by Sax Rohmer
“Ardatha—Ardatha!” I groaned. “My God, how I love you! How could you do it!”
That beating heart drummed hard as ever, but I detected a relaxation of tensed muscles. No effort of acting could have simulated the agony in my voice: Ardatha knew, but she did not speak.
“I searched the world for you, Ardatha, after you left me in Paris. For weeks I rarely slept. I couldn’t believe, even if you had changed, why you should torture me. And so I thought you must be dead. I came very near to madness. I went to Greece—hoping to die.”
She looked up at me. To this hour I have no idea what lay beyond the brick arch, what surrounded us as we stood there. But, either I saw her psychically, or some faint light reached the spot; for I knew that there were tears on her lashes.
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “Because, you must mean—some other Ardatha.”
Every quaint inflection of that elusive accent, the sympathy in her musical voice, tortured me. I turned my head aside. I could no longer trust myself. She spoke as the Ardatha I adored, the Ardatha I had lost; her pretence, her actions, spoke another language.
“There is only one Ardatha. I was the fool, to believe in her. Where is Fu-Manchu? Where is Nayland Smith?”
“Please don’t hurt me.” I had tightened my hold automatically. “I would, indeed, help you if I could. Nayland Smith is my enemy, but you are not my enemy, and I wish you no harm. Only, I tell you that if you stay here you will die—”
“Where is Nayland Smith? He has never been your enemy. Why do you say such a thing? And don’t mock me because I love you.”
She was silent for a moment. Those slim curves enclosed by my arms tainted me. One nervous, slender hand stole up and rested on my shoulder.
“I am not mocking you. You frighten me. I don’t understand. I am very, very sorry for you. I want to save you from danger. But there is some great mistake. You ran after me across Hyde Park tonight, and now, you are here. You tell me”—her voice faltered—“that you love me. How can that be?”
Her fingers were clutching my shoulder, and I knew, although I kept my head averted, that she was looking up; I knew, too, and wondered if war had driven the whole world mad, that there were tears in her eyes.
“It has always been, since the first moment I saw you. It will always be—always, Ardatha. Now lead me to Smith—I shall not let you go until we find him.”
But she clung to me, resisting.
“No, no! wait—let me try to understand. You say, since the first moment you saw me. The first moment I saw you was tonight, when you cried out to me—cried my name—in the Park!”
“Ardatha!”
“Yes—you cried out ‘Ardatha’. I looked back, and I saw you. Perhaps I liked you and wished that I knew you. But I did not know you, and your eyes were glaring madly. So I ran. Now—” I suppose, for the whole situation was illusory, dream-line, that my grasp had changed to a caress; I had stooped to kiss her, liar, hypocrite though she might be. I know that her voice, as she trembled in my arms, had thrust out everything else in the world except my blind hopeless love. “No! you dare not!” She dashed her hand against my lips; I kissed her palm, her fingers. “Do you think I am a courtesan? I don’t even know your name!”
I stood suddenly still, but I did not release her.
“Ardatha,” I said, “has Dr. Fu-Manchu ordered you to torture me?” At those words I felt a quiver pass through her body. She inhaled a sobbing breath, and was silent. “I loved you—I shall love you always—and you ran away. You sent me no message, no word, even to tell me that you were alive. Now, when I find you, you say that you don’t know my name… Ardatha!”
She crushed her head against me and burst into passionate tears.
“I want to believe!” she sobbed; “I want to believe; I cannot understand; but I have no one in all the world to turn to! If it were true, if in some way, I had forgotten, if you were really—” And as I held her, tenderly now, certain words of Nayland Smith’s were singing in my brain: “Don’t despair… Dr. Fu-Manchu once had a daughter.” The significance of the words was not yet clear to me, but I found in them, gladly, something to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable.
“Ardatha, my dearest, you must believe. How could I know your name—or worship you as I do—if we had never been lovers? You have forgotten—God knows why or how—and it is true.”
She made a perceptible effort to control herself, and when she spoke, although her voice was unsteady it had regained its natural timbre.
“I am trying to believe you—although to do so means that I must have had a mental breakdown and forgotten that, too. You asked me where Nayland Smith had gone. He ran to the garage: it is straight along this path. I cannot tell you where Dr. Fu-Manchu is: I do not know. But unless you let me go I shall die—”
“Die! why should you die?”
“Next time we meet I will try to tell you.” She pressed her face against my shoulder. “But I am to believe you, then you must believe me. See—I trust you. I took it a long time ago from your pocket—”
And she handed me my Colt!
I released Ardatha and stood there, the automatic in my hand, trying to adjust my ideas to a new scheme of things, when from far away up near the house came Barton’s great voice: “Kerrigan! Where are you? Give me a hail.”
I turned and shouted:
“This way, Barton.”
But, as I swung about again—Ardatha had vanished! Her cloak I held over my arm, the Colt was still grasped in my hand. I dropped it back in my pocket, snatched out the torch and flashed a ray ahead.
Nothing moved, and I could hear no footstep. Water was dripping mournfully from the roof of a glass-house, and a long way off I detected insistent hooting of a motor horn.
The raid squad was coming.
Why was Nayland Smith silent? There was something ominous about it. I have said, and I confess it again, that at first sight of Ardatha every other idea in my mind had been swept out; and whilst I had stood there (my heart was still pounding madly) it was quite possible—
“Have you found Smith?” Barton cried. “Show a light. I’ve caught something, and—”
I turned back and threw a moving fan of light on the path which led to the house. As I did so, an overpowering smell of hawthorn swept down upon me as if home on a sudden breeze. Too late, a decimal of a second too late, I ducked and half turned.
My head was enveloped in what felt like a moist rubber bag… I experienced a sensation of sinking, not swiftly, but as if floating gently downward, into deep clouds of hawthorn blossom.
CHAPTER SIX
DR. FU-MANCHU EXPERIMENTS
I seemed to break through some brittle surface into a plane of violet light—and silence. There was a rapidly-receding background, a memory of wild action, of the drip of moisture, of a noisome tunnel and moving water. Here, all was still; nothing was visible in that luminous expanse. Then, a long way off, I heard the voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
“A member of my family, a mandarin of my rank, is bound by codes stronger than bands of steel. For myself I ask nothing. I hold the key which unlocks the heart of the secret East; holding that key, I command the obedience of an army greater than any ever controlled by one man…”
This must be delirium; for no living thing was in sight: I was alone in a violet void.
“My power rests in the East, but my hand is stretched out to the West. I shall restore the lost grandeur of China. When your civilization, as you are pleased to term it, has exterminated itself, when you have reduced to ashes your palaces and your temples, when in your blindness you have set back the clock which so laboriously you fashioned, I shall stir. Out of the fire I shall arise. The red dusk of the West will have fallen, the golden dawn of the East will come—”
The voice faded, and at the same time that mysterious radiance also grew dim, as though it had been a mirage created by the voice or the aura of the speaker.
I was lying, in a constrained position, upon a cushioned s
ettee which had a metal base, in a long, narrow, low-ceilinged room which possessed no visible windows. It was lighted by hanging lamps and permeated by a carnal smell: I thought of the Morgue. That half of the room which contained the settee or couch was unfurnished except for a tall glass-fronted cabinet. In this cabinet, preserved in jars, were all kinds of anatomical specimens; a collection so gruesome that I doubted the verity of this phase, too.
There were several human hands, black, yellow, and white; there was a brown forearm; there were internal organs which I need not describe: and, half covered by a sheet of gauze, a decapitated Negro head grinned from the largest jar.
The lower half of the room was a small but well equipped laboratory where some experiment was actually in progress. An apparatus resembling a Bunsen burner, but dissimilar in some way which my indifferent knowledge of chemistry did not enable me to define, hissed below a retort fitted with a condenser.
One glance I took at the object in process of distillation, and looked elsewhere. I grew nauseated and closed my eyes for a moment. But I had seen something which might have accounted for the violet mirage.
On a smaller bench there stood a low, squat lamp, resting on what I assumed to be a block of crystal. It produced a strange amethystine radiance—and instantly I thought of the eyes of Ardatha.
With that thought came complete consciousness… Ardatha!
Had she betrayed me? Had she tricked me again, and left me to the mercies of Fu-Manchu’s thugs? I remembered that she had stolen my Colt, and then returned it. Was this evidence of her innocence, or merely of a moment’s remorse prompted by knowledge of those who covered me, who at that instant she had seen behind me?
A door hidden in the wall near the large bench slid soundlessly open. I became aware of a sensation in my skull which resembled that experienced on quickly climbing to a high altitude. A man entered with slow, curiously feline steps, and closed the door behind him. He wore a long coat of what appeared to be varnished green silk. Turning, he stared in my direction.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He was more emaciated than I remembered him to have been, and as he seated himself at the bench I noted the weariness of his movements. To one who had not met Dr. Fu-Manchu it would be impossible, I suppose, to convey any idea of the peculiar force which he seemed to project.
With the exception of Nayland Smith I had never known one who could stand up to it. And now, alone with him in that long, narrow, sinister room, silent save for the hiss of the burner, I recognized the fact that this power emanated entirely from his eyes.
His imposing figure—tall, angular, high-shouldered—lent him a sort of grotesque majesty; and as he sat there before me, a vitalized skeleton clothed in wrinkled silk, his shrunken skin exposing all the contours of that wonderful skull, no whit of this force was missing. I had sprung up at the moment of his entrance, and now I stood there battling with a fear not unmixed with loathing which he inspired; and I knew that his power resided in a tremendous intellect, for it shone out like a beacon from those strange green eyes, feverishly brilliant in cavernous shadows.
He spoke.
The effort of speech was terrifying. It came to me suddenly as a conviction that Dr. Fu-Manchu was very near his end. It was as though a magician had conjured back a soul into a body dead for generations.
“I trust that you are conscious of no nausea or other unpleasant after-effects. My fellows are adepts with their knives and strangling cords, but clumsy when employing more subtle methods.”
One clawlike hand, the nails long and pointed, resting on the plate-glass which covered the bench, he watched me for a few moments, and I felt, as of old, as if he read every record printed upon my brain.
I plunged my hand into my pocket: it was a gesture of resignation—but my fingers touched the automatic
I had not been disarmed!
“You seriously inconvenienced my plans, Mr. Kerrigan, when you shot Companion Oster. Dr. Oster was a licentiate of Heidelberg and held also a minor London degree. His qualifications, therefore, were limited. Nevertheless, he was useful. Your own powers of observation being not entirely undeveloped, no doubt you noted that his skin displayed unusual pigmentary characteristics?”
That intolerable gaze brooked no denial. I replied:
“He was yellow as a lemon.”
I was clutching the Colt and saying to myself, “You did not hesitate in the case of the lesser scoundrel; why hesitate now?”
“Exactly. This was due to the nature of the experiments which he had carried out under my direction. Be good enough to glance into the cabinet on your right—but avoid crossing the red line which you may have seen painted on the floor.”
I had not seen the red line; but I saw it now: an inch-wide band extending from wall to wall just beyond the cabinet which contained the anatomical specimens, and dividing the long, narrow room into equal parts. I moved forward; it suited me to do so: it brought Dr. Fu-Manchu into a range at which I could not possibly miss him.
“The hands of the Negro,” he went on, his voice low and sibilant, “are of particular interest. Do you agree with me?”
Conquering nausea which threatened to return I looked at those gruesome fragments. One of the hands was clenched, convulsively, and I wondered how the black man had died; the other was rigidly open. But, a certain characteristic they shared in common: on close inspection it became apparent that they were not true black nor even brown, but rather of that deep purplish green which is present in some cultivated tulips. I became fascinated.
“Note the white forearm. It is that of a Lascar. The bright yellow hand, labelled G, was contributed by a blond Bavarian youth…
I suppose it was a belated recognition of the meaning of his words, a sudden, hot understanding of the fact that human beings, black, white, and brown had been sacrificed to some unimaginable scientific experiment, which prompted my action; but, turning to Dr. Fu-Manchu, I snatched the Colt from my pocket, took deliberate aim, and fired, not at his head but at his heart. To make doubly sure of ridding the world of a monster, I fired twice!
In a life which, for one of my years, had been notable for action, I think that those dragging seconds which followed the two shots epitomized all the wonder, all the terror and all the acceptance of laws beyond human understanding which any man has known.
Dr. Fu-Manchu smiled!
He revealed a row of small, even, yellow teeth. It was as though a mummy of one who had lived when the world was young jeered at me. He spoke, but his words sounded as words spoken at the end of a long tunnel.
“They were live cartridges; they had not been exchanged for blanks. I wished you to attempt to add me to your bag, but I observed that you aimed at my breast. The brain, Mr. Kerrigan, and not the heart, is the seat of power. The Ancient Egyptians knew…”
But I had turned away. I tossed the Colt on to the settee and dropped down beside it. I had witnessed a miracle, and I was shaken to my soul. Only the manner of my death remained in doubt.
That odd, indefinable vibration which I had noted at the moment of his entrance suddenly ceased, as Dr. Fu-Manchu’s voice again broke through the blanket of stupor which had settled upon my brain.
“A consciousness of cerebral pressure is relieved, no doubt? You experience a sense of restful silence. The explanation is a simple one. If you will be good enough to leave your automatic where it lies and accept this chair, we can approach the real purpose of our present interview.”
I stood up and faced him. His eyes were filmy, contemplative; they lacked that emerald lustre which I could never face unmoved. One clawlike hand was stretched across the bench, indicating a metal chair.
With some of the feelings of a whipped cur, I rose and moved forward. At the red line I paused.
“You may cross safely.”
I crossed and dropped down in the chair facing Dr. Fu-Manchu. Save for the hissing sound of the burner, the room was silent. Dr. Fu-Manchu rested his chin upon one skeleton hand: his proximity i
mparted a sense of chill, as though I had sat with a corpse.
“You observe, Mr. Kerrigan, that I am employing those primitive methods here which gave Paracelsus such excellent results, and by means of which van Helmont performed his transmutations. But before we proceed to the subject of my present experiments—a subject of some personal interest to yourself” (at those words my heart grew cold)—“it is only fair to explain why your bullets failed to reach me.”
I clenched my teeth.
“When you were very young, Dr. Sven Ericksen died, and the newspapers of the world were filled with stories of the Ericksen Ray which that distinguished physicist had never perfected. Although legally dead, he has since completed his inquiries, with some slight assistance from myself.”
This statement evoked ghastly memories; but I remained silent.
“The so-called ‘ray’ is, in fact, a sound wave, or chord. Ericksen discovered that a certain combination of incalculably high notes, inaudible to the human ear, could reduce nearly any substance to its original particles. It was a problem of pure physics: that of disturbing harmonic equilibrium. A belt or curtain of these sound waves can be thrown across this room by merely depressing a switch. Continued exposure to such vibrations, however, is highly injurious. Therefore I have disconnected the apparatus.”
I looked up quickly, and as quickly down again. Dr. Fu-Manchu was watching me; and even when veiled contemplatively I could not sustain the regard of those magnetic eyes.
“Your bullets are still present; not in the form of lead and nickel but in that of their component elements: they are disintegrated. The importance of this discovery it would be difficult to exaggerate. I am acquainted with only one substance capable of penetrating a zone protected by Ericksen Chords…”
I heard a faint buzzing sound—and all the lights went out!
