by Sax Rohmer
“I’ve broke a man’s neck for less,” Pallant remarked.
I said nothing. The tone was very menacing.
“For two pins,” he continued, “I’d chuck you in the river.”
However, the gateway reached, he suddenly released his hold. Seizing me from behind by both shoulders, he gave me a shove which sent me reeling for three or four yards.
“Get to hell out of here!” he roared.
At the end of that tottering run I pulled myself up. What prompted the lunacy I really cannot say, except perhaps that a Rugby Blue doesn’t enjoy being hustled out of the game in just that way.
I came about in one jump, ran in and tackled him low!
It was on any count a mad thing to do, but he wasn’t expecting it. He went down beautifully, I half on top of him — but I was first up. As I stood there breathing heavily I was weighing my chances. And looking at the bull neck and span of shoulders, an uncomfortable conviction came that if Seaman Pallant decided to fight it out I was probably booked for a first-class hiding.
However, he did not move.
I watched him second after second, standing poised with clenched fists; I thought it was a trick. Still he did not move. Very cautiously, for I knew the man to be old in ringcraft, I approached and bent over him. And then I saw why he lay there.
A pool of blood was forming under his head. He had pitched on to the jagged edge of the gatepost — and was quite insensible!
For a long minute I waited, trying to find out if accidentally I had killed him. But satisfied that he was merely stunned, those counsels of insanity which I count to be hereditary, which are responsible for some of the tightest corners in which I have ever found myself, now prevailed.
Ardatha’s dangerous bodyguard was out of the way. I might as well take advantage of the fact.
Turning, I ran back into the barroom, raised the flap, crossed the bar, and gently moving the rush curtain, stood again in the narrow passage. On my extreme right was a closed door; on the left, lighted by another of the paper-covered hanging lamps, I saw an uncarpeted staircase. I had heard Ardatha’s footsteps going up those stairs, and now, treading softly, I began to mount.
That reek of stale spirits and tobacco smoke which characterised the bar was equally perceptible here. Two doors opened on a landing. I judged that on my left to communicate with a room overlooking the front of the Monks’ Arms, and I recalled that as I returned from my encounter with Pallant I had seen no light in any of the windows on this side of the house. Therefore, creeping forward on tiptoe, I tried the handle of the other door.
It turned quite easily and a dim light shone out as I pushed the door open.
The room was scantily furnished: an ancient mahogany chest of drawers faced me as I entered and I saw some chairs of the same wood upholstered with horsehair. A lamp on an oval table afforded the only light, and at the far end of the room, which had a sloping ceiling, there was a couch or divan set under a curtained window.
Upon this a man was reclining, propped upon one elbow and watching me as I stood in the doorway…
He wore a long black overcoat having an astrakhan collar, and upon his head a Russian cap, also of astrakhan. One slender hand with extraordinarily long fingernails rested upon an outstretched knee; his chin was cupped in the other! He did not stir a muscle as I entered, but simply lay there watching me.
A physical chill of a kind which sometimes precedes an attack of malaria rose from the base of my spine and stole upwards. I seemed to become incapable of movement. That majestic, evil face fascinated me in a way I cannot hope to make clear. Those long, narrow, emerald-green eyes commanded, claimed, absorbed me. I had never experienced a sensation in my life resembling that which held me nailed to the floor as I watched the man who reclined upon the divan.
For this was the substance of that dreadful shadow I had seen on the screen in Nayland Smith’s room… it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
CHAPTER TWELVE. DR. FU-MANCHU’S BODYGUARD
Motionless I stood there staring at the most dangerous man in the world.
In that moment of realisation it was a strange fact that no idea of attacking him, of attempting to arrest him, crossed my mind. The complete unexpectedness of his appearance, a danse macabre which even in that sordid little room seemed to move behind him like a diabolical ballet devised by an insane artist, stupefied me.
The windows were closed and there was no sound, for how many seconds I cannot say. I believe that during those seconds my sensations were akin to the visions of a drowning man; I must in some way have accepted this as death.
I seemed to see and to hear Nayland Smith seeking for me, urgently calling my name. The whole pageant of my history joined and intermingled with a phantom army, invisible but menacing, which was the aura of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Dominating all was the taunting face of Ardatha, an unspoken appeal upon her lips; and the thought, like a stab of the spirit, that unquestionably Ardatha was the woman associated with the assassination of General Quinto, the willing accomplice of this Chinese monster, and a party to the murder of Sergeant Hythe.
Dr. Fu-Manchu did not move; the gaze of his unnatural green eyes never left my face. That bony hand with its long, highly polished nails lay so motionless upon the pile of the black coat that it might have been an ivory carving.
Then after those moments of stupefaction the spell broke. My duty was plain, my duty to Nayland Smith, to humanity at large. As quick resolve claimed my mind Dr. Fu-Manchu spoke:
“Useless, Mr Kerrigan.” His thin lips barely parted. “I am well protected; in fact I was expecting you.”
He bluffed wonderfully, I told myself; I plunged for my automatic.
“Stand still!” he hissed; “don’t stir, you fool!”
And so tremendous was the authority in that sibilant voice, in the swiftly opened magnetic eyes, that even as my hand closed upon the weapon I hesitated.
“Now, slowly — very slowly, I beg of you, Mr Kerrigan — move your head to the left. You will see from what I have saved you!”
Strange it may sound, strange it appears to me now, but I obeyed, moving my head inch by inch. In that position, glancing out of the corner of my eye, I became again stricken motionless.
The blade of a huge curved knife resembling a sickle was being held motionless by someone who stood behind me, a hair’s breadth removed from my neck! I could see the thumb and two fingers of a muscular brown hand which clutched the hilt. One backward sweep of such a blade would all but sever a man’s head from his body. In that instant I knew how Sergeant Hythe had died.
“Yes” — Dr. Fu-Manchu’s voice was soft again; and slowly, inch by inch, I turned as he began to speak— “that was how he died, Mr Kerrigan: your doubts are set at rest.”
Even before the astounding fact that he had replied to an unspoken thought had properly penetrated, he continued:
“I regret the episode. It has seriously disarranged my plans: it was unnecessary and clumsily done — due to overzealousness on the part of one of my bodyguards. These fellows are difficult to handle. They are Thugs, members of a religious brotherhood specialising in murder — but long ago stamped out by the British authorities as any textbook will tell you. Nevertheless I find them useful.”
I was breathing hard and holding myself so tensely that every muscle in my body seemed to be quivering. Dr. Fu-Manchu did not stir, his eyes were half closed again, but their contemplative gaze was terrifying.
“I can only, suppose,” I said, and the sound of my own voice muffled in the little room quite startled me, “that much learning has made you mad. What have you or your cause — if you have a cause — to gain by this indiscriminate murder? Let me draw your attention to the state of China, to which country I believe you belong. There is room there for your particular kind of activity.”
This speech had enabled me somewhat to regain control of myself, but in the silence that followed I wondered how it would be accepted.
“My particular activities, Mr. Kerriga
n, are at the moment directed to the correction of certain undesirable menaces to China. You are thinking of the armies who clash and vainly stagger to and fro in my country. I assure you that the real danger to China lies not within her borders, but outside. The surgeon seeks below the surface. Muscles are useless without nerves and brain. My concern is with nerves and brain. However, these details cannot interest you, as I fear you will not be in a position to impart them to Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Had your talents been outstanding I might have employed you — but they are not; therefore I have no use for you.”
Following those softly spoken words came a high, guttural order.
A cloth was whipped over my mouth and secured before I fully realised what had happened. In less time than it takes to write of it I was lashed wrist and ankle by some invisible expert stationed behind me! The curved blade of the knife I could see out of the corner of my left eye.
Dr. Fu-Manchu never stirred a muscle.
I longed to cry out but could not. Another guttural order — and the blade disappeared. He who had held the knife stepped forward, and I saw a thick-set, yellow-faced man dressed in an ill-fitting blue suit. Immediately I recognised him for one of the pair who had attacked me on the night that I first saw and spoke to Ardatha. Although short of stature he was immensely powerful, and without ceremony he stooped, hoisted me upon his shoulder and carried me like a sack from the room!
My last impression was one of that dreadful, motionless figure upon the settee…
Down the stairs I was borne, helpless as a trussed chicken. Considering my weight it was an astonishing feat on the part of the man who performed it. Past the rush curtain of the bar we went and along the passage. Dread of my impending death was almost swamped by loathing of the blood-lustful creature who carried me. Another of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s evil-faced Thugs held a door open, and a damp smell, the ringing sound of footsteps on stone paving, told me that I was being taken down into the cellars. Something like a scream arose to my lips — but I stifled it, for I knew, not for the first time since I had met the Chinese doctor, stark terror’s icy hand.
From those cellars I should never come out alive.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. IN THE WINE CELLARS
The cellars of the Monks’ Arms were surprisingly equipped. They reminded me of those of a well-known speakeasy in New York which I had once explored. Beyond the cellar proper, the contents of which looked innocent enough, other cellars, altogether more extensive, lay concealed. By means of manipulating hidden locks seemingly solid walls could be opened.
In the light of a hurricane lamp carried by one of the Thugs, I saw casks of brandy and bins of French wines which certainly were never intended for the clientele of the Monks’ Arms. As Sergeant Weldon had more than hinted, this ancient inn was a smugglers’ base. Its subterranean ramifications suggested that at some time the building above had been larger.
At what I judged to be the end of the labyrinth, I was carried up several well-worn steps into a long, rectangular room. I noticed a stout door set in the thickness of the wall, and then I was dumped unceremoniously upon the paving stones. The place contained nothing but lumber: broken fishing tackle, nets, empty casks, old furniture, and similar odds and ends. Among these was the dismantled frame of a heavy iron bedstead. Hauling out what had been the headpiece — it had cross bars strong enough for a prison window — the two yellow men laid it on the floor and stretched me upon it.
From first to last they worked in silence.
Deftly they lashed me to the rusty bars until even slight movement became almost impossible and the pain was all I could endure. At first their purpose remained mysterious, then with a new pang of terror I recognised it…
Dr. Fu-Manchu was determined that a second body should not be found in the neighbourhood of the Monks’ Arms. Secured to the heavy iron framework I was to be taken out and thrown into the river!
When at last the two had completed their task and one, standing up, raised the lantern from the floor, the horror of the fate which I felt was upon me reached such a climax that again I stifled a desire to scream for help. A sound, faint but just discernible, which came through a grating up in one corner of the wall, told me that the stream beside which the inn was built passed directly outside the door.
Perhaps I had little cause for it, but when the yellow men turned, and he carrying the lantern leading, went back by the way they had come, I experienced such a revulsion from despair to almost exultant optimism that I cannot hope to describe it.
I was still alive! My absence could not fail to: result in a search party being sent out. My chances might be poor but my position was no longer desperate!
Why had I been left there?
Dr. Fu-Manchu’s words allowed no room for doubt regarding his intention. Why then this delay? And — an even greater mystery — what had brought him to the Monks’ Arms and why did he linger? Overriding my own peril, topping everything, was the maddening knowledge that if I could only communicate what I knew to Nayland Smith, it might alter the immediate history of the world.
Audacity is an outstanding characteristic of all great criminals, and that Dr. Fu-Manchu should calmly recline in that room upstairs while the district all about him was being combed for the murderer of Sergeant Hythe, illustrated the fact that he possessed it in full measure. The clue was perhaps to be found in his words that something had seriously disarranged his plans. I wondered feverishly if happy chance would lead Nayland Smith to the inn. Even so, and the thought made me groan, he would probably go away again never suspecting what the place contained!
Now came an answer to one of my questions — an answer which sent a new chill through my veins.
Dimly I heard the sound of oars. I knew that a boat was being pulled along the creek in the direction of the oak door close to which my head rested.
Of course I was to be transported to some spot where the water was deep, and thrown in there!
I listened eagerly, fearfully, to the creak of the nearing oars; and when I knew that the invisible boat had reached those steps which I divined to be beyond the door, I gave myself up for lost. But my calculations were at fault.
The boat passed on.
I could tell from the sound that an oar had been reversed and was being used as a punt pole. The swish of the rushes against the side of the craft was clearly discernible. I doubted if the little stream was navigable far above that point, but as those ominous sounds died away I knew at least that I had had a second reprieve.
Breathing was difficult because of the bandage over my mouth, and my heart was beating madly. Through the grating a sound reached me — that bumping and scraping which tells of someone entering or leaving a boat. Then I knew that poling had recommenced, but never once did I hear a human voice.
The boat was coming back. I heard the faint rattle of an oar set in a rowlock, the drip of water from the blade; but until the rower had crept past outside the oak door I doubt if I breathed again.
What did it all mean?
Someone, I reasoned, had been brought from the inn and was being rowed downstream to the larger river of which it was a tributary.
Dr. Fu-Manchu!
Yes, it must be. The monstrous Chinaman, having lain within the grasp of the law, almost under the very nose of Nayland Smith, was escaping!
I tugged impotently at my lashings, but the pain I suffered soon checked my struggles. In fact this, with the damp silence of the cellar and the difficulty which I experienced in breathing, now threatened to overcome me. Clenching my teeth, I fought against the weakness and lay still.
How long I lay it is impossible to say. Those moments of mental and physical agony seemed to stretch out each into an eternity, and then…
I heard the boat returning.
This time there could be no doubt. Dr. Fu-Manchu had been smuggled away — doubtless to some larger craft which awaited him — and they were returning to deal with me.
Yes, I was right. I heard the boat grating against the sto
ne steps, a stumbling movement and a key being inserted in the lock above and behind me. The door, which opened outward, was flung back. A draught of keen air swept into the cellar.
Shadowy, looking like great apes, the yellow men entered. One at my head and one at my feet, they lifted the iron framework to which I was lashed. I have an idea that I muttered a sort of prayer, but of this I cannot be certain, for there came an interruption so unexpected, so overwhelming, that I must have given way to my mental and physical agony. I remember little more.
A series of loud splashes, as though a number of swimmers had plunged into the water — the bumping and rolling of a boat — a rush of footsteps — a glare of light…
Finally, a voice — the voice of Nayland Smith:
“In you go, Gallaho! Don’t hesitate to shoot!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE MONKS’ ARMS (CONCLUDED)
“All right, Kerrigan? Feeling better?”
I stared around me. I was lying on a sofa in a stuffy little sitting room which a smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke told me to be somewhere at the back of the bar of the Monks’ Arms. I sat up and finished what remained of a glass of brandy which Smith was holding to my lips.
“Gad!” I muttered, “every muscle in my body will be stiff for twenty-four hours. It was mostly the pain that did it, Smith.”
“Don’t apologise,” he returned drily, and looking at his blanched face as he stood beside me, I could read a deep anger in his eyes. “We were only just in time.”
“Doctor Fu-Manchu?”
He snapped his fingers irritably.
“A motor launch had crept up in the mist and his yellow demons got him aboard, only a matter of minutes before our arrival. Take it easy, Kerrigan; you can tell us your story later. I found this in your pocket, so I gather that you had succeeded where we failed.” He held up the little notebook which I had found in the eel fisher’s hut. “It tells the story of poor Hythe’s last hours. It was traces of oil on the water that gave him the clue. He selected a hiding place which evidently you found, and watched from some point near by. He saw the motor craft arrive. It was met by a boat which belongs to the inn. Someone was rowed ashore. He seems to have waded or swum out to the deserted motor launch, and apparently he made a curious discovery—”
