The Island of Fu-Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

  “‘E opens it, an’ says, ‘Come inside an’ shut your bloody row. I only got four on me. Wait a minute an’ I’ll get a quid—an’ you can ‘ave your five.’

  “I says, ‘Right-o!’ ‘E goes up to the ‘ouse, me keepin’ pretty close alongside, an’ wonderin’ if ‘e’s goin’ to phone for the cops—see wot I mean? But presently ‘e comes out, gives me me five an’ says, ‘Beat it! Beat it!’ ‘e says. ‘An to ‘ell with yer.’ ‘To flamin’ ‘ell with you!’ I says—’with brass knobs on!’ Then I goes out.

  “I’m ‘avin’ a final at the Dock Gates, which is a favorite pub o’ mine, when the cops nobbles me. That’s all I bloody well know about it!”

  “Anything further to ask him, sir?” said Yale.

  “Yes. Answer this question carefully, my man: Was he smoking?”

  “Smokin’? No—’e wasn’t.”

  “Sure?”

  “Dead sure.”

  “Good.” Nayland Smith nodded. “Take him back.”

  As a constable hustled the prisoner from the room he turned, and:

  “A bloody good night to all of yer!” said he.

  * * *

  Inspector Yale drove back with us from the garage where we had placed the car; and as we left the dockland behind us an threaded the dreary highways of the East End:

  “I must admit I’m not satisfied, sir” the detective said. “Although the case against Hawkes, the ship’s fireman, is a strong one.”

  “Unsatisfactory,” Nayland Smith murmured. “There is the extraordinary circumstance that the knife, admittedly once the property of Hawkes, shows no trace of blood.”

  “He may have cleaned it.”

  “Why, having done so, leave it behind? Then, you must remember our discovery of the cigarette just inside the gate, the cigarette for which I was looking.”

  Yale was silent. He had, himself, picked up the partially smoked Balkan Yenadi—free from any trace of lipstick—from the gravel path as we were leaving Peter Anderman’s house.

  “Hawkes is perfectly clear on the point that Anderman was not smoking when he parted from him.”

  “He might have lied.”

  “Not knowing the purpose of the question—why should he have lied?”

  There was a further silence, and then:

  “I take it your idea is, sir,” said Yale, “that Anderman walked down the path with someone who came after Hawkes had gone, stood there for a while, smoking, then dropped the cigarette end, and—what? That he was followed back to the house?”

  “Well, suggest an alternative.”

  “He may have been expecting someone. You think it was a woman, sir?”

  “I do.”

  “And that she murdered him?”

  “Not at all. No woman’s hand struck that blow.” A long silence fell. The car ate up mile after mile of deserted Commercial Road East. Then Nayland Smith, who had been sitting tugging at the lobe of his left ear, which I knew of old to betoken intense reflection, suddenly grabbed the speaking-tube.

  “Pull up, Blake!” he shouted, whilst Yale and I stared in amazement. “Turn around and drive back as fast as you can go. Never mind regulations. I’ll tell you where to pull up!”

  He glanced at the inspector, and:

  “In my preoccupation with the identity of the woman who visited Peter Anderman tonight,” he said, “I had quite overlooked the character of the murderer. Let’s hope we’re not too late.”

  * * *

  No glimmering of Nayland Smith’s purpose dawned upon my mind until, tumbling out of the car, he set off at a tremendous pace along a narrow street. He plunged into an alley on the right…

  He had led us back to the Blue Lamp!

  In response to continuous banging, the door was cautiously opened a few inches, and:

  “All shut—all shut!” came the sing-song voice of Jo Chang. “No more tonight!”

  “Sorry to trouble you,” said Nayland Smith, forcing his way into the passage. “But I must speak to your waitress, Matâri.”

  “Matâri? She finish—go home.”

  At which moment, as Yale and I entered in turn, I saw the half-caste girl cross the café beyond.

  “One moment!” Nayland Smith cried.

  Chang fell back into shadow and allowed us to pass. Smith whispered something rapidly to the inspector. Then, as he and I entered the room—from which most of the tables had been cleared and stacked at the farther end—I saw the face of the girl Matâri. It was deathly white, and her eyes were terror-stricken.

  “Now, Matâri,” said Nayland Smith, “will you please go and find Mrs. Chang and request her to come and speak to me?”

  “She is…” the girl began in a trembling voice—”she is…”

  “Asleep,” said Jo Chang. “If someone go, I go. But I don’t know why.”

  “If anyone goes…it must be Matâri,” Nayland Smith returned, grimly.

  “But …” the girl began again—

  “Lock her door,” said the Chinaman sullenly.

  “Indeed? From which side?”

  “Lock her door,” the Chinaman repeated. “Then, if you will give Matâri the key, her door can be unlocked.”

  * * *

  Jo Chang darted a lightning glance from the speaker to myself, to Yale. He was calculating his chances. Evidently he assessed them as poor, for, with a slight shrug, he plunged his hand into his trousers pocket, closely watched by the detective, and pulled out a ring of keys. He indicated one and handed the bunch to the girl. Matâri, avoiding our eyes, darted off through a doorway left of the little counter.

  A moment later, from some place above, came a weird, muffled cry.

  “You go, Greville,” said Nayland Smith rapidly. “Yale and I… will stay here.”

  I nodded, and set off. There was a short passage beyond the door, a stairway opening to the left. Up this I ran on to an uncarpeted landing. One of two doors was open; the room beyond dimly lighted. I stepped in, not knowing what to expect. What I saw was this:

  The girl Matâri, hands raised to her pale face, was swaying beside the bed, upon which Mrs. Chang, gagged and bound—her eyes blazing like those of a terror-stricken animal—lay motionless! Silent with amazement, I set to work, and found it no easy task to loose the cunning knots with which she was fastened. First, I unlashed the towel tied over her mouth, and spoke words meant to be reassuring.

  She half sat up, moaned, and fell back, closing her eyes. I could see no evidence of injury, but she was clearly incapable of answering questions; and leaving Matâri in the room, I ran down to report.

  Jo Chang was standing where I had left him. Nayland Smith fixed his piercing gaze upon me.

  “Alive?” he snapped.

  “Just,” I replied. “She was tied up and gagged.”

  “Ah!” He turned to the Chinaman. “There was one question I wanted to ask your wife,” he said: “Where she obtained those choice Balkan cigarettes which she smokes.”

  “I tell you,” Chang replied, without emotion, “because, tonight, I find out myself.”

  Most of the lights in the café had been extinguished; but even so I saw a gleam of sudden understanding dawn upon the countenance of Detective-Inspector Yale. He rested his hand upon the Chinaman’s shoulder, and:

  “Jo Chang,” he said, “I arrest you for the murder of Peter Anderman at his house tonight. I warn you that anything you say may be used as evidence against you.”

  Chang listened to the formal words, unmoved.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he replied calmly. “What is to be, always will be. Dishonor in wife deserve death. But for her this was not to be. I see that my wife has fine dress and silk stocking, and sometimes jewels. I think she cheating me in my business. I tell her too that she paint her case too much. And always she smoke, smoke, those little cigarettes which she tell me sister send from Cardiff. She go out too much and business keep me here. But tonight, I creep out to follow.

  “She go to house of Peter Anderman. A sailor wh
o is drunk come out and my wife stand close by wall until he go by. Then she ring bell by door. When she has go in, I try door. It is not close. I too go in. There is light in big room, shine out through window. But they are in little room far in, and I cannot see them. They quarrel.

  “For long time they there, and then come out. She angry, but he smile, and light cigarette. But his hand shake and match fall.

  “I hide as they walk to door… When Peter Anderman go to go in, I appear. He hear my foot, turn, drop cigarette—run… but too late. I…”

  A sound of stumbling footsteps interrupted the unemotional story and, looking across the room, I saw Mrs. Chang stagger in, supported by Matâri. She leaned against the doorpost, staring wild-eyed across at us. Jo Chang appeared neither to have heard nor to have seen her. He continued:

  “I throw my arm around him, but one hand he wrench free, to get into one pocket. And I see the shining of long blade. I throw him off and fall back. He spring and strike. I catch his wrist—twist—and dagger fall on carpet—all jewel. So! it is my turn—and something must settle.”

  Mrs. Chang came, dazedly, farther into the room.

  * * *

  Suddenly, Jo Chang resorted to illustration. From somewhere (his sleeve I think; it was like a conjuring trick) he produced a knife having a long, wooden handle and a very slender, needle-like blade.

  “I spring also.”

  The unemotional voice was raised to a high key. It became sibilant. Eluding the vigilance of Yale, Jo Chang sprang like a leopard upon his wife!

  Nothing, I believe, could have saved her, except that “what is to be, will be.”

  In sheer terror she dropped limply to the floor—no more than one second before that death leap. The blade of Chang’s knife was buried halfway to the hilt in a panel of the door! Chang ran to retrieve it.

  Uttering a sound which I can only describe as a roar, Detective-Inspector Yale hurled himself upon the Chinaman’s back, seized his thick neck, and thrust a knee against his spine. Chang’s iron grip on the haft of the knife, never relaxing, drew the blade from the woodwork as he was jerked backward.

  “My God!”

  Nayland Smith’s words sounded like a groan.

  Reversing the blade with incredible speed, Jo Chang grasped the hilt of his knife with both hands and plunged it into his broad chest!

  Matâri began to utter choking, wailing sounds, as Yale lowered the heavy body to the floor.

  APPRECIATING DE. FU-MANCHU

  BY LESLIE S. KLINGER

  The “yellow peril”—that stereotypical threat of Asian conquest—seized the public imagination in the late nineteenth century, in political diatribes and in fiction. While several authors exploited this fear, the work of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, stood out.

  Dr. Fu-Manchu was born in Rohmer’s short story “The Zayat Kiss,” which first appeared in a British magazine in 1912. Nine more stories quickly appeared and, in 1913, the tales were collected as The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu in America). The Doctor appeared in two more series before the end of the Great War, collected as The Devil Doctor (The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu) and The Si-Fan Mysteries (The Hand of Fu-Manchu).

  After a fourteen-year absence, the Doctor reappeared in 1931, in The Daughter of Fu-Manchu. There were nine more novels, continuing until Rohmer’s death in 1959, when Emperor Fu-Manchu was published. Four stories, which had previously appeared only in magazines, were published in 1973 as The Wrath of Fu-Manchu.

  The Fu-Manchu stories also have been the basis of numerous motion pictures, most famously the 1932 MGM film The Mask of Fu Manchu, featuring Boris Karloff as the Doctor.

  In the early stories, Fu-Manchu and his cohorts are the “yellow menace,” whose aim is to establish domination of the Asian races. In the 1930s Fu-Manchu foments political dissension among the working classes. By the 1940s, as the wars in Europe and Asia threaten terrible destruction, Fu-Manchu works to depose other world leaders and defeat the communists in Russia and China.

  Rohmer undoubtedly read the works of Conan Doyle, and there is a strong resemblance between Nayland Smith and Holmes. There are also marked parallels between the four doctors, Petrie and Watson as the narrator-comrades, and Dr. Fu-Manchu and Professor Moriarty as the arch-villains.

  The emphasis is on fast-paced action set in exotic locations, evocatively described in luxuriant detail, with countless thrills occurring to the unrelenting ticking of a tightly wound clock. Strong romantic elements and sensually described, sexually attractive women appear throughout the tales, but ultimately it is the fantastic nature of the adventures that appeal.

  This is the continuing appeal of Dr. Fu-Manchu, for despite his occasional tactic of alliance with the West, he unrelentingly pursued his own agenda of world domination. In the long run, Rohmer’s depiction of Fu-Manchu rose above the fears and prejudices that may have created him to become a picture of a timeless and implacable creature of menace.

  * * *

  A complete version of this essay can be found in The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, also available from Titan Books.

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS:

  THE COMPLETE FU-MANCHU SERIES

  Sax Rohmer

  Available now:

  THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

  THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

  THE HAND OF DR. FU-MANCHU

  DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU

  THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU

  THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU

  THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU

  PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU

  THE DRUMS OF FU-MANCHU

  Coming soon:

  THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU

  RE-ENTER FU-MANCHU

  EMPEROR FU-MANCHU

  THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU AND OTHER STORIES

  WWW.TITANBOOKS.COM

  THE HARRY HOUDINI MYSTERIES

  Daniel Stashower

  THE DIME MUSEUM MURDERS

  THE FLOATING LADY MURDER

  THE HOUDINI SPECTER

  In turn-of-the-century New York, the Great Houdini’s confidence in his own abilities is matched only by the indifference of the paying public. Now the young performer has the opportunity to make a name for himself by attempting the most amazing feats of his fledgling career—solving what seem to be impenetrable crimes. With the reluctant help of his brother Dash, Houdini must unravel murders, debunk frauds and escape from danger that is no illusion…

  A thrilling series from the author of The Further

  Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Ectoplasmic Man.

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