The Mystery of Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

  “As you please,” she replied. “The police would learn nothing.”

  “You do not belong to the Far East,” my friend said abruptly. “You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no kin of Fu-Manchu.”

  “That is true,” she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

  “Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?”

  She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.

  Smith walked to the door.

  “I must make out my report, Petrie,” he said. “Look after the prisoner.”

  And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility. What attitude should I adopt? How should I go about my delicate task? In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances saw captive in my rooms.

  “You do not think we would harm you?” I began awkwardly. “No harm shall come to you. Why will you not trust us?”

  She raised her brilliant eyes.

  “Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,” she said, “those others whom he has sought for?”

  Alas! it had been of none, and I knew it well. I thought I grasped the drift of her words.

  “You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?”

  “Of killing me!” she flashed scornfully. “Do I seem one to fear for myself?”

  “Then what do you fear?” I asked in surprise.

  She looked at me oddly.

  “When I was seized and sold for a slave,” she answered, “my sister was taken too, and my brother—a child.” She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more soft. “My sister died in the desert. My brother lived. Better, far better, that he had died too.”

  Her words impressed me intensely.

  “Of what are you speaking?” I questioned. “You speak of slave-raids, of the desert. Where did these things take place? Of what country are you?”

  “Does it matter?” she questioned in turn. “Of what country am I? A slave has no country, no name.”

  “No name!” I cried.

  “You may call me Kâramanèh,” she said. “As Kâramanèh I was sold to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased. We were cheap at the price he paid.” She laughed shortly, wildly.

  “But he has spent a lot of money to educate me. My brother is all that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand? It is upon him the blow will fall. You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection. Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?”

  I shook my head sadly.

  “You understand now why I cannot disobey my master’s orders—why, if I would, I dare not betray him.”

  I walked to the window and looked out. How could I answer her arguments? What could I say? I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called herself Kâramanèh stood beside me. She laid her hand upon my arm.

  “Let me go,” she pleaded. “He will kill him! He will kill him!”

  Her voice shook with emotion.

  “He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame,” I said angrily. “We arrested you; you are not here of your own free will.”

  She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.

  “Listen.” She was speaking rapidly, nervously. “If I help you to take Dr. Fu-Manchu—tell you where he is to be found alone—will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you will let us both go free?”

  “I will,” I said, without hesitation. “You may rest assured of it.”

  “But there is a condition,” she added.

  “What is it?”

  “When I have told you where to capture him you must release me.”

  I hesitated. Smith often had accused me of weakness where this girl was concerned. What now was my plain duty? That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances unless it suited her to do so, I felt assured. If she spoke the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element; her conduct I now viewed in a new light. Humanity, I thought, dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.

  “I agree,” I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation, perhaps of fear.

  She laid her hands upon my shoulders.

  “You will be careful?” she said pleadingly.

  “For your sake,” I replied, “I shall.”

  “Not for my sake.”

  “Then for your brother’s.”

  “No.” Her voice had sunk to a whisper. “For your own.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE HULK OFF THE FLATS

  A cool breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames. Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low’s Cottages, the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes. Between us and the cottages stretched half a mile of lush land through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths; before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed around the bend ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily toward our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely place.

  Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with Kâramanèh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must not be acquainted with her share in the matter.

  A light came into view far ahead of us.

  “That’s the light, Petrie,” said Smith. “If we keep that straight before us, according to our information we shall strike the hulk.”

  I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little weapon was curiously reassuring. I have endeavoured, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact, the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister. I despair of conveying to those who may read this account any but the coldest conception of the man’s evil power.

  Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm. We stood listening.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You heard nothing?”

  I shook my head.

  Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way. He turned to me, and his face wore a peculiar expression.

  “You don’t think it’s a trap?” he jerked. “We are trusting her blindly.”

  Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms against the innuendo.

  “I don’t,” I said shortly.

  He nodded. We pressed on.

  Ten minutes’ steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames. Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu’s activities centred always about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of communication along which he moved his mysterious forces. The opium den off Shadwell Highway; the mansion upstream, at that hour a smouldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes. Always he made his headquarters upon the river. It was significant; and even if tonight’s expedition should fail, this was a clue for our future guidance.

  “Bear to the right,” directed Smith. “We must reconnoitre before making our attack.”

  We took a path that led directly to the river bank. Before us lay the grey expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city. But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us. The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity. Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked indeed a
fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein we played our parts. When I had lain in the East End opium den, when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a peaceful Norfolk countryside; the world of living men, had come to me.

  Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.

  “Kâramanèh merely means a slave,” he said irrelevantly.

  I made no comment.

  “There’s the hulk,” he added.

  The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud sloped to the level of the running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet—for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory—a rough pier showed. Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water. Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.

  “That will be the cabin,” said Smith.

  Acting upon our prearranged plan we turned and walked up on to the staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier. With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rungs creaking harshly against the crazy railing.

  “How are we going to get down without being detected?” whispered Smith.

  “We’ve got to risk it,” I said grimly.

  Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.

  The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me. My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape. I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird creaking of the ladder, the groans of the labouring hulk, and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.

  Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck. He had witnessed my accident, but—

  “We must risk it,” he whispered in my ear. “We dare not turn back now.”

  He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I perforce following.

  At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out from the singular apartment at the entrance to which we found ourselves. It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms, and with instruments—some of them of a form unknown to my experience. I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith’s voice rose above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding:

  “I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!”

  For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.

  The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his mask-like, intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular appliances before him, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded lamp above, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green, raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.

  But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his immediate surroundings tallied, almost identically, with the dream-pictures which had come to me as I lay chained in the cell!

  Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens. A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated, leapt and chattered the little marmoset.

  That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything—for anything except for what really happened.

  The Doctor’s wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion. The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.

  “Put up your hands!” rapped Smith, “and attempt no tricks.” His voice quivered with excitement. “The game’s up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him with, Petrie.”

  I moved forward to Smith’s side, and was about to pass him in the narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing—groaning, creaking—and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.

  “Put up your hands!” ordered Smith imperatively.

  Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the impassive features—a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace, revealing as it did his even, discoloured teeth, but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.

  He spoke softly, sibilantly.

  “I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves.”

  Smith’s keen grey eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker. The gleaming barrel moved not a hair’s breadth. But I glanced quickly over my shoulder—and stifled a cry of pure horror.

  A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me. A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein. A slight movement must have despatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon, I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.

  “Smith!” I whispered hoarsely, “don’t look around. For God’s sake keep him covered. But a dacoit has his knife at my throat!”

  Then, for the first time, Smith’s hand trembled. But his glance never wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.

  I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but a few seconds. To me those seconds were each a lingering death. There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!

  “You supposed that I was alone?” suggested Fu-Manchu. “So I was.”

  Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when we had entered.

  “But my faithful servant followed you,” he added. “I thank him. The honours, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?”

  Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously. Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leapt playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a whistling voice.

  “Don’t stir!” said Smith savagely. “I warn you!”

  Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.

  “May I ask how you discovered my retreat?” he asked.

  “This hulk has been watched since dawn,” lied Smith brazenly.

  “So?” The Doctor’s filmed eyes cleared for a moment. “And today you compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people, too. I congratulate you. She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions.”

  The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of note-paper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.

  “An impasse,” said Fu-Manchu. “I have a proposal to make. I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?”

  “I would not,” replied Smith promptly.

  “Therefore,” pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone marred his perfect English, “I must accept yours. Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing. You, I take it, know as little of mine. My Burmese friend and Dr. Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow. We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards. You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps. I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of the specified
period, to act as you see fit. Is it agreed?”

  Smith hesitated. Then:

  “The dacoit must leave his knife also,” he stipulated.

  Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.

  “Agreed. Shall I lead the way?”

  “No!” rapped Smith. “Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last.”

  A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with its evil odours, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments, and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.

  “It will be awkward on the ladder,” said Fu-Manchu. “Dr. Petrie, I will accept your word to adhere to the terms.”

  “I promise,” I said, the words almost choking me.

  We mounted the rising and dipping ladder; all reached the pier, and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of Smith’s revolver. Around about our feet, now leaping ahead, now gambolling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit, dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes. Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a scene in that place.

  “Here we part,” said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.

  The man threw his knife upon the ground.

  “Search him, Petrie,” directed Smith. “He may have a second concealed.”

  The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man’s scanty garments.

  “Now search Fu-Manchu.”

  This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense of revulsion from any human being. I shuddered, as though I had touched a venomous reptile.

  Smith threw down his revolver.

  “I curse myself for an honourable fool,” he said. “No one could dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand.”

  Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in Smith’s voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my friend’s word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment. Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he too must have known.