The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages, the last
regular habitations abutting upon the marshes. Between us and the
cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land through which at this
season there were, however, numerous dry paths. Before us the flats
again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of
the cool breeze that the river flowed round the bend ahead. It was
very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I
tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely
place.
Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought
that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the capture of the
formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with
Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
A light came into view far ahead of us.
"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith. "If we keep that straight
before us, according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little
weapon was curiously reassuring. I have endeavored, perhaps in
extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there
rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other
men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his
path, rendered him an object supremely sinister. I despair of
conveying to those who may read this account any but the coldest
conception of the man's evil power.
Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm. We stood listening.
"What?" I asked.
"You heard nothing?"
I shook my head.
Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way. He
turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked. "We are trusting her
blindly."
Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms against the
innuendo.
"I don't," I said shortly.
He nodded. We pressed on.
Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered always
about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of
communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces. The opium
den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream, at that hour a
smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes. Always he made
his headquarters upon the river. It was significant; and even if
to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew for our future
guidance.
"Bear to the right," directed Smith. "We must reconnoiter before
making our attack."
We took a path that led directly to the river bank. Before us lay the
gray expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy shipping of the
great mercantile city. But this life of the river seemed widely
removed from us. The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with
human activity. Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it
looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
we played our parts. When I had lain in the East End opium den, when
upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a peaceful
Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness, of utter
detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
I made no comment.
"There's the hulk," he added.
The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level of the
running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--for we
perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--a rough pier showed.
Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon
threw far out upon the softly eddying water. Only one dim light was
visible amid this darkness.
"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to the
staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down to the deck
below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier. With every motion
of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rings creaking
harshly, against the crazy railing.
"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and
commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared below the
level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled,
and for one breathless moment looked down upon the glittering surface
streaking the darkness beneath me. My foot had slipped, and but that I
had a firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had
marked the end of my share in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had
a narrow escape. I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the
weird creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk, and the
lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound of the splash
as my revolver dropped into the river.
Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck. He had
witnessed my accident, but--
"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear. "We dare not turn back now."
He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I perforce
following.
At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found
ourselves. It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of
shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific
paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes,
holding living organisms, and with instruments--some of them of a form
unknown to my experience. I saw too that books, papers and rolls of
parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose
above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding:
"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects
upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the
shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium. But,
most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
lay chained in the cell!
Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens. A faint
smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel of one of
the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated, leaped
and chattered a little marmoset.
That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything--for anything
except for what really happened.
The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion. The
lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks." His voice
quivered with excitement. "The game's up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to
tie him up with, Petrie."
I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in the
narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing
groaning, creaking--and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with
a sound infinitely dreary.
"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the
impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace,
revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed
eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
He spoke softly, sibilantly.
"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker. The
gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced quickly over
my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me. A
lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held
a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein. A
slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around. For God's sake keep
him covered. But a dacoit has his knife at my throat!"
Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled. But his glance never
wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently
upon his jaw.
I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but
a few seconds. To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any
of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and
through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!
"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when
we had entered.
"But my faithful servant followed you," he added. "I thank him. The
honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a
whistling voice.
"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely. "I warn you!"
Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment. "And to-day you
compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people,
too. I congratulate you. She would not betray me though lashed with
scorpions."
The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I
think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make. I assume
that you would not accept my word for anything?"
"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone
marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours. Of your resources
outside this cabin I know nothing. You, I take it, know as little of
mine. My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you
and I will follow. We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three
hundred yards. You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging
me your word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps.
I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of
the specified period, to act as you see fit. Is it agreed?"
Smith hesitated. Then:
"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated. Fu-Manchu
smiled his evil smile again.
"Agreed. Shall I lead the way?"
"No!" rapped Smith. "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with
its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,