 CHAPTER XXII. OF THE INSIDIUS DR. FU MANCHU. We must arrange for the house to be raided without delay, said Smith. This time we are sure of our ally. But we must keep our promise to her, my interrupted. You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said. I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr. Fu Manchu," he added grimly. Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between his teeth, so that the muscle stood out squally upon his lean jaws. The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness of his grey eyes. What have I all along maintained, he jerked, looking back at me across his shoulder, that although Caramanne was one of the strongest weapons in the doctor's armory, she was the one which some day would be turned against him. That day has dawned. We must await word from her, quite so. We knocked out his pipe on the grate then. Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the file? Not the slightest, and I have none to spare for analytical purposes. Then Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl and dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor. I cannot rest, Petrie, he said. I am itching to get to work, yet a full smoothen—he lighted his pipe and stood staring from the window. I shall, of course, take the needle, syringe with me," I explained. Smith made no reply. If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance of death, I continued. My fame would long survive my ashes. My friend did not turn, but she said it was something he put in the wine, he jerked. In the wine, yes. Silence fell. My thoughts reverted to Caramanne, whom Dr. Fu Manchu held in bond stronger than any slave-chains, for with Aziz, her brother suspended between life and death, what could she do save a bay of the mandates of the cunning Chinaman? What perverted genius was his? In this treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone, of living man had rifled, but could be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the name of Dr. Fu Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the history of healing. Nalyn Smith suddenly turned, an expression upon his face amazes me. Look up the next train to—he rapped—to—to what? To the Bradshaw. We haven't a minute to waste. In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well. In his eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for action or potentious truth suddenly grasped. One in half an hour, for last, we must catch it. No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress, for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown and smoking without intermission. Out into the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi upon the rank. Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off, all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterised my friend's movements in times of important action. He sat glancing impatiently from the window, and twitching at the lobe of his ear. I know you will forgive me, old man, he said, but there is a little problem which I am trying to work out in my mind. Did you bring the things I mentioned? Yes." Conversation lapsed until, just as the cab turned into the station, Smith said. Should you consider Lord Suthery to have been the first constructive engineer of his time, Petrie? Undoubtedly, I replied. Greater than von Holber of Berlin? Possibly not, but von Holber has been dead for three years. Three years, is it? Roughly. Ah! We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisurely, carefully to inspect the occupants of the others, from the engine to the guard's van. He was muffled up to the eyes, and warned me to keep out of sight. In fact, his behaviour had me bursting with curiosity. The train had started. Don't imagine, Petrie, said Smith, that I am trying to lead you blindfolded in order to later dazzle you with my perspicacity. I am simply afraid that this may be a wild goose chase. The idea upon which I am acting does not seem to have struck you. I wish it had. The fact would argue in favour of it being sound. At present I am hopelessly mystified. Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view. But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at the reason for this sudden journey. I shall be distinctly encouraged if you succeed. But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more. The train stopped at rugby, where he was engaged with the station master in making mysterious arrangements. At L, however, that object became plain, for a high-power car was awaiting us, and into this we hurried, and there the greater number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads. Twenty minutes rapid travelling, and a white mansion leapt into line of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing. Stradwick Hall, said Smith, the home of Lord Southerly. We are first. But Dr. Fu Manchu was on the train. Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity. CHAPTER XXIII. OF THE INSIDIERS DR. FU MANCHU. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by F.N.H. The insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Roma. CHAPTER XXIII. Your extra-ordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith. The sleek little man in the dress-suit, who looked like a head-waiter, but was the trusted legal adviser of the House of Southerly, puffed at his cigar indignantly. Naelyn Smith, whose restless pacing had led him to the fire-end of the library, turned a remote but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor. I'm in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon the latter, his grey eyes ablaze. Safe for the air, who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southerly to consider? The word rests with you. If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer. My own, sir. If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer, Mr. Henderson." The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over him menacingly. Lord Southerly was a lonely man, continued my friend. If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt what my answer had been. Why do you hesitate? Why do you experience this feeling of horror? Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire. His constitutionally ruddy face was pale. It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith. We have not the necessary powers. Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from his pocket and glancing at it. I am vested with the necessary powers. I will give you a written order, sir. The preceding savers of paganism, such a course might be admissible in China, in Burma. Do you weigh a life against such quibbles? Do you suppose that granting my irresponsibility Dr. Petrie would countenance such a thing if he doubted the necessity? Mr. Henderson looked at me with a pathetic hesitance. There are guests in the house, mourners who attended the ceremony today, they— We'll never know if we are in error, interrupted Smith. Good God! Why do you delay? You wish it to be kept secret. You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now. We require no other witnesses. We are answerable only to our consciences. The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow. I have never in my life been so called upon to come to so momentous a decision in so short a time, he confessed. But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision. As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placity was a rebuke to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle growth in the garden of England. Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves. The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber. Yet, if Smith were right, and I did not doubt him, the green eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu had looked upon the scene, and I found myself marvelling that its beauty had not wilted up. Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us. As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates, he turned to Nailon Smith, his face twitched oddly. Witness that I do this unwillingly, he said, most unwillingly. Mind be, the responsibility was the reply. Smith's voice quavered. Responsiveness to the nervous vitality pent up within that lean frame. He stood motionless, listening, and I knew for whom he listened. He peered about him to the right and left. I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see. Above us now the trees looked with a solemnity different from the aspect of monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our journey's end, the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch, or so it seemed. By that path, patch now with pools of moonlight, Lord Sothery had passed upon his beer, with the sun to light his going, by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place. To the doors of the vault the moon's rays found free access. No branch, no leaf intervened. Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly. The keys which he carried rattled in his hand. Light the lantern, he said, unsteadily. Nalyn Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried. He turned to the solicitor. Be calm, Mr. Henderson, he said sternly. It is your plain duty to your client. God be my witness that I doubt it, replied Henderson, and opened the door. We descended the steps. The air beneath was damp and chill. It touched us with clammy fingers, and the sensation was not holy physical. Before the narrow mansion which now suffice, Lord Sothery, the great engineer whom kings had honoured, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support. Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task and rightly. With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend and myself set to work. In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken labours as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this. He seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw. At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Sothery questioned the intruding light. Nalyn Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar when he raised the lantern. Later I knew there would be a sudden releasing of the tension of will, a reaction physical and mental, but not until his work was finished. That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely, professional zeal. For under conditions which in the event of failure and exposure must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by the British Medical Association I was about to attempt an experiment never before assayed by a physician of the white races. Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the BMA or any other council was improbable. In the former event all but impossible. But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlontry or what any one of my fellow practitioners must have designated as such was with me. Yet so profound to my belief becoming the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure. I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step, though blindly, into the future of medical science. So far as my skill bore me, Lord Sothery was dead. Unhesitatingly I would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations. The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary to the interests of Dr. Fu Manchu, his genius diverted into other channels would serve the yellow group better than his death. The second I had seen the boy as is raised from a state as like death as this. From the file of amber-hued liquid which I had with me I charged the needle syringe. I made the injection and waited. If he is really dead, whispers Smith, it seems incredible that he can have survived for three days without food. Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week. Mr. Henderson groaned. Watch in hand I stood observing the gray face. A second passed. Another. A third. In the fourth the miracle began. Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life. It came in waves, in waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakened heart, which swept fuller and stronger, which filled and quickened the chilled body. As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one, Sothery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up, looking about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back. My God! cried Smith. It's all right, I said, and had time to note how my voice had assumed a professional tone. A little brandy from my flask is all that is necessary now. You have two patients, doctor, wrapped my friend. Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault. Quiet! whispered Smith. He is here. He extinguished the light. I supported Lord Sothery. What has happened? he kept moaning. Where am I? Oh God! What has happened? I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and place my travelling coat about him. The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had re-closed but not re-locked. Now as I upheld the man whom literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door re-open. To Ada Henderson I could make no move. Smith was breathing hard beside me. I dare not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord Sothery in his exhaustive condition. Through the Memphium dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touching the last stone of the stairway. A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu Manchu stood at the head of the stairs. Although I could not see my friend, I became aware that Nain and Smith had his revolver in his hand, and I reached into my pocket for mine. At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap. It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night, unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door. His capture was imminent. Someone was descending the steps. In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Sothery I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known. The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again. Lord Sothery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall, but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson, the beam shone. In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind, and he awakened from his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror. Smith was past him at a bound. Something flashed towards him as the light was extinguished. I saw him duck and heard the knife ring upon the floor. I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top as I fired up the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu Manchu, to see the gleaming chattelorant eyes, greenly terrible as they sought to pierce the gloom. A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time, that of a brown man scantily clad. He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit, but went on again, Smith hard on his heels. Mr. Henderson, I cried, relight the lantern and take charge of Lord Southerly. Here is my flask on the floor. I rely upon you." Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair. Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger. I saw him fall. As he fell for the third time I heard the crack of his revolver. Instantly I was at his side, somewhere along the black aisle beneath the trees receding footsteps pattered. Are you hurt, Smith? I cried anxiously. He got to his feet. He has a decoyed with him, he replied, and showed me the long curved knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade, blood-stained. A near thing for me, Petrie. I heard the whir of a restarted motor. We've lost him, said Smith. But we have saved Lord Southerly, I said. Fu Manchu will credit us with a skill as great as his own. We must get to the car, Smith muttered, and try to overtake them. My left arm is useless. It would be a mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them, I argued, for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed. I have a very good idea, snapped Smith. Stradwick Hall is less than ten miles from the coast. There is only one practical means of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London. You think he meant to take him from here to London? Prior to shipping him to China, I think so. His clearing-house is probably on the Thames. A boat? A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness. Fu Manchu may have designed to ship him direct to China. Lord Southerly, a bizarre figure, my travelling coat wrapped about him and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself, emerged from the vault into the moonlight. This is a triumph for you, Smith, I said. The throb of Fu Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost in the night's silence. Only half a triumph, he replied. But we still have another chance, the raid on his house. When will the word come from Caramano? Southerly spoke in a weak voice. Gentlemen, he said, it seems I am raised from the dead. It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly buried man speak from the mould of his tomb. Yes, replied Smith Southerly, and spared from the fate of heaven alone knows how many men of genius. The yellow society lacks a Southerly. But that Dr. Fu Manchu was in Germany three years ago, and I have reason to believe, so that even without visiting the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died about that time, I venture to predict that they may have a von Homer, and that the futurist group in China knows how to make men work. End of Chapter 23 Recorded in sunny Anchorage, Alaska Chapter 24 Of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by F.N.H. The insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Roma Chapter 24 From the rescue of Lord Southerly my story bears me mercilessly on to other things. I may not tarry as more leisurely pen-men to round my incidents. They were not of my choosing. I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure of my drama. Its scheme is none of mine. Often enough in those days I found a fitness in the lines of Omar. We are no other than a moving show of magic shadow shapes that come and go, round with the sun illuminated lantern held, in midnight by the master of the show. But the master of the show, in this case, was Dr. Fu Manchu. I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal, who was Dr. Fu Manchu? Let me confess here that my final answer must be postponed. I can only indicate at this place the trend of my reasoning and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases. What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of the Manchu's? The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply, young China. This is unsatisfactory. What do we mean by young China? In my own hearing, Fu Manchu had disclaimed with scorn association with the whole of that movement, and assuming that the name were not an assumed one, he clearly had been no anti-Manchu, no Republican. The Chinese Republican is of the Mandarin class, but of a new generation which veneers its confusionism with Western polish. These youthful and unbalanced reformers in conjunction with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians may be said to represent young China. Amid such termos as this, we invariably look for and invariably find a third party. In my opinion, Dr. Fu Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party. Another question often put to me was where did this Dr. Hai during this time that he pursued his operations in London? This is more susceptible of explanation. For a time, Nalyn Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliffe Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations. Later we came to believe that the Manchu near Windsor was his hiding-place, and later still the Hulk lying off the downstream flats. But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End Riverside building which I was the first to enter. Of this I am all but sure, for the reason that if not only for the home of Fu Manchu, of Karamanne, and of her brother Aziz, but the home of something else, of something which I shall speak of later. The dreadful tragedy or series of tragedies which attended the raid upon the place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case. Let me endeavour to explain what occurred. By the aid of Karamanne, you have seen how we had located the Willam Warehouse, which from the exterior was so drab and dreary, but which within was a place of wonderous luxury. At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it. A river police-launch lay off the wharf which opened from it onto the riverside, than which are better could not have been chosen. You will fulfil your promise to me, said Karamanne, and looked up into my face. She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of her hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars. What do you wish us to do? asked Naylen Smith. You and Dr. Petrie, she replied swiftly, must enter first, and bring out Aziz, until he is safe, and until he is out of that place you are not to make an attempt upon. Upon Dr. Fu Manchu, interrupted Weymouth, for Karamanne hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name as she always did. But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us? The Scotland Yardman did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinamans. Aziz lies in a private room, she explained eagerly, her old accent more noticeable than usual. There is only one of the Burmese men in the house, and he—he dare not enter without orders. But Fu Manchu, we have nothing to fear from him. He will be your prisoner within ten minutes from now. I have no time for words. You must believe—she stamped her foot impatiently. And the decoyed, snapped Smith. He also— I think perhaps I'd better come in, too, said Weymouth slowly. Karamanne shrugged her shoulders, with quick impatience, and unlocked the door in the hybrid wall which divided the gloomy evil smelling-cord from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu Manchu. Make no noise, she warned, and Smith and myself followed her along the uncarbaded passage beyond. Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second-in-command, brought up the rear. The door was re-closed, a few paces further on and a second was unlocked. Passing through a small room unfurnished, a further passage led us to a balcony. The transition was startling. Darkness was about us now, and silence, a perfume slumberous darkness, a silence full of mystery. For beyond the walls of the apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn of the great industrial river. About the confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapours of the low attempts. From the metallic but infinitely human clanger of the dockside life, from the unpleasant but homey odours which prevail where ships swallow in the belch and the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had come into this incense stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the greater part of the room darker for its contrast. Nothing of the temside activity, of the riveting and scraping, the bumping of bails, the bawling of orders, the hiss of steam penetrated to this perfumed place. In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike figure of the dark-haired boy, Garamana's muffled form bending over him. At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu Manchu, whispered Smith. Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger. We stood not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair. From the time when Naylen Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this advanced guard of a cogent yellow peril, the face of Dr. Fu Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night. The millions might sleep in peace, the millions in whose cause we laboured. But we who knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England, a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu Manchu, whose tentacles were decoyty, thuggy, modes of death secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left no clue behind. Caramana I called softly. The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl. She who had been a plying instrument in the hands of Fu Manchu was now to be the means whereby society would be rid of him. She raised her finger warningly, then beckoned me to approach. My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through the gloom of the great apartment into the patch of light, and Caramana beside me stood looking down upon the boy. It was as is her brother, dead so far as Western law had power to judge, but kept alive in that death-like trance by the uncanny power of the Chinese doctor. Be quick, she said. Be quick, awaken him. I'm afraid. From the case which I carried, I took out a needle, syringe, and file containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid. It was the drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopia. Of its constitution I knew nothing. Although I had had the file in my possession for some days, I had dared not devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes. The amber-drops spelled life for the boy as is, spelled success for the mission of Nail and Smith, spelled ruin for the fiendish Chinaman. I raised the white cublet. The boy, fully dressed, lay with his arms crossed upon his breast. I discerned the mark of previous injections, as charging the syringe from the file I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him. I would have given half my small worldly possessions to have known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through the veins of Aziz, which was tinted in the grayed face with the olive tone of life, which, so far as medical training bore me, was restoring the dead to life. As such was not the purpose of my visit. I was come to remove from the house of Dr. Fu Manchu the living chain which bound Karamana to him. The boy alive and free, the doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be broken. My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt, and devoured with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics. The peculiar perfume which she wore, which seemed to be a part of her, which always I associated with her, was faintly perceptible. Karamana was breathing rapidly. You have nothing to fear, I whispered. See, he's reviving. In a few moments all will be well with him. The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us, wafted it seemed by some draught which passed through the apartment. The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamana nervously clutched my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to open. The stillness of the place was positively unnatural. It seemed inconceivable that all about us was the discordant activity of the commercial East End. Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive. It began positively to appall me. Inspector Weymouth's wandering face peeped over my shoulder. Where is Dr. Fu Manchu, I whispered, as Naelyn Smith in turn appeared beside me. I cannot understand the silence of the house. Look about, replied Karamana, never taking her eyes from the face of a zizz. I peered around the shadowy walls, to all glass cases there were, shelves and niches, where once from the gallery above I had seen the tubes and restorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar law, the impedimenta of the occult student, and of a man of silence, the visible evidences of Fu Manchu's presence. Shelves, cases, niches were bare. Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories, wherein he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein he isolated the bacilli of unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound volumes for a glimpse at which, had they known of their contents, the great men of Harley Street would have given a fortune. No trace remained. The silken cushions, the inlaid tables, all were gone. The room was stripped, dismantled. Had Fu Manchu fled? The silence assumed a new significance. His decoits and kindred ministers of death all must have fled too. You have let him escape us, I said rapidly. You promise to aid us to capture him, to send us a message, and you have delayed until— No, she said, no, and clutched at my arm again. Oh, he's not reviving slowly. Are you sure you have made no mistake? Her thoughts were all for the boy, and so her solicitude touched me. I again examined as is, the most remarkable patient of my busy professional career. As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes, which were so light the eyes of Karamanah, and with the girl's eager arms tidily about him, sat up, looking wonderfully around. Karamanah pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly-spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nalyn Smith. I handed her my flask which I had filled with wine. My promise is fulfilled, I said. You are free. Now for Fu Manchu. But first let us admit the police to this house. There is something uncanny in its stillness. No, she replied. First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety. Will you carry him? She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written awe and wonder. The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom. Nalyn Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly. He turned to Karamanah. You are not playing with us? He said harshly. We have done our part. It remains for you to do yours. Do not speak so loudly, the girl begged. He is near us, and oh God, I fear him so. Where is he? persisted my friend. Karamanah's eyes were glassy with fear now. You must not touch him until the police are here, she said. But from the direction of her quick agitated glances, I knew that her brother, safe now, she feared for me and for me alone. Those glances sent my blood dancing. For Karamanah was an eastern jewel, which any man of flesh and blood must have coveted had he known it to lie within his reach. Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery, which more than once I had known the desire to explore. Look, beyond that curtain her voice was barely audible. But do not enter. Even as he is, I fear him. Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary. Tragedy and fuma and chew were never far apart. Though we numbered two and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who had ever come out of the east. It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet, Nail and Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door to which Karamanah had pointed. Then, upon looking into the dim place beyond, all else save what it held was forgotten. We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions, and reclining in a corner, where the faint blue light from a lamp placed upon a low table, painting grotesque shadows about the caverous face of Dr. Fu Man Chew. At sight of him my heart leaped, and seemed to suspend its function so intense was the horror with which this man's presence inspired me. My hand clutching the curtain I stood watching him. The lids veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile. Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe. A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation of the hushed silence and the ease with which we had thus far executed our plan came to me. The cunning mind was torpid, lost in a brutish world of dreams. Fu Man Chew was in an opium sleep. The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines which covered the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow, and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes. At last we had triumphed. I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance, and mastering some of my repugnance and forgetful of Kara Mano's warning, I was about to step forward into the room loaded with its nauseating opium fumes when a soft breath fanned my cheek. Do not go in, said Kara Mano's warning voice, hushed, trembling. A little hand grasped my arm. She drew Smith and myself back from the door. There is danger there, she whispered. Do not enter the room. The police must reach him in some way, and drag him out. Do not enter that room. The girl's voice quivered hysterically. Her eyes blazed into savage flame. The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her now. But fear of Fu Man Chew held her yet. Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs and joined us. I've sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station, he said. The divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive, Dr. Petrie. All is ready now, for launch is just off the wharf and every side of the place under observation. Where's our man? He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised his eyebrows interrogatively. The absence of sound, of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom we were there to arrest, puzzled him. Nalyn Smith jerked his thumb towards the curtain. At that and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped to the draped door. He was a man who drove straight at his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure. I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the place, stripped as it was, it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume, had begun to get a hold upon him. He was anxious to shake it off, to be up and doing. He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room. Smith and I, perforce, followed him. Just within the door, the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which had spread terror throughout the eastern and western worlds. Helpless as Fu Man Chew was, he inspired terror now, though the giant intellect was inert, stupefied. In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted, I heard Karamana utter a stifled scream, but it came too late. As though cast up by a volcano, the silk and cushions, the inlaid table with its ghastly blue shaded lamp, the garish walls, the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon its features, quivered and shot upward. So it seemed to me. Though, in the ensuing instant, I remembered too late a previous experience of the floors of Fu Man Chew's private apartments, I knew what had indeed befallen us, a trap had released beneath our feet. I recall falling, but have no recollection of the end of my fall, of the shock marking the drop. I only remember fighting for my life against a stifling something which had me by the throat. I knew that I was being suffocated, but my hands met only the deathly emptiness. Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank. I could not cry out. I was helpless. But the fate of my companions I knew nothing, could surmise nothing. Then all consciousness ended. End of Chapter 24. Recorded in Sunny Anchorage, Alaska. Chapter 25 of the Insidious Dr. Fu Man Chew This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by FNH. The Insidious Dr. Fu Man Chew by Sax Roma. Chapter 25. I was being carried along a dimly lighted tunnel-like place, slung sackwise, across the shoulder of a burman. He was not a big man, but he supported my considerable weight with apparent ease. A deadly nausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness. My hands and feet were closely lashed. I hung limply as a wet towel. I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me must stay along finally have become extinguished. A fancy possessed me. In these first moments of my restoration to the world of realities that I had been smuggled into China, and as I swung my head downwards I told myself that the huge, puffy things which strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool unfamiliar to me, and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China I was now in. The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with the smell as of rotting vegetation. I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching any of the unwholesome looking growths in passing through what seemed a succession of sellers, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated unnatural shapes, lifting his bare brown feet with a cat-like delicacy. He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground, and ran back. Half-stunned I lay watching the agile brown body melt into the distances of the sellers. These walls and roof seem to emit a faint phosphorescent light. Petri came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. Is that you, Petri? It was Nail and Smith. Smith, I said, and strove to sit up. But the intense nausea overcame me, so that I all but swooned. I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words which he uttered. A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too, for the burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore, for as he picked his way through the bloated things which grew upon the floors of the sellers, I realised that he was carrying the inert body of Inspector Weymouth, and I found time to compare the strength of the little brown man with that of a Nile beetle which can raise many times its own weight. Then behind him appeared a second figure which immediately claimed the whole of my errant attention. Fu Manchu hissed my friend from the darkness which concealed him. It was indeed none other than Fu Manchu, the Fu Manchu whom we had thought to be helpless. The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning, the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts. He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium smoker, so well as to dupe me a medical man, so well as to dupe Karamanne, whose experience of the noxious habit probably was greater than my own, and with the gallows dangling before him, he had waited, played the part of a lure whilst a body of police actually surrounded the place. I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually used for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to protect him during the comatose period. Now, holding a lantern above his head, the divisor of the trap, wherein too we, mouse-like, had blindly entered, came through the cellars following the brown man who carried Weymouth. The faint rays of the lantern, it apparently contained a candle, revealed a very tall forest of the gigantic fungi, poisonously colored, hideously swollen, climbing from the floor up the slimy walls, climbing like horrid parasites to such part of the arched roof as was visible to me. Fu Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintly as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed. The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased, culminated in a splintering crash. Dr. Fu Manchu and his servant who carried the apparently insensible detective passed in under the arch. Fu Manchu glanced him back once along the passages. The lantern he extinguished or concealed, and whilst I waited, my mind dully surveying memories of all the threats which this uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamour came to my ears. Then abruptly it ceased. Dr. Fu Manchu had closed a heavy door, and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass. The willow-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista of the cellars faintly luminous and visible to me from where I lay. Fu Manchu spoke softly. His voice, its guttural note alternating with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation. The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman, for he had just perpetrated an act of daring, unparalleled in my experience, and in the clamour now shut out by the glass door I tidily recognised the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house, the coming of those who would save us, who would hold the Chinese doctor for the hangman. I have decided, he said deliberately, that you are more worthy of my attention than I had formally supposed. A man who can solve the secret of the golden elixir—I had not solved it, I had merely stolen some—should be a valuable acquisition to my council. The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and of the English-Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn. Therefore, gentlemen, you live for the present. And your swing came way, Miss Horse-voice, in the near future, you and all your yellow gang. I trust not, was the placid reply. Most of my people are safe, some are shipped as las cars upon the liners, others have departed by different means. Ah! The last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yet escaped him. A disc of light danced among the brilliant poisonous hues of the passages, but no sound reached us, by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hematically. It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed, and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear. Had I known what was to follow, I should have cursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me. I should have prayed for oblivion, to be spared the sight of that which ensued. It's Logan! cried Inspector Weymouth, and I could tell that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds. From his voice it was evident that he too was recovering from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered to us all. Logan! he cried, Logan, this way, help! But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space, and seemed to carry no further than the invisible walls of our prison. The door fits well, came Fu Manchu's mocking voice. It is fortunate for us all that it is so. This is my observation-window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy the unique opportunity of studying fungology. I have already drawn your attention to the anesthetic properties of the lycopodon, or common puffball. You may have recognized the fumes. The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourself was charged with them. By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value of the puffball in this respect. Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved most obstinate subject, but he succumbed in fifteen seconds. Logan! help! help! this way, man! Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now. Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal. A group of men had entered the furthest cellars led by one who bore an electric pocket lamp. The hard white ray danced from bloated gray fungi to others of nightmare shape of dazzling, feminist brilliance. The mocking lecture-room voice continued. Note the snowy growth upon the roof, doctor. Do not be deceived by its size. It is a giant variety of my own culture, and is of the order Empunza. You in England are familiar with the death of the common housefly, which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold. I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species. Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue Amamananta fungus. Hard beside me I heard Nailin Smith groan. Weymouth had become suddenly silent. For my own part I could have shrieked in pure horror, for I knew what was coming. I realized in one agonized instant the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress through the subterranean fungi-grove, of the care with which Fu Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths. I knew now that Dr. Fu Manchu was the greatest fungologist the world had ever known, was a poisoner to whom the Borges were as children, and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking into a valley of death. Then it began, the unnatural scene, the Saturnia of murder. Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought them out in the darkness and which alone preserved their existence. A brownish cloud I could not determine whether liquid or powdery arose in the cellar. I tried to close my eyes, or to turn them away from the reeling forms of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless. I must look. The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim, eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second. A bright light sprang up, doubtless at the touch of the fiendish being who now resumed speech. Observe the symptoms of delirium, doctor. Out there, beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing, tearing their garments from their bodies, leaping, waving their arms, were become maniacs. We will now release the ripe spores of Giant Entipusa, continued the wicked voice. The air of the second cellar being supercharged with oxygen, they immediately germinate. Ah! It is a triumph! That process is the scientific triumph of my life. Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof, frosting the riving shapes of the already poisoned men. Before my horrified gaze the fungus grew. It spread from the head to the feet of those it touched. It enveloped them as in glittering shrouds. They die like flies, screamed Fu Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement, and I felt assured of something I had long suspected, that the magnificent, perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac, though Smith would never have accepted the theory. It is my fly-trap, shrieked the Chinaman, and I am the God of Destruction! End of Chapter 25 The clammy touch of the mist revived me. A culmination of the scene in the poisoned cellars, together with the effects of the fumes which I end inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness. Now I knew that I was afloat on the river. I still was bound. Furthermore a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth and I was secured to a ring in the deck. By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water. By moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the imperpled face of Inspector Weymouth, who similarly bound and gagged lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nail and Smith, for I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more. We re-bored an electric launch. I heard the hated guttural voice of Fu Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm, and my heart leapt to hear the voice that answered him. It was that of Karamana. His triumph was complete. Clearly his plans for departure were complete. His slaughter of the police in the underground passages had been a final reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman subtle cunning would have been incapable had he not known of his escape from the country to be assured. What fate was in store for us? How would he avenge himself upon the girl who had betrayed him to his enemies? What portion awaited those enemies? He seemed to have formed the singular determination to smuggle me into China. But what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth and in the case of Nail and Smith? All but silently we were filling our way through the mist. A stern dyed the clanger of dock and wharf into a remote discord. A head hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway. But through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells. The gentle movement of the screws ceased altogether, the launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells. A distant throbbing grew louder, and something advanced upon us through the haze. A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself, a voice which I knew. I felt Weymouth writhing impotently beside me, heard him mumbling incoherently, and I knew that he, too, had recognized the voice. It was that of Inspector Reiman of the River Police, and their launch was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay. Hoi! Hoi! I trembled. A feverish excitement claimed me. They were hailing us. We carried no lights. But now, and ignoring the pain which shot from my spine to my skull, I craned my neck to the left. The port light of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist. I was unable to utter any safe mumbling sounds, and my companions were equally helpless. It was a desperate position. Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random? The light drew nearer. Launch! Hoi! They had seen us. Fu Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly, and our screw began to revolve again. We leaped ahead into the bank of the darkness. Faint grew the light of the police launch, and was gone. But I heard Reiman's voice shouting. Full speed came faintly through the darkness. Port! Port! Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us we were racing deeper into the fog-banks, speeding seaward, though of this I was unable to judge at the time. On we raced, and on, sweeping over the growing swells. Once a black-towering shape dropped down upon us. Far above lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog. The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode. It was such a journey as I had taken once before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the yellow peril. But this was infinitely more terrible, for now we were utterly in Fu Manchu's power. A voice mumbled in my ear. I turned my bound-up face, and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly slipped the bandage from his mouth. I've been working at the cord since we left those filthy cellars, he whispered. My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife and freed my ankles, Smith had kicked him with his bound feet. The detective slipped the bandage back into position and placed his hands behind him again. Dr. Fu Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft. He was dragging Karamana by the wrists. He seated himself on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him. Now I could see her face, and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe. Fu Manchu was watching us, his discoloured teeth faintly visible in the dim light to which my eyes were becoming accustomed. Dr. Petrie, he said, you shall be my honoured guest at my home in China. You shall assist me to revolutionise chemistry. Mr. Smith, I fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you ever confident. Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual, Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate. He turned to the cowering girl, who shrank away from him in pitiful abject terror. In my hands, doctor, he continued, I hold a needle charged with a rare culture. It is the link between the bacilli and the fungi. You have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach and pearl which render my Karamanae so delightful in the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes. You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I have planned for you, while such distractions exist. A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamanae, becomes the shrieking hag, the manacle, mowing. Then with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him. Karamanae wrought upon past endurance with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck, and lay still. I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together. Weymouth had one big hand at the doctor's yellow throat, with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right, it held the needle. Now I could look along the length of the little craft, and so far as it was possible to make out in the fog only one other was aboard, the half-clad brown man who'd navigated her, and who had carried us through the cellars. The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box. The throb of the motor, the hissing breath of the two who fought, with so much at issue, these sounds and the wash of the water alone broke the eerie stillness. By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch, Fu Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth. His glorious fingers were fast in the big man's throat. The right hand, with its deadly needle, was forcing down to the left of his opponent. He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place. His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvellous. His breath was whistling through his nostril significantly, but Weymouth was palpably tiring. The latter suddenly changed his tactics, by a supreme effort to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity of the needle. He raised Fu Manchu by the throat and arm, and pitched him sideways. The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped, a writhing mass upon the port cushions. The launch healed over, and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage. For as Fu Manchu sought to extricate himself he overbalanced, fell back, and, bearing Weymouth with him, slid into the river. The mist swallowed them up. There were moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions. Moments so acutely horrible that mercifully our memory retains nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was one of them. A chaos ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward, glanced back. Then the course of the launch was changed. How long intervened between the tragic end of that gargantuan struggle and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us? I cannot pretend to state. With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued, and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog, which was the last I saw of him. Water began to wash aboard, and fully alive to our imminent peril. I fought with the cords that bound me, but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility a death from drowning within six feet of the bank. Beside me, Nailon Smith was straining and twisting. I think his object was to touch Karamana in the hope of arousing her. Where he failed in his project the inflowing ward has succeeded. A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her stir, when I saw her raise her hands to her head, and saw the big horror bright eyes gleam through the mist veil. End of Chapter 26 Recorded in Sunny Anchorage, Alaska Chapter 27 Of the Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Roma Chapter 27 We quitted the wreck launch but a few seconds before a stern settled down into the river, where the mud bank upon which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea, but at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu Manchu. Smith stood looking out towards the river. My God! he groaned. My God! he was thinking as I was of Weymouth, and when an hour later the police boat located us on the mudflats below Greenwich, and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion. Back there in the Foxer reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge, and his voice was under poor command. There was an uncanny howling and pills of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks. Karamanna, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered, and I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength. Smith swallowed noisily. Pray God the river has that yellow satan, he said. I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a grappling-iron. We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night. He seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot, so nearly as we could locate it, where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight. Our helplessness was pathetic, and although had the night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise. It came to me that this stinking merc was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat. But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had a matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow. There was Karamanna to be considered, Karamanna and her brother. A brief counsel was held, where at it was decided that for the present they should be lodged at a hotel. I shall arrange, said Smith to me, for the girl was watching us, to have the place patrolled night and day. Petrie! I cannot and dare not oppose Fu Manchu dead until with my own eyes I have seen him so. Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful oriental girl and her brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting. I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison-sellers, lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake. Members of the Fire Brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds. From Karamanna we learned much of Fu Manchu, little of herself. What am I? Does my poor history matter to any one? Was her answer to questions respecting herself? And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes. The decoits in the Chinaman had brought to England originally numbered seven we learned. As you, having followed me thus far, will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Bermons. Probably only one now remained in England. They had lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor, which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction, the doctor had bought outright. The Thames had been his highway. Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of the East End, where sailor men of all nationalities congregate. Chee Yans had been the East End headquarters. It employed the hulk from the time of his arrival as a laboratory for certain class of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence. Nalyn Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative. She had never been on board, however, and had never set eyes upon it, and could give us no information respecting its character. It had sailed for China. You are sure, asked Smith keenly, that it actually left? I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route. It would have been difficult for Fu Manchu to travel by a passenger boat. I cannot say what were his plans. In the state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us of a fellow worker. Vividly I recalled a scene at Paul Weymouth's home on the day that we visited it. I then made the acquaintance of the inspector's brother, Nalyn Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene. Out there in the mist he concluded wearily. It all seemed very unreal. I wished to God it had been. Aim into that, Mr. Weymouth. But your brother made a gallant finish. If ridding the world of Fu Manchu were the only good deed to his credit, his life had been well spent. James Weymouth smoked a while in thoughtful silence, though but for four and a half miles SSE of St. Paul's, the quaint little cottage with its rustic garden shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the village street before motorbuses were, was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England. But another shadow lay upon it to-day, chilling, fearful. An incarnate evil had come out of the dim east and in its dying benevolence had touched this home. There are two things I don't understand about it, sir, continued Weymouth. What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river-police heard in the fog? And where are the bodies? Caramana, seated beside me, shuddered at the words. Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in these aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her. In these latter days of his Orguian labours, to purge England of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more lean and nervous looking than I had ever known him. His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue. But now his grey eyes had grown feverishly bright, and his 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, Caramana, as her name implies, was a slave. Weymouth glanced at the beautiful troubled face with scarcely veiled distrust. He 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, she replied. My father was a pure Bedouin, 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 hadder, 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. 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. It was a faint sound from the roof 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 much about the poison 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 Karamana. 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 was 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 into the body of a newborn infant. All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the genealogy of the man called Dr. Fu Manchu. Even Karamanad cannot help me in this. But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old Kang Soo 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 labours are finished, but I'm far from triumphant. Is there any improvement in Mrs. Weymouth's condition? Very little was the reply. She is laying in 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 moustache. 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 her eyes turned in the direction indicated. John often came home at half-past two from the yard, continued Weymouth, so we naturally thought Paul 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, Nailen Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed. She heard it, too. The sun was streaming into the cosy little sitting-room, but I will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily. Caramanna laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint childish fashion peculiarly her own. Her hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me. For Caramanna was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl, a pearl of the east such as many a monarch has fought for. What then, Ask Smith? She was afraid to move, afraid to look out the window. My friend turned and stared 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's too great a strain for an inexperienced nurse. End of Chapter 27 Of all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu Manchu, how little had we accomplished. Excepting Caramanna and her brother, who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctors, 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 latter developments have been made public. Nail and 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 centred about the great waterway. There was much of poetic justice in his end, for the Thames had claimed him, for who so long had used that 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. Caramanna, whose beauty he had used as a law, at last was free, and no more with her smile could tempt men to death, that a 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 condoneable in a European equally cultured. But indeed, let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me in some respects. The soul of Caramanna was a closed book to my short-sighted western eyes. But the body of Caramanna 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 a brother and herself to Egypt. The boat sailed in three days. But Caramanna's beautiful eyes were sad. Often I detected tears on the black lashes. Shall I endeavour to describe my own tumultuous conflicting emotions? It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible. For in the dark eyes burned a fire I might not see. Though silk and lashes veiled a message I dared not read. Naylen 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 Caramanna, had kept his head. We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round of amusements, though with poor waymost bodies still at the mercy of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gaiety. 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 watercolours in Bond Street. Caramanna 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 as is her brother, a new upon the world from his living grave in the house of Dr. Fu Manchu. Suddenly as is clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic, I saw a peach-like colour fade, saw her become pale and wild eyes, the haunted Caramanna of the old days. She turned to me. Dr. Petrie, he says that Fu Manchu is here. Where? Naelyn Smith wrapped 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 as is 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 searching the room with big velvet black eyes. I studied the faces of 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. A united scoot in his 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 gate which I can only liken to that of an awkward cat. Then, over the head 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 smoke glasses and walked slowly leaning upon a stick. Smith's gaunt face paled, with a rapid glance at Karamana. He made off across the room. Could it be, Dr. Fu Manchu? How many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymur Sai and 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 Karamana, the police had searched every known haunt of the murder-group. But everything pointed to the fact that the group was disbanded and dispersed, and that the Lord of Strange Death, 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 available forces of the authorities took the field against one man. But that one man was evil of the East in Karnat. When we rejoined him, Nailen Smith was talking to the Commissioner at the door. He turned to me. That is Professor Jenner Mond, 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 Commissioner. 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. Nailen Smith stood clicking his teeth together in an irritable hesitation. I heard Karamana sigh, and looking at her, I saw that her cheeks were regaining their natural color. She smiled in pathetic apology. If he was here, he's gone, she said. I'm not afraid now. Smith thanked the Commissioner for his information, and we quitted the gallery. Professor Jenner Mond muttered, my friend, as lived so long in China as almost to be a Chinaman. I've never met him, never seen him before. But I wonder—you wonder what, Smith? I wonder if he could possibly be an ally of the doctors. I stared at him in amazement. If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all, I said, we must remember that the boy's impression, and Karamana's, was that Fu Manchu was present in person. I do attach importance to the incident, Petri. They are naturally sensitive to such impressions. But I doubt if even the abnormal organization of Aziz could dishingish between the hidden presence of a creature of the doctors and that of the doctor himself. I shall make a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Mond. But fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made his proposed call upon the Professor. Karamana and her brother safely lodged in their hotel, which was watched night and day by four men under Smith's orders. We returned to my quiet suburban rooms. First, said Smith, let us see what we can find out, respecting Professor Mond. He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard. There followed some little delay before the requisite information was obtained. Finally, however, we learned that the Professor was something of a recluse, having fewer acquaintances and fewer friends. He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street. A charwoman did such cleaning as was considered necessary by the Professor, who employed no regular domestic. When he was in London he might be seen fairly frequently at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was familiar to the officials. When he was not in London, that is, during the greater part of each year, no one knew where he went. He never left any address to which letters might be forwarded. How long has he been in London now? asked Smith. So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court, replied Scotland Yard, roughly a week. My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room. The charbed briar was produced and stuffed with that broad-cut latkeakile mixture of which Nalyn Smith consumed close upon a pound a week. He was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts hanging from the pipe-bowl, and when they light up, strew the floor with smouldering fragments. A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered. Mr. James Weymouth, to see you, sir. Hello, Wrapsmith. What's this? Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respect singularly like his brother, in others a singularly unlike. Now in his black suit he was a somber figure, and in the blue eyes I read a fear suppressed. Mr. Smith, he began. There's something uncanny going on at Maple Cottage. Smith wheeled the big armchair forward. Sit down, Mr. Weymouth, he said. I'm not entirely surprised, but you have my attention. What has occurred? Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I profited, and poured out a peg of whiskey. His hand was not quite steady. At knocking, he explained, he came again the night after you were there, and Mrs. Weymouth, my wife, I mean, felt that she couldn't spend another night there alone. Did she look out of the window, I asked. No, doctor, she was afraid. But I spent last night downstairs in the sitting-room, and I looked out. He took a gulp from his glass. Naelyn Smith seated on the edge of the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand was watching him keenly. I'll admit, I didn't look out at once, Weymouth resumed. There was something so uncanny gentlemen in that knocking, knocking in the dead of night. I thought, his voice shook, of poor Jack lying somewhere amongst the slime of the river, and— Oh, my God! It came to me that it was Jack who was knocking, and I dare not think what he—what it—would look like. He leaned forward, his chin in his hand. For a few moments we were all silent. I know I funked, he continued huskily. But when the wife came to the head of the stairs and whispered to me, there it is again. What in heaven's name can it be? I started to unbolt the door. The knocking had stopped. Everything was very still. I heard Mary, his widow, sobbing upstairs. That was all. I opened the door a little bit at a time. Pausing again, he cleared his throat and went on. It was a bright night, and there was no one there, not a soul. But somewhere down the lane as I looked out into the porch, I heard the most awful groans. They got fainter, and fainter. Then I could have sworn I heard someone laughing. My nerves cracked up at that, and I shut the door again. The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural fear which it had occasioned. He raised his glass with unsteady hand and drained it. Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe. He began to pace the room again. His eyes were literally on fire. Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house before tonight? Remover to your place, for instance? He asked abruptly. Weymouth looked up in surprise. She seems to be in a very low state, he replied. He glanced at me. Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion. I will come and see her, I said. But what is your idea, Smith? I want to hear that knocking, he rapped. But in what I may say fit to do, I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman. Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate, I suggested. That would meet the situation? Good, cried Smith. He was intensely excited now. I rely upon you to arrange something, Petrie. Mr. Weymouth, he turned to our visitor. I shall be with you this evening, not later than twelve o'clock. Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved. I asked him to wait whilst I prepared a draught for the patient. When he was gone, what do you think this knocking means, Smith, I asked. He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate, and began with nervous energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch. I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie, he replied. Nor what I fear. End of Chapter XXVIII Recorded in sunny Anchorage, Alaska Chapter XXIX Dusk was falling when we made our way in the direction of Magel Cottage. Naelyn Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the character of the district. A high and ancient wall bordered the road along which we walked for a considerable distance. Later it gave place to a rickety fence. My friend peered through a gap in the latter. There is quite an extensive estate here, he said, not yet cut up by the builder. It is well wooded on one side and there appears to be a pool lower down. The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread, quite unmistakable, of an approaching policeman. Smith continued to peer through the hole in the fence until the officer drew level with us, then. Does this piece of ground extend down to the village, Constable? He inquired. Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped and stood with his thumbs thrust in his belt. Yes, sir, they tell me three new roads will be made through it between here and the hill. It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps. I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times, but after dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would ever be the wiser. Burglar is frequent in the houses backing onto it. Oh, no. A favourite game in these parts is snatching loaves and bottles of milk from the door's first thing as they are delivered. There's been an extra lot of it lately. My mate who relieves me has got special instructions to keep his eye open in the mornings. The man grinned. It wouldn't be a very big case, even if he caught anybody. No, said Smith absently. Perhaps not. Your business must be a dry one in this warm weather. Good night. Good night, sir, replied the constable, richer by half a crown, and thank you. Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his ear. I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case after all, he murmured. Come on, Petrie. Not another word did he speak until we stood at the gate of Maple Cottage. There a plain clothesman was standing, evidently waiting Smith. He touched his hat. Have you found a suitable hiding place? asked my companion rapidly. Yes, sir, was the reply. Kent, my mate, is there now. You'll notice that he can't be seen from here. No, agreed Smith, peering all about him. He can't. Where is he? Behind the broken wall, explained the man, pointing. Through that ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door. Good. Keep your eyes open. If a messenger comes for me, he's to be intercepted, you understand? No one must be allowed to disturb us. You will recognize the messenger. He will be one of your fellows. Should he come, hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can. We walked up to the porch of the cottage. In response to Smith's ringing, came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival. First, said my friend briskly, you had better run up and see the patient. Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his wife to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay, a wanily, pathetic sight. Did you administer the draught as directed? I asked. Mrs. James Weymouth nodded. She was a kindly-looking woman, with the same dread haunting her haze eyes as that which lurked in her husband's blue ones. The patient was sleeping soundly. Some whispered instructions I gave to the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm night, and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking. The dim light from the lamp on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his brother, and for a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able to trust my reason. Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the illusion was lost. Do you think she's likely to wake, doctor? he asked. I think not, I replied. Nalyn Smith stood upon the rug before the half, swinging from one foot to the other in his nervously restless way. The room was foggy with the fumes of tobacco, for he too was smoking. At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar, which I never knew him to clean or scrape, would go out. I think Smith used three more matches than any other smoker I have ever met, and he invariably carried three boxes in various pockets of his garments. The tobacco habit is infectious, and seating myself in an armchair I lighted a cigarette. For this dreary vigil I had come prepared with a bunch of rough notes, a writing block and a fountain pen. I settled down to work upon my record of the Fu Manchu case. Silence fell upon Maple Cottage, save for the shuddering sigh which whispered through the overhanging cedars, and Smith's eternal match-striking. Nothing was there to disturb me in my task. Yet I could make little progress. Between my mind and the chapter upon which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself. It was as though this unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes. This was the sentence. Imagine a person tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered with a brow like Shakespeare, and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire eastern race accumulated in one giant intellect. Dr. Fu Manchu. Fu Manchu, as Smith had described him to me on that night, which now seemed so remotely distant, the night upon which I had learned of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that secret quickening which stirred the womb of the yellow race. A Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar of the grate. The cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour. Two, said James Weymouth. I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing block in the bag that I had with me. Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke. I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room. All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the patient still slept soundly. I returned to find Nailen Smith pacing about the room in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach of any crisis. At a quarter-past, too, the breeze dropped entirely, and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the great Metropolis. Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing. He sat at the window and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars. Smith seized his pacing and stood again on the rug very still. He was listening. I doubt not we were all listening. Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction of the village street. It was a vague indefinite disturbance, brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever. Some minutes before Smith had extinguished the lamp. In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together. The call of an hour sounded very clearly three times. I knew that to mean that a messenger had come, but from whence or bearing what tidings I knew not. My friend's plans were incomprehensible to me, nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature, knowing him to be in that high-strung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him at times of uncertainty when he doubted the wisdom of his actions, the accuracies of his surmises. He gave no sign. Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half hour. A soft breeze stole again through the branches above. The wind, I thought, must be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before. In so lonely a spot it was difficult to believe that the bell was that of St. Paul's, yet such was the fact. And hard upon the ringing followed another sound, a sound we had all expected and waited for, but at whose coming no one of us, I think, retained complete mastery of himself. Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping, it came, an imperative knocking at the door. My God! groaned Weymouth, but he did not move from his position at the window. Stand by, Petrie, said Smith. He strode to the door and threw it widely open. I know I was pale. I think I cried out as I fell back, retreated with clenched hands from before that which stood on the threshold. It was a wild, unkempt figure with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes. With its hands it clutched at its hair, at its chin, plucked at its mouth. No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant, but scantiest was the illumination. We could see the gleaming teeth and the wildly glaring eyes. He began to laugh, peel after peel, hideous and shrill. Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears. I was palsied by the horror of the sound. Then Naylen Smith pressed the button and an electric torch which he carried. He directed the disc of white light fully upon the face in the doorway. Oh God! cried Weymouth. It's John! And again and again. Oh God! Oh God! Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed, may I could not doubt, that a thing of another world stood before me. I'm ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me. James Weymouth raised his hands as if to thrust away from him that awful thing in the door. He was babbling prayers, I think, but wholly incoherent. Hold him, Petrie. Smith's voice was low. When we were past thought or intelligent action, he, dominant and cool with that forced calm for which a crisis over he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above. He leapt forward, and in the instant that he grappled with the one who had knocked, I knew the visitant for a man of flesh and blood, a man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal, foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy, knew him for a madman, knew him for the victim of foo-man chew. Not dead, but living, for Inspector Weymouth, a maniac. In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance. There was a sound of racing footsteps, and the men who had been watching outside came running into the porch. A third was with them, and the five of us, for Weymouth's brother, had not yet grasped the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst, clung to the infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him. The syringe, Petrie, gasped Smith, quick, you must manage to make an injection. I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag. A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me at Smith's request. Even in that thrilling moment I could find time to admire the wonderful foresight of my friend, who had devined what would before, isolated the strange, pitiful truth from the chaotic circumstances which saw us at Maple Cottage that night. Let me not enlarge upon the end of that awful struggle. At one time I despaired, we all despaired, of quieting the poor, demented creature. But at last it was done, and the gaunt bloodstained savage whom we had known as Detective Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny being, who, with his scratch of a needle, had made a brave and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thug. Nailon Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be the messenger from Scotland Yard. Well, he rapped. He's arrested, sir, the detective reported. They've kept him at his chambers, as you ordered. As she slept through it, said Smith to me, I just returned from a visit to the room above. I nodded. Is he safe for an hour or two, indicating the figure on the couch? For eight or ten, I replied grimly. Come, then. Our night's labours are not nearly complete. End of Chapter 29 Recorded in sunny Anchorage, Alaska Chapter 30 Of the Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu This Librivox recording is in the public domain. The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Roma Chapter 30 Later was forthcoming evidence to show that Paul Weymouth had lived a wildlife in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighbouring hill. Literally he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to steel as we learned when his lair was discovered. He had hidden himself cunningly, but witnesses appeared to have seen him in the dusk and fled from him. They never learned that the object of their fear was inspected to John Weymouth. How, having escaped death in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved we never knew, but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each morning, a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with the old custom, will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of alienation. I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking. In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village, we sped through the deserted streets to new-in court. I, who had followed Nail and Smith through the failures and successes of his mission, knew that to-night he'd surpassed himself, had justified the confidence placed in him by the highest authorities. We were admitted to an untidy room that of a student, a traveller and a crank, by a plain-clothes officer. A mid-pitcher-esque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue of the Buddha, sat a handcuffed man. His white hair and beard were patriarchal, his pose had great dignity, but his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses which he wore. Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner. We arrested Professor Jenna Mond as he came in, sir, reported the man who had opened the door. He has made no statement. I hope there isn't a mistake. I hope not, wrap Smith. He strode across the room. He was consumed by a fever of excitement. Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig, dashed the smoked glasses upon the floor. A great high brow was revealed, and green malignant eyes which fixed themselves upon him with an expression I can never forget. It was Dr. Fu Manchu. One intense moment of silence ensued, of silence which seemed to throb, then, what have you done with Professor Mond, demanded Smith. Dr. Fu Manchu showed his even yellow teeth in a singularly evil smile which I knew so well. A manacled prisoner, he sat, as unruffled as a judge upon the bench. In truth and injustice I am compelled to say that Fu Manchu was absolutely fearless. He has been detained in China, he replied, in smooth, sibilant tones, by affairs of great urgency. His well-known personality and ungregorious habits have served me well here. Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act. He stood, tugging at his ear, and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wandering detectives. What are we to do, sir? one of them asked. Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you. The three withdrew. My divine now, what was coming? Can you restore way, Moth-sanity? wrapped Smith abruptly. I cannot save you from the hangman, nor his fist clenched convulsively. Woodley, if I could, but Fu Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him. Say no more, Mr. Smith, he interrupted. You misunderstand me. I do not quarrel with that. But what I have done from conviction, and what I have done of necessity are separated, are seized apart. The brave Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poison needle in self-defense, but I regret his condition as greatly as you do. I respect such a man. There is an antidote to the poison of the needle. Name it, said Smith. Fu Manchu smiled again. Useless, he replied, I alone can prepare it. My secret shall die with me. I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth but no one else shall be in the house but he and I. It will be surrounded by police, interrupted Smith grimly. As you please, said Fu Manchu, make your arrangements. In that ebony case upon the table and the instruments for the cure. Arrange for me to visit him where and when you will. I distrust you utterly. It's some trick, jerk Smith. Dr. Fu Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height. His manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his. He raised them above his head and with a tragic gesture his fixed piercing gaze upon nailing Smith. The God of Cathay hear me, he said with a deep guttural note in his voice. I swear. The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the end of the visit of Fu Manchu was characteristic, terrible, inexplicable. Strange to relate. I did not doubt that this weird being had conceived some terrible kind of admiration or respect for the man to whom he had wrought so terrible an injury. He was capable of such sentiments, for he entertained some similar one in regard to myself. A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant, and in the early dawn of that morning came the scene of the Otra happenings. Poor Weymouth still in a comatose condition, we removed there, Smith having secured the key from the astonished agent. I suppose so strange a specialist never visited a patient before, certainly not under such conditions. For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring of police, Dr. Fu Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which his work of healing complete, he was to be born to prison and to death. Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend, that the enemy of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down. No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come. No concourse of excited students followed the hand of the master. But within that surrounded cottage was performed one of the miracles of science, which in other circumstances had made the fame of Dr. Fu Manchu to live forever. Inspector Weymouth dazed, dishevelled, clutching his head as a man who had passed through the valley of the shadow, but sane, sane walked out into the porch. He looked towards us, his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome wildness of insanity. Mr. Smith, he cried, and staggered down the path. Dr. Petrie, what? There came a deafening explosion, from every visible window of the deserted cottage, flames burst forth. Quick! Smith's voice rose almost to a scream. Into the house! He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying there like a drunken man. I was close upon his heels. Behind me came the police. The door was impassable. Already it vomited a deathly heat, born upon stifling fumes, like those at the mouth of the pit. We burst a window. The room within was a furnace. My God! cried someone. This is supernatural! Listen! cried another. Listen! The crowd, which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already, but upon all descended a pall of silence. From the heat of the Holocaust a voice proclaimed itself, a voice raised, not in anguish, but in triumph. It chanted barbarically and was still. The abnormal flames rose higher, leaping forth from every window. The alarm, said Smith Horsley, call up the brigade. I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust, the trust of my reader. For having limed in the colours at my command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as I should desire, unable with my consciousness of finality to write finis to the end of my narrative. It seems to me sometimes, that my pen is but temporarily idle, that I have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred phases. One sequel I hope for and against all the promptings of logic and western bias, if my hope shall be realised I cannot at this time pretend to state. The future, amid its secrets, holds this precious one from me. I ask you then to absolve me from the charge of ill-completing my work, for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader is shared by the writer. With intent I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor Jenner Mond to that closing episode at the deserted cottage. I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my account something of the breathless scurry which characterised those happenings. My canvas may seem sketchy. It is my impression of the reality. No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night. Fu Manchu arrested, Fu Manchu manacled, entering the cottage on his mission of healing. Weymouth miraculously rendered sane coming forth, the place in flames. And then, to a shell the cottage burned with an incredible rapidity that pointed to some hidden agency, to a shell of our ashes which held no trace of human bones. It has been asked of me, was there no possibility of Fu Manchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion? Was there no loophole of escape? I reply that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce have quitted the building undetected. Yet that Fu Manchu had in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency produced those abnormal flames I cannot doubt. Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral-pire? As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum. It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but illegible hand. This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth, to this day a man mentally sound, in a pocket of his ragged garments. When it was written I leave you to judge, how it came to be where Weymouth found it calls for no explanation. 2. Mr. Commissioner Nailen Smith and Dr. Petrie Greeting. I am recalled home by one who may not be denied. In much that I came to do I have failed, much that I have done I would undo. Some little I have undone. Out of fire I came, the smouldering fire of a thing one day to be a consuming flame, in fire I go. Seek not my ashes. I am the lord of the fires. Farewell. Fu Manchu. Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who penned that message, I leave to a judge if it be the letter of a madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means, or the jibe of a preternaturally clever scientist and the most elusive being ever born of the land of mystery, China. For the present I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict. A day may come though, I pray it do not, when I shall be able to throw new light upon much that is dark in this matter. That day so far as I can judge could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival, therefore I pray that the evil Vale will never be lifted. But as I said there is another sequel to this story which I can contemplate with different countenance. How then shall I conclude this very unsatisfactory account? Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely dark-eyed Karamanna, on board the liner which was to bearer to Egypt? No. Let me instead conclude with the words of Naylon Smith. I sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie. I have left to break my journey at the ditch. How would a run-up the Nile fit your program? Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you. End of Chapter 30. End of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Roma