The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck;
her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded
and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the
anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes,
who would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which she
believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes,
must have prostrated a victim of "nerves."
"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips
together.
"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from
my window. The moonlight threw half the lawn into shadow, and just
disappearing in this shadow was something--something of a brown color,
marked with sections!"
"What size and shape?"
"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quite
six feet of it flash across the grass!"
"Did you hear anything?"
"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
She met my eyes expectantly. Her confidence in my powers of
understanding and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but
occupied the position of a father-confessor.
"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke in the
train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some
way. I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an
old traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!"
Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they want to do
to him?"
"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
"Will you think over what I have told you? For I do assure you there
is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite of
father's 'fortifications'? Caesar knows there is. Listen to him. He
drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as he
threw the weight of his big body upon it.
I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
smoking and talking.
"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said; "but they dare not
have him in Nan-Yang at present. He knows the country as he knows
Norfolk; he would see things!
"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think. The attempt in
the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity. But whilst
Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way)
they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here. In case
no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided for getting at
him here!"
"But how, Smith?"
"That's the mystery. But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
"It's impossible, Petrie. You are thinking of secret passages, and so
forth. There are none. Eltham has measured up every foot of the
place. There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnel
under the moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, a
former camp of Hadrian's time. I have seen a very old plan of the
Round Moat Priory as it was called. There is no entrance and no exit
save by the steps. So how was the dog killed?"
I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith. "Our danger is no
greater in Norfolk than in London. But what do they want to do? That
man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments? Then
the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been the eyes
of Fu-Manchu? Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--something
calling for the presence of the master?"
"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
"Quite so. He probably has instructions to be merciful. But God help
the victim of Chinese mercy!"
I went to my own room then. But I did not even undress, refilling my
pipe and seating myself at the open window. Having looked upon the
awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed green
eyes, could never leave me. The idea that he might be near at that
moment was a poor narcotic.
The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
the night with something menacing in it. I sat looking out across the
sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green
sea. The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and
fragrant with country scents.
It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious
death--that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared. What
uncanny secret did it hold?
Caesar became silent.
As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed, now
recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. It was twelve minutes past
midnight.
As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
of sheer anger. He was alternately howling and snarling in a way that
sounded new to me. The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain,
shook the building in which he was confined. It was as I stood up to
lean from the window and commanded a view of the corner of the house
that he broke loose.
With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavy
body fall against the wooden wall. There followed a strange, guttural
cry . . . and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house.
He was out! But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a
dog. Of what was he in pursuit?
At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not
know. I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe
shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went
crashing into the undergrowth.
Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the
only spectator of the scene. I leaned farther from the window.
"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said. "I am so glad you are awake. Can we do
nothing to help? Caesar will be killed."
"Did you see what he went after?"
"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
For a strange figure went racing across the grass. It was that of a
man in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before him, and a
revolver in his right hand. Coincident with my recognition of Mr.
Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
"Come back! Come back, Eltham!"
I ran out into the passage and downstairs. The front door was open. A
terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
something else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
"The man is mad!" he snapped. "Heaven knows what lurks there! He
should not have gone alone!"
Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern. The
sounds of conflict ceased suddenly. Stumbling over stumps and lashed
by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman
knelt amongst the bushes. He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was
revealed by the dim light.
"Look!" he cried.
The body of the dog lay at his feet.
It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his
death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad to
find traces of life.
"Drag him out. He is not dead," I said.
"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
We were not molested. No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almost
immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared. The white faces of the
house servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me from
her room:
"Is he dead?"
"No," I replied; "only stunned."
We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head. It had
been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull was not
broken. It is hard to kill a mastiff.
"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham. "We must see that the
villain does not escape."
His face was grim and set. This was a different man from the diffident
clergyman we knew: this was "Parson Dan" again.
I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the others
went off for more lights to search the shrubbery. As I was washing a
bad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me. It was
the sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientific
ministration, which recalled Caesar to life. For, as she entered, his
tail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--one of
which was injured.
Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of his
young mistress and joined the search party. They had entered the
shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry but
thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit in
moments of perplexity.
CHAPTER IX
WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the
electrical contrivances from every point. They were in perfect order.
It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
and quitted Redmoat during the night. The barbed-wire fencing was
intact, and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west of
the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the surrounding
laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle, but no human
footprint could be found.
"The ground is dry," said Smith. "We cannot expect much."
"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar; his presence
is dangerous. And in his rage he broke loose."
"I think so, too," agreed Smith. "But why did this person make for
here? And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat? I am open
to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during the day whilst
the gates are open, and hiding until dusk. But how in the name of all
that's wonderful does he GET OUT? He must possess the attributes of a
bird."
I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend of her
description of the thing which she had seen passing into this strangely
haunted shrubbery.
"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he
said. "Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us to
a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible. My view of
the case to date stands thus:
"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way to
stay in England.
"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in
England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham
are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a
train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room
coffee. An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia.
"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made