The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

  CHAPTER X. THE CLIMBER RETURNS

  In utter darkness we groped our way through into the hallway ofSlattin's house, having entered, stealthily, from the rear; for Smithhad selected the study as a suitable base of operations. We reached itwithout mishap, and presently I found myself seated in the very chairwhich Karamaneh had occupied; my companion took up a post just withinthe widely opened door.

  So we commenced our ghostly business in the house of the murdered man--ahouse from which, but a few hours since, his body had been removed. Thiswas such a vigil as I had endured once before, when, with Nayland Smithand another, I had waited for the coming of one of Fu-Manchu's deathagents.

  Of all the sounds which, one by one, now began to detach themselvesfrom the silence, there was a particular sound, homely enough at anothertime, which spoke to me more dreadfully than the rest. It was theticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece; and I thought how this soundmust have been familiar to Abel Slattin, how it must have formedpart and parcel of his life, as it were, and how it went onnow--tick-tick-tick-tick--whilst he, for whom it had ticked, layunheeding--would never heed it more.

  As I grew more accustomed to the gloom, I found myself staring at hisoffice chair; once I found myself expecting Abel Slattin to enter theroom and occupy it. There was a little China Buddha upon the bureau inone corner, with a gilded cap upon its head, and as some reflection ofthe moonlight sought out this little cap, my thoughts grotesquely turnedupon the murdered man's gold tooth.

  Vague creakings from within the house, sounds as though of stealthyfootsteps upon the stair, set my nerves tingling; but Nayland Smith gaveno sign, and I knew that my imagination was magnifying these ordinarynight sounds out of all proportion to their actual significance.Leaves rustled faintly outside the window at my back: I construed theirsibilant whispers into the dreaded name--Fu-Manchu-Fu-Manchu--Fu-Manchu!

  So wore on the night; and, when the ticking clock hollowly boomed thehour of one, I almost leaped out of my chair, so highly strung were mynerves, and so appallingly did the sudden clangor beat upon them. Smith,like a man of stone, showed no sign. He was capable of so subduing hisconstitutionally high-strung temperament, at times, that temporarilyhe became immune from human dreads. On such occasions he would be icilycool amid universal panic; but, his object accomplished, I have seen himin such a state of collapse, that utter nervous exhaustion is the onlyterm by which I can describe it.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick went the clock, and, with my heart still thumpingnoisily in my breast, I began to count the tickings; one, two, three,four, five, and so on to a hundred, and from one hundred to manyhundreds.

  Then, out from the confusion of minor noises, a new, arresting sounddetached itself. I ceased my counting; no longer I noted the tick-tickof the clock, nor the vague creakings, rustlings and whispers. I sawSmith, shadowly, raise his hand in warning--in needless warning, for Iwas almost holding my breath in an effort of acute listening.

  From high up in the house this new sound came from above the topmostroom, it seemed, up under the roof; a regular squeaking, oddly familiar,yet elusive. Upon it followed a very soft and muffled thud; then ametallic sound as of a rusty hinge in motion; then a new silence,pregnant with a thousand possibilities more eerie than any clamor.

  My mind was rapidly at work. Lighting the topmost landing of the housewas a sort of glazed trap, evidently set in the floor of a loft-likeplace extending over the entire building. Somewhere in the red-tiledroof above, there presumably existed a corresponding skylight orlantern.

  So I argued; and, ere I had come to any proper decision, another sound,more intimate, came to interrupt me.

  This time I could be in no doubt; some one was lifting the trap abovethe stairhead--slowly, cautiously, and all but silently. Yet to my ears,attuned to trifling disturbances, the trap creaked and groaned noisily.

  Nayland Smith waved to me to take a stand on the other side of theopened door--behind it, in fact, where I should be concealed from theview of any one descending the stair.

  I stood up and crossed the floor to my new post.

  A dull thud told of the trap fully raised and resting upon somesupporting joist. A faint rustling (of discarded garments, I toldmyself) spoke to my newly awakened, acute perceptions, of the visitorpreparing to lower himself to the landing. Followed a groan of woodworksubmitted to sudden strain--and the unmistakable pad of bare feet uponthe linoleum of the top corridor.

  I knew now that one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's uncanny servants had gained theroof of the house by some means, had broken through the skylight and haddescended by means of the trap beneath on to the landing.

  In such a tensed-up state as I cannot describe, nor, at this hourmentally reconstruct, I waited for the creaking of the stairs whichshould tell of the creature's descent.

  I was disappointed. Removed scarce a yard from me as he was, I couldhear Nayland Smith's soft, staccato breathing; but my eyes were all forthe darkened hallway, for the smudgy outline of the stair-rail with thefaint patterning in the background which, alone, indicated the wall.

  It was amid an utter silence, unheralded by even so slight a soundas those which I had acquired the power of detecting--that I saw thecontinuity of the smudgy line of stair-rail to be interrupted.

  A dark patch showed upon it, just within my line of sight, invisible toSmith on the other side of the doorway, and some ten or twelve stairsup.

  No sound reached me, but the dark patch vanished and reappeared threefeet lower down.

  Still I knew that this phantom approach must be unknown to mycompanion--and I knew that it was impossible for me to advise him of itunseen by the dreaded visitor.

  A third time the dark patch--the hand of one who, ghostly, silent, wascreeping down into the hallway--vanished and reappeared on a level withmy eyes. Then a vague shape became visible; no more than a blur upon thedim design of the wall-paper... and Nayland Smith got his first sight ofthe stranger.

  The clock on the mantelpiece boomed out the half-hour.

  At that, such was my state (I blush to relate it) I uttered a faint cry!

  It ended all secrecy--that hysterical weakness of mine. It might havefrustrated our hopes; that it did not do so was in no measure due to me.But in a sort of passionate whirl, the ensuing events moved swiftly.

  Smith hesitated not one instant. With a panther-like leap he hurledhimself into the hall.

  "The lights, Petrie!" he cried--"the lights! The switch is near thestreet-door!"

  I clenched my fists in a swift effort to regain control of mytreacherous nerves, and, bounding past Smith, and past the foot of thestair, I reached out my hand to the switch, the situation of which,fortunately, I knew.

  Around I came, in response to a shrill cry from behind me--an inhumancry, less a cry than the shriek of some enraged animal....

  With his left foot upon the first stair, Nayland Smith stood, his leanbody bent perilously backward, his arms rigidly thrust out, and hissinewy fingers gripping the throat of an almost naked man--a man whosebrown body glistened unctuously, whose shaven head was apish low, whosebloodshot eyes were the eyes of a mad dog! His teeth, upper and lower,were bared; they glistened, they gnashed, and a froth was on his lips.With both his hands, he clutched a heavy stick, and once--twice, hebrought it down upon Nayland Smith's head!

  I leaped forward to my friend's aid; but as though the blows had beenthose of a feather, he stood like some figure of archaic statuary, norfor an instant relaxed the death grip which he had upon his adversary'sthroat.

  Thrusting my way up the stairs, I wrenched the stick from the hand ofthe dacoit--for in this glistening brown man, I recognized one of thatdeadly brotherhood who hailed Dr. Fu-Manchu their Lord and Master.

  * * * * *

  I cannot dwell upon the end of that encounter; I cannot hope to makeacceptable to my readers an account of how Nayland Smith, glassy-eyed,and with consciousness ebbing from him instant by instant, stood there,a realization of Leighton's "Athlete," his
arms rigid as iron bars evenafter Fu-Manchu's servant hung limply in that frightful grip.

  In his last moments of consciousness, with the blood from his woundedhead trickling down into his eyes, he pointed to the stick which I hadtorn from the grip of the dacoit, and which I still held in my hand.

  "Not Aaron's rod, Petrie!" he gasped hoarsely--"the rod ofMoses!--Slattin's stick!"

  Even in upon my anxiety for my friend, amazement intruded.

  "But," I began--and turned to the rack in which Slattin's favorite caneat that moment reposed--had reposed at the time of his death.

  Yes!--there stood Slattin's cane; we had not moved it; we had disturbednothing in that stricken house; there it stood, in company with anumbrella and a malacca.

  I glanced at the cane in my hand. Surely there could not be two such inthe world?

  Smith collapsed on the floor at my feet.

  "Examine the one in the rack, Petrie," he whispered, almost inaudibly,"but do not touch it. It may not be yet...."

  I propped him up against the foot of the stairs, and as the constablebegan knocking violently at the street door, crossed to the rack andlifted out the replica of the cane which I held in my hand.

  A faint cry from Smith--and as if it had been a leprous thing, I droppedthe cane instantly.

  "Merciful God!" I groaned.

  Although, in every other particular, it corresponded with that which Iheld--which I had taken from the dacoit--which he had come to substitutefor the cane now lying upon the floor--in one dreadful particular itdiffered.

  Up to the snake's head it was an accurate copy; but the head lived!

  Either from pain, fear or starvation, the thing confined in the hollowtube of this awful duplicate was become torpid. Otherwise, no poweron earth could have saved me from the fate of Abel Slattin; for thecreature was an Australian death-adder.