The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness. "Port! Port!"
Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us we
were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward; though of this
I was unable to judge at the time.
On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells. Once, a black,
towering shape dropped down upon us. Far above, lights blazed, bells
rang, vague cries pierced the fog. The launch pitched and rolled
perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had
concluded this episode. It was such a journey as I had taken once
before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril; but
this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly in
Fu-Manchu's power.
A voice mumbled in my ear. I turned my bound-up face; and Inspector
Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly slipped the bandage
from his mouth.
"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars," he
whispered. "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife and
freed my ankles--"
Smith had kicked him with his bound feet. The detective slipped the
bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again. Dr.
Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft. He was
dragging Karamaneh by the wrists. He seated himself on the cushions
near to us, pulling the girl down beside him. Now, I could see her
face--and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe.
Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible in the
dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in
China. You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry. Mr. Smith, I
fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you to
have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant. Where
your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."
He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him in pitiful,
abject terror.
"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged with a
rare culture. It is the link between the bacilli and the fungi. You
have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach and pearl which
render my Karamaneh so delightful, in the supple grace of her movements
and the sparkle of her eyes. You can never devote your whole mind to
those studies which I have planned for you whilst such distractions
exist. A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"
Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the
deck--and lay still. I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture,
and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down
together.
Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat; with his left
he grasped the Chinaman's right. It held the needle.
Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far as
it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--the
half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
the cellars. The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--with
so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone broke
the eerie stillness.
By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth. His
clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand with
its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent. He had
been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place. His powers of
physical endurance must have been truly marvelous. His breath was
whistling through his nostrils significantly, but Weymouth was palpably
tiring.
The latter suddenly changed his tactics. By a supreme effort, to which
he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity of the needle, he
raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--and pitched him sideways.
The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped, a
writhing mass, upon the port cushions. The launch heeled over, and my
cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage. For, as
Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--fell back--and,
bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
The mist swallowed them up.
There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was one of them. A
chaos ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward,
glanced back. Then the course of the launch was changed. How long
intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle and the
time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot pretend to
state.
With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued, and I
clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--which was
the last I saw of him.
Water began to wash aboard.
Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that bound
me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I began to
accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death from drowning,
within six feet of the bank.
Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting. I think his
object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her. Where he
failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded. A silent prayer
of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her stir--when I saw
her raise her hands to her head--and saw the big, horror-bright eyes
gleam through the mist veil.
CHAPTER XXVII
WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern
settled down into the river. Where the mud-bank upon which we found
ourselves was situated we had no idea. But at least it was terra firma
and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Smith stood looking out towards the river.
"My God!" he groaned. "My God!"
He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was
eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in
charge, and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny
howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for
weeks--"
Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and
I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant
strength.
Smith swallowed noisily.
"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said. "I would
sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a
grappling-iron!"
We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so
nearly as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last
gallant fight. Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the
night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise,
it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us
back in coward retreat.
But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the
stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had matter to
relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother. A
brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
they should be lodged at a hotel.
"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
"to have the place patrolled night and day."
"You cannot suppose--"
"Petrie! I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my
own eyes I have seen him so!"
Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother
away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting. I will not dwell
upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be accused of
accumulating horror for horror's sake. Members of the fire brigade,
helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the victims wrapped
in their living shrouds. . . .
From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
"What am I? Does my poor history matter--to anyone?" was her answer to
questions respecting herself.
And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
numbered seven, we learned. As you, having followed me thus far, will
be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans. Probably only one
now remained in England. They had lived in a camp in the grounds of
the house near Windsor (which, as we had learned at the time of its
destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his
highway.
Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of
the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters. He had employed the
hulk from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a
private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative. She had
never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it, and
could give us no information respecting its character. It had sailed
for China.
"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"
"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."
"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger
boat?"
"I cannot say what were his plans."
In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we
passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us of our
fellow-worker.
Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
visited it. I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very
unreal."
"I wish to God it had been!"
"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth. But your brother made a gallant finish.
If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his
credit, his life had been well spent."
James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence. Though but four
and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint little cottage, with
its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the
village street before motor 'buses were, was a spot as peaceful and
secluded as any in broad England. But another shadow lay upon it
to-day--chilling, fearful. An incarnate evil had come out of the dim
East and in its dying malevolence had touched this home.
"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued
Weymouth. "What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the
river police heard in the fog? And where are the bodies?"
Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words. Smith, whose
restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in his aimless
wanderings about the room and looked at her.
In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of the
unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more lean and
nervous-looking than I had ever known him. His long residence in Burma
had rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a
coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his