents. “Thanks, mister. This is a bit of all right.”
“Those blasted chinks,” Sir Denis continued, “slipped out of that place as though they’d been dissolved.”
“How many, guv’nor?”
“Four, I think they were looking for.”
Mingled with the sound of whisky trickling into a tin mug, came a muted rumbling which examination of the face of the night watchman might have sug
gested to an observer to be due to suppressed mirth; then:
“You might have done worse than stop for a chat with me, guv’nor,” said the man, re-screwing the flask and returning it to Sir Denis.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE. NIGHT WATCHMAN’S STORY
“It was this way with me,” the night watchman continued, endeavoring to chuckle and eat bacon at the same time, “as I told the young scab of a copper down there what come walkin’ by. He says ‘You’ve ‘ad one over the eight, haven’t you?’ he says. See what I mean, mister?”
“I know those young coppers,” snapped Nayland Smith, glancing at Gallaho. “They’ve got no sense.”
“Sense!” the night watchman made a strong brew of tea. “What I want to know is: how do they get into the Force? Answer me that: how do they get into the Force? Well, this bloke I’m tellin’ you about...”
The dammed up stream of traffic was trickling slowly past the obstruction, under Constable Ireland’s direction. Things were going fairly well. But nevertheless it was difficult to hear the speaker, and Nayland Smith and Gallaho bent over the red barrier, listening intently. Petrie craned forward also, his hand resting on Gallaho’s shoulder.
“This bloke says to me,” the night watchman repeated, “‘ad one over the eight, haven’t you?’ So I didn’t say no more to him, except, ‘Bloody good luck to me’ says I, ‘if I have’... and I adds, ‘Bloody bad luck to you if you ain’t.’ That was what I said.”
With all the care of a pharmacist preparing a prescription, he added a portion of the whisky from the tin cup to a brew of hot tea in a very cracked mug.
“I let him go — it’s silly talkin’ to coppers. He went away laughin’. But the laugh was mine, if I says so — but the laugh was mine! I’ll tell you what I told ‘im, mate — I told him what I see.”
He swallowed a portion of bread and bacon.
“You’re a newspaper man. Well, you’d have got your story all right, if you stopped, like you wanted to do, that night. What story I don’t know, but a story. Here it is. I work for a firm, if you follow what I mean; I ain’t a Council man — that’s why I travels so much. Very well. The same firm what done this job ‘ere was on the Limehouse job...”
