by Sax Rohmer
“We can rely upon the armed forces in the four provinces adjoining Szechuan. Some seventy-five per cent have joined the Si-Fan. I have a report here from Peiping which states that agents of Free China are securing many recruits, and I have ordered those of these agents who already belong to our Order to make sure of these recruits.”
Fu Manchu, still keeping his eyes closed, spoke softly.
“There is a rapport between the free Chinese and the Secret Service of which our old friend, Nayland Smith, is an active member. Great caution is necessary. We are not ready. And if our present standing with Peiping should be disturbed—if they lost their confidence in me—our strategy would be badly shaken.” His voice sank yet lower. “This loss of the register alarms me. Such evidence, in the hands either of the Allies or of Russia, would destroy us.’
“It is certain that the register could not be in the possession of the man called Wu Chi Foh—and equally certain that he could not have stolen it. He was in prison at the time. I doubt if he is concerned in any way.”
“Yet the affair, Tsung-Chao, was so cunningly contrived that some outside agency must have planned it. The escape was brilliantly managed, and the complete disappearance of the man and his boat is phenomenal. Some hiding place had been prepared for him.”
General Huan smiled wrily. “This is possible. But he may yet be found. It is now nearing the time when I must prepare to entertain Andre Skobolov.”
“I have already made my preparations.” Fu Manchu’s soft tones assumed that sibilant character which was something more than a hiss. “I have some choice glossina in my laboratory—a highly successful culture. I shall take steps to ensure his mental incapacity and ultimate death. The symptoms will develop some hours after he leaves here. I selected this method as the most suitable. Mahmud and a selected party will cover his movements from the moment of his departure. They will take the first possible opportunity to seize any briefcase or other receptacle he may carry. If he has the register, we shall recover it, and if he has notified Moscow, his death, should the body be found, cannot be laid at your door. The trypanosomes which the insects will inject are so amplified that fatal conditions develop in twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
General Huan’s wrinkled face, which was not unlike a map of Asia, assumed a troubled expression.
“I agree, although with reluctance, that this man’s execution is necessary to our safety, but I do not understand how these insects to which you refer—I am a scientist only of war—are to be employed.”
Dr. Fu Manchu opened his eyes, and smiled. It was a deathly smile. He dipped his long fingers in a silver snuffbox.
“I, also, have studied the science of war. But my strategy is designed to prevent it—by removing those few who have power to loose upon the world forces of wholesale destruction. It is simple and it is just . . . I have ordered that one of my Cold Men be brought here. He will arrive about dawn. These living-dead, as the ignorant masses term them, are dispensable. And handling the glossina is very dangerous. I shall smoke awhile, Tsung-Chao, and repose; for I have much work to do. Be so good as to send Chung-Wa to prepare my pipe . . .”
* * *
Dawn was stealing shyly over the river when Yueh Hua piloted the sampan into the canal. They went up for a mile or more before coming to a place where a gnarled tree hung right over the water, forming a sort of green cover. They tied up under the tree.
It was as Tony was eating his unpalatable breakfast that a slight movement in a field of rape in full yellow bloom drew his attention to the bank. At first he thought he was mistaken. Then he knew he wasn’t.
A pair of bright, beady black eyes peered out intently!
Tony stood up, staring under raised hands. And presently, in rapid flight along a path through the five-feet-high rape he saw a tiny boy, naked except for a loincloth.
“Why should he run away, Yueh Hua?”
He saw her face flush.
“He may have been watching us for all sorts of reasons. I suppose he thought you would beat him.”
An old rush basket, water-logged and broken, was drifting toward them along the canal. He watched it until it had reached the sampan. Then he pulled it on board.
“If anyone comes to ask questions, Yueh Hua, I shall disappear. Say this is your boat, and say that there has been no one else with you.”
“As you wish, Chi Foh. But how are you going to disappear?”
A flight of wild ducks passed overhead. It was the fact that this marshy land teemed with wild fowl which had given him the idea.
“It may not be necessary. If it is, I’ll show you.”
While Yueh Hua washed the rice bowls, he made a sounding with the long sweep. He found more than five feet of water in the canal.
He had no sooner completed this than he saw that his disappearance was going to be necessary.
Far off across the fields, on the side to which they were tied up, a small figure, little more than a yellow dot in the distance, came running along an embankment. Two men in uniform followed!
“Yueh Hua!” He spoke quietly She turned. “Yes, Chi Foh?”
“Remember what we arranged. That little devil of a boy is bringing two soldiers. It’s your word against his.”
He ducked into the low cabin and came out carrying the pistol. Yueh Hua had seemed alarmed the first time she saw it, but now she smiled bravely and nodded her approval.
Then he managed to pull away the heavy iron pin which did duty as a rowlock. He tied it to a line on which he knotted a loop and threw it overboard. Next, with a piece of string he fastened the automatic around his neck. Last, he went overboard himself, feet first, holding the ground line and the rush basket.
“Oh!” Yueh Hua’s eyes danced joyously for one fleeting moment. “Like snaring wild duck.”
He grinned cheerfully, although he felt far from cheerful, and hauled on the line until he could get one foot into the loop to steady him. Standing on the bed of the canal, he found that his shoulders were well above water. He waded several yards from the sampan, pulled the old rush basket over his head—and disappeared.
Through the basket’s many holes he could see quite well. He unfastened his pistol and held it inside the basket clear of the water line.
If anything went wrong with Yueh Hua’s story, he didn’t mean to hesitate. There might have to be two casualties in the ranks of the People’s Army . . .
The two men and the boy reached the canal bank. The boy was a grubby little cross-eyed specimen. The men were shoddily dressed irregulars of the peasant type. They carried old service revolvers.
“We want to see the man, not you,” one of them said.
He seemed to be the senior. The other, deeply pockmarked, stared dumbly at Yueh Hua.
“There’s some mistake!” Yueh Hua stood upright, open-eyed. “There’s no man on my boat!”
“You are a liar!” the boy piped shrilly.
Tony held his breath.
“And you’re an ugly little son of a sow!” Yueh Hua screamed at him.
“What lies have you been telling about me? I’m an honest girl. My mother is sick in Chia-Ting and I’m going to nurse her. If my father heard you, he would cut your tongue out!”
“Chia-Ting! Who is your father?” the man asked.
“My father is head jailer at the prison. Only wait until he hears about this!”
This flight of fancy was sheer genius.
“If you’re going to Chia-Ting,” the boy piped, “what are you doing here?”
“Resting, you mangy little pig! I’ve come a long way.”
She was a virago, a shrill-voiced river girl. Her blue eyes challenged them. But the man who did all the talking still hesitated.
“Ask her—” the boy began.
The man absently gave him a flip on the head which nearly knocked him over.
“We are doing our duty. What is your name?”
“Tsin Gum.”
“There is a reward for a prisoner called Wu Chi
Foh. He escaped from Chia-Ting.”
Tony held his breath again.
“Oh!” Yueh Hua’s entire manner changed magically. “My poor father! When anyone escapes he is always punished.”
“It is a big reward. You have seen no one?”
“No one. How much is the reward?”
The man hesitated, glancing at his pock-marked companion. “Fifty dollars.”
Tony made a rapid mental calculation. Fifty dollars (Chinese) added up to about two dollars and fifty cents American. Beyond doubt, his recapture was worth more than that.
“Fifty dollars? Ooh!” Yueh Hua clapped her hands. “And my father would be so glad. What does he look like, this prisoner?”
“He is rather tall, and pretends to be a fisherman. He is really a dangerous criminal. He is very ugly.”
“I will look out for him all the way to Chia-Ting,” Yueh Hua promised. “If I find him, will I get the reward there?”
“You haven’t searched the cabin!” came the boy’s shrill pipe. “And the reward isn’t fifty dollars, it’s—”
His second, unfinished remark had sealed his fate. He saw this just in time. Turning, he ran like the wind across the rape field.
“Look in the cabin,” the senior man directed. Then, meeting a fiery glance from Yueh Hua: “He may have slipped on board,” he added weakly.
His pockmarked assistant scrambled clumsily on to the sampan, one eye on Yueh Hua. He looked in under the low, plaited roof, then climbed quickly back to the bank.
“Nobody there.”
They turned and walked off.
Yueh Hua rowed when Tony thought it safe to move, and nothing occurred on the way down the canal to suggest that they were watched. When they turned into the creek. Tony saw that the left bank was a mere bamboo jungle. But the right bank showed cultivated land away to the distant hills. It was a charming prospect; acres of poppies, the buds just bursting into dazzling whiteness; for opium cultivation had been renewed in a big way by the Communist government. Beyond, was a small orchard of peach trees lovely in a mantle of pink blossom.
“I’ll take the oar, Yueh Hua.”
“As you say, Chi Foh. But it is still dangerous.”
He took the sweep, and made Yueh Hua rest. He would never be able to understand how those small hands could manage the long oar.
She lay down, and almost immediately fell asleep like a tired child.
Chapter VI
From a guest house in the extensive and beautiful grounds of General Huan’s summer residence Dr. Fu Manchu in the grey of dawn watched the approach of two bearers with a stretcher along a winding flower- bordered path. A third man followed. The stretcher was occupied by a motionless figure covered from head to feet with a white sheet.
The young Japanese doctor who had followed, directed the men to a room where there was a rubber-covered couch and to lay the patient on it. This was done, and the bearers, who appeared to be shivering, went away.
And when the Japanese removed the sheet from the motionless body, the action seemed to excite a draft of cold air which sensibly affected the temperature of the room. The man on the stretcher apparently was a dead man. He might have been Burmese, but his normal complexion had become a sort of ghastly grey. The Japanese was feeling for his pulse when Dr. Fu Manchu came in.
“Have you selected a specimen in good condition, Matsukata?”
Matsukata bowed. “Perfect, Excellency. A former dacoit from the Shan hills who was drafted into the Cold Corps for insubordination. He can move as silently as a cat and climb better than any cat. He is one of three who escaped recently and reached the town, creating many undesirable rumors I selected him for his qualities and have prepared him carefully as you see.”
Fu Manchu examined the apparently frozen body, using a stethoscope. He lifted an eyelid and peered into the fishlike eye. He nodded.
“You have prepared him well. This one will serve.” He stood upright, glancing at the Japanese. “You were studying the pupils of my own eyes through the powerful lenses of those glasses you wear.”
“I feared. Excellency, that you had not slept.”
“You are a brilliant diagnostician, Matsukata. Chandu is a treacherous friend. Sometimes it stimulates the subconscious memory but does not induce sleep. I smoked last night and lived through incidents as remote as my first meeting, in Burma, with Mr. Commissioner (now Sir Denis) Nay land Smith.” He suddenly changed the topic. “You were expecting a report from the lodge-master in Tokyo concerning the progress of our Order in Japan?”
“It is not yet to hand. Excellency.”
“No matter. Japan is safe. You may return to the clinic.”
Matsukata bowed deeply and went out . . .
* * *
More than an hour after Yueh Hua had fallen asleep. Tony found a break in the bamboo wall bordering the creek. He had been hailed only twice from the other bank, and they were friendly hails to which he had replied cheerily. He had passed no other craft.
A narrow stream—little more than a brook—joined the creek, its surface choked with wild lilies. The bamboo jungle faded away inland. There was a sort of miniature bay. Farther up he saw banyan and cypress trees.
This looked the very place to hide the sampan until nightfall.
He swung in, tested the depth of the water and the strength of the lily stems, then pushed a way through. He found himself in a shaded pool, the water deep and crystal clear.
Yueh Hua woke up and prepared a meal, which included the inevitable rice, and tea. As he smoked a cigarette, Tony’s eyes began to close.
“Now you must rest awhile,” Yueh Hua insisted. “I will watch until you’re ready to go on. There is an early moon tonight. It will help us to find the way.”
And he fell fast asleep with the words, “It will help us to find the way”, ringing in his ears like a peal of fairy bells . . .
He had no idea how long he slept, nor what wakened him. But he sat up with a start and looked around.
It was night. The moon hung like a great jewel over the bamboo jungle . . . and he couldn’t see Yueh Hua!
He got to his feet, listening, staring to right and left about the pool. He could see no one, hear nothing.
A sense of utter desolation crept over him. He was just going to call out her name. But he checked the cry in time. He crouched back under shelter of the plaited roof and stared, enthralled.
He had seen Yueh Hua.
She was swimming across the pool to a shallow bank on which they had cooked their dinner. Part of it was brightly and coldly lighted. The other part lay in shadow.
He saw her walk ashore and stand, wringing water from her dark hair. Then, she stretched her arms above her head and looked up at the sky as he had seen her do before. But that had been Yueh Hua, the river girl. This was Moon Flower, the goddess of night.
Her agility and grace he had noted. He had never suspected that she had so slimly beautiful a body, such smooth, ivory skin and perfect limbs.
He almost ceased to breathe.
When Yueh Hua came back to the sampan after her bath, he pretended to be asleep, and let her wake him.
But the light touch of her hand affected him strangely . . .
On the way to Niu-fo-Tu he tried to conquer a sense of awkward restraint which had come over him. He felt guilty. He rarely met Yueh Hua’s glance, for he was afraid she would read his secret in his eyes.
Surely no river girl was ever shaped like that?
He rowed furiously, pushing the sampan ahead as if competing in a race.
The river, when he came to it, gleamed deserted in the moonlight. The current favored him, and he made good going. He passed a tied-up junk but there seemed to be nobody on board, or nobody on watch. He couldn’t see if Yueh was asleep, but she lay very still. A slight breeze rattled the junk’s sails, making a sound like dry palm fronds in a high wind.
“Chi Foh!”
She was awake.
“Yes, Yueh Hua?”
“We have to look out for lights. Then we have to cross to the other bank and find the creek which will take us behind Niu-fo-Tu. We mustn’t miss it.”
Remembering his experience at Chia-Ting, Tony had no intention of missing it.
“Are there soldiers there, Yueh Hua?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“A jail?”
“No.” She laughed, that musical laugh. “Criminals have to be sent up to Chia-Ting.”
“And that, then, is where your father takes care of them?”
He rowed on. He knew Yueh Hua was watching him, and presently:
“Were you angry with me for being such a liar?” she asked.
“Don’t be silly, Yueh Hua! I never admired you more.”
“Oh.”
He had said too much. Or said it the wrong way. She had spoken the “Oh” like a wondering sigh.
He decided on a policy of silence. And Yueh Hua didn’t speak again. The river swept round in a long, flattened curve. Tony detected faintly a twinkling light ahead.
“Is that Niu-fo-Tu, Yueh Hua?”
“No.” She hesitated. “I think it must be another junk.”
So she had been awake all the time!
“I hope they are all asleep!”
“Let me row, Chi Foh. It is better. Don’t risk being seen.”
He wavered for a moment, then gave way and passed the oar over to her.
Navigation called for little but steering. The current carried them along. He crouched out of sight, watching Yueh Hua handle the long sweep with an easy grace he had never acquired. Beyond doubt, she had been born on the river.
She gave the junk as wide a berth as possible. If anybody was awake, it was someone who paid no attention. They passed unchallenged. Yueh Hua stayed at the oar, and Tony sat studying her, a silhouette against the moonlight, as she swayed rhythmically to and fro. They were silent for a long time, until she checked her rowing and stared intently ahead.
