I got the screw of the accursed thing loosened, but the act of
removing the jacket was too agonizing for Eltham—man of iron though
he was. I laid him swooning on the floor.
"Where is Fu-Manchu?"
Nayland Smith, from just within the door, threw out the query in
a tone of stark amaze. I stood up—I could do nothing more for the
poor victim at the moment—and looked about me. The room was
innocent of furniture, save for heaps of rubbish on the floor, and
a tin oil-lamp hung, on the wall. The dead Chinaman lay close
beside Smith. There was no second door, the one window was barred,
and from this room we had heard the voice, the unmistakable,
unforgettable voice, of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
But Dr. Fu-Manchu was not there!
Neither of us could accept the fact for a moment; we stood
there, looking from the dead man to the tortured man who only
swooned, in a state of helpless incredulity.
Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and
with a cry of baffled rage Smith leaped along the passage to the
second door. It was wide open. I stood at his elbow when he swept
its emptiness with the ray of his pocket-lamp.
There was a speaking-tube fixed between the two rooms!
Smith literally ground his teeth.
"Yet, Petrie," he said, "we have learnt something. Fu-Manchu had
evidently promised Eltham his life if he would divulge the name of
his correspondent. He meant to keep his word; it is a sidelight on
his character."
"How so?"
"Eltham has never seen Dr. Fu-Manchu, but Eltham knows certain
parts of China better than you know the Strand. Probably, if he saw
Fu-Manchu, he would recognize him for who he really is, and this,
it seems, the Doctor is anxious to avoid."
We ran back to where we had left Karamaneh.
The room was empty!
"Defeated, Petrie!" said Smith, bitterly. "The Yellow Devil is
loosed on London again!"
He leaned from the window and the skirl of a police whistle
split the stillness of the night.
Such were the episodes that marked the coming of Dr. Fu-Manchu
to London, that awakened fears long dormant and reopened old
wounds—nay, poured poison into them. I strove desperately, by close
attention to my professional duties, to banish the very memory of
Karamaneh from my mind; desperately, but how vainly! Peace was for
me no more, joy was gone from the world, and only mockery remained
as my portion.
Poor Eltham we had placed in a nursing establishment, where his
indescribable hurts could be properly tended: and his uncomplaining
fortitude not infrequently made me thoroughly ashamed of myself.
Needless to say, Smith had made such other arrangements as were
necessary to safeguard the injured man, and these proved so
successful that the malignant being whose plans they thwarted
abandoned his designs upon the heroic clergyman and directed his
attention elsewhere, as I must now proceed to relate.
Dusk always brought with it a cloud of apprehensions, for
darkness must ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long
after the clocks had struck the mystic hour "when churchyards
yawn," that the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp
a victim. I was dismissing a chance patient.
"Good night, Dr. Petrie," he said.
"Good night, Mr. Forsyth," I replied; and, having conducted my
late visitor to the door, I closed and bolted it, switched off the
light and went upstairs.
My patient was chief officer of one of the P. and O. boats. He
had cut his hand rather badly on the homeward run, and signs of
poisoning having developed, had called to have the wound treated,
apologizing for troubling me at so late an hour, but explaining
that he had only just come from the docks. The hall clock announced
the hour of one as I ascended the stairs. I found myself wondering
what there was in Mr. Forsyth's appearance which excited some vague
and elusive memory. Coming to the top floor, I opened the door of a
front bedroom and was surprised to find the interior in
darkness.
"Smith!" I called.
"Come here and watch!" was the terse response. Nayland Smith was
sitting in the dark at the open window and peering out across the
common. Even as I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could detect that
tensity in his attitude which told of high-strung nerves.
I joined him.
"What is it?" I said, curiously.
"I don't know. Watch that clump of elms."
His masterful voice had the dry tone in it betokening
excitement. I leaned on the ledge beside him and looked out. The
blaze of stars almost compensated for the absence of the moon and
the night had a quality of stillness that made for awe. This was a
tropical summer, and the common, with its dancing lights dotted
irregularly about it, had an unfamiliar look to-night. The clump of
nine elms showed as a dense and irregular mass, lacking detail.
Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I
had no thought of the night's beauty, for it only served to remind
me that somewhere amid London's millions was lurking an uncanny
being, whose life was a mystery, whose very existence was a
scientific miracle.
"Where's your patient?" rapped Smith.
His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No
footstep disturbed the silence of the highroad; where was my
patient?
I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.
"Don't lean out," he said.
I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.
"For Heaven's sake, why not?"
"I'll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?"
"I did, and I can't make out what he is doing. He seems to have
remained standing at the gate for some reason."
"He has seen it!" snapped Smith. "Watch those elms."
His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I
say that I was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add
that I was thrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert
watching of Smith could only mean one thing:
Fu-Manchu!
And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set
me listening; not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds
within. Doubts, suspicions, dreads, heaped themselves up in my
mind. Why was Forsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen
him before, to my knowledge, yet there was something oddly
reminiscent about the man. Could it be that his visit formed part
of a plot? Yet his wound had been genuine enough. Thus my mind
worked, feverishly; such was the effect of an unspoken
thought—Fu-Manchu.
Nayland Smith's grip tightened on my arm.
"There it is again, Petrie!" he whispered.
"Look, look!"
His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a
wonderful and uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms,
low down upon the ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up,
elfinish, then began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch
flame, it rose, high—higher—higher, to what I adjudged to be some
twelve feet or more from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died
away again as it had come!
"For God's sake, Smith, what was it?"
"Don't ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We—"
He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith's shoulder
I saw Forsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out
across the common.
Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.
"We must stop him!" he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to
my mouth as I was about to call out—"Not a sound, Petrie!"
He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the
dark, crying:
"Out through the garden—the side entrance!"
I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room.
Through it he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed
him out, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants
in a neighboring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze
stirred; and in the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of
me, tugging at the bolt of the gate.
Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and
left the door ajar.
"We must not appear to have come from your house," explained
Smith rapidly. "I will go along the highroad and cross to the
common a hundred yards up, where there is a pathway, as though
homeward bound to the north side. Give me half a minute's start,
then you proceed in an opposite direction and cross from the corner
of the next road. Directly you are out of the light of the street
lamps, get over the rails and run for the elms!"
He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.
While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive, impetuous
way of his, with his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming
like steel, I had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but
now, when I stood alone, in that staid and respectable byway,
holding a loaded pistol in my hand, the whole thing became utterly
unreal.
It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner,
as directed; for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great
and evil man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule,
not of Nayland Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the
realization of his monstrous schemes, not even of Karamaneh the
slave girl, whose glorious beauty was a weapon of might in
Fu-Manchu's hand, but of what impression I must have made upon a
patient had I encountered one then.
Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common
and vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward
the elms I found myself wondering what it was all about, and for
what we were come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me
that if Smith had counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late,
for it appeared to me that he must already be in the coppice.
I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the
elms, came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air—the eerie
hoot of a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry
of that bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached
little significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most
dreadful scream—a scream in which fear, and loathing, and anger
were hideously blended—thrilled me with horror.
After that I have no recollection of anything until I found
myself standing by the southernmost elm.
"Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are
you?"
As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled
sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly
figure—that of a man whose face appeared to be streaked. His eyes
glared at me madly and he mowed the air with his hands like one
blind and insane with fear.
I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled and
the man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.
Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment—and was
still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere
beyond the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when
he stood beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.
"I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God
forgive me—God forgive me!"
The words aroused me.
"Smith"—my voice came as a whisper—"for one awful moment I
thought—"
"So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the
end designed for me, Petrie!"
At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had
struck me as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why
Forsyth now lay dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man
and wore a slight mustache, he was, in features and build, the
double of Nayland Smith!
We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I
dropped upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a
match. A slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the
elms, but, screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life.
It illuminated wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes
gleaming with unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying
light of the match touched that other face.
"Oh, God!" whispered Smith.
A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.
In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything
quite so horrible. Forsyth's livid face was streaked with tiny
streams of blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular
wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another
beneath his right eye, and others extended from the chin down to
the throat. They were black, almost like tattoo marks, and the
entire injured surface was bloated indescribably. His fists were
clenched; he was quite rigid.
Smith's piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on
the path and made my examination—an examination which that first
glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had
rendered useless—a mere matter of form.
"He's quite dead, Smith," I said huskily.
"It's—unnatural—it—"
Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking
little, short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I
could hear a car humming along the highroad, but I remained there
on my knees staring dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a
matter of minutes since had been that of a clean looking British
seaman. I found myself contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed
mustache with the bloated face above it, and counting the little
drops of blood which trembled upon its edge. There were footsteps
approaching. I stood up. The footsteps quickened; and I turned as a
constable ran up.
"What's this?" he demanded gruffly, and stood with his fists
clenched, looking from Smith to me and down at that which lay
between us. Then his hand flew to his breast; there was a silvern
gleam and—
"Drop that whistle!" snapped Smith—and struck it from the man's
hand. "Where's your lantern? Don't ask questions!"
The constable started back and was evidently debating upon his
chances with the two of us, when my friend pulled a letter from his
pocket and thrust it under the man's nose.
"Read that!" he directed harshly, "and then listen to my
orders."
There was something in his voice which changed the officer's
opinion of the situation. He directed the light of his lantern upon
the open letter and seemed to be stricken with wonder.
"If you have any doubts," continued Smith—"you may not be
familiar with the Commissioner's signature—you have only to ring up
Scotland Yard from Dr. Petrie's house, to which we shall now
return, to disperse them." He pointed to Forsyth. "Help us to carry
him there. We must not be seen; this must be hushed up. You
understand? It must not get into the press—"
The man saluted respectfully; and the three of us addressed
ourselves to the mournful task. By slow stages we bore the dead man
to the edge of the common, carried him across the road and into my
house, without exciting attention even on the part of those
vagrants who nightly slept out in the neighborhood.
We laid our burden upon the surgery table.
"You will want to make an examination, Petrie," said Smith in
his decisive way, "and the officer here might 'phone for the
ambulance. I have some investigations to make also. I must have the
pocket lamp."
He raced upstairs to his room, and an instant later came running
down again. The front door banged.
"The telephone is in the hall," I said to the constable.
"Thank you, sir."
He went out of the surgery as I switched on the lamp over the
table and began to examine the marks upon Forsyth's skin. These, as
I have said, were in groups and nearly all in the form of elongated
punctures; a fairly deep incision with a pear-shaped and
superficial scratch beneath it. One of the tiny wounds had
penetrated the right eye.
The symptoms, or those which I had been enabled to observe as
Forsyth had first staggered into view from among the elms, were
most puzzling. Clearly enough, the muscles of articulation and the
respiratory muscles had been affected; and now the livid face,
dotted over with tiny wounds (they were also on the throat), set me
mentally groping for a clue to the manner of his death.
No clue presented itself; and my detailed examination of the
body availed me nothing. The gray herald of dawn was come when the
police arrived with the ambulance and took Forsyth away.
I was just taking my cap from the rack when Nayland Smith
returned.
"Smith!" I cried—"have you found anything?"
He stood there in the gray light of the hallway, tugging at the
lobe of his left ear, an old trick of his.
The bronzed face looked very gaunt, I thought, and his eyes were
bright with that febrile glitter which once I had disliked, but
which I had learned from experience were due to tremendous nervous
excitement. At such times he could act with icy coolness and his
mental faculties seemed temporarily to acquire an abnormal
keenness. He made no direct reply; but—
"Have you any milk?" he jerked abruptly.
So wholly unexpected was the question, that for a moment I
failed to grasp it. Then—
"Milk!" I began.
"Exactly, Petrie! If you can find me some milk, I shall be
obliged."
I turned to descend to the kitchen, when—
"The remains of the turbot from dinner, Petrie, would also be
welcome, and I think I should like a trowel."
I stopped at the stairhead and faced him.
"I cannot suppose that you are joking, Smith," I said,
"but—"
He laughed dryly.
"Forgive me, old man," he replied. "I was so preoccupied with my
own train of thought that it never occurred to me how absurd my
request must have sounded. I will explain my singular tastes later;
at the moment, hustle is the watchword."
Evidently he was in earnest, and I ran downstairs accordingly,
returning with a garden trowel, a plate of cold fish and a glass of
milk.
"Thanks, Petrie," said Smith—"If you would put the milk in a
jug—"
I was past wondering, so I simply went and fetched a jug, into
which he poured the milk. Then, with the trowel in his pocket, the
plate of cold turbot in one hand and the milk jug in the other, he
made for the door. He had it open when another idea evidently
occurred to him.
"I'll trouble you for the pistol, Petrie."
I handed him the pistol without a word.
"Don't assume that I want to mystify you," he added, "but the
presence of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don't expect
to be long."
The cold light of dawn flooded the hallway momentarily; then the
door closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland
Smith as he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He
was making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he
reached them.
I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of
sunrise. A policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a
belated reveler in evening clothes. That sense of unreality
assailed me again. Out there in the gray mists a man who was vested
with powers which rendered him a law unto himself, who had the
British Government behind him in all that he might choose to do,
who had been summoned from Rangoon to London on singular and
dangerous business, was employing himself with a plate of cold
turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!
Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by
the common; then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly
direction. Its lights twinkled yellowly through the grayness, but I
was less concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary
traveler who had descended from it.
As the car went rocking by below me, I strained my eyes in an
endeavor more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the
highroad, had struck out across the common. It was that of a woman,
who seemingly carried a bulky bag or parcel.
One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent
powers in man which man, in modern times, neglects, or knows not
how to develop. I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity
respecting this lonely traveler who traveled at an hour so strange.
With no definite plan in mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from
the rack, and walked briskly out of the house and across the common
in a direction which I thought would enable me to head off the
woman.
I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have
it, and with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I
came upon her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the
bundle which had attracted my attention. I stopped and watched
her.
She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a
common black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that
the dexterous hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white;
and I perceived a pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf
beside her. As she threw open the wrappings and lifted out
something that looked like a small shrimping net, I stepped around
the bush, crossed silently the intervening patch of grass, and
stood beside her.
A faint breath of perfume reached me—of a perfume which, like
the secret incense of Ancient Egypt, seemed to assail my soul. The
glamour of the Orient was in that subtle essence; and I only knew
one woman who used it. I bent over the kneeling figure.
"Good morning," I said; "can I assist you in any way?"
She came to her feet like a startled deer, and flung away from
me with the lithe movement of some Eastern dancing girl.
Now came the sun, and its heralding rays struck sparks from the
jewels upon the white fingers of this woman who wore the garments
of a mendicant. My heart gave a great leap. It was with difficulty
that I controlled my voice.
"There is no cause for alarm," I added.
She stood watching me; even through the coarse veil I could see
how her eyes glittered. I stooped and picked up the net.
"Oh!" The whispered word was scarcely audible, but it was
enough; I doubted no longer.
"This is a net for bird snaring," I said. "What strange bird are
you seeking—Karamaneh?"
With a passionate gesture Karamaneh snatched off the veil, and
with it the ugly black hat. The cloud of wonderful, intractable
hair came rumpling about her face, and her glorious eyes blazed out
upon me. How beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an
Egyptian night; how often had they looked into mine in dreams!
To labor against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one
knows, upon evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be
worthless—evil; is there any torture to which the soul of man is
subject, more pitiless? Yet this was my lot, for what past sins
assigned to me I was unable to conjecture; and this was the woman,
this lovely slave of a monster, this creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!" I said
harshly.
Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.
"It is very convenient to forget, sometimes," I ran on bitterly,
then checked myself; for I knew that my words were prompted by a
feckless desire to hear her defense, by a fool's hope that it might
be an acceptable one.
I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it had a
strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously it
was intended for snaring.
"What were you about to do?" I demanded sharply—but in my heart,
poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of
Karamaneh's lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.
She spoke then.
"Dr. Petrie—"
"Well?"
"You seem to be—angry with me, not so much because of what I do,
as because I do not remember you. Yet—"
"Kindly do not revert to the matter," I interrupted. "You have
chosen, very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends.
Please yourself. But answer my question."
She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
"Why do you treat me so!" she cried; she had the most
fascinating accent imaginable. "Throw me into prison, kill me if
you like, for what I have done!" She stamped her foot. "For what I
have done! But do not torture me, try to drive me mad with your
reproaches—that I forget you! I tell you—again I tell you—that
until you came one night, last week, to rescue some one from—"
There was the old trick of hesitating before the name of
Fu-Manchu—"from him, I had never, never seen you!"
The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for
belief—or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were
against her.
"Such a declaration is worthless," I said, as coldly as I could.
"You are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust
you—"
"I am no traitress!" she blazed at me; her eyes were
magnificent.
"This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to
serve Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your
'slavery'—for I take it you are posing as a slave again—is
evidently not very harsh. You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their
destruction, and in return he loads you with jewels, lavishes
gifts—"
"Ah! so!"
She sprang forward, raising flaming eyes to mine; her lips were
slightly parted. With that wild abandon which betrayed the desert
blood in her veins, she wrenched open the neck of her bodice and
slipped a soft shoulder free of the garment. She twisted around, so
that the white skin was but inches removed from me.
"These are some of the gifts that he lavishes upon me!"
I clenched my teeth. Insane thoughts flooded my mind. For that
creamy skin was red with the marks of the lash!