The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that
to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who
is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?"
She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my
eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in
gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim
shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit
for the walled gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible,
in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said,
wrapping her cloak quickly about her. "You see me as I am." Her
garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting
I had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.
"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secrets
of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--seen her
thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have seen men flogged
until they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself.
Death! What does it matter?"
She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and with
only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such
words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have
been a cultured European.
"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service. Tell
me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is my
master I will never betray him. Tear me from him--by force, do you
understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer. Ah! but
you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'--your police.
Police! Ah, I have said enough."
A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laid
her hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering among
the curved black lashes.
"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never understand
and release me from him! I must go. Already I have remained too long.
Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out--at a hotel, where you will,
but do not stay here."
"And Nayland Smith?"
"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my
lips? You are in danger--you hear me, in danger! Go away from here
to-night."
She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she
turned, stamping her foot passionately.
"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Be
warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something that
sounded like a sob.
I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the
arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down
the stairs, I heard her open and close the door--the door of which Dr.
Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me,
and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith
came running up.
"Did you see her?" I began.
But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of
my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in
bewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into
the familiar cracked briar.
"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and
undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You
should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had
that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."
"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
me a warning. She disarms me."
"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know the
Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position. She
fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you! If
you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her
down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she
knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection
that speech was forced from her. I am not joking; it is so, I assure
you. And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful
and strong!"
"Smith," I said, "be serious. You know what her warning meant before."
"I can guess what it means now," he rapped. "Hallo!"
Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
"No one at home?" said my friend. "I will go. I think I know what it
is."
A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger. I left him
behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which
subsequently he found. This will be fragments of the mummy."
"What! You think the mummy was abstracted?"
"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the
sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House. A sarcophagus, I find, is
practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes
evident--ventilation. How this person killed Strozza I have yet to
learn."
"Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the green
mist?"
Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways. Remember,
we have only one man's word that it existed. It is at best a confusing
datum to which we must not attach a factitious importance."
He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the
lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table. Suddenly the
lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in
tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box,
so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
Then happened a singular thing.
Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--an oily
vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and of
some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life!
Fu-Manchu sent that box!" I threw my arms round him. As he bent
forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils. I dragged him
back and all but pitched him out on to the landing. We entered my
bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tanned
face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identical
with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to be
something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what! It is the fumes of
chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works. We have been
blind--I particularly. Don't you see? There was no one in the
sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have
suffocated a regiment!"
Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a
scheme? I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy case
being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid
of the string--after Sir Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I take
it, is heavier than air."
"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a half
times heavier than air. You can pour it from jar to jar like a
liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask. In these respects this
stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would not
interest you. The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, and
the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining--except the smell."
"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar
with it. You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by the
arrival of Sir Lionel? The scent of those infernal flowers must
partially have drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the
stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where
Kwee was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient
draught to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the
floor now. I will go and open both windows."
Nayland raised his haggard face.
"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel
Barton," he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude,
Petrie?--contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is
justified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is
by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
CHAPTER XIII
I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the
stranger things to which I awakened. Since, out of a blank--a
void--this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate
it, without preamble. It was thus:
I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable. My
veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was
about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my
burning body.
This, I thought, was death.
Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and
tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within. Panting,
but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold. I waded and
plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose
impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable. I wondered
why I could not see the windows. The horrible idea flashed to my mind
that I was become blind!
Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily. I became aware
of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away. It grew
steadily in brilliance. It spread like a bluish-red stain--like a
liquid. It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
But this was not my room! Nor was it any room known to me.
It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
kind of awe such as I never had known: the awe of walled vastness.
Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound. Its hugeness had a
distinct NOTE.
Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible. These
tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the
serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance,
each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely
with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood
knee-deep in its pile. And this, too, was fashioned all over with
golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the
design--stealthily.
At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table with
dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet. It
bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and
books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with
instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming
an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet. A lamp hung