The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
above this table, suspended by golden chains from the ceiling--which
was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in
the purple shadows above.
In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind
this table. The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side
of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and
left the other side in purplish shadow. From a plain brass bowl upon
the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially
obscured that dreadful face.
From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the
nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
I had eyes only for him.
For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire,
to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the
carpet, left me. Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like
a cold douche. I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face,
that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite
Chinese dragon tapestry. The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be
as a jungle and became a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but
merely a carpet. But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with
the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and
overflowing about it were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to
me.
Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the
table--grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of
gray horror. It enveloped me, clammily. Dimly, through its oily
wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied
brain acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted
our poor human wits. The green eyes showed filmy through the fog. An
intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I
looked down. As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I
dreamed that I wore increased in length, curled sinuously upward,
twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!
Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a
false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea that my head lay
softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead.
Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kiss--and the
recollection thrilled me strangely. Dreamily content I lay, and a
voice stole to my ears:
"They are killing him! they are killing him! Oh! do you not
understand?" In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had
died, and that this musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact
of my own dissolution.
But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me. I
never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash
that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic, jangling crash,
as the fall of heavy chains. I thought that, then, I half opened my
eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad
in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim
ankles surrounded by gold bands. The girl was gone, even as I told
myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been
consigned by some error to the paradise of Mohammed.
Then--a complete blank.
My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and
though my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain,
some moments more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to
a steel collar--that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
I moaned weakly.
"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you? Smith!"
On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
all but insupportable. It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw
the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices. I could
recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine; but my mind
retained no impression of our having passed it--only a vague memory of
a rush of footsteps--a blow. Then, my vision of the hall of dragons,
and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside
me. My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
collar about it.
"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form. "Smith, old man--speak
to me! Smith!"
Could he be dead? Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr.
Fu-Manchu and the murder group? If so, what did the future hold for
me--what had I to face?
He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
"Thank God!" I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
with selfishness. For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet
obsessed with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at
the realization that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese
doctor in the flesh. Smith began incoherent mutterings.
"Sand-bagged! . . . Look out, Petrie! . . . He has us at last! . . .
Oh, Heavens!" . . . He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
"All right, old man," I said. "We are both alive! So let's be
thankful."
A moment's silence, a groan, then:
"Petrie, I have dragged you into this. God forgive me--"
"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly. "I'm not a child. There is no
question of being dragged into the matter. I'm here; and if I can be
of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
He grasped my hand.
"There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head
throbs!--in that office door. They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of
it!--in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand! We were rushed into
the car--and it was all over, before--" His voice grew faint. "God!
they gave me an awful knock!"
"Why have we been spared, Smith? Do you think he is saving us for--"
"Don't, Petrie! If you had been in China, if you had seen what I have
seen--"
Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage. A blade of light crept
across the floor towards us. My brain was growing clearer. The place
had a damp, earthen smell. It was slimy--some noisome cellar. A door
was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern. Its light
showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the slime-coated walls of a
dungeon some fifteen feet square--shone upon the long yellow robe of
the man who stood watching us, upon the malignant, intellectual
countenance.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race. How can I
paint the individual who now stood before us--perhaps the greatest
genius of modern times?
Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a
face like Satan. Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very
presence. Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent. Together,
chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our
boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
carrying his high shoulders almost hunched. He placed the lantern in a
niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes
which must haunt my dreams forever. They possessed a viridescence
which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye of the cat--and
the film intermittently clouded their brightness--but I can speak of
them no more.
I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense a
force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being. He spoke.
His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too
far. I have seriously turned my attention to you."
He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated, but discolored in a
way that was familiar to me. I studied his eyes with a new
professional interest, which even the extremity of our danger could not
wholly banish. Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
oddly contracted--a pin-point.
Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China
Movement--the name of Fu-Manchu! Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent
meddler--I despise you! Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for
you!"
He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he
looked down on us. The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it
was entirely untheatrical. Still Smith remained silent.
"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
added Fu-Manchu.
"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said. "You may have lacked
the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--and
in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice in the
future."
"You will not long outlive me," I replied. "And our deaths will not
profit you, incidentally; because--" Smith's foot touched mine.
"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly. "Ah! Mr. Smith is so prudent! He
is thinking that I have FILES!" He pronounced the word in a way that
made me shudder. "Mr. Smith has seen a WIRE JACKET! Have you ever seen
a wire jacket? As a surgeon its functions would interest you!"
I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling
sound, a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot
upward. A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered
grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face. The Doctor raised his bony
hand and fondled the little creature, crooning to it.
"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully
so that they blazed like green lamps. "I have others, equally useful.
My scorpions--have you met my scorpions? No? My pythons and
hamadryads? Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique. Have you ever
visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor? No? But Mr. Nayland Smith
will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon! And we must not forget my
black spiders, with their diamond eyes--my spiders, that sit in the
dark and watch--then leap!"
He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to
the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran from
the cellar.
"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die--these
miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof, his
lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith. "God help us, the man is a
dangerous homicidal maniac!"
Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head
grimly.
"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger to
the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning
abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait. At
the threshold be looked back.