The Mystery of Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

  From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this advance-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 whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left no clue behind.

  “Kâramanèh!” I called softly.

  The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell upon the darkly lovely face of the slave girl. She who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu now was to be the means whereby society should 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, Kâramanèh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy; dead so far as Western lore had power to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny skill of the Chinese doctor.

  “Be quick!” she said, “be quick! Awaken him! I am afraid.”

  From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe and phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid. It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia. Of its constitution I knew nothing. Although I had had the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared to devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes. The amber drops spelt life for the boy Azîz, spelt success for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelt ruin for the fiendish Chinaman.

  I raised the white coverlet. 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 phial, I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him. I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through the veins of Azîz—which was tinting the greyed face with the olive tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me, was restoring the dead to life.

  But 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 Kâramanèh to him. Azîz 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. Kâramanèh was breathing rapidly.

  “You have nothing to fear,” I whispered, “see, he is reviving. In a few moments all will be well with him.”

  The hanging lamp with its garishly coloured 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 Kâramanèh 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 to appal me.

  Inspector Weymouth’s wondering face peeped over my shoulder.

  “Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?” I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared beside me. “I cannot understand the silence of the house—”

  “Look about,” replied Kâramanèh, never taking her eyes from the face of Azîz.

  I peered around the shadowy walls. Tall glass cases there were, shelves and niches; where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore, the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science —the visible evidences of Fu-Manchu’s presence. Shelves—cases—niches—were bare. Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories wherewith 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 dacoits and kindred ministers of death—all must have fled too.

  “You have let him escape us!” I said rapidly. “You promised 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! is he not reviving slowly? Are you sure you have made no mistake?”

  Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me. Again I examined Azîz, the most remarkable patient of my professional career.

  As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes—which were so like the eyes of Kâramanèh—and, with the girl’s eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.

  Kâramanèh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith. I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.

  “My promise is fulfilled!” I said. “You are free! Now for FuManchu! 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. Nayland Smith’s eyes gleamed feverishly. He turned to Kâramanèh.

  “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.

  Kâramanèh’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 set my blood dancing; for Kâramanèh 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 Fu-Manchu were never far apart. Though we were two, and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who ever came out of the East.

  It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet, Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door, to which Kâramanèh 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, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face—was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

  At sight of him my heart leapt—and seemed to suspend its functions, so intense was the horror which this man’s presence inspired in 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-Manchu 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. The man’s ruling vice had wrought his downfall.

  I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Kâramenèh’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!” came Kâramanèh’s warning voice—hushed—trembling.

  Her little hand grasped my arm. She drew Smith and myself back from the door.

  “There is danger there!” she whispered, “Do not enter that 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-Manchu held her yet. Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs and joined us.

  “I have 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. The 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 elusive Chinaman whom he was there to arrest—puzzled him.

  Nayland 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 world. Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant intellect was inert—stupefied.

  In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Kâramanèh utter a stifled scream. But it came too late.

  As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions, the inlaid table with its 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-Manchu’s private apartments; I knew what has indeed befallen us. A trap had been 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. Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing—could surmise nothing.

  Then ... all consciousness ended.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE FUNGI CELLARS

  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 ere long finally become extinguished.

  A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration to the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China; and as I swung head downward 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 now was in.

  The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a 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 cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated, unnatural shapes, lifting his bare brown feet with catlike 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 cellars. Their walls and roof seemed to emit a faint, phosphorescent light.

  “Petrie!” came a weak voice from somewhere ahead ... “Is that you, Petrie?”

  It was Nayland 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.

  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 cellars, I realized that he was carrying the inert body of Inspector Weymouth. And I found myself comparing 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 Kâramanèh—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 deviser of the trap whereinto we, mouselike, 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 veritable forest of the gigantic fungi—poisonously coloured—hideously swollen—climbing from the floor up the slimy walls—clinging 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 daintily 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 glancing 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 will-o’-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 tardily recognized 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 formerly 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 you’ll swing,” came Weymouth’s hoarse 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 lascars upon the liners; others have departed by different means. Ah!”

  That last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yet escaped him. A disc of light danced among the brilliant poison hues of the passages—but no sound reached us; by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically. 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 a unique opportunity of studying fungology. I have already drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the lyco-perdon, or Common Puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes? The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves was charged with them. By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value of the Puff-ball in this respect. Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject; but he succumbed in fifteen seconds.”