by Sax Rohmer
Down five steps I groped, and knew that I was below water level again.
Far along a tunnel similar to that which led under the Rio Mori, I saw the two figures. The man’s arm was around the woman; his head was close to hers. I knew that I could never be detected in the darkness of this ancient catacomb unless my own movements betrayed me; and when the silhouettes became blurred and then disappeared altogether I divined the presence of ascending steps at the end of the passage.
One fact of importance I noted: this damp and noisome burrow ran parallel to the Grand Canal. I must be a long way from my starting point.
And now it had grown so black that I had no alternative but to use my torch. I used it cautiously shining its ray directly before my feet. The floor was clammily repulsive, but I proceeded until I reached the steps. I switched off the torch.
A streak of light told me that a door had been left ajar at the top.
Gently I pushed it open and found myself in an empty wine cellar. One unshaded electric light swung from the vaulted roof. An open stone stair of four steps led up to an arch.
I questioned the wisdom of further advance. But I fear the spirit of Nayland Smith deserted me, that hereditary madness ruled my next move, for I crept up, found a massive, nail-studded door open, and peered out into a carpeted passage!
Emerging from that subterranean chill, the change of atmosphere was remarkable. Rudolf Adion’s voice reached me. He spoke happily, passionately. Then the speaker’s tone rose to a high note—a cry . . . and ceased abruptly!
They had him—it was all over! Inspired by a furious indignation, I stole forward and peered around the edge of a half-opened door into a room beyond. It was a small room having parquet flooring of a peculiar pattern: a plain border of black wood some three feet wide, the center designed to represent a lotus in bloom. Its walls were panelled, and the place appeared to be empty until, venturing unwisely to protrude my head, I saw watching me with a cold smile the woman of death!
* * *
I suppose she was exceptionally beautiful, this creature who, according to Nayland Smith, should long since have been dust; but the aura surrounding her, my knowledge, now definite, of her murderous work, combined to make her a thing of horror.
She had discarded her wrap; it was draped over her arm. I saw a slenderly perfect figure, small delicately chiseled features. Hers was a beauty so imperious that it awakened a memory which presently came fully to life. She might have posed for that portrait of Queen Nefertiti found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. An Arab necklace of crudely stamped gold heightened the resemblance. I was to learn later of others who had detected this.
But it was her eyes, fixed immovably upon me, which awakened ancient superstitions. The strange word zombie throbbed in my brain; for those eyes, green as emeralds, were long and narrow, their gaze was hard to sustain . . . and they were like the eyes of Dr Fu Manchu!
“Well”—she spoke calmly—”who are you, and why have you followed me?”
Conscious of my disheveled condition, of the fact that I had no backing, I hesitated.
“I followed you,” I said at last, “because it was my duty to follow you.”
“Your duty—why?”
She stood there, removed from me by the length of the room, and the regard of those strange, narrowed eyes never left my face.
“Because you had someone with you.”
“You are wrong; I am alone.”
I watched her, this suave, evil beauty. And for the first time I became aware of a heavy perfume resembling that of hawthorn.
“Where has he gone?”
“To whom do you refer?”
“To Rudolf Adion.”
She laughed. I saw her teeth gleam and thought of a vampire. It was the laugh I had heard down there in the cellars, deep, taunting.
“You dream, my friend—whoever you are—you dream.”
“You know quite well who I am.”
“Oh!” she raised delicate eyebrows mockingly. “You are famous then?”
What should I do? My instinct was to turn and run for it. Something told me that if I did so, I should be trapped.
“If you were advised by me you would go back. You trespass in someone’s house—I do not advise you to be found here.”
“You advise me to go back?”
“Yes. It is kind of me.”
And now although common sense whispered that to go would mean ambush in that echoing tomb which was the Palazzo Mori, I was sorely tempted to chance it. There was something wildly disturbing in this woman’s presence, in the steady glance of her luminous eyes. In short, I was afraid of her—afraid of the silent house about me, of the noisome passages below—of all the bloodthirsty pageant of mediaeval Venice to which her sheath frock, her ivory shoulders, seemed inevitably to belong.
But I wondered why she temporized, why she stood there watching me with that mocking smile. Although I could hear no sound surely it must be a matter of merely raising her voice to summon assistance.
Forcing down this insidious fear which threatened to betray me, I rapidly calculated my chances.
The room was no more than twelve feet long. I could be upon her in three bounds. Better still—why had I forgotten it? I suppose because she was a woman . . .
In a flash I had her covered with my automatic.
She did not stir. There was something uncanny in her coolness, something which again reminded me of the dreadful Dr Fu Manchu. Her lips alone quivered in that slight, contemptuous smile.
“Don’t move your hands!” I said, and the urgency of my case put real menace into the words. “I know this is a desperate game—you know it too. Step forward. I will return as you suggest, but you will go ahead of me.”
“And suppose I refuse to step forward?”
“I shall come and fetch you!”
Still there was no sound save that of our low-pitched voices, nothing to indicate the presence of another human being.
“You would be mad to attempt such a thing. My advice was sincere. You dare not shoot me unless also you propose to commit suicide, and I warn you that one step in my direction will mean your death.”
I watched her intently—although now an attack from the rear was what I feared, having good reason to remember the efficiency of Fu Manchu’s Thugs. Perhaps one of them was creeping up behind me. Yet I dared not glance aside.
“Go back! I shall not warn you again.”
Whereupon, realizing that now or never I must force the issue, I leapt forward . . . That heavy odor of hawthorn became suddenly acute—overpowering—and stifling a scream, I knew too late what had happened.
The woman stood upon the black border, where I, too, had been standing. The whole of the center of the floor was simply an inverted “star trap.”
It opened silently as I stepped upon it, and I fell from life into a sickly void of hawthorn blossom and oblivion . . .
Ancient Tortures
“Glad to see that you are feeling yourself again, Kerrigan.”
I stared about me in stupefaction. This of course was a grotesque dream induced by the drug which had made me unconscious—the drug which smelled like hawthorn blossom. For (a curious fact which even at this moment I appreciated) my memories were sharp-cut, up to the very instant of my fall through that trap in the lotus floor. I knew that I had dropped into some place impregnated with poison gas of an unfamiliar kind. Now came this singularly vivid dream . . .
A dungeon with a low, arched roof: the only light that which came through a barred window in one of the stone walls; and in this place I sat upon a massive chair attached to the paved floor. My hands and arms were free, but my ankles were chained to the front legs of the chair by means of gyves evidently of great age and also of great strength. On my left was a squat pillar some four feet in diameter, and in the shadows behind it I discerned a number of strange and terrifying implements: braziers, tongs and other equipment of a torture chamber.
Almost directly facing me and close besi
de the barred window, attached to a similar chair, sat Nayland Smith!
This dream my conscious mind told me must be due to thoughts I had been thinking at the moment that unconsciousness came. I had imagined Smith in the power of the Chinese doctor; I had seemed to feel all about me uneasy spirits of men who had suffered and had died in those old palaces which lie along the Grand Canal.
There came a low moaning sound, which rose and fell—rose and fell—and faded away . . .
“I know you think you are dreaming, Kerrigan!” Smith’s voice had lost none of its snap. “I thought so myself, until I found it impossible to wake up. But I assure you we are both here and both awake.”
Tentatively I tried to move the chair. Stooping, I touched the iron bands about my ankles. Then I stared wanly across at my fellow captive . . . I knew I was awake.
“Thank God you’re alive. Smith!”
“Alive, as you say, but not, I fear, for long!”
He laughed. It was not a mirthful laugh. The sound of our voices in that horrible musty place was muted, toneless, as the voices of those who speak in a crypt. I had never seen Smith otherwise than well groomed, but now, growing accustomed to the gloom, I saw that there was stubble on his chin. His hair was of that crisp, wavy sort which never seems to be disordered. But this growth of beard deepened the shadows beneath his cheekbones, and the quick gleam of his small even teeth as he laughed seemed to accentuate the haggardness of his appearance.
“I left in rather a hurry, Kerrigan; I forgot my pipe. It’s been damnable here, waiting for . . . whatever he intends to do to me. You will find that the chains are long enough to enable you to reach that recess on your right, where, very courteously, the designer of this apartment has placed certain toilet facilities for the use of one confined here during any considerable time. I am similarly equipped. A Thug of hideous aspect, whom I recognize as an old servant of Doctor Fu Manchu, has waited upon me excellently.”
He indicated the remains of a meal on a ledge in the niche beside him.
“Knowing the doctor’s penchant for experiments in toxicology, frankly, my appetite has not been good.”
I stood up and moved cautiously forward, dragging the chains behind me.
“No, no!” Smith smiled grimly. “It is well thought out, Kerrigan. We cannot get within six feet of one another.”
I stood there at the full length of my tether watching him where he sat.
“What I was about to ask is: do you happen to have any cigarettes?”
I clapped a hand to my pocket. My automatic, my clasp knife, these were gone—but not my cigarettes!
“Yes, the case is full.”
“Do you mind tossing one across to me? I have a lighter.”
I did as he suggested, and he lighted a cigarette. Returning to the immovable chair I followed his example; and as I drew the smoke between my lips I asked myself the question: Am I sane? Is it a fact that I and Nayland Smith are confined in a cell belonging to the Middle Ages?
That gruesome moaning arose again—and died away.
“What is it, Smith?”
“I don’t know. I have been wondering for some time.”
“You don’t think it’s some wretched—”
“It isn’t a human sound, Kerrigan. It seems to be growing louder. . . However—how did you fall into this?”
I told him—and I was perfectly frank. I told him of Ardatha’s visit, of the sounds which I had heard out on the canal side, of all that had followed right to the time that I had fallen into the trap prepared for me.
“There would seem to be a point, Kerrigan, where courage becomes folly.”
I laughed.
“What of yourself, Smith? I have yet to learn how you come to be here.”
“Oddly enough, our stories are not dissimilar. As you know, I did not turn in when you left me, but I put out the lights and stared from the window. The room was not ideal in view of the peril in which I knew myself to be. But I noted with gratitude a moored gondola in which a stout policeman was seated, apparently watching my window. It occurred to me that the sitting-room windows were equally accessible and, quietly, for I assumed you had gone to bed, I went in to look.
“I found that one was wide open and as I moved across to close it, I heard voices in your room. My first instinct was to dash in, but I waited for a moment because I detected a woman’s voice. Then I realized what had happened. Ardatha had paid you a secret visit!
“Knowing your sentiments about this girl, I was by no means easy in my mind. However, I determined not to disturb you or to bring you into the matter in any way. But here was a chance not to be missed.
“Dropping out of the sitting-room window (which the man in the gondola could not see) I tripped and fell. The sound of my fall must have attracted your attention. I discovered a half-gate which shut me off from the courtyard directly below your room. I tried it very gently. It was not locked. Knowing that Ardatha must have approached from the other end, I crept past your window and concealed myself in a patch of shadow near the small bridge which crosses the canal at that point.
“When Ardatha came out (I recognized her from your description) I followed; and my experiences from this point are uncommonly like your own. She entered the old stone storehouse facing the Palazzo Mori; and I, too, performed that clammy journey through the tunnels. I lost her at the top of the steps leading out of the wine cellar. But having learned all I hoped to learn I was about to return when something prompted me to look into the room with the lotus floor.”
He paused.
“Now, I want to make it quite clear, Kerrigan: I have no evidence to show that Ardatha suspected she was being followed. The presence of the woman whom I found in that room may have been accidental, but as I looked in I saw her . . .”
“You saw whom?”
“The zombie!”
“Good God!”
“My theories regarding her identity were confirmed. I had been right. Failing the presence of Doctor Fu Manchu in the case, she could only be a spirit, a creature of another world. For myself, I had seen her consigned to a horrible death. But woman or spirit, I knew now that she had to be silenced. I sprang forward to seize her—”
“I know!” I groaned.
“At that moment, Kerrigan, my usefulness to the world ended.”
He stared down at the smoke arising from the tip of his cigarette.
“You say you recognized her. Who is she?”
“She is Doctor Fu Manchu’s daughter.”
“What!”
“Unchanged from the first moment I set eyes upon her. She is a living miracle, a corpse moving among the living. But—here we are! And frankly, I confess here we deserve to be!”
He paused for a moment as if listening—perhaps for that awe some moaning. But I could detect no sound save a faint drip-drip of water.
“Of course you realize, Smith,” I said in a dull voice, “that Rudolf Adion is in the hands of Doctor Fu Manchu?”
“I realize it fully. I may add that I doubt if he is alive.”
Why I should have felt so about one who was something of a storm centre in Europe I cannot say, but momentarily forgetting my own peril I was chilled by the thought that Rudolf Adion no longer lived, that the power which swayed a nation had ceased to be. We were silent for a long time, sitting there smoking and staring vacantly at each other. At last:
“As I see it,” said Nayland Smith, “we have just one chance.”
“What is that?”
“Ardatha!”
“Why do you think so?”
“Now that I know her Oriental origin, which all along I had suspected, I think if she learns that you are here she will try to save you.”
I shook my head.
“Even if you are right I doubt if she would have the power . . . and I am sorry to say that I believe her to be utterly evil.”
“Let us pray that she is not. She risked perhaps more than you understand to save you once before. If she fails to try ag
ain . . .”
That unendurable moaning arose, as if to tell us that Ardatha would fail—that all would fail.
* * *
I don’t know how long I had been sitting there in hopeless dejection when I heard a slow, soft footstep approaching. I glanced across at Nayland Smith. His face was set, expressionless.
A rattling of keys came, and the heavy door swung open. At the same moment a light set somewhere behind that squat pillar sprang up, and I saw as I had suspected a fully equipped torture chamber. Nocturnal insects rustled to cover.
Dr Fu Manchu came in . . .
He wore a plain yellow robe having long sleeves, and upon his feet I saw thick-soled slippers. His phenomenal skull was hidden by a mandarin’s cap, perhaps that which I had found in a hut on the Essex marshes.
I am unable to record my emotions at this moment, for I cannot recall that I had any. When on a previous occasion I had found myself in the power of the Chinese doctor, I had been fortified by the knowledge that Nayland Smith was free, that there was a chance of his coming to my aid. Now we were fellow captives. I was numbly resigned to whatever was to be.
Seated on Dr Fu Manchu’s left shoulder I saw a tiny, wizened marmoset. I thought that it peered at me inquisitively. Fu Manchu crossed nearly to the centre of the cell—he had a queer, catlike gait. There, standing midway between us, he looked long and searchingly, first at Nayland Smith and then at me. I tried to sustain the gaze of his half-closed eyes. I was mortified when I found that I could not do it.
“So you have decided to join me. Sir Denis?” He spoke softly and raising one hand caressed the marmoset. “At last the Si-Fan is to enjoy the benefit of your great ability.”
Nayland Smith said nothing. He watched and listened.
“Later I shall make arrangements for your transport to my temporary headquarters. I shall employ you to save civilization from the madmen who seek to ruin it.”
The meaning of these strange words was not entirely clear to me, but I noted, and drew my own conclusions, that Dr Fu Manchu seemed to have forgotten my presence.
“Tonight, a man who threatens the peace of the world will make a far-reaching decision. To me his life or death are matters of no importance, but I am determined that there shall be peace; the assumption of the West that older races can benefit by your ridiculous culture must be corrected. Your culture!”
