The Mask of Fu-Manchu
Page 23
A final question I threw at Betts:
“He’s a tall man?”
“Very tall, sir, and distinguished; Chinese, I believe…”
I battled my way to the staircase. Couples were seated upon it fully halfway up. I heard the chief’s loud laugh and had a hazy impression that Nayland Smith formed one of the group in the lobby.
They were the two for whom this trap had been laid!
While disavowing any claims to heroism, I must state here that I mounted those stairs to the Museum Room fully expecting to meet destruction. I was determined to meet it alone. The plan should fail. With moderate luck, I might escape; but, even if I crashed, the Chinese doctor would have been foiled.
Sounds of voices, laughter, music, followed me as I threw open the door guarded left and right by phantoms clothed in Saracen armour.
The Museum Room was empty!
For a moment I doubted the evidence of my senses. After all, was it credible that Fu-Manchu should have presented himself at Sir Lionel’s house? Was it possible that he could have crossed the lobby without being recognized by one of the many present who knew him?
I was aware, of course, that the room had three doors; but, even so, escape to the street without detection was next to impossible.
But definitely there was no one there!
Then, on the table, that memorable table which I had prepared for the private view of the relics, I saw that a small parcel lay.
A dimmed clamour of voices and music reached me, with which mingled the traffic hum of Bruton Street.
Neatly wrapped and sealed it lay before me; that package which I believed to contain—death.
The motives which actuated me I realise now, looking back, were obscure; but I opened the parcel and found it to consist of a small casket apparently of crystal, carved (as I supposed at the time) in a pattern of regular prisms which glittered brightly in the sunlight.
An ebony box was inside the casket. A sheet of thick, yellow notepaper, folded, lay on the lid of the box. I opened the box.
It was lined with velvet; and, resting upon the velvet, I saw a string of pink pearls coiled around a scarab ring.
My brain performed a somersault. Someone was calling my name, but I didn’t heed the interruption. I was unfolding the sheet of thick, yellow notepaper. It was neither headed nor dated. In jet-black, cramped writing it contained these words:
To Mr. Shan Greville.
Greeting.
You have suffered at my hands, because unwittingly you have sometimes obstructed me. I bear you no ill will. Indeed, I respect you—for you are an honourable man; and I wish you every happiness.
The pearls are for your bride. They are the only perfectly matched set of a hundred pink pearls in the world. The casket is also for her. She is beautiful, brave, and virtuous, a combination of qualities so rare that the woman possessing them is a jewel above price. It is set with eighty flawless diamonds and was made to the order of Catherine of Russia—who was brave, but neither beautiful nor virtuous.
The ebony box is for you. It will interest Sir Lionel Barton. It bears engraved upon it the seal of King Solomon and came from his temple. The ring, also, I request you to accept. It is the signet ring of Khufu—supposed builder of the Great Pyramid.
Commend me to Sir Denis Nayland Smith, to Dr. Petrie, and to Karamenfeh, his wife, and convey my good wishes to Superintendent Weymouth.
I desire you every good fortune.
Greeting and Farewell.
Fu-Manchu.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sax Rohmer was born Arthur Henry Ward in 1883, in Birmingham, England, adding “Sarsfield” to his name in 1901. He was four years old when Sherlock Holmes appeared in print, five when the Jack the Ripper murders began, and sixteen when H.G. Wells’ Martians invaded.
Initially pursuing a career as a civil servant, he turned to writing as a journalist, poet, comedy sketch writer, and songwriter in British music halls. At age twenty he submitted the short story “The Mysterious Mummy” to Pearson’s magazine and “The Leopard-Couch” to Chamber’s Journal. Both were published under the byline “A. Sarsfield Ward.”
Ward’s Bohemian associates Cumper, Bailey, and Dodgson gave him the nickname “Digger,” which he used as his byline on several serialized stories. Then, in 1908, the song “Bang Went the Chance of a Lifetime” appeared under the byline “Sax Rohmer.” Becoming immersed in theosophy, alchemy, and mysticism, Ward decided the name was appropriate to his writing, so when “The Zayat Kiss” first appeared in The Story-Teller magazine in October, 1912, it was credited to Sax Rohmer.
That was the first story featuring Fu-Manchu, and the first portion of the novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Novels such as The Yellow Claw, Tales of Secret Egypt, Dope, The Dream Detective, The Green Eyes of Bast, and Tales of Chinatown made Rohmer one of the most successful novelists of the 1920s and 1930s.
There are fourteen Fu-Manchu novels, and the character has been featured in radio, television, comic strips, and comic books. He first appeared in film in 1923, and has been portrayed by such actors as Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Sellers, and Nicolas Cage.
Rohmer died in 1959, a victim of an outbreak of the type A influenza known as the Asian flu.
APPRECIATING DOCTOR FU-MANCHU
BY LESLIE S. KLINGER
The “yellow peril”—that stereotypical threat of Asian conquest— seized the public imagination in the late nineteenth century, in political diatribes and in fiction. While several authors exploited this fear, the work of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, stood out.
Dr. Fu-Manchu was born in Rohmer’s short story “The Zayat Kiss,” which first appeared in a British magazine in 1912. Nine more stories quickly appeared and, in 1913, the tales were collected as The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu in America). The Doctor appeared in two more series before the end of the Great War, collected as The Devil Doctor (The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu) and The Si-Fan Mysteries (The Hand of Fu-Manchu).
After a fourteen-year absence, the Doctor reappeared in 1931, in The Daughter of Fu-Manchu. There were nine more novels, continuing until Rohmer’s death in 1959, when Emperor Fu-Manchu was published. Four stories, which had previously appeared only in magazines, were published in 1973 as The Wrath of Fu-Manchu.
The Fu-Manchu stories also have been the basis of numerous motion pictures, most famously the 1932 MGM film The Mask of Fu Manchu, featuring Boris Karloff as the Doctor.
In the early stories, Fu-Manchu and his cohorts are the “yellow menace,” whose aim is to establish domination of the Asian races. In the 1930s Fu-Manchu foments political dissension among the working classes. By the 1940s, as the wars in Europe and Asia threaten terrible destruction, Fu-Manchu works to depose other world leaders and defeat the Communists in Russia and China.
Rohmer undoubtedly read the works of Conan Doyle, and there is a strong resemblance between Nayland Smith and Holmes. There are also marked parallels between the four doctors, Petrie and Watson as the narrator-comrades, and Dr. Fu-Manchu and Professor Moriarty as the arch-villains.
The emphasis is on fast-paced action set in exotic locations, evocatively described in luxuriant detail, with countless thrills occurring to the unrelenting ticking of a tightly-wound clock. Strong romantic elements and sensually described, sexually attractive women appear throughout the tales, but ultimately it is the fantastic nature of the adventures that appeal.
This is the continuing appeal of Dr. Fu-Manchu, for despite his occasional tactic of alliance with the West, he unrelentingly pursued his own agenda of world domination. In the long run, Rohmer’s depiction of Fu-Manchu rose above the fears and prejudices that may have created him to become a picture of a timeless and implacable creature of menace.
A complete version of this essay can be found in The Mystery of Fu-Manchu, also available from Titan Books.
e Mask of Fu-Manchu