The Mystery of Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

  The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back. Nayland Smith’s next move filled me with surprise. For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar and waistcoat.

  “Pocket your valuables, and do the same,” he muttered hoarsely. “We have a poor chance, but we are both fairly fit. Tonight, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives.”

  We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot. At Smith’s words I realized in a flash that such was to be our fate tonight.

  I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory. East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for. To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered—was answered again.

  “Three, at least,” hissed Smith, “three armed dacoits. Hopeless.”

  “Take the revolver,” I cried. “Smith, it’s—”

  “No,” he rapped, through clenched teeth. “A servant of the Crown in the East makes his motto: ‘Keep your word, though it break your neck!’ I don’t think we need fear it being used against us. Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods.”

  So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come. It was, roughly, a mile to the first building—a deserted cottage—and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied. Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu’s dacoits, was practically nil.

  At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would decide our fate. The professional murderers who pursued us ran like panthers, I knew; and I dared not allow my mind to dwell upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives. For a long time neither of us looked back.

  On we ran, and on—silently, doggedly.

  Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.

  Should I, too, look back? Yes. It was impossible to resist the horrid fascination.

  I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.

  And never while I live shall I forget what I saw. Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.

  More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted. The brilliant moonlight’ gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance, and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.

  “As hard as you can go now,” panted Smith. “We must make an attempt to break into the empty cottage. Only chance.”

  I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I cannot speak. But I am confident that the next half-mile was done in time that would not have disgraced a crack man. Not once again did either of us look back. Yard upon yard we raced forward together! My heart seemed to be bursting. My leg muscles throbbed with pain. At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles. Once I stumbled.

  “My God!” came from Smith, weakly.

  But I recovered myself. Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu’s bloodhounds were hard put to it by the killing pace we had made.

  “Smith,” I whispered, “look in front. Someone!”

  As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again. It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.

  It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward into the interior darkness. Flat upon the floor he lay, for as, with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost fell over his recumbent body.

  Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open. I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to. As I turned, the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon, leapt through the gateway.

  That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine accident my weak hands found the bolt. With the last ounce of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket—as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.

  I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.

  A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window, and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.

  “Sorry, old man,” whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible. Weakly he grasped my hand. “My fault. I shouldn’t have let you come.”

  From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report. And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.

  One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his account.

  A grey figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.

  Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.

  In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me. Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail. The room was full of pungent smoke. I staggered to my feet as the grey figure with the revolver turned toward me. Something familiar there was in that long grey garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.

  It was my grey rain-coat.

  “Kâramanèh,” I whispered.

  And Smith, supporting himself uprightly with difficulty, and holding fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which sounded like “God bless her!”

  The girl trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.

  “I followed you,” she said. “Did you not know I should follow you? But I had to hide because of another who was following also. I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me.”

  She broke off and turned to Smith.

  “This is your pistol.” she said naïvely. “I found it in your bag. Will you please take it!”

  He took it without a word. Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.

  “Now go. Hurry!” she said. “You are not safe yet.”

  “But you?” I asked.

  “You have failed,” she replied. “I must go back to him. There is no other way.”

  Strangely sick at heart for a man who had just had a miraculous escape from death, I opened the door. Coatless, dishevilled figures, my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.

  Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens. Kâramanèh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains. If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers, a nature more tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it. Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she had the heart of a child—this girl who could shoot so straightly.

  “We must send the police tonight,” said Smith. “Or the papers—”

  “Hurry,” came the girl’s voice commandingly from the darkness of the cottage.

  It was a singular situation. My very soul rebelled against it. But what could we do?

  “Tell us where we can communicate,” began Smith.

  “Hurry. I shall be suspected. Do you want him to kill me?”

  We moved away. All was very still now, and the lights glimmered faintly ahead. Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon’s disc.

  “Good-night, Kâramanèh,” I whispered softly.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “ANDAMAN—SECOND”

  To pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once useless and thankless. In its actual and in its dramatic significance it concluded with our parting from Kâramanèh. And in that
parting I learnt what Shakespeare meant by “sweet sorrow”.

  There was a world, I learnt, upon the confines of which I stood, a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected. Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was the mystery of the heart of Kâramanèh. I sought to forget her. I sought to remember her. Indeed, in the latter task I found one more congenial, yet in the direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.

  East and West may not intermingle. As a student of world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny, that truth. Again, if Kâramanèh were to be credited, she had come to FuManchu a slave; had fallen into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers; had known the house of the slave dealer. Could it be? With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to have passed.

  But if it were so?

  At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth—closing my eyes in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.

  Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story. Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems persistently haunted my mind. But always, my heart had an answer. And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!—who, in brief, a very short time ago, had thought himself past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find no place—are excluded!

  But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist sympathy for the recorder. The topic upon which, here, I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other. Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.

  It is a fact, singular but true, that few Londoners know London. Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned, since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few; places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.

  Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes’ walk from the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way. Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts he paused and turned to me.

  “Whatever you see or hear,” he cautioned, “express no surprise.”

  A cab had dropped us at the corner. We both wore dark suits and fez caps with black silk tassels. My complexion had been artificially reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend’s. He rang the bell beside the door.

  Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman—gross, hideously ugly.

  Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic. As a linguist his attainments were a constant source of surprise. The jargons of the East, Far and Near, he spoke like his mother tongue. The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect. Following this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music, we entered a little room, bare of furniture, with coarse matting for mural decoration, and a patternless red carpet on the floor. In a niche burnt a common metal lamp.

  The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy. Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab—for such he appeared to be—drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess. Placing his finger upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.

  We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us. The sounds of crude music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter side I gave a start of surprise.

  Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around three of its walls. These divans were occupied by a motley company of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese. Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking. A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying the centre of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.

  Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated, and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the further end of the room. A buzz of conversation arose.

  “It is a sort of combined Wekâleh and place of entertainment for a certain class of Oriental resident in, or visiting, London,” Smith whispered. “The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host. I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank.”

  He was peering out eagerly into the strange club-room.

  “Whom do you expect to find here?” I asked.

  “It is a recognized meeting-place,” said Smith in my ear. “It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group use it at times.”

  Curiously I surveyed all those faces which were visible from the spy-hole. My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.

  “Do you recognize anyone?” I whispered.

  “S-sh!”

  Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway. He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know that a new arrival was entering.

  The hum of conversation died away, and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies. The newcomer was a woman, then. Fearful of making any noise, I yet managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.

  A woman in an elegant flame-coloured opera-cloak was crossing the floor and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed. She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across her face. A momentary view I had of her—and wildly incongruous she looked in that place—and she had disappeared from sight, having approached some one invisible who sat upon the divan immediately beneath our point of vantage.

  From the way in which the company gazed toward her, I divined that she was no habituée of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly surprising to those in the room as it was to me.

  Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt— who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity, but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a midnight expedition of so unusual a character?

  I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me. His excitement was intense. Had his keener powers enabled him to recognize the unknown?

  A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery. Only one woman known to me used that perfume—Kâramanèh.

  Then it was she!

  At last my friend’s vigilance had been rewarded. Eagerly I bent forward. Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.

  Again the strange perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right nor left, I saw Kâramanèh—for that it was she I no longer doubted —recross the room and disappear.

  “The man she spoke to,” hissed Smith. “We must see him! We must have him!”

  He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom. It was empty. Down the passage he led, and we were almost come to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him, and was gone, slamming it fast.

  I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained the street it was empty. Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic. A big car was just turning the corner toward Leicester Square.

  “That is the girl,” rapped Smith, “but where in heaven’s name is the man to whom she brought the message? I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot. To think that we have had such an opportunity and have thrown it away!”

  Angry and nonplu
ssed he stood at the corner, looking in the direction of the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity, and sharply clicking his teeth together. I, too, was very thoughtful. Clues were few enough in those days of our war with that giant antagonist. The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying a moment too long might mean the victory of Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning of the balance which a wise providence had adjusted between the white and yellow races, was appalling.

  To Smith and I, who knew something of the secret influences at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be, the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule, it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretched out over London. Dr. Fu-Manchu was, a menace to the civilized world. Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions whose fate he sought to command.

  “Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?” said Smith. “What State secret is to be filched? What faithful servant of the British Raj to be spirited away? Upon whom now has Fu-Manchu set his death seal?”

  “Kâramanèh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary of the Doctor.”

  “I feel assured that she was, Petrie. Of the many whom this yellow cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer? The man’s instructions were urgent. Witness his hasty departure. Curse it!” He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his left hand. “I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last. To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation of just such a meeting—only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!”

  Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly Circus, and had walked out into the heart of the night’s traffic. I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the off-front wheel of a big Mercédès. Then the traffic was blocked, and we found ourselves dangerously penned in amidst the press of vehicles.

  Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers, who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors; and just before that impassable barrier, the arm of a London policeman, was lowered and the stream moved on, a faint breath of perfume became perceptible to me.