by Sax Rohmer
“Straight up, Kerrigan! Even a hawk needs a take-off; but these birds rise straight from their heels.”
“How?”
“One of our conscripts, Professor Swain—whose name you may have heard—discovered a meteoric substance in Poland (his native land) which was anti-gravitational—”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean that these planes are fitted with an insulated disc of Swainsten (named after its discoverer) which, when exposed, or partially exposed, to the earth’s influence, sends the bus flying upwards towards some unknown planet for which Swainsten has so keen an affinity that it overcomes gravity and atmosphere to get there! Uncontrolled, one would reach the stratosphere!”
“But—”
“The Swainsten disc is operated from the controls. The pilot can climb at terrific speed, or hover. It’s simply miraculous. I have learned, since I came here, that I didn’t know the first thing about flying! You begin to feel the fascination of having access to knowledge which others are groping to find. The whole show is like that. These things take the air as silently as owls. One could start from a bowling green and alight on a billiard table. Once afloat, propulsion is obtained from Ericksen waves—”
“But the Ericksen wave—”
“Disintegrates? I agree—if so directed. But, as fitted to the Bats (that is our name for these small planes) it enables the pilot to tune in to a suitable wavelength as one does with a radio set, and to pick up from it all the power he needs to develop anything up to three hundred miles an hour. There are larger models, of course, which can do more. I had the pleasure of bringing you here in one from the jamboree at Morne la Selle.”
It was dawning upon my mind that I was acquiring knowledge which I should never live to use: part, at least, of the mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s secret journeys was explained.
“The whole outfit is silent as a radio set; in fact it is broadly operated on the same principle, except that the energy is converted. I would give you a trial spin, but I have no instructions. Some other time…”
When he had partially exhausted his enthusiasm for this, his pet subject (I gathered that he was Chief Pilot) I asked him a question which had been in my mind throughout.
“Aren’t there—urges, to return to your former friends?”
His mouth twisted into a wry expression.
“At first—yes; lots. I believe there have been cases where unwilling workers have been allowed to go. We have Professor Richner here—”
“But Professor Richner—”
“Is dead, you mean? My dear, Kerrigan, every soul on the Headquarters Staff (I refer to the officers) is legally dead! I am legally dead; we are all dead. But in those rare cases I have mentioned, Companion Richner has prescribed and one of the doctor’s medical staff has dealt with, the case. A painless injection and the patient returns to the world with a blind spot in his memory. He can tell his friends nothing: he remembers nothing. Do you see?”
I saw. Ardatha had had such a “painless injection.”
“When, as it were, normally one goes on leave—well, it is merely necessary to avoid old haunts and, if caught up, to stick to the new identity; profess ignorance and say ‘Sorry you must be mistaken’.”
“But even when you elect to stay under these conditions, there must be pulls to your old life?”
We were walking along a path which evidently led back to the main quadrangle, and Allington grabbed my arm in his impulsive way.
“In my own case, as no doubt it would be in yours, the pull was a girl. I was crazy about her. All the same, I consented to see Richner and I submitted to the injection he prescribed.”
“What occurred?”
“Well—it was a good deal like recovering from a tropical fever. I saw Joan—she is one of the many Joans—in correct perspective. I realized, for the first time, that she had most irritating mannerisms, and that although her figure was good, her complexion was dreadful! It became clear to me, Kerrigan, that there are millions of pretty women in the world and that a Companion of the Si-Fan has a wide field of choice.”
I was silent for a while. My feelings about Squadron Leader Allington underwent a swift change.
I understood—and that first moment of understanding was a shattering moment. It became evident to me why Marriot Doughty, Horton and Allington—men, in their normal lives, honourable, above reproach—now embraced the ideals of the Si-Fan wholeheartedly, unquestioningly. They were truly zombies, slaves of a master physician. Better death than the “painless injection!”
Perhaps Nayland Smith was already dead—perhaps I was alone in this head office of Hell!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ARDATHA REMEMBERS
Allington left me in my new quarters; the number on my door was 13, and I disliked the omen. I had seen so many things which transcended what hitherto I had regarded as natural laws that I was bewildered. There was a well-stocked buffet in the small sitting-room and I was about to take a drink when I paused, glass in hand.
The power of the Si-Fan was appalling; I was afraid to think about it. Men of genius laboured in the workshops, in the laboratories; men, some of them, whose names figure in every work of reference. “The conscripts,” as Allington termed them, had been poisoned, buried for dead, and then secretly exhumed. Their lives had been prolonged by means of some process known only to Dr. Fu-Manchu. Allington had introduced me to Professor Richner. At the time of his death, in 1923, he’d been seventy-two. He looked like an old man, but not like one nearing ninety!
Four days—I had been here for four days.
I set the glass down. Even as I did so, I knew that I flattered myself; for Dr. Fu-Manchu would not go to so much trouble about a mere journalist. A corner in brains? I had seen but a small part of what this meant, but already I was appalled. The fate, not only of the United States but of the world, hung in the balance. I turned swiftly. Someone had opened my door.
Dr. Marriot Doughty came in.
“You’re very jumpy, Kerrigan,” he said, professionally. “I was anxious to see how you had taken your first tour of headquarters. If you are going to have a whisky and soda may I join you? It’s an allowance, you know, and not deducted from pay!”
Reassured, I served out two drinks.
“You know,” said the physician, “I have got to get your bloodstream clean. Yours is one of those cases that put me on my mettle. You consulted Partlake in London, you told me. Between ourselves, Partlake is an old fool. I’ll have you fit inside a month.”
“What does it matter!”
“Oh! feeling like that about it? Well, well—I passed through that phase myself. When I ‘died’ it was Partlake who signed my death certificate! I was conscious all the time, Kerrigan!”
“Good God!”
“They did me well and consigned me to the family vault in a Roman Catholic cemetery: we are a Catholic family, as you know. I knew that I was a case of catalepsy; I knew that Partlake had failed to make the proper tests. I wondered how long the agony would last.”
“How long did it last?”
“I was exhumed the same night! I believe the watchman had been drugged. The fellows who hauled me out were Asiatics: they belong to a special guild and do no other work. My coffin was replaced and the tomb re-sealed. A smart job. They hoisted me over a wall into a waiting car, and I was rushed to a house in Cadogan Square. A very competent Japanese surgeon gave an injection—and I was a living man again!”
“But,” I said breathlessly, “after that—what happened?”
John Marriot Doughty finished his whisky and soda and stood up.
“No time to tell you, now. I have been sent to take you to a second interview with the Doctor.”
“Why? Does this mean that I have to make a decision—at once?”
“My dear Kerrigan, only the Doctor knows that.”
Once more I walked along a tiled, palm-bordered path across the big quadrangle; once more Marriot Doughty rang a bell. This time, for it w
as a different door Hassan the Nubian opened, I was conducted straight to the room of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He sat behind the big desk, and through half-closed eyes watched me.
“Be seated, Mr. Kerrigan.”
I was fighting for self mastery. Some great ordeal pended: I knew that its outcome meant compromise—or extinction.
“You have had an opportunity to glance over some of the work being done here. I would not hurry you. Clearly, you apprehend that my design is to force a decision. Mr. Kerrigan, you must correct your perspective. You are not of sufficient value to the Si-Fan to justify your extravagant heroism. I could bind you to me now, if I wished; I could kill you by merely depressing a switch. Search your memory.”
That hard guttural voice was mastering me, as always it had mastered me.
“What do you wish me to remember?”
“Two things. The first, that I have never broken my word; the second, that I promised to restore Ardatha to complete freedom.”
And as he spoke a sort of violet haze seemed to obstruct my vision—a haze which resembled in colour Ardadia’s eyes. I saw the pit yawning before me, the trap set for my feet. I knew that when I chose the path—death, or service to Dr. Fu-Manchu—I should make no free choice.
He pressed a button. A door opened, silently. Ardatha came in.
* * *
“The part played by Ardatha in my organization,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “is an important one. She is the successor to some of the most beautiful women who have decorated the world. I employ beauty, Mr. Kerrigan, as a swordsman employs a rapier. Now, she has gone the way of her predecessors. I accept the fact because you have twice succeeded in transmuting the base metal of feminine caprice into the gold of love.”
Ardatha stood motionless, watching me. In the subdued light of Fu-Manchu’s study she looked like a lovely phantom; her eyes seemed to hold some message which I could not read. Dr. Fu-Manchu opened his jade snuff-box.
“I said”—he spoke softly—“that I would restore her: there is, as you know, a blind spot in her memory, which I shall presently correct.” He raised a pinch of snuff; Ardatha did not move. “You have had an opportunity of meeting members of my staff, of glancing over some of the results which we have achieved. There has been, for the second time within ten years, an attempt, and an attempt from the same quarter, to disturb my authority. Ardatha was one of the enemy’s prizes. I recovered her.”
He took up a sycamore box from the desk and opened it.
“This attempt shall be the last.”
His long nails scratched unpleasantly on the surface. He took out a small telescopic rod attached to a metal base, and set it on the desk before him. From a projecting arm at the top of the rod an object which resembled a large black diamond hung suspended upon what seemed to be two strands of silk.
“A form of lignite—known to commerce as jet; a remarkably fine specimen from an ancient British barrow of the Bronze Age.”
Fu-Manchu turned the fragment of mineral between his long fingers until the suspended strands were knotted. His gaze became fixed upon me.
“You have my word,” he said softly, “that I design no harm to Ardatha. I merely propose to correct that blind spot in her memory to which I have referred.”
He turned to Ardatha, who stood less than two paces from the ebony chair in which he was seated.
“Come forward!” She obeyed, moving like an automaton. “Bend down, and watch closely.”
He released the piece of cut jet and it began to spin.
“Tell me what you see. Speak!”
“A spot of bright light,” Ardatha whispered. “It grows larger… it is a gleaming mirror… a picture is forming in it.”
“Describe the picture.”
“It is of myself. I am going into a hut on a river bank: I am seeking for something… Ah! a man is hiding there! He stands between me and the door—”
“Who is the man?”
“It is too misty to see.”
Ardatha was describing our second meeting! It had taken place in an eel-fisher’s hut on a Norfolk river.
“Go on.”
“I talk with him.” There was a subtle change in the tone of her voice which hastened my heart beats. “I trick him… I escape.”
“Do you wish to escape?”
“No—I wish to stay.”
“Follow this man and tell me his name.”
And as I watched Ardatha bending over the spinning lignite, the light of the globular lamp striking sparks from her hair, she described every one of our meetings, in London, in Venice, in Paris. The jet became stationary, but she went on without a pause, her voice that of one speaking in a trance. At last:
“Name this man,” Dr. Fu-Manchu said softly.
“It is Bart—Bart Kerrigan!”
“Do you love him?”
An instant’s pause, and then:
“Yes,” she whispered.
But she remained there, bending forward even when Fu-Manchu raised his eyes—brilliant green in concentration—and addressed me.
“A device which we owe to the Arabs. It stimulates the subconscious mind.” He clapped his hands sharply. “Return Ardatha. Is this the man you desire?”
Ardatha stood upright, sighed, and locked about her as one suddenly awakened; then, as her gaze rested on me, she grew so suddenly pale that I thought she was about to collapse. But, as I watched her hungrily, a wave of crimson swept to her pale cheeks and a glory came into her eyes which was heaven.
“Bart!” she sobbed. “Oh, my darling, where have you been?”
Momentarily, that sinister figure in the ebony chair seemed to have ceased to exist for her. She ran to me with a joyous cry and threw herself into my arms.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE VORTLAND LAMP
“You observe,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “that residence here is not without its attractions.”
Ardatha he had sent away in charge of Hassan, whom he had summoned. As I last glimpsed her, those beautiful eyes were radiant. His sibilant tones brought me down to realities. Love can raise some natures to great heights. I faced him more fearlessly than I had supposed ever to be possible.
“I owe you my gratitude. But what do you ask in return?”
He began to toy with the jade snuff-box.
“I am not a hunter, Mr. Kerrigan. It lies in my power to do with you as I please. Let us suppose that I give you leave to go.”
“It would not be real freedom. Ardatha is bound to you by a tie she cannot break—and live.”
“So? In what I may, perhaps, term your second romance, she confided this to you? Here I perceive, is some deep affinity. You must certainly marry. The progeny of such a union could not fail to be interesting.”
His voice remained low, sibilant. Was he mocking me?
“That member of my staff responsible,” he went on, “treated Ardatha psychologically. The injection to which she submitted was harmless; the antidote is a mild stimulant. Localized amnesia I induced by hypnosis; I have removed it. There is no finer example of physical fitness in the world than that afforded by Ardatha.”
An emotional wave swept me. Ardatha was not doomed to the living-death! Then came the aftermath—a vision of those long months of slavery, horror, fear, which she had endured.
“Your methods are those of hell!” I blazed. “Yes, I have met members of your ‘staff’, men who once were good men, honest men. Now, they are zombies, automata, their sense of proportion destroyed—”
“A simple operation, Mr. Kerrigan. The drug used—a discovery of my own—is known as 973.”
But I went on, fist clenched, speaking at the top of my voice:
“They live in a dream world, labouring day and night to achieve some damnable ambition of yours!”
Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up, and I prepared for the worst.
“Must my ambitions necessarily be damnable?” he asked, in that low, even tone. “In order that any radical change be brought about, it is inevitable tha
t thousands shall suffer. Where is the ethical difference between poisoning an enemy in his sleep and bombing his house by night? You have not angered me. I admire your spirit, although it is so correctly English; as correct as the attitude of your Foreign Office which compelled you to alter your account of certain facts in my previous encounter with Sir Denis Nayland Smith—”
This touched me professionally: it was true.
“In order that his identity might be hidden, they demanded that you should describe the funeral of ‘Rudolph Adlon’. Actually, he was at his usual post at the time. Nevertheless, you have not only disturbed a molar which has served me for a period of years longer than you might credit, but also defied me in my own fortress. Come, I have plans for you.”
He pressed a bell, a door opened, and one of those short, thick-set Burmans of whom I had had experience in the past, entered. He wore a sort of blue uniform: his yellow face was expressionless.
“Follow,” Fu-Manchu commanded in English.
The Burman saluted and stood aside. Dr. Fu-Manchu, with an imperious gesture of the hand to me, walked along that passage where earlier I had set out with Allington. Fu-Manchu led, however, in a different direction, walking quite silently in thick-soled slippers. I discovered that he was fully an inch taller than myself, but the difference might have been due to the padded slippers: his catlike tread was deceptively swift.
Opening a door set in the wall of a large building which possessed no windows:
“Here you change your shoes,” he said.
I saw a row of what looked like goloshes ranged along a shelf, but on inspection they proved to have unusually thick soles. I unlaced and discarded my shoes, and as the Burman knelt to assist me, I was transported in spirit to an Eastern mosque.
A metal door being opened, I found myself in a vast laboratory. The floor was covered with some substance which might have been rubber; the walls and ceiling were apparently opaque glass. Numerous pieces of mechanism, some in motion, were set about the place; and suspended from the centre of the ceiling was a copper globe some twelve feet in diameter. On one wall was a huge switchboard. There were glass-topped benches supporting chemical appliances of a kind I had never seen—vessels of all sorts containing brightly coloured fluids. There was a perceptible, although not an audible, throbbing. Some powerful plant was working. But there was no one on duty.
