The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate with the two
Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage. I look to you to
recover these plans, Captain."
"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were
watching the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very
singular one. Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.
Then occurred the extraordinary incident which to this day remains
inexplicable, for, clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice
said:
"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
I turned as though I had been stung. Smith turned also. My eyes
passed from face to face of the group about us. None was familiar. No
one apparently had moved away.
But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference between that
happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must appeal to you who
merely read of it. It is beyond my powers to convey the sense of the
uncanny which the episode created. Yet, even as I think of it, I feel
again, though in lesser degree, the chill which seemed to creep through
my veins that day.
From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked, by
the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--near whom
you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--I am aware
that much must be omitted. I have no space for lengthy examinations of
the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted. This
incident at the docks is but one such point.
Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in the
cellar of the house near Windsor. It has since struck me that it
possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination. Can
it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp? Cannabis
indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow
science. West's experience proved so much.
I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did
so--opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge
of the secret East. Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my
errors. Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is
lost forever. There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its
survival, in part; and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a
scientific sequel to this record of our dealings with the Chinese
doctor.
CHAPTER XXI
TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
to our goal. So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded the
matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past master
of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis; searched
for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct to the task,
but eluding all--triumphant, contemptuous.
One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize. Yet
it was a big and important link.
"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
"'. . . In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night. On board the deck of
a junk passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
"'Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
A boat was put out. But no one was recovered. There are sharks in
these waters. A fairly heavy sea was running.
"'Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards, second class,
booked to Shanghai. I think the name was assumed. The man was some
sort of Oriental, and we had had him under close observation. . . .'"
"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman at the
moment of her departure from Tilbury.
He carefully lighted his pipe.
"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the
day be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
Smith began striding up and down the room.
"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head of our danger
list?"
He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men
intervening between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and
the triumph of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
I glanced at our notes. "Lord Southery," I replied.
Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
"Look," he said shortly. "He's dead."
I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at the long
obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it. He had but recently
returned from the East, and now, after a short illness, had died from
some affection of the heart. There had been no intimation that his
illness was of a serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his
flock--the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
had not suspected that the end was so near.
"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long finger
upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night, but Sir Frank
Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later, unhesitatingly pronounced death
to be due to syncope, and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
I looked at him thoughtfully.
"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must remember
he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu is
responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye of an expert there
would be nothing suspicious to see. Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
"Are you going around?" I asked.
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"I think not," he replied. "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu has
taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work so well
that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
which went out every few minutes.
"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a
coincidence. We must go around and see him."
An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face of
Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day. The
mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction of
the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring two
great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other. But
now it would plan no more.
"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris," explained the
family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal termination so
soon. I was called about two o'clock this morning, and found Lord
Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition. I did all that was
possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for. But shortly before his
arrival the patient expired."
"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery for
angina pectoris?" I said.
"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent with a
death from that cause?"
"Certainly. Do you observe anything unusual yourself? Sir Frank
Narcombe quite agrees with me. There is surely no room for doubt?"
"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
The physician seemed puzzled.
"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the
police?" asked the physician.
"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the
police," answered Smith. "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard
our recent questions as confidential."
As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the
unseen visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers,
Smith paused, detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
The man bowed.
"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
"I was, sir."
"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"
"Nothing, sir."
"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the
street.
"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said; "but there
seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--something peculiar to
houses whose doors bear the invisible death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
"You are right, Smith!" I cried. "I hesitated to mention the matter,
but I, too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the
Doctor's presence. Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory
evidence, I am as sure that he has brought about Lord Southery's death
as if I had seen him strike the blow."
It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless, in our
ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's supernormal genius--that we
lived throughout the ensuing days. My friend began to look like a man
consumed by a burning fever. Yet, we could not act.
In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I stood idly
turning over some of the works exposed for sale outside a second-hand
bookseller's in New Oxford Street. One dealing with the secret
societies of China struck me as being likely to prove instructive, and
I was about to call the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand
clutch my arm.
I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful eyes
of Karamaneh! She--whom I had seen in so many guises--was dressed in a
perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much of her wonderful hair
concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
She glanced about her apprehensively.
"Quick! Come round the corner. I must speak to you," she said, her
musical voice thrilling with excitement.
I never was quite master of myself in her presence. He must have been
a man of ice who could have been, I think, for her beauty had all the
bouquet of rarity; she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a
woman. Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
have risked much to save her from it.
As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
"I am in distress. You have often asked me to enable you to capture
Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."
I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
"Your brother--" I began.
She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
"You are a doctor," she said. "I want you to come and see him now."
"What! Is he in London?"
"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
"And you would have me--"
"Accompany me there, yes."
Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against trusting
my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes. Yet I did
so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling eastward in a
closed cab. Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I turned to her
I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression in which there
was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there was something