by Sax Rohmer
I turned and bounded back to the river’s brink. I heard a faint cry behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman. Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water. The reach was lonely of rowers. Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along, and her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon the river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed. That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous attention I could not doubt. But where in Heaven’s name WAS he? He could not humanly have remained below water for so long; yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface, concealed amongst the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me. It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith. My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand rejoined my friend.
He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with an extraordinary expression.
“What does it mean, Smith?” I began.
But he interrupted me.
“Where is the dacoit?” he demanded rapidly.
“Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,” I replied, “I cannot pretend to say.”
The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed. Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith held captive; it was familiar, too.
I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
“He’s tricked you,” said Smith, an angry note in his voice. “What is that you have in your hand?”
I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
“I know,” he rapped. “I saw it. He was in the water not three yards from where you stood. You must have seen him. Was there nothing visible?”
“Nothing.”
The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
“A wild-fowl,” I added; “nothing else.”
“A wild-fowl,” snapped Smith. “If you will consult your recollections of the habits of wild-fowl you will see that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It’s an old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in decoying. A dacoit’s head was concealed in that wild-fowl! It’s useless. He has certainly made good his escape by now.”
“Smith,” I said, somewhat crestfallen, “why are you detaining this gypsy woman?”
“Gypsy woman!” he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made an impatient movement. “Use your eyes, old man.”
He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud of disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
“A wet sponge will do the rest,” he said.
Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes of the captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming features of the slave girl. There were tears on the whitened lashes, and she was submissive now.
“This time,” said my friend hardly, “we have fairly captured her — and we will hold her.”
From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
“The dacoit!”
Nayland Smith’s lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
Another call answered, and a third responded. Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle, and I noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall, mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a welcome offering.
The surrounded mansion was in flames!
“Curse it!” rapped Smith. “So this time we were right. But, of course, he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects. I knew that. The man’s daring is incredible. He has given himself till the very last moment — and we blundered upon two of the outposts.”
“I lost one.”
“No matter. We have the other. I expect no further arrests, and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor’s servants that nothing can save it. I fear its ashes will afford us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should serve to disturb Fu-Manchu’s world.”
He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms. She looked up proudly.
“You need not hold me so tight,” she said, in her soft voice. “I will come with you.”
That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes; but of the many such scenes in that race-drama wherein Nayland Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.
Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London, for my friend’s authority was supreme. A strange trio we were, and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came to an end at last. Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room — the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought to upset the balance of the world — to place Europe and America beneath the scepter of Cathay.
I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands; Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened briar a dozen times in as many minutes. In the big arm-chair the pseudogypsy was curled up. A brief toilet had converted the wizened old woman’s face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl. Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb. She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us through lowered lashes.
Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate, and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved. Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul, yet I strove not to think of them. Accomplice of an arch-murderer she might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
“That man who was with you,” said Smith, suddenly turning upon her, “was in Burma up till quite recently. He murdered a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left. The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head. Am I right?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“Suppose — What then?” she asked.
“Suppose I handed you over to the police?” suggested Smith. But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we both had owed our lives to this girl.
“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.<
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She looked at me oddly.
“When I was seized and sold for a slave,” she answered slowly, “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 Karamaneh,” she said. “As Karamaneh 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 Karamaneh 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 XVII
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 round the bend ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards 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 Karamaneh; 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 endeavored, 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 tanned 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 centered 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 smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes. Always he made his headquarters upon the river. It was significant; and even if to-night’s expedition should fail, this was a clew for our future guidance.
“Bear to the right,” directed Smith. “We must reconnoiter before making our attack.”
We took a path that led directly to the river bank. Before us lay the gray 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 same knowledge of aloofness, of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
“Karamaneh 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 slopes 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 rings 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.
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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 laboring 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 apartments 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 masklike, intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded lamp above him, 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 surroundings tallied, almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I lay chained in the cell!