"What does it mean?" said Nayland Smith wearily, looking at me through
the haze of tobacco smoke which lay between us. "A well-known man like
Sir Baldwin Frazer is decoyed away—undoubtedly by the woman Zarmi;
and up to the present moment not so much as a trace of him can be
found. It is mortifying to think that with all the facilities of New
Scotland Yard at our disposal we cannot trace that damnable cab! We
cannot find the headquarters of the group—we cannot
move!
To sit
here inactive whilst Sir Baldwin Frazer—God knows for what purpose!—
is perhaps being smuggled out of the country, is maddening—maddening!"
Then, glancing quickly across to me: "To think ..."
I rose from my chair, head averted. A tragedy had befallen me which
completely overshadowed all other affairs, great and small. Indeed,
its poignancy was not yet come to its most acute stage; the news was
too recent for that. It had numbed my mind; dulled the pulsing life
within me.
The s.s.
Nicobar
, of the Oriental Navigation Line, had arrived at
Tilbury at the scheduled time. My heart leaping joyously in my bosom,
I had hurried on board to meet Kâramaneh....
I have sustained some cruel blows in my life; but I can state with
candor that this which now befell me was by far the greatest and the
most crushing I had ever been called upon to bear; a calamity dwarfing
all others which I could imagine.
She had left the ship at Southampton—and had vanished completely.
"Poor old Petrie," said Smith, and clapped his hands upon my shoulders
in his impulsive sympathetic way. "Don't give up hope! We are not
going to be beaten!"
"Smith," I interrupted bitterly, "what chance have we? what chance
have we? We know no more than a child unborn where these people have
their hiding-place, and we haven't a shadow of a clue to guide us to it."
His hands resting upon my shoulders and his gray eyes looking
straightly into mine.
"I can only repeat, old man," said my friend, "don't abandon hope. I
must leave you for an hour or so, and, when I return, possibly I may
have some news."
For long enough after Smith's departure I sat there, companioned only
by wretched reflections; then, further inaction seemed impossible; to
move, to be up and doing, to be seeking, questing, became an
imperative necessity. Muffled in a heavy traveling coat I went out
into the wet and dismal night, having no other plan in mind than that
of walking on through the rain-swept streets, on and always on, in an
attempt, vain enough, to escape from the deadly thoughts that pursued
me.
Without having the slightest idea that I had done so, I must have
walked along the Strand, crossed Trafalgar Square, proceeded up the
Haymarket to Piccadilly Circus, and commenced to trudge along at the
Oriental rugs displayed in Messrs. Liberty's window, when an incident
aroused me from the apathy of sorrow in which I was sunken.
"Tell the cab feller to drive to the north side of Wandsworth Common,"
said a woman's voice—a voice speaking in broken English, a voice
which electrified me, had me alert and watchful in a moment.
I turned, as the speaker, entering a taxi-cab that was drawn up by the
pavement, gave these directions to the door-porter, who with open
umbrella was in attendance. Just one glimpse I had of her as she
stepped into the cab, but it was sufficient. Indeed, the voice had
been sufficient; but that sinuous shape and that lithe swaying movement
of the hips removed all doubt.
It was Zarmi!
As the cab moved off I ran out into the middle of the road, where
there was a rank, and sprang into the first taxi waiting there.
"Follow the cab ahead!" I cried to the man, my voice quivering with
excitement. "Look! you can see the number! There can be no mistake. But
don't lose it for your life! It's worth a sovereign to you!"
The man, warming to my mood, cranked his engine rapidly and sprang to
the wheel. I was wild with excitement now, and fearful lest the cab
ahead should have disappeared; but fortune seemingly was with me for
once, and I was not twenty yards behind when Zarmi's cab turned the
first corner ahead. Through the gloomy street, which appeared to be
populated solely by streaming umbrellas, we went. I could scarcely
keep my seat; every nerve in my body seemed to be dancing—twitching.
Eternally I was peering ahead; and when, leaving the well-lighted West
End thoroughfares, we came to the comparatively gloomy streets of the
suburbs, a hundred times I thought we had lost the track. But always
in the pool of light cast by some friendly lamp, I would see the
quarry again speeding on before us.
At a lonely spot bordering the common the vehicle which contained
Zarmi stopped. I snatched up the speaking-tube.
"Drive on," I cried, "and pull up somewhere beyond! Not too far!"
The man obeyed, and presently I found myself standing in what was now
become a steady downpour, looking back at the headlights of the other
cab. I gave the driver his promised reward.
"Wait for ten minutes," I directed; "then if I have not returned, you
need wait no longer."
I strode along the muddy, unpaved path, to the spot where the cab, now
discharged, was being slowly backed away into the road. The figure of
Zarmi, unmistakable by reason of the lithe carriage, was crossing in
the direction of a path which seemingly led across the common. I
followed at a discreet distance. Realizing the tremendous potentialities
of this rencontre I seemed to rise to the occasion; my brain became
alert and clear; every faculty was at its brightest. And I felt
serenely confident of my ability to make the most of the situation.
Zarmi went on and on along the lonely path. Not another pedestrian was
in sight, and the rain walled in the pair of us. Where comfort-loving
humanity sought shelter from the inclement weather, we two moved out
there in the storm, linked by a common enmity.
I have said that my every faculty was keen, and have spoken of my
confidence in my own alertness. My condition, as a matter of fact,
must have been otherwise, and this belief in my powers merely
symptomatic of the fever which consumed me; for, as I was to learn,
I had failed to take the first elementary precaution necessary in
such case. I, who tracked another, had not counted upon being tracked
myself! ...
A bag or sack, reeking of some sickly perfume, was dropped silently,
accurately, over my head from behind; it was drawn closely about my
throat. One muffled shriek, strangely compound of fear and execration,
I uttered. I was stifling, choking ... I staggered—and fell....
My next impression was of a splitting headache, which, as memory
remounted its throne, brought up a train of recollections. I found
myself to be seated upon a heavy wooden bench set flat against a wall,
which was covered with a kind of straw matting. My hands were firmly
tied behind me. In the first agony of that reawakening I became aware
of two things.
I was in an operating-room, for the most conspicuous item of its
furniture was an operating-table! Shaded lamps were suspended above
it; and instruments, antiseptics, dressings, etc., were arranged upon
a glass-topped table beside it. Secondly, I had a companion.
Seated upon a similar bench on the other side of the room, was a
heavily built man, his dark hair splashed with gray, as were his
short, neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He, too, was pinioned; and
he stared across the table with a glare in which a sort of stupefied
wonderment predominated, but which was not free from terror.
It was Sir Baldwin Frazer!
"Sir Baldwin!" I muttered, moistening my parched lips with my tongue—
"Sir Baldwin!—how—"
"It is Dr. Petrie, is it not?" he said, his voice husky with emotion.
"Dr. Petrie!—my dear sir, in mercy tell me—what does this mean? I
have been kidnaped—drugged; made the victim of an inconceivable
outrage at the very door of my own house...."
I stood up unsteadily.
"Sir Baldwin," I interrupted, "you ask me what it means. It means that
we are in the hands of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
Sir Baldwin stared at me wildly; his face was white and drawn with
anxiety.
"Dr. Fu-Manchu!" he said; "but my dear sir, this name conveys nothing
to me—nothing!" His manner momentarily was growing more distrait.
"Since my captivity began I have been given the use of a singular
suite of rooms in this place, and received, I must confess, every
possible attention. I have been waited upon by the she-devil who
lured me here, but not one word other than a species of coarse
badinage has she spoken to me. At times I have been tempted to
believe that the fate which frequently befalls the specialist had
befallen me? You understand?"
"I quite understand," I replied dully. "There have been times in the
past when I, too, have doubted my sanity in my dealings with the group
who now hold us in their power."
"But," reiterated the other, his voice rising higher and higher,
"what does it mean, my dear sir? It is incredible—fantastic! Even
now I find it difficult to disabuse my mind of that old, haunting
idea."
"Disabuse it at once, Sir Baldwin," I said bitterly. "The facts are
as you see them; the explanation, at any rate in your own case, is
quite beyond me. I was tracked ..."
"Hush! some one is coming!"
We both turned and stared at an opening before which hung a sort of
gaudily embroidered mat, as the sound of dragging footsteps,
accompanied by a heavy tapping, announced the approach of
some one
.
The mat was pulled aside by Zarmi. She turned her head, flashing
around the apartment a glance of her black eyes, then held the
drapery aside to admit the entrance of another....
Supporting himself by the aid of two heavy walking sticks and
painfully dragging his gaunt frame along,
Dr. Fu-Manchu entered!
I think I have never experienced in my life a sensation identical to
that which now possessed me. Although Nayland Smith had declared that
Fu-Manchu was alive, yet I would have sworn upon oath before any
jury summonable that he was dead; for with my own eyes I had seen
the bullet enter his skull. Now, whilst I crouched against the
matting-covered wall, teeth tightly clenched and my very hair
quivering upon my scalp, he dragged himself laboriously across the
room, the sticks going
tap—tap—tap
upon the floor, and the tall
body, enveloped in a yellow robe, bent grotesquely, gruesomely, with
every effort which he made. He wore a surgical bandage about his
skull and its presence seemed to accentuate the height of the great
domelike brow, to throw into more evil prominence the wonderful,
Satanic countenance of the man. His filmed eyes turning to right and
left, he dragged himself to a wooden chair that stood beside the
operating-table and sank down upon it, breathing sibilantly,
exhaustedly.
Zarmi dropped the curtain and stood before it. She had discarded the
dripping overall which she had been wearing when I had followed her
across the common, and now stood before me with her black, frizzy
hair unconfined and her beautiful, wicked face uplifted in a sort of
cynical triumph. The big gold rings in her ears glittered strangely
in the light of the electric lamps. She wore a garment which looked
like a silken shawl wrapped about her in a wildly picturesque
fashion, and, her hands upon her hips, leant back against the curtain
glancing defiantly from Sir Baldwin to myself.
Those moments of silence which followed the entrance of the Chinese
Doctor live in my memory and must live there for ever. Only the
labored breathing of Fu-Manchu disturbed the stillness of the place.
Not a sound penetrated to the room, no one uttered a word; then—
"Sir Baldwin Frazer." began Fu-Manchu in that indescribable voice,
alternating between the sibilant and the guttural, "you were promised
a certain fee for your services by my servant who summoned you. It
shall be paid and the gift of my personal gratitude be added to it."
He turned himself with difficulty to address Sir Baldwin; and it
became apparent to me that he was almost completely paralyzed down
one side of his body. Some little use he could make of his hand and
arm, for he still clutched the heavy carven stick, but the right side
of his face was completely immobile; and rarely had I seen anything
more ghastly than the effect produced upon that wonderful, Satanic
countenance. The mouth, from the center of the thin lips, opened only
to the left, as he spoke; in a word, seen in profile from where I sat,
or rather crouched, it was the face of a dead man.
Sir Baldwin Frazer uttered no word, but, crouching upon the bench
even as I crouched, stared—horror written upon every lineament—at
Dr. Fu-Manchu. The latter continued:—
"Your experience, Sir Baldwin, will enable you readily to diagnose my
symptoms. Owing to the passage of a bullet along a portion of the
third left frontal into the postero-parietal convolution—upon which,
from its lodgment in the skull, it continues to press—hemiplegia of
the right side has supervened. Aphasia is present also...."
The effort of speech was ghastly. Beads of perspiration dewed
Fu-Manchu's brow, and I marveled at the iron will of the man, whereby
alone he forced his half-numbed brain to perform its function. He
seemed to select his words elaborately and by this monstrous effort
of will to compel his partially paralyzed tongue to utter them. Some
of the syllables were slurred; but nevertheless distinguishable. It
was a demonstration of sheer
Force
unlike any I had witnessed, and
it impressed me unforgettably.
"The removal of this injurious particle," he continued, "would be an
operation which I myself could undertake to perform successfully upon
another. It is a matter of some delicacy as you, Sir Baldwin, and"—
slowly, horribly, turning the half-dead and half-living head towards
me—"you, Dr. Petrie, will appreciate. In the event of clumsy surgery,
death may supervene; failing this, permanent hemiplegia—or"—the
film lifted from the green eyes, and for a moment they flickered with
transient horror—"idiocy! Any one of three of my pupils whom I might
name could perform this operation with ease, but their services are
not available. Only one English surgeon occurred to me in this
connection, and you, Sir Baldwin"—again he slowly turned his head—
"were he. Dr. Petrie will act as anaesthetist, and, your duties
completed, you shall return to your home richer by the amount
stipulated. I have suitably prepared myself for the operation, and I
can assure you of the soundness of my heart. I may advise you, Dr.
Petrie"—again turning to me—"that my constitution is inured to the
use of opium. You will make due allowance for this. Mr. Li-King-Su,
a graduate of Canton, will act as dresser."