The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie, I will
accept your word to adhere to the terms."
"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and
strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of
Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now
gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit, dressed solely
in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife, and
sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes. Never before, I
venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a scene in that place.
"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
The man threw his knife upon the ground.
"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith. "He may have a second concealed."
The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty
garments.
"Now search Fu-Manchu."
This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense of
revulsion from any human being. I shuddered, as though I had touched a
venomous reptile.
Smith threw down his revolver.
"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said. "No one could dispute
my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in
Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my friend's
word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped
just retribution at that moment. Fiend though he was, I admired his
courage; for all this he, too, must have known.
The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back. Nayland Smith's
next move filled me with surprise. For just as, silently, I was
thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar,
and waistcoat.
"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely. "We
have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit. To-night, Petrie, we
literally have to run for our lives."
We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to
owe their survival to their fleetness of foot. At Smith's words I
realized in a flash that such was to be our fate to-night.
I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory. East and west,
then, we had nothing to hope for. To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even
as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the
weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered--was
answered again.
"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits. Hopeless."
"Take the revolver," I cried. "Smith, it's--"
"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth. "A servant of the Crown in
the East makes his motto: 'Keep your word, though it break your neck!'
I don't think we need fear it being used against us. Fu-Manchu avoids
noisy methods."
So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come. It
was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--and
another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
was practically nil.
At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
decide our fate. The professional murderers who pursued us ran like
panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell upon those
yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives. For a long time
neither of us looked back.
On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
Should I, too, look back? Yes. It was impossible to resist the horrid
fascination.
I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
And never while I live shall I forget what I saw. Two of the pursuing
dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or fellows), and were actually
within three hundred yards of us.
More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent
forward, with their faces curiously uptilted. The brilliant moonlight
gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even
in that quick, agonized glance, and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped
knives.
"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith. "We must make an attempt to
break into the empty cottage. Only chance."
I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
cannot speak. But I am confident that the next half-mile was done in
time that would not have disgraced a crack man. Not once again did
either of us look back. Yard upon yard we raced forward together. My
heart seemed to be bursting. My leg muscles throbbed with pain. At
last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles. Once I
stumbled.
"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
But I recovered myself. Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and
panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard put to
it by the killing pace we had made.
"Smith," I whispered, "look in front. Someone!"
As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the
shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again. It could only be
another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly
whispered words, crashed open the gate and hurled himself blindly at
the door.
It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
into the interior darkness. Flat upon the floor he lay, for as, with a
last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost
fell over his recumbent body.
Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open. I kicked the
foot away, and banged the door to. As I turned, the leading dacoit,
his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon
leaped wildly through the gateway.
That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
accident my weak hands found the bolt. With the last ounce of strength
spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--as a full six inches
of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.
I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
Weakly he grasped my hand. "My fault. I shouldn't have let you come."
From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long
tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report. And the yellow
face at the window was blotted out.
One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his
account.
A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken
window.
Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the
reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered. In
the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles
pattering upon the path outside stole to me. Two runners, I thought
there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail. The
room was full of pungent smoke. I staggered to my feet as the gray
figure with the revolver turned towards me. Something familiar there
was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought
so.
It was my gray rain-coat.
"Karamaneh," I whispered.
And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which
sounded like "God bless her!"
The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that
quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
"I followed you," she said. "Did you not know I should follow you?
But I had to hide because of another who was following also. I had but
just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
She broke off and turned to Smith.
"This is your pistol," she said naively. "I found it in your bag.
Will you please take it!"
He took it without a word. Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
"Now go. Hurry!" she said. "You are not safe yet."
"But you?" I asked.
"You have failed," she replied. "I must go back to him. There is no
other way."
Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous escape
from death, I opened the door. Coatless, disheveled figures, my friend
and I stepped out into the moonlight.
Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes
upcast to the peace of the blue heavens. Karamaneh had shot to kill,
for both had bullets in their brains. If God ever planned a more
complex nature than hers--a nature more tumultuous with conflicting
passions, I cannot conceive of it. Yet her beauty was of the sweetest;
and in some respects she had the heart of a child--this girl who could
shoot so straight.
"We must send the police to-night," said Smith. "Or the papers--"
"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness of the
cottage.
It was a singular situation. My very soul rebelled against it. But
what could we do?
"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
"Hurry. I shall be suspected. Do you want him to kill me!"
We moved away. All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
faintly ahead. Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.
CHAPTER XVIII
TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once
useless and thankless. In its actual and in its dramatic significance
it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh. And in that parting I
learned what Shakespeare meant by "Sweet Sorrow."
There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood, a
world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected. Not the
least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was the mystery
of the heart of Karamaneh. I sought to forget her. I sought to
remember her. Indeed, in the latter task I found one more congenial,
yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one
that led me to a precipice.
East and West may not intermingle. As a student of world-policies, as
a physician, I admitted, could not deny, that truth. Again, if
Karamaneh were to be credited, she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had
fallen into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the
slave-drivers; had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to
have passed.
But if it were so?
At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes in
a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
persistently haunted my mind. But, always, my heart had an answer.
And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family
practice!--who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself
past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute sway
and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--no
place--are excluded!
But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist
sympathy for the recorder. The topic upon which, here, I have ventured
to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I cannot hope that it holds
equal charm for any other. Let us return to that which it is my duty
to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.
It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned, since