by Sax Rohmer
Gallaho began chewing phantom gum.
“I said the local police were of some use,” he went on truculently, staring at Nayland Smith. “What I mean is this: They have the woman who made the call.”
“What!”
Smith became electrified; his entire expression changed.
“Yes. I roused everybody, had every car challenged, and luckily got a description of the one we wanted from a passing A.A. scout who had seen it standing near the box. The village constable at Greystones very cleverly spotted the right one. The woman is now at police headquarters there, sir! I suggest we proceed to Greystones at once.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN. CONSTABLE ISLES’S STATEMENT
When presently Smith, Gallaho and I set out in the police car for Greystones, we had succeeded in learning a little more about the mysterious Mrs Milton. A police inspector and the police surgeon we had left behind at Great Oaks; but as Nayland Smith said, what expert opinion had failed to learn in regard to the death of General Quinto local talent could not hope to find out.
Mrs Milton, Dr. Jasper had told us before he finally collapsed (for the ordeal through which he had passed had entirely sapped his nervous energy), was a chance acquaintance. The doctor, during one of his rare constitutionals in the neighbouring lanes, had found her beside a broken-down car and had succeeded in restarting the engine. Quite obviously he had been attracted. They had exchanged cards and he had invited her to lunch and to look over his laboratory.
His description of Mrs Milton tallied exactly with that of the woman who had visited General Quinto on the night before his murder!
My excitement as we sped towards Greystones grew ever greater. With my own eyes I was about to see this harbinger of death employed by Dr. Fu-Manchu, finally to convince myself that she was not Ardatha. But indeed little doubt on this point remained.
“Unless I am greatly mistaken,” said Nayland Smith, “you are going to meet for the first time, Kerrigan, an example of a dead woman moving among the living, influencing, fascinating them. I won’t tell you, Inspector Gallaho” — he turned to the Scotland Yard officer— “whom I suspect this woman to be. But she is someone you have met before.”
“Now that I know Doctor Fu-Manchu is concerned in this case,” the inspector growled in his husky voice, “nothing would surprise me.”
We passed along the main street of a village in which all the houses and cottages were in darkness and pulled up before one over which, dimly, I could see a tablet which indicated that this was the local police headquarters. As we stepped out:
“Strange,” murmured Nayland Smith; looking about him— “there’s no car here and only one light upstairs.”
“I don’t like this,” said Gallaho savagely, marching up the path and pressing a bell beside the door.
There was some delay which we all suffered badly. Then a window opened above and I saw a woman looking out. “What do you want?” she called: it was a meek voice.
“I want Constable Isles,” said Gallaho violently. “This is Detective Inspector Gallaho of Scotland Yard. I spoke to the constable twenty minutes ago, and now I’m here to see him.”
“Oh!” said the owner of the meek voice, “I’ll come down.”
A minute later she opened the door. I saw that she wore a dressing gown and looked much disturbed.
“Where’s the woman,” snapped Nayland Smith, “whom the constable was detaining?”
“She’s gone, sir.”
“What!”
“Yes. I suppose he must have been satisfied to have let her go. My husband has had a very hard day, and he’s fast asleep in the parlour. I didn’t like to disturb him.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
Nayland Smith spoke as angrily as he ever spoke to a woman. Accompanied by the hastily attired Mrs Isles, we stood in a little sitting room. A heavily built man who wore a tweed suit was lying on a couch, apparently plunged in deep sleep. Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho chewed ominously and glared at the woman.
“I think it’s just that he’s overtired, sir,” she said. She was a plump, dark-eyed, hesitant sort of a creature, and our invasion seemed to have terrified her. “He has had a very heavy day.”
“That is not the point,” said Smith rapidly. “Inspector Gallaho here sent out a description of a car seen by an A.A. man near a call box on the London Road. All officers, on or off duty, were notified to look out for it and to stop it if sighted. Your husband telephoned to Great Oaks twenty minutes ago saying that he had intercepted this car and that the driver, a woman, was here in his custody. Where is she? What has occurred?”
“I don’t really know, sir. He was just going to bed when the phone rang, and then he got up, dressed, and went out. I heard a car stop outside, and then I heard him bring someone in. When the car drove away again and he didn’t come up I went to look for him and found him asleep here. When he’s like that I never disturb him, because he’s a bad sleeper.”
“He’s drugged,” snapped Smith irritably.
“Oh no!” the woman whispered. Drugged he was, for it took us nearly ten minutes to revive him. When ultimately Constable Isles sat up and stared about I thought that I had rarely seen a more bewildered man. Smith had been sniffing suspiciously and had examined the stubs of two cigarettes in an ash tray.
“Hello, Constable,” he said, “what’s the meaning of this? Asleep on duty, I’m afraid.”
Constable Isles sat up, then stood up, clenched his fists and stared at all of us like a man demented.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” he muttered thickly. “I don’t know!”
He looked again from face to face.
“I’m Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho. Perhaps you know what’s happened now! You reported to me less than half an hour ago. Where’s the car? Where’s the prisoner?”
The wretched man steadied himself, outstretched hand against a wall.
“By God, sir!” he said, and made a visible attempt to pull himself together. “A terrible thing has happened to me!”
“You mean a terrible thing is going to happen to you,” growled Gallaho.
“Leave this to me.” Nayland Smith rested his hand on Isles’s shoulder and gently forced him down on to the couch again. “Don’t bother about it too much. I think I know what occurred, and it has occurred to others before. When the general order came you dressed and went out to watch the road. Is that so?”
“Yes sir.”
“You saw what looked like the car described, coming along this way. You stopped it. How did you stop it?”
“I stood in the road and signalled to the driver to pull up.”
“I see. Describe the driver.”
“A woman, sir, young—” The speaker clutched his head. Obviously he was in a state of mental confusion. “A very dark young woman; she was angry at first and glared at me as though she was in half a mind to drive on.”
“Do you remember her eyes?”
“I’m not likely to forget them, sir — they were bright green. She almost frightened me. But I told her I was a police officer and that there was a query about her car. She took it quietly after that, left the car at the gate out there and came in. That was when I telephoned to the number I had been given and reported that I had found the wanted car.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well sir, I could see she was a foreigner, good looking in her way, though” — glancing at his buxom wife— “a bit on the thin side from my point of view. And she was so nice and seemed so anxious not to want to wake the missus, that I felt half sorry for her.”
“What did she say to you? What did she talk about?”
“To tell you the truth, sir,” he stared pathetically at Nayland Smith, “I can’t really remember. But while we were waiting she asked me to have a cigarette.”
“Did you do so?”
“Yes. I lighted it and one for her at the same time, and we went on talking. The reason I remember her eyes, is because that’s the l
ast thing I do remember—” He swallowed noisily. “Although there was nothing, I give you my word, there was nothing to give me the tip in time, I know now that that cigarette was drugged. I hope, sir” — turning to Gallaho— “that I haven’t failed in my duty.”
“Forget it,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Men far senior to you have failed in the same way where this particular woman has been concerned.”
CHAPTER TWENTY. A MODERN VAMPIRE
“There are certain features about this case, Kerrigan,” said Nayland Smith, “which I have so far hesitated to mention to you.”
Alone in the police car we were returning to London. The night remained mistily gloomy, and I was concerned with my own private thoughts.
“You mean perhaps in regard to the woman known as Mrs Milton?”
“Yes!” He pulled out his pipe and began to load it “She is a phenomenon.”
“You referred to her, I remember, as a zombie.”
“I did. A dead woman moving among the living. Yes, unless I am greatly mistaken, Kerrigan, Mrs Milton is a modern example of the vampire.”
“Ghastly idea!”
“Ghastly, if you like. But there is very little doubt in my mind that Mrs Milton is the woman who was concerned — although as it seemed at the time, remotely — in the death of General Quinto. Those descriptions which we have had unmistakably tally. Stress this point in your notes, Kerrigan. For there is a bridge here between life and death.”
Tucked into one corner of the car as it raced through the night, I turned and stared at my companion.
“You think you know her?”
“There is little room for error in the matter. The facts we learned from Constable Isles go to confirm my opinion. That so simple a character should fall victim to this woman is not surprising. She is as dangerous to humanity at large as Ardatha is dangerous to you.”
I did not reply, for he seemed to have divined that indeed I had been thinking about Ardatha. Of one thing I was sure: Ardatha was not the harbinger of death employed by Dr. Fu-Manchu in the assassination of General Quinto and in that of Osaki.
Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho had been left in charge of the inquiry in Suffolk. Among his duties was that of obtaining a statement from Dr. Martin Jasper regarding the exact character of the vacuum charger and the identity of the man known as Osaki. That he, with local assistance, would come upon a clue to the mystery of the Green Death was unlikely, since London experts had failed in an earlier case.
Nayland Smith had worked himself to a standstill in the laboratory. The mystery of why Osaki, locked in there alone, should have died remained a mystery. I began to feel drowsy but became widely awake again when Nayland Smith, striking a match to light his pipe, spoke again.
“Whoever was watching that laboratory, Kerrigan, must have been prepared with some second means of dealing with Doctor Jasper.”
“Why?”
“Well, they could not have known that he would open the door. They must have assumed when he did open the door that he was returning to the house and would come back.”
“Why should they suppose that he would come back?”
“Obviously they knew of his appointment with Osaki.”
“Why not have just removed the model and the plans?”
“They knew that neither model nor plans were of any avail if their inventor still defied the Si-Fan. Doctor Fu-Manchu’s object, Kerrigan, was not to steal the plans of the vacuum charger, but to prevent those plans falling into the hands of the Power represented by Mr Osaki. I am convinced that Osaki’s death was an accident, but it probably suited the Si-Fan.”
In the bumping of the car over a badly paved road I seemed to hear the beating of drums.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. THE RED BUTTON
“Sir Denis evidently detained, sir. Expect any moment.”
It was the evening of the following day and I had called at Smith’s flat in Whitehall by appointment. I looked at the expressionless face of the speaker.
“That’s all right, Fey. I’ll come in and wait.”
As I crossed the lobby and entered the sitting room which contained the big radio and that television set upon which miraculously once Dr. Fu-Manchu had manifested himself, I heard the phone ringing. Staring at the apparatus, I took out a cigarette. I could detect Fey’s monosyllables in the lobby. A few moments later he entered.
“Going out, sir,” he reported. “Whisky-soda? Buffet at disposal. Sir Denis at Yard with Inspector Gallaho. Will be here inside ten minutes.”
He prepared a drink for me and went out.
I sipped my whisky and soda and inspected some of the pictures and photographs which the room contained. The pictures were landscapes, almost exclusively Oriental. A fine photograph of a handsome grey-haired man I was able to identify as that of Dr. Petrie, Nayland Smith’s old friend who had been associated with him in those early phases of his battle with Fu-Manchu, of which I knew so little. Another, a grimly humorous, square-jawed, moustached face, I was unable to place, but I learned later that it represented Superintendent Weymouth, once of the Criminal Investigation Department, but now attached to the Cairo police.
There were others, not so characteristic. And on a small easel on top of a bookcase I came across a watercolour of an ethereally beautiful woman. Upon it was written:
“To our best and dearest friend from Karamaneh.”
I stared out of a window across the embankment to where old Father Thames moved tunelessly on. A reluctant moon, veiled from moment to moment, sometimes gleamed upon the water. For many years, as Nayland Smith had told me, the Thames had been Dr. Fu-Manchu’s highway. His earliest base had been at Limehouse in the Chinese quarter. London River had served his purpose well.
Nothing passed along the stream as I watched and my thoughts wandered to that Essex creek on the banks of which stood the Monks’ Arms. How hopelessly they wandered there!
Ardatha! — a strange name and a strange character. To me, lover of freedom, it was appalling to think that in those enigmatical amethyst eyes I had lost myself — had seen my philosophy crumble, had read the doom of many a cherished principle. Almost certainly she was evil; for how, otherwise, could she be a member of so evil a thing as the Si-Fan?
I tried to cease contemplating that bewitching image. Crossing to an armchair, I was about to sit down when I heard the phone bell in the lobby. I set my glass on a table and went out to answer the call.
“Hello,” said a voice, “can I speak to Sir Denis Nayland Smith?”
“Sir Denis is out. But can I take a message?”
The speaker was a man who used good but not perfect English — a foreigner of some kind.
“Thank you. I will call again.”
I returned to the armchair and lighted a cigarette.
What was the mystery of the Green Death? Where medical analysis had failed, where Nayland Smith had failed, what that power possessed by the awful man I had met out on the Essex marshes. A monster had been reborn — and I had stood face to face with him.
Closing my eyes I lay back in the chair…
“If you will be good enough to lower the light, Mr Kerrigan” — the voice was unmistakable— “and sit closer to the screen. There is something important to yourself and to Sir Denis which I have to communicate.”
I sprang up. I could not have sprung up more suddenly if a bomb had exploded at my feet. The screen was illuminated, as once before I had seen it illuminated… And there looking out at me was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
Perhaps for a decimal moment I doubted what course to take; and then (I think almost anyone would have done the same) I extinguished the light.
The switches were remote from the television screen; and I confess, as I turned and stood in darkness before that wonderful evil face which apparently regarded me, I was touched by swift fear. In fact I had to tell myself that this was not the real Dr. Fu-Manchu but merely his image before I summoned up courage enough to approach and to watch.
“Will you please to
uch the red button on the right of the screen,” the sibilant voice went on, “merely to indicate that you have observed my wishes.”
I touched the red button. My heart was beating much too rapidly; but sitting down on an ottoman, I compelled myself to study that wonderful face.
It might have been the face of an emperor. I found myself thinking of Zenghis Khan. Intellectually, the brow was phenomenal, the dignity of the lined features might have belonged to a Pharaoh, but the soul of the great Chinese doctor lay in his eyes. Never had I seen before, and never have I seen since, such power in a man’s eyes as lay in those of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Then he spoke, and his voice, too, was unforgettable. One hearing its alternate sibilants and gutturals must have remembered every intonation to the end of his days.
“I regret, Mr Kerrigan,” he said, “that you are still alive. Your rescue meant that an old and useful base is now destroyed. I suspect, that some member of the Si-Fan has failed me in this matter. If so, there will be retribution.”
His words chilled me coldly.
Ardatha!
She had defied me, jeered at me, fought with me, but in the end she had saved me. It was a strange romance, but I knew that on my side it was real. Ardatha was my woman, and, if I lost her I should have lost all that made life worthwhile. I think, except for that unreadable expression which seemed to tell me that her words did not mean all they conveyed, I had had but little hope, in spite of my masculine vanity, until I had realised that she had risked everything to rescue me from the cellars of the Monks’ Arms.
I was watching the image of those strange eyes as this thought flashed through my mind.
Good Good! Did he suspect Ardatha?
“In the absence of Sir Denis” — the words seemed to reach me indistinctly— “I must request you, Mr Kerrigan, to take my message. It is very simple. It is this: Sir Denis has fought with me for many years. I have come to respect him as one respects an honourable enemy, but forces difficult to control now demand that I should act swiftly. Listen, and I will explain what I mean to do.”