He turned laboriously to Zarmi. She clapped her hands and held the
curtain aside. A perfectly immobile Chinaman, whose age I was unable
to guess, and who wore a white overall, entered, bowed composedly to
Frazer and myself and began in a matter-of-fact way to prepare the
dressings.
"Sir Baldwin Frazer," said Fu-Manchu, interrupting a wild outburst
from the former, "your refusal is dictated by insufficient knowledge
of your surroundings. You find yourself in a place strange to you, a
place to which no clue can lead your friends; in the absolute power
of a man—myself—who knows no law other than his own and that of
those associated with him. Virtually, Sir Baldwin, you stand in
China; and in China we know how to
exact
obedience. You will not
refuse, for Dr. Petrie will tell you something of my
wire-jackets
and my
files
...."
I saw Sir Baldwin Frazer blanch. He could not know what I knew of the
significance of those words—"my wire-jackets, my files"—but perhaps
something of my own horror communicated itself to him.
"You will not
refuse
" continued Fu-Manchu softly; "my only fear for
you is that the operation my prove unsuccessful! In that event not
even my own great clemency could save you, for by virtue of your
failure I should be powerless to intervene." He paused for some
moments, staring directly at the surgeon. "There are those within
sound of my voice," he added sibilantly, "who would flay you alive in
the lamentable event of your failure, who would cast your flayed
body"—he paused, waving one quivering fist above his head, "to the
rats—to the rats!"
Sir Baldwin's forehead was bathed in perspiration now. It was an
incredible and a gruesome situation, a nightmare become reality. But,
whatever my own case, I could see that Sir Baldwin Frazer was
convinced, I could see that his consent would no longer be withheld.
"You, my dear friend," said Fu-Manchu, turning to me and resuming his
studied and painful composure of manner, "will also consent...."
Within my heart of hearts I could not doubt him; I knew that my
courage was not of a quality high enough to sustain the frightful
ordeals summoned up before my imagination by those words—"my files,
my wire-jackets!"
"In the event, however, of any little obstinancy," he added,
"another will plead with you."
A chill like that of death descended upon me—as, for the second
time, Zarmi clapped her hands, pulled the curtain aside ... and
Kâramaneh was thrust into the room!
There comes a blank in my recollections. Long after Kâramaneh had
been plucked out again by the two muscular brown hands which clutched
her shoulders from the darkness beyond the doorway, I seemed to see
her standing there, in her close-fitting traveling dress. Her hair
was unbound, disheveled, her lovely face pale to the lips—and her
eyes, her glorious, terror-bright eyes, looked fully into mine....
Not a word did she utter, and I was stricken dumb as one who has
plucked the Flower of Silence. Only those wondrous eyes seemed to
look into my soul, searing, consuming me.
Fu-Manchu had been speaking for some time ere my brain began again
to record his words.
"—and this magnanimity," came dully to my ears, "extends to you,
Dr. Petrie, because of my esteem. I have little cause to love
Kâramaneh"—his voice quivered furiously—"but she can yet be of
use to me, and I would not harm a hair of her beautiful head—except
in the event of your obstinacy. Shall we then determine your
immediate future upon the turn of a card, as the gamester within me,
within every one of my race, suggests?
"Yes, yes!" came hoarsely.
I fought mentally to restore myself to a full knowledge of what was
happening, and I realized that the last words had come from the lips
of Sir Baldwin Frazer.
"Dr. Petrie," Frazer said, still in the same hoarse and unnatural
voice, "what else can we do? At least take the chance of recovering
your freedom, for how otherwise can you hope to serve—your friend...."
"God knows!" I said dully; "do as you wish"—and cared not to what I
had agreed.
Plunging his hand beneath his white overall, the Chinaman who had been
referred to as Li-King-Su calmly produced a pack of cards,
unemotionally shuffled them and extended the pack to me.
I shook my head grimly, for my hands were tied. Picking up a lancet
from the table, the Chinaman cut the cords which bound me, and again
extended the pack. I took a card and laid it on my knee without even
glancing at it. Fu-Manchu, with his left hand, in turn selected a
card, looked at it and then turned its face towards me.
"It would seem, Dr. Petrie," he said calmly, "that you are fated to
remain here as my guest. You will have the felicity of residing
beneath the same roof with Kâramaneh."
The card was the Knave of Diamonds.
Conscious of a sudden excitement, I snatched up the card from my
knee. It was the Queen of Hearts! For a moment I tasted exultation,
then I tossed it upon the floor. I was not fool enough to suppose
that the Chinese Doctor would pay his debt of honor and release me.
"Your star above mine," said Fu-Manchu, his calm unruffled. "I place
myself in your hands, Sir Baldwin."
Assisted by his unemotional compatriot, Fu-Manchu discarded the
yellow robe, revealing himself in a white singlet in all his gaunt
ugliness, and extended his frame upon the operating-table.
Li-King-Su ignited the large lamp over the head of the table, and
from his case took out a trephine.
"Other points for your guidance from my own considerable store of
experience"—Fu-Manchu was speaking—"are written out clearly in the
notebook which lies upon the table...."
His voice, now, was toneless, emotionless, as though his part in the
critical operation about to be performed were that of a spectator. No
trace of nervousness, of fear, could I discern; his pulse was
practically normal.
How I shuddered as I touched his yellow skin! how my very soul rose
up in revolt! ...
"There is the bullet!—quick! ... Steady, Petrie!"
Sir Baldwin Frazer, keen, cool, deft, was metamorphosed, was the
enthusiastic, brilliant surgeon whom I knew and revered, and another
than the nerveless captive who, but a few minutes ago, had stared,
panic-stricken, at Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Although I had met him once or twice professionally, I had never
hitherto seen him operate; and his method was little short of
miraculous. It was stimulating, inspiring. With unerring touch he
whittled madness, death, from the very throne of reason, of life.
Now was the crucial moment of his task ... and, with its coming, every
light in the room suddenly failed—went out!
"My God!" whispered Frazer, in the darkness, "quick! quick! lights!
a match!—a candle!—something, anything!"
There came a faint click, and a beam of white light was directed,
steadily, upon the patient's skull. Li-King-Su—unmoved—held an
electric torch in his hand!
Frazer and I set to work, in a fierce battle to fend off Death, who
already outstretched his pinions over the insensible man—to fend off
Death from the arch-murderer, the enemy of the white races, who lay
there at our mercy! ...
"It seems you want a pick-me-up!" said Zarmi. Sir Baldwin Frazer
collapsed into the cane arm-chair. Only a matting curtain separated us
from the room wherein he had successfully performed perhaps the most
wonderful operation of his career.
"I could not have lasted out another thirty seconds, Petrie!" he
whispered. "The events which led up to it had exhausted my nerves and
I had no reserve to call upon. If that last ..."
He broke off, the sentence uncompleted, and eagerly seized the tumbler
containing brandy and soda, which the beautiful, wicked-eyed Eurasian
passed to him. She turned, and prepared a drink for me, with the
insolent
insouciance
which had never deserted her.
I emptied the tumbler at a draught.
Even as I set the glass down I realized, too late, that it was the
first drink I had ever permitted to pass my lips within an abode of
Dr. Fu-Manchu....
I started to my feet.
"Frazer!" I muttered—"we've been drugged! we ..."
"You sit down," came Zarmi's husky voice, and I felt her hands upon
my breast, pushing me back into my seat. "You very tired ... you go
to sleep...."
"Petrie! Dr. Petrie!"
The words broke in through the curtain of unconsciousness. I strove
to arouse myself. I felt cold and wet. I opened my eyes—and the world
seemed to be swimming dizzily about me. Then a hand grasped my arm,
roughly.
"Brace up! Brace up, Petrie—and thank God you are alive! ..."
I was sitting beside Sir Baldwin Frazer on a wooden bench, under a
leafless tree, from the ghostly limbs whereof rain trickled down upon
me! In the gray light, which, I thought, must be the light of dawn,
I discerned other trees about us and an open expanse, tree-dotted,
stretching into the misty grayness.
"Where are we?" I muttered—"where ..."
"Unless I am greatly mistaken," replied my bedraggled companion, "and
I don't think I am, for I attended a consultation in this neighborhood
less than a week ago, we somewhere on the west side of Wandsworth
Common!"
He ceased speaking; then uttered a suppressed cry. There came a
jangling of coins, and dimly I saw him to be staring at a canvas bag
of money which he held.
"Merciful heavens!" he said, "am I mad—or did I
really
perform that
operation? And can this be my fee? ..."
I laughed loudly, wildly, plunging my wet, cold hands into the pockets
of my rain-soaked overcoat. In one of them, my fingers came in contact
with a piece of cardboard. It had an unfamiliar feel, and I pulled it
out, peering at it in the dim light.
"Well, I'm damned!" muttered Frazer—"then I'm not mad, after all!"
It was the Queen of Hearts!
Fully two weeks elapsed ere Nayland Smith's arduous labors at last met
with a slight reward. For a moment, the curtain of mystery surrounding
the Si-Fan was lifted, and we had a glimpse of that organization's
elaborate mechanism. I cannot better commence my relation of the
episodes associated with the Zagazig's cryptogram than from the moment
when I found myself bending over a prostrate form extended upon the
table in the Inspector's room at the River Police Depôt. It was that
of a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop
suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body.
His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face,
although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death
another and more dreadful expression.
Asphyxiation had accounted for his end beyond doubt, but there were
marks about his throat of clutching fingers, his tongue protruded,
and the look in the dead eyes was appalling.
"He was amongst the piles upholding the old wharf at the back of the
Joy-Shop?" said Smith tersely, turning to the police officer in charge.
"Exactly" was the reply. "The in-coming tide had jammed him right up
under a cross-beam."
"What time was that?'
"Well, at high tide last night. Hewson, returning with the ten o'clock
boat, noticed the moonlight glittering upon the knife."
The knife to which the Inspector referred possessed a long curved
blade of a kind with which I had become terribly familiar in the past.
The dead man still clutched the hilt of the weapon in his right hand,
and it now lay with the blade resting crosswise upon his breast. I
stared in a fascinated way at this mysterious and tragic flotsam of
old Thames.
Glancing up, I found Nayland Smith's gray eyes watching me.
"You see the mark, Petrie?" he snapped.
I nodded. The dead man upon the table was a Burmese dacoit!
"What do you make of it?" I said slowly.
"At the moment," replied Smith, "I scarcely know what to make of it.
You are agreed with the divisional surgeon that the man—unquestionably
a dacoit—died, not from drowning, but from strangulation. From
evidence we have heard, it would appear that the encounter which
resulted in the body being hurled in the river, actually took place
upon the wharf-end beneath which he was found. And we know that a place
formerly used by the Si-Fan group—in other words, by Dr. Fu-Manchu—
adjoins the wharf. I am tempted to believe that this"—he nodded
towards the ghastly and sinister object upon the table—"was a servant
of the Chinese Doctor. In other words, we see before us one whom
Fu-Manchu has rebuked for some shortcoming."
I shuddered coldly. Familiar as I should have been with the methods of
the dread Chinaman, with his callous disregard of human suffering, of
human life, of human law, I could not reconcile my ideas—the ideas
of a modern, ordinary middle-class practitioner—with these Far Eastern
devilries which were taking place in London.
Even now I sometimes found myself doubting the reality of the whole
thing; found myself reviewing the history of the Eastern doctor and
of the horrible group of murderers surrounding him, with an incredulity
almost unbelievable in one who had been actually in contact not only
with the servants of the Chinaman, but with the sinister Fu-Manchu
himself. Then, to restore me to grips with reality, would come the
thought of Kâramaneh, of the beautiful girl whose love had brought
me seemingly endless sorrow and whose love for me had brought her once
again into the power of that mysterious, implacable being.
This thought was enough. With its coming, fantasy vanished; and I knew
that the dead dacoit, his great curved knife yet clutched in his hand,
the Yellow menace hanging over London, over England, over the
civilized world, the absence, the heart-breaking absence, of
Kâramaneh—all were real, all were true, all were part of my life.