by Sax Rohmer
Nayland Smith looked grimly at Tony. “Now we know how Skobolov died.”
And, as he spoke, the light went out.
“I fear,” a cold, sibilant voice said, “that you know too much, Sir Denis.”
* * * *
In complete darkness, Tony, his heart beating a tattoo, realized that he stood closest to the door. He reached it, and found it unopenable.
“We’re trapped, McKay!” Nayland Smith said. “What about—”
“What about the other door, you were thinking, Sir Denis?” came the mocking voice. “Unfortunately, as it belongs to my laboratory, I make a point of keeping it locked.”
Tony, cool again after that first shock, began to peer through the darkness in the direction from which the voice came. His hand closed over the butt of his automatic. He had seen something.
High up at the end of this home of insect horrors, he saw a square patch of dim light. He raised his automatic and fired.
The odor of the discharge mingled with the other unpleasant smell which haunted the place. Vibration caused a rattle of glass, but it came from the surrounding cases. Then the silence was complete again, except for the faint buzzing of the tsetse flies and whispering sounds made by some of the other inhabitants of the cases.
“No good, McKay,” Nayland Smith said sharply. “I saw that opening, too.”
“It’s over the door of my workroom,” Cameron-Gordon whispered. “That’s where he is.”
His words were answered by a harsh laugh from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
“Since the arrival of my old acquaintance, Sir Denis, in China, I have made it a practice to look in, unobtrusively, whenever you have remained late at work, Dr. Cameron-Gordon. Tonight I seem to have disturbed your showing your friends this small collection of rare specimens.”
“Enough of this idle chatter,” Nayland Smith barked angrily. “You have trapped us. Very well, come and take us!”
“Sir Denis, how strangely you misread my purpose. If I desired your death, it would be necessary only to shatter any one of the cases of specimens surrounding you — which I assure you I could do without exposing myself to your fire. Should you prefer the tsetse flies? That would be a lingering death. Or perhaps the fleas and the painful result of bubonic plague?”
“You’re not a man, you’re a demon!” Tony rasped.
“I have knowledge which few men possess, Mr. McKay, that is your name, I believe. And as you are clearly a man of courage, possibly you would prefer to try to repel in the dark the attack of my katipo, tarantula? He is a strangely active nocturnal creature.”
“Stop talking!” Nayland Smith shouted. “Words don’t frighten us. Smash everything in the place, if you like.”
“That is indeed the familiar spirit of the British policeman. But, for your very stubbornness I admire you, Sir Denis. Dr. Cameron-Gordon is useful to me, and I believe I could use the qualities of Mr. McKay also.”
“You never will,” Tony assured him.
“Let me explain myself,” the cold, emotionless voice continued. “There are more ways than by drugs, or physical pain, to enforce obedience. One of these means I hold in my hands. There is no place for heroics. Dismiss any plans you may have made. I assure you that you have no alternative other than acceptance of my terms — whatever they may be.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tony opened his eyes; looked around. He closed his eyes again. This was part of the dream. In the part which had passed earlier he had wandered in a strange paradise. There were trees laden with blossoms he had never seen before and the ground upon which he trod was carpeted with flowers. The air was filled with their intoxicating perfume.
He rested under one of the trees, from which a gentle breeze dropped fragrant petals from time to time. A gracefully beautiful girl had joined him, seated herself beside him. She carried a flask of wine and two crystal glasses. She smiled, and her dark eyes challenged him provocatively. She filled the glasses.
“You will drink with me?” she whispered, handing him a glass. “I belong to you, and so let us drink together.”
Tony hesitated. She wore a gauzy robe and through its mist every line of her shapely body was visible. She placed her arms around his neck. Her ripe lips were very near. Some swift revulsion swept over him. He dashed his glass to the ground, and sudden darkness fell…
When the dark cloud passed, he found himself in another part of the garden. A sweet voice, a woman’s voice, spoke from the shadow of a flowering bush near where Tony lay.
“Why are you so sad?” the voice asked. “You are young and the world is before you. There is nothing to prevent you from rising to the greatest heights. May I talk to you?”
“Yes,” he remembered saying.
He was joined by a fair woman as beautiful as the dark siren who had offered him wine. She seated herself beside him on the mossy bank. She had strange violet eyes, alight with intelligence.
“Together,” she said softly, “we could go so very far.”
Tony looked into the violet eyes, and as he looked they seemed to turn green, the fair features became yellowish and he found himself staring into the saturnine face of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
So the dream had ended, and now, he thought, it was continuing.
He opened his eyes again.
The wonderful garden had gone and with it the beautiful women and the hypnotic face of Fu-Manchu. He lay, not among flowers, but on a cushioned divan. Looking around, he still saw what he had seen before: a small room luxuriously furnished in the Oriental manner. The only light came from a shaded lantern hung from the ceiling. But there were rich rugs on the floor, lacquered objects gleamed from the shadows. There was a faint odor of sandalwood.
He sat up, conscious of a swimming feeling, but with no trace of headache to explain what he supposed to have been delirium. He tried to stand up. He couldn’t. Looking down, angrily, at his ankles, he saw that they were secured by a tiny cord of something that resembled catgut. He put his heels together and tried to snap it.
The effort was useless. The fastenings pierced his skin, and he knew that any further attempts would only cut the tendons.
And, in that moment of acute pain, real memory came, bridging the mirage which had clouded his mind. He remembered that last scene in the insect vivarium lined with cases of loathsome creatures, remembered the mocking words of Fu-Manchu.
Then had come that perfumed cloud, oblivion…
A heavy curtain was silently drawn aside, and Dr. Fu-Manchu came in.
He wore a yellow robe. A sort of satanic majesty seemed to radiate from the tall figure. Silent, he stood watching Tony. Then, at last, he spoke.
“Your impersonation of Chi Foh, the fisherman, was excellent. You almost deceived me. I congratulate you.”
Tony said nothing.
“The gas which overcame you is a preparation perfected by me some years ago. If any of it had penetrated the cases, it would not have affected the creatures confined there.”
It was hard to sit and listen to that cold voice. Dr. Fu-Manchu spoke English with careful perfection and his manner was that of a professor addressing a class of students.
“What a pity,” Tony commented.
“I note that you are imitating the brand of repartee favored by Sir Denis Nayland Smith. It is usually prompted by bravado in moments of danger. I am completely acquainted with the psychological features of Sir Denis’s character. I endeavored to learn something of your own, particularly of one aspect, during the time that you remained under the influence of the drug. Its composition renders the subject peculiarly impressionable to what is sometimes termed hypnotic suggestion.”
Tony was listening intently now.
“I projected onto your brain the images of two desirable women who are members of my organization. There was no trace of sexual reaction. You rejected their overtures. In fact you dispelled the second image, for I saw recognition of myself dawning in your eyes. But I had learned what I wanted to know. You are completely devoted
to one woman. And I think I know her name.”
* * * *
Tony found himself alone again. Dr. Fu-Manchu had stepped silently to the draped opening, raised the curtain, and silently disappeared.
He could detect no sound of any kind. Where was he? What place was this? And where were Nayland Smith and Cameron-Gordon? He stood up and learned that by taking short, mincing steps he could walk.
First, he crossed to the curtain from behind which Fu-Manchu had entered and retired. He raised the heavy brocade. He saw a blank wall. That it masked a door was perfectly obvious, but to find out how to open it was another matter.
He hobbled around the room, examining the wall foot by foot.
The room had no window and no door.
For one horrifying moment panic touched him with its icy finger.
Except that it was exotically furnished, this place was no better than an oubliette, one of those dreadful medieval dungeons, without any exit other than an inaccessible trap. He had seen one in an ancient French castle.
He returned to the settee and tried to recover composure, get himself in hand.
That he might be left in this luxurious cell to starve to death was a nightmare he could safely dismiss. Dr. Fu-Manchu had other plans for him; he had spoken of terms which, “whatever they might be,” he must accept.
He wanted to shout out curses on Fu-Manchu, that cold-blooded monster who used human emotions as ingredients in a scientific formula. But he smothered the useless words, clutched his head and groaned.
How long a time had elapsed since that moment when, surrounded by obscene insects, they had heard the sardonic voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu? He could have been unconscious for hours, days, weeks! The devilish genius who had them all in his power possessed medical knowledge which, as Cameron-Gordon had said, properly belonged to the future of science.
Tony groped in his Chinese garments. He was desperately thirsty, and a smoke might steady his nerves. His automatic was gone, but a packet of cigarettes and a lighter remained. He lighted a cigarette.
As he blew smoke from his lips he noted that it hung motionless in the stagnant air. There was little or no ventilation.
Sitting there, watching the smoke, trying to conquer useless anger and to think constructively, he became aware of two curious facts. The first, smoke clouds began to swirl; second, the air grew suddenly cold.
A premonition swept into his mind. He dropped the cigarette in a jade bowl which lay on a table near the divan, and stood up.
The curtain masking the hidden opening was moving. It was swept aside.
The gaunt figure of a man wearing only a loincloth stood there, looking into the room.
His neck was fixed in a brace which seemed to make his head immovable, for he never turned it in the slightest degree. The ghastly gray features and fishlike eyes in the rigid head were indescribably revolting. There was a long scar over the creature’s heart.
But, crowning terror, this apparition unmistakably was that of the Cold Man whom he had killed, whose body, with a broken neck, he had seen lying at the foot of a tree near the wall of Lao Tse-Mung’s house!
Tony stifled a cry of horror. He became cold as though his spine had frozen, incapable of action.
The gray thing spoke. Its voice resembled something on a worn-out record.
“Follow.”
Very slowly, the gray figure turned, never moving the rigid neck. A black opening in the wall gaped behind him. The temperature of the room had become perceptibly lower. Tony, fists clenched convulsively, hesitated. Every human instinct prompted him to refuse to follow a thing which he could only believe to be of another world.
He overcame that helpless inertia which had seized him and took a deep breath. Dead or alive, the creature which had said “Follow” offered a way out of the prison in which he was trapped. But perhaps this was another dream, a further example of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s psychological examinations — a test of his courage.
Tony followed. Slowly, because of the fastenings around his ankles; fearfully, because he was uncertain if he dreamt or was awake.
Ahead, silhouetted against a lighted opening, he could see the mummylike figure moving. He kept his distance. Even the narrow passage was chilled by the creature’s presence. There was a short stair. He allowed the gray thing to reach the top before he followed, and found himself in a white-walled corridor, with doors opening to right and left. The corridor was empty.
Before one of these doors, the gray figure paused, pressed a bell and went on, moving mechanically like an automaton. When Tony came to the door — a sliding door — he found it wide open. He hesitated, glanced along the lighted passage. His phantom guide had disappeared.
He looked into a small room. The only illumination came from one wall of the room which appeared to be made of glass.
Three chairs were set facing the glass wall, and two of them were occupied.
“Hullo, McKay.” Nayland Smith’s unmistakably snappy speech. “You’re rather late. But the curtain hasn’t gone up yet.”
As Tony stepped in, the sliding door closed noiselessly behind him.
He made his way to the vacant chair next to Nayland Smith and sat down. Dr. Cameron-Gordon, his head in his hands, occupied the third chair. Somewhere below, Tony could see through the glass wall, a large, dimly lighted place masked in vague shadows. Sir Denis grasped his hand.
“Keep smiling, McKay. I don’t know what all this is about any more than you do. But we’re still alive.”
Then Cameron-Gordon’s voice. “It’s all over, Smith. What will become of Jeanie when we disappear for good?”
“Don’t worry,” Nayland Smith said. “We’re in a tight corner, but at least we’re all together.”
Cameron-Gordon sighed and dropped his head into his hands again.
“I was led here by the dacoit we buried in the cypress grove,” Tony whispered to Sir Denis. “It is supernatural!”
“Nothing is supernatural where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned. You may recall that the dacoit was dug up again!”
“What about it?”
“I have known of others buried as dead who have been disinterred by Fu-Manchu and restored to life.”
“But a man with a broken neck?”
“Clever surgeons have mended broken necks before now. And Dr. Fu-Manchu is probably the greatest surgeon the world has ever known.”
As Nayland Smith stopped speaking, Tony noted for the first time how completely silent the cabinet in which they were assembled seemed to be! Not a sound was audible from outside its walls… until suddenly the stillness was broken by a voice, apparently the voice of someone in the room. But no one else was in the room.
“I am instructed,” the modulated voice said, “to explain the purpose of what you are about to see. This is a soundproof observation room which both I and the Master use frequently. He is about to pay his daily visit to the necropolites, known locally as Cold Men — a duty which falls on me when the Master is absent.”
“Dr. Matsukata,” Cameron-Gordon muttered, “Fu-Manchu’s chief technical assistant.”
“Is that so?” Nayland Smith asked. “Why don’t you join us, Dr. Matsukata, instead of speaking on radio?”
“I am following my instructions. Be so good, Sir Denis, as to listen to what I am here to tell you.”
“Seems we have no choice,” Tony commented.
The precise voice continued. “I believe you have already made the acquaintance of a necropolite and must have noted the unusual qualities which these creatures possess. In certain respects they resemble the Haitian zombies, whose existence has been disputed in some quarters. In fact, in certain respects, the process of reanimation is similar, but superior. They work as automata, being entirely controlled by the power miscalled hypnotic suggestion. Other than by complete disintegration, their faculties are indestructible. Thus, the necropolite is perfectly equipped to carry out dangerous missions.”
“You’re telling me nothing,” Tony broke in. “
But there’s one thing you might tell me: What is a Japanese doing in Fu-Manchu’s gang?”
“For a friend of Sir Denis Nayland Smith, you betray remarkable ignorance of the Order of the Si-Fan,” Matsukata answered heatedly. “Its membership is not confined to China. It includes the whole of Asia, the Near East, many parts of Europe, and America. Its secret power is at least equal to that of Communism.”
Light sprang up in the dim place below, and Tony found himself looking down into a morgue.
Nearly a score of gray bodies lay there in two rows, one row on the right and one on the left. But here the resemblance to a morgue ended. They lay, not on stone slabs, but on neat hospital cots.
“The necropolites,” said Matsukata. “This clinic was constructed for the purpose of creating and maintaining them. They represent the Master’s supreme achievement, for they are dead men who live again at his command. The process of reducing their bodies to the low temperature, at which, alone, reanimation can be brought about is too technical for description here. But I should be glad to discuss it, later, with Dr. Cameron-Gordon.”
“Thank you, no,” Cameron-Gordon muttered. “I want to keep what little sanity I have left.”
“Be good enough to watch closely what takes place now. I must explain that a necropolite retains in his living-death state, whatever useful qualities were his in normal life, as well as his physical appetites or vices. Without occasional gratification of the latter, the creature’s usefulness deteriorates. Watch carefully.”
Tony was watching more than carefully. He was trying hard to convince himself that this thing was reality, that he wasn’t lost again in a nightmare. Nayland Smith’s crisp voice came to reassure him.
“I warned you, McKay, that if we made a mistake, we should walk into hell.”
Dr. Fu-Manchu came into the ward below with its rows of gray corpses. He wore a white coat, and his manner showed the cool detachment that marks the specialist visiting a hospital ward. A white-coated orderly followed, pushing a glass-topped cabinet on rubber wheels. He was sallow-faced, but looked European.
