The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated. But I knew
that he was as fit as ever.
"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said. "She
and her brother were for some time in the household of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies, was a slave."
Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely veiled
distrust. "You don't look as though you had come from China, miss," he
said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh. "My father was a pure
Bedawee. But my history does not matter." (At times there was
something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent added
force.) "When your brave brother, Inspector Weymouth, and Dr.
Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned
needle in his hand. The laughter meant that the needle had done its
work. Your brother had become mad!"
Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion. "What was on the needle?"
he asked huskily.
"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp
adder," she answered. "It produces madness, but not always death."
"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in
complete possession of his senses. At the time of the encounter we
must have been some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was
impenetrable."
"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies have
been recovered?"
"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point are
not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."
There was a faint sound from the room above. The news of that tragic
happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated poor Mrs.
Weymouth.
"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She
doesn't know about--the poisoned needle. What kind of fiend was this
Dr. Fu-Manchu?" He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.
"John never told me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the
papers. What was he? Who was he?"
Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many
generations. He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he
willed, could have revolutionized science. There is a superstition in
some parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar
conditions (one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an
evil spirit of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born
infant. All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the
genealogy of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help
me in this. But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a
certain very old Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I
have mentioned prevailed at his birth!"
Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly, and quite
mirthlessly.
"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked. "I suppose my labors are finished; but
I am far from triumphant. Is there any improvement in Mrs. Weymouth's
condition?"
"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious state
since the news came. No one had any idea she would take it so. At one
time we were afraid her brain was going. She seemed to have delusions."
Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.
The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since--it happened;
and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at the
same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door."
"What door?"
"That door yonder--the street door."
All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued
Weymouth; "so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
and she was wide awake at half-past two."
"Well?"
Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
"She heard it, too!"
The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room; but I will
confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily. Karamaneh laid her
hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion peculiarly her own. Her
hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me. For Karamaneh was not a
child, but a rarely beautiful girl--a pearl of the East such as many a
monarch has fought for.
"What then?" asked Smith.
"She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!"
My friend turned and stared hard at me.
"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"
"In all probability," I replied. "You should arrange that your wife be
relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth. It is too great a strain
for an inexperienced nurse."
CHAPTER XXVIII
OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how little had
we accomplished. Excepting Karamaneh and her brother (who were victims
and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's) not one of the formidable
group had fallen alive into our hands. Dreadful crimes had marked
Fu-Manchu's passage through the land. Not one-half of the truth (and
nothing of the later developments) had been made public. Nayland
Smith's authority was sufficient to control the press.
In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly
evil--existed in our midst.
Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great
waterway. There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames
had claimed him, who so long had used the stream as a highway for the
passage to and fro for his secret forces. Gone now were the yellow men
who had been the instruments of his evil will; gone was the giant
intellect which had controlled the complex murder machine. Karamaneh,
whose beauty he had used as a lure, at last was free, and no more with
her smile would tempt men to death--that her brother might live.
Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with
horror. I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite
differently. No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.
Many, having looked into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I
found, must have forgiven her almost any crime.
That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder. Her
nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude not
condonable in a European equally cultured.
But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
in some respects. The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my
short-sighted Western eyes. But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite;
her beauty of a kind that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies
of Eastern poets. Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its
appeal; her lips, even in repose, were a taunt. And, herein, East is
West and West is East.
Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful
self-possession of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected
girl--in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself to
Egypt. The boat sailed in three days. But Karamaneh's beautiful eyes
were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes. Shall I endeavor
to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions? It would be
useless, since I know it to be impossible. For in those dark eyes
burned a fire I might not see; those silken lashes veiled a message I
dared not read.
Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance
who, having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy of
unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety; and I took a
gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely companion everywhere
excited. I learned, in those days, how rare a thing in nature is a
really beautiful woman.
One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water colors in
Bond Street. Karamaneh was intensely interested in the subjects of the
drawings--which were entirely Egyptian. As usual, she furnished matter
for comment amongst the other visitors, as did the boy, Aziz, her
brother, anew upon the world from his living grave in the house of Dr.
Fu-Manchu.
Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in
Arabic. I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and
wild-eyed--the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
She turned to me.
"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
"Where?"
Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
from the picture which he was examining.
"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about
her. "Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely
afraid. Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
She held my arm tightly. Her brother was searching the room with big,
velvet black eyes. I studied the faces of the several visitors; and
Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
nervously at the lobe of his ear. The name of the giant foe of the
white race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme
intensity.
Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been that
of the Chinese doctor. Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape, with
the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait, which I can
only liken to that of an awkward cat?
Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I
saw Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer
room. Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness coat
and a rather shabby silk hat. He had long white hair and a patriarchal
beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly, leaning upon a stick.
Smith's gaunt face paled. With a rapid glance at Karamaneh, he made
off across the room.
Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's
iron grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the
Thames. Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last
victim. Nor had we left any stone unturned. Acting upon information
furnished by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of
the murder group. But everything pointed to the fact that the group
was disbanded and dispersed; that the lord of strange deaths who had
ruled it was no more.
Yet Smith was not satisfied. Neither, let me confess, was I. Every
port was watched; and in suspected districts a kind of house-to-house
patrol had been instituted. Unknown to the great public, in those days
a secret war waged--a war in which all the available forces of the
authorities took the field against one man! But that one man was the
evil of the East incarnate.
When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
at the door. He turned to me.
"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said. "The sergeant, here, knows
him well."
The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
although I had never before set eyes upon him.
"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir," stated the
commissionaire. "I often used to see him. But he's an eccentric old
gentleman. Seems to live in a world of his own. He's recently back
from China, I think."