by Sax Rohmer
“Particularly note the fern-like grass growing on the margins. Some of this was introduced among the roses which decorated Colonel Kennard Wood’s apartment at the Prado in New York. Hoemadipsa zeylanica has an affinity for this grass, from which it is not readily distinguishable. Before feeding, this creature resembles a fragment of string or a bristle from a brush. These examples actually come from a swampy area south of Port au Prince and are much larger, more active and voracious than any, I have examined.”
He gave an abrupt order. From a sort of cupboard the Burman took out the body of a newly-slain kid and attached it to the hook of a tackle fitted over the pit. He lowered the kid to a point some six feet above the scum and marginal plants, when it began to spin slowly.
“Hoemadipsa works in the dark,” muttered Dr. Fu-Manchu. All the lights went out. “Listen!”
Scarcely had he hissed the word when I heard again that evil thing — The Snapping Fingers!
“Now watch, and you will see them.”
Lights sprang up; and I saw a strange, a revolting sight. One has seen caterpillars arch their bodies in moving forward: now, I saw a number of pale, slender things some two inches in length arching their threadlike bodies all over the suspended carcase. But in this case the movement served a different purpose. One by one they sprang back to the long feather grass, each spring creating a sound almost exactly like that of snapping fingers!
“They shun light. Even when feeding, they drop off if light disturbs the feast. The largest land-leech known to me, Mr. Kerrigan. When sated, they can, nevertheless, compress themselves in such a way that they can pass through very narrow apertures — such as between the slats of a shutter…”
He proceeded to details so nauseating that once more I became fighting mad and turned on him, fists clenched. I met a glance from full-opened green eyes which checked me like a blow.
“Anticipating a further display of Celtic berserker, I ordered a guard to attend me. One more attempted assault, and I shall order him to throw you into the pit, and to extinguish the lights.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. THE SUBTERRANEAN HARBOUR
I looked along a stone passage, or tunnel, which was patchily illuminated: I mean that the effect was of a badly-lighted arcade. An insidious acceptance of fatality, of the hopelessness of this fight, was beginning to prevail. Smith had told me many things about the power behind Dr. Fu-Manchu, of the resources of the Si-Fan; but I had not properly appreciated his words. Here, in this veritable town concealed behind the sisal factory, I grasped some part of their significance.
“You may wonder — indeed, you are wondering — why I take you so closely into my confidence,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu. “This will be made clear, later. No doubt you have appreciated the fact that my daughter, known as Koreâni, a second time, under certain influence, has presumed to challenge me. Her part, as the Queen Mamaloi, she has successfully played for nearly two years, and has enslaved the Voodoo elements of the Republic. She has, naturally, access to the higher secrets of the creed and therefore control of its devotees. Follow.”
But I had followed no more than three paces, when I paused.
The luminous patches which I have mentioned were due to the presence of a series of crystal coffins (I cannot otherwise describe them) each having a shaded light directed upon it. In these, bolt upright, their glassy eyes staring dreadfully before them, I saw men and women — some of whom I remembered to have seen “smelt out” by the Sword Bearer at the Voodoo temple!
“Follow,” Fu-Manchu rasped.
I had been standing astounded before the figure of the handsome Negro who had passed Smith and myself on the maintain road. Unashamed, in statuesque nakedness he glared out at me from his glass sarcophagus.
“They are all — dead.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Kerrigan, they are all alive.”
Before one sarcophagus containing the rigid form of a mulatto, a young man with a fine head and intellectual brow, Dr. Fu-Manchu raised his claw-like hands and shook them frenziedly before the glass. He poured out a torrent of vituperation in the Haitian dialect, his voice rising shrilly, demoniacally, as once I had heard it raised before. These outbursts from one normally more imperturbable than any man I had known, inclined me to believe that Smith was right. Smith had maintained for many years that in the case of the Chinese Doctor genius had overstepped the narrow borderland — that Fu-Manchu was insane.
He laughed and turned away. It was an appalling exhibition.
“Do not suppose, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said, “that I waste my words. They can see — they can hear.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
“They cannot move an eyelid. That mongrel, and the man Lou Cabot, who was conveniently stabbed by his mistress in Colon, were prime movers in the conspiracy against me. The woman you know as Korêani — my daughter — seduced him from his vows: he was a man who would sell his soul for a woman. It was she who conceived the idea that by seizing your charming friend, Ardatha, the offensive of Sir Denis Nayland Smith might be checked. I suffered her intrigues against me right up to the meeting at Morne la Selle. And there I gathered to me all the pitiful conspirators. Here is the chief criminal.”
And, in the last of the glass coffins, or the last one illuminated, I saw Korêani!
She stood exactly as I remembered her standing before the door of the Voodoo temple, her arms beside her, her hands clenched; those brilliant eyes, which were so strangely like the eyes of Fu-Manchu, staring straight before her: an ivory goddess. Beginning almost in a whisper Fu-Manchu addressed her. He spoke in Chinese, and as he spoke, his voice rose stage by stage, until again it reached that pitch of wild frenzy; his long fingers twitched, closing upon the air as if he would have strangled this perfect outcome of his union with an unknown mother. Then he turned away.
In obedience to a short command, the Burman pressed a button in the wall at the end of the vault-like corridor. A door opened and I saw an elevator.
“Follow!”
I followed Dr. Fu-Manchu; the yellow man entered last, closed the gates, and the elevator began to descend. This proximity to Fu-Manchu was almost unendurable. He spoke again softly, unemotionally:
“The entrance discovered and used by Christophe, the black king, is unknown. According to an ancient chart in the possession of your inquisitive friend, Sir Lionel Barton, it was masked by the erection of a chapel on a hillside some miles away. My inquiries there did not enable me to find it, but as a precautionary measure, I destroyed the chapel.” The lift continued to drop. “My own entrance — a volcanic fissure in the ravine below the brow of the Citadel — was discovered by accident. This fissure I have effectively blocked, and the shaft by which we are now descending strikes it at a point a hundred and fifty feet east of the entrance. From thence a sort of path exists down the wall of the cavern itself. It is a tedious journey. I avoided it when I had this lift installed by Mr. Perrywell, one of Vickers’ senior engineers, who is with us. It is the second deepest in the world.”
When, after an awe-inspiring descent, the elevator stopped, the door opened and I stepped out, a new amazement claimed me.
I was in a stone-faced corridor brightly lighted; many doors were visible right and left. There were thousands of such corridors in the office buildings of New York.
“We are now,” came the cold voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu, “only thirty feet above sea level, and you are one of that privileged few who have entered the interior of a volcano.”
* * * *
In the company of Mr. Perrywell, late of Vickers, a prosaic Manchester man whose presence enhanced the fantastic character of my surroundings, I set out. We walked down a flight of steps, he opened a door and I found myself to be in broad daylight!
I stood on a long, wide quay where coloured gangs were at work unpacking crates and loading the contents, which I thought were machine parts, on to trucks. The still water had a strange black appearance; it resembled ink; and ten or twelve small vessels were dotted about its surf
ace. I supposed myself to be in a small land-locked harbour, for from where I stood I could see right to the other side, formed by a sheer wall of towering black rock.
The fact dawned upon me that whether I looked to right or left it was the same, and that when I looked upward I could see no sky, only a sort of mist out of which glowed the light of a brazen sun, or so one might at first have assumed. A moment’s consideration convinced me of my error. The sun should not be directly above, nor, looking harder, was this the sun!
I turned in bewilderment to my guide. He was lighting a cigar and smiling with quiet amusement.
“In heaven’s name where am I, and where does the light come from?”
“You are in the interior of a volcano, Mr. Kerrigan. The light comes from a Ferris Globe. The Doctor may have shown you the one in the laboratory.’’
“Yes, he did. But this is not artificial light — this is sunlight.”
Perrywell nodded, staring at the glowing end of his cigar thoughtfully for a moment.
“I suppose in a way, it is,” he conceded. “Speaking un-scientifically, the Ferris Globe absorbs energy from the sun and redistributes it as required. It’s a revolutionary system, of course, and in use nowhere in the world but here. Yes—” he saw me staring upward— “it’s very deceptive. You see at one point the roof is higher than the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral; and now—” he grasped my arm and turned me about, pointing— “do you notice a red buoy floating out there, roughly halfway across?”
I looked, and out on the surface of this vast subterranean lake presently picked up the object to which he referred.
“That marks the deepest spot. We haven’t been able to plumb it, yet.”
“What!”
“It’s true, Mr. Kerrigan. That’s put there for navigational purposes. The sea off this coast is very deep, you know. So what occurred in some past age was this: the sea broke in — we use the opening it made, as our water-gate — and, quite simply, put out the volcano.”
“But such a thing—”
“Would make a lot of steam? I agree that it would. It was the steam that made this huge cavern, and that buoy marks the very centre of what used to be the crater.”
I said nothing; I could think of nothing to say.
“The potentialities of such a base as this it would be difficult to exaggerate. The use that has been made of it under the driving genius of the Doctor surprises even those who work on the spot. In addition to the private lift by which no doubt you came down, I completed here, less than two years ago, the deepest hoist in the world, or the deepest known to me. There is no difficulty about shipping stuff to the works and no questions are asked. It’s brought down here in sections if necessary. As you see, labour is cheap.”
I looked at the coloured gangs working.
“Surely, where so many men are employed, secrecy is impossible?”
“Not at all, Mr. Kerrigan — just a question of organization. You won’t find happier coolies anywhere, as you can see for yourself. Once these fellows are brought below-ground they stay below.”
“What do you mean? Like pit ponies?”
“That is, until we are done with them. Then they are shipped across to Tortuga, with plenty of money and a blank spot in the memory.”
I wanted to say to him, I wanted to shout at him: “You, too, have a blank spot in your memory! You, too, are living in a delusion! Your fine intellect is enslaved to a madman who one day will destroy the world, unless some miracle intervenes!” But, looking at this comfortably stout person as he puffed away at his cigar, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, I remained silent, for words would have been of no avail.
“Only the heads of departments come up and down,” he added. “Those who load the hoist at the top have no idea where it goes to. Oh! organization can accomplish miracles, Mr. Kerrigan.”
“I agree with you,” I replied, and spoke with sincerity.
“The working staff of the sisal corporation have nothing to do with the Si-Fan, you see; they are just ordinary labourers who have no idea that there is a below-ground. If one becomes inquisitive — well, we bring him down, here and let him see for himself! And now, my instructions are to introduce you to Dr. Heron.”
“Is he—”
“What Allington calls a conscript?” laughed Perrywell. “Yes, as a matter of fact, he is. He vised to be chief technician to the German navy. His success attracted the Doctor’s attention. I can assure you that, in the twelve years that he has been employed here and elsewhere, he has evolved something which nullifies the power of every navy afloat.”
We walked along the busy dock bathed in synthetic sunshine, beside the unknown depths of what must have been one of the largest volcanoes in the world. I talked to a talented and worthy engineer whose brains had been commandeered by Dr. Fu-Manchu. In Europe, battles greater than any known in history were being waged, whilst here, in this community of accumulated genius, a superman quietly planned, in his own words, “to tip the scale.”
What exactly did he mean and in what direction did he propose to tip it?
We entered a small, neat office, where an elderly German whose high, bald forehead was almost as striking as that of Fu-Manchu himself, stood up to greet us. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles; a short, bristling, grey moustache lent him some resemblance to pictures I had seen of the former Kaiser. Unlike Perrywell who, most grotesquely as I thought, wore a Harris tweed suit and displayed a thick gold watch chain across his ample waistcoat, Dr. Heron wore blue overalls.
“Companion Heron — this is Mr. Bart Kerrigan.”
“I am pleased here to see you, Mr. Kerrigan. Always I am pleased when an opportunity comes my playthings to show off. So rare are opportunities, and always the artist for recognition craves. Eh? Is it not so?”
“I’m coming too,” said Perrywell. “It’s a long time since I was on board a Shark.”
Here, in this strange world, England and Germany were not at war.
“Always I am pleased to show you. Companion Perrywell,” the German replied, “although I know the subject to be beyond your understanding quite.”
He winked at me with heavy Teutonic humour, then led the way down a stair at the back of his office, I found myself on an iron platform which projected out to the open conning-tower of one of those odd craft which I had sighted on the surface of the lake. From the moment that I climbed down the ladder to the interior I plunged into the heart of a dream; for what I saw and what I heard did not seem sanely to add up. I had expected heavy petrol fumes, but of such there was no trace.
“But of course not!” said Dr. Heron. “Why, if you please? Because we use no petrol.”
“Then what is the motive power?”
“Ah!” he sighed, and shook his head. “A lot I may brag, Mr. Kerrigan, a national characteristic this may be; but always we come back to the genius of Sven Ericksen. Power is generated in the Ericksen room, which takes the place of the engine room in any other submersible craft. I will show you and shall also explain, for at least the credit to me is for this adaptation to under-water vessels.”
We went along a tiny alley-way — there was no more than room for Perrywell to pass — and into a room which certainly could not have accommodated more than two men. There were fixed revolving chairs or stools before a glittering switchboard, upon which were levers, dials, lamps and indicators of a more complicated character than anything I had ever seen.
“A protective headdress is worn,” Dr. Heron explained, “by the Ericksen operators; otherwise exposure to the waves created would shorten life speedily. Now, here is the main control. If I am ordered by the officer in the turret to proceed, this lever I depress. It creates before the bows of my ship a new chemical condition.”
“Call it steam,” suggested Perrywell.
“Very well. Instantaneously it reduces a large number of cubic feet of water to vapour.”
“I should expect a tremendous explosion,” I said.
“You get one — you get
one!” said Dr. Heron. “But what do I do with this tremendous explosion! I use it as the tremendous explosion is used in the Diesel engine. Through the Heron tube” — he turned to Perrywell: “these at least, my own invention are — I transfer that power from the bows to the stern. Here it becomes motive, and because as it is created I withdraw it, what happens?”
I shook my head blankly.
“I have before me a continuously renewing partial vacuum. I have behind me a driving power that even without the vacuum would give me great velocity. By means of these two together I have an underwater speed, Mr. Kerrigan, which no submarine engineer has ever to dream of dared.”
I suppose I bore a puzzled expression, for:
“Sounds like mumbo-jumbo,” said Perrywell. “But of this I can assure you — these things really go.”
“But what power do you use to empty your tanks?”
“Ballast tank? No ballast tanks I carry.”
“No ballast tanks?”
“I am weighted so that I sink like a thousand tons of lead. I sink deep, deep, many fathoms deep. But three Swainsten dials, one forward, one amidships, one aft, I operate from Here — see.” He indicated-sections of the switchboard which seemed to be insulated from the others.
“This, forward, to lift my bows — gently or suddenly as I move the indicator. This, aft, my stern the same. This, the centre control, and I rise up, up, on an even keel.”
“Where are the torpedo tubes?”
Perrywell laughed gruffly.
“The Doctor’s ships come out of Alice in Wonderland,” he said; “they carry no torpedoes.”
“No torpedoes? Then of what use are they in war?”
Again the German shook his head anxiously.
“Again, it is Ericksen. I have no periscope, but I have a complete view of the sea for miles around which reaches me from a float or several floats and is thrown upon the control screen in the conning tower. It is possible that the Doctor has shown you the improved television which we have?”
