The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
"Can't it!" he snapped. "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
evidence like that lying about? It's a thousand to one he has it
already, but there is just a bare chance."
It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded no room for
comment; and so lost in thought did I become that the cab was outside
the house for which I was bound ere I realized that we had quitted the
purlieus of Wapping. Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop
of events which had crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith
from Burma. Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton
Davey, and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
that had killed him. Now, with those remorseless memories jostling in
my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's last victim, and the
shadow of that giant evil seemed to be upon it like a palpable cloud.
Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and
embarrassment in her manner.
"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
respecting Mr. Cadby."
"Oh, sir!" she cried. "Don't tell me that anything has happened to
him!" And divining something of the mission on which I was come, for
such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man: "Oh, the poor,
brave lad!"
Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that
hour, since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and
spoke eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
Poor lad! It was the same when his mother died."
At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such beliefs
are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently composed I
went on to explain what I thought necessary. And now the old lady's
embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow, and presently the truth
came out:
"There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir."
I started. This might mean little or might mean much.
"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until
half-past--and this morning again. She came the third time about an
hour ago, and has been upstairs since."
"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO. And God
knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him; but she is not the
girl I should have liked a son of mine to take up with."
At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be
serious. Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly
significant, for perhaps it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit
followers was watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's
approach! Warning to whom? It was unlikely that I should forget the
dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants. Was that lure of men
even now in the house, completing her evil work?
"I should never have allowed her in his rooms--" began Mrs. Dolan
again. Then there was an interruption.
A soft rustling reached my ears--intimately feminine. The girl was
stealing down!
I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before
me--back up the stairs! Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
to the door.
She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging
silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust. The gaslight
was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide
its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim
the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah. For it was she!
"So I came in time," I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her
jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly, "and
then prepare to accompany me."
She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
"I have taken nothing," she said. Her breast was heaving tumultuously.
"Oh, let me go! Please, let me go!" And impulsively she threw herself
forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into
my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
magic cloud. Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree; it
is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand." Now, in those
pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words. Her clothes or her
hair exhaled a faint perfume. Like all Fu-Manchu's servants, she was
perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties. Her beauty was wholly
intoxicating.
But I thrust her away.
"You have no claim to mercy," I said. "Do not count upon any. What
have you taken from here?"
She grasped the lapels of my coat.
"I will tell you all I can--all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
If you could only understand you would not be so cruel." Her slight
accent added charm to the musical voice. "I am not free, as your
English women are. What I do I must do, for it is the will of my
master, and I am only a slave. Ah, you are not a man if you can give
me to the police. You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to
save you once."
I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my
friend. But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder? And
now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what
have YOU to do with the police? It is not your work to hound a woman
to death. Could you ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you
loved, and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here. Do not
be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and
save me--from HIM." The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath
fanned my cheek. "Have mercy on me."
At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must come
to. After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of
Dr. Fu-Manchu? Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must
necessarily be different from mine. Irreconcilable as the thing may be
with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed
the girl to be a slave. Then there remained that other reason why I
loathed the idea of becoming her captor. It was almost tantamount to
betrayal! Must I soil my hands with such work?
Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
in an abandonment of pleading despair. Then I remembered the fate of
the man in whose room we stood.
"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me. "No, I swear by the holy
name I did not! I did not! I watched him, spied upon him--yes! But,
listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death. I
could not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you. I
have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away. I came twice
and could not find it. There, will you let me go?"
"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."
Her hands dropped and she took a backward step. A new terror was to be
read in her face.
"I dare not! I dare not!"
"Then you would--if you dared?"
She was watching me intently.
"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice
that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at
all which the words implied. She grasped my arm.
"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"
"The authorities--"
"Ah!" Her expression changed. "They can put me on the rack if they
choose, but never one word would I speak--never one little word."
She threw up her head scornfully. Then the proud glance softened again.
"But I will speak for you."
Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no
longer be his slave."
My heart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this
warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt
of. For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her
personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my
judgment seat--had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to
justice. Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary. What should I do?
What COULD I do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in
which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I
stepped across the room until I glanced back. But she had gone!
As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you--yet.
Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I
wished it. Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and
hide me."
Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled cry from
Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her. The front door
opened and closed.
CHAPTER V
"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff
Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.
"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the
Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.
There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't
understand this."
We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of
foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor
Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that
combustion had not been complete.
"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar
went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'
(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out . . . booming
sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . . not for days,
or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make . . . snatch
. . . pigtail . . .'"
"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued
Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of
retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a
hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several
other persons) went up somewhere--presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's,
and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a
booming sound. Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary. We
have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I
feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered
by Fu-Manchu! It is sheer supposition, however. But that Cadby meant
to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise,