by Sax Rohmer
“What does it matter!”
“Oh! feeling like that about it? Well, well — I passed through that phase myself. When I ‘died’ it was Partlake who signed my death certificate! I was conscious all the time, Kerrigan!”
“Good God!”
“They did me well and consigned me to the family vault in a Roman Catholic cemetery: we are a Catholic family, as you know. I knew that I was a case of catalepsy; I knew that Partlake had failed to make the proper tests. I wondered how long the agony would last.”
“How long did it last?”
“I was exhumed the same night! I believe the watchman had been drugged. The fellows who hauled me out were Asiatics: they belong to a special guild and do no other work. My coffin was replaced and the tomb re-sealed. A smart job. They hoisted me over a wall into a waiting car, and I was rushed to a house in Cadogan Square. A very competent Japanese surgeon gave an injection — and I was a living man again!”
“But,” I said breathlessly, “after that — what happened?”
John Marriot Doughty finished his whisky and soda and stood up.
“No time to tell you, now. I have been sent to take you to a second interview with the Doctor.”
“Why? Does this mean that I have to make a decision — at once?”
“My dear Kerrigan, only the Doctor knows that.”
Once more I walked along a tiled, palm-bordered path across the big quadrangle; once more Marriot Doughty rang a bell. This time, for it was a different door Hassan the Nubian opened, I was conducted straight to the room of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He sat behind the big desk, and through half-closed eyes watched me.
“Be seated, Mr. Kerrigan.”
I was fighting for self mastery. Some great ordeal pended: I knew that its outcome meant compromise — or extinction.
“You have had an opportunity to glance over some of the work being done here. I would not hurry you. Clearly, you apprehend that my design is to force a decision. Mr. Kerrigan, you must correct your perspective. You are not of sufficient value to the Si-Fan to justify your extravagant heroism. I could bind you to me now, if I wished; I could kill you by merely depressing a switch. Search your memory.”
That hard guttural voice was mastering me, as always it had mastered me.
“What do you wish me to remember?”
“Two things. The first, that I have never broken my word; the second, that I promised to restore Ardatha to complete freedom.”
And as he spoke a sort of violet haze seemed to obstruct my vision — a haze which resembled in colour Ardadia’s eyes. I saw the pit yawning before me, the trap set for my feet. I knew that when I chose the path — death, or service to Dr. Fu-Manchu — I should make no free choice.
He pressed a button. A door opened, silently. Ardatha came in.
* * * *
“The part played by Ardatha in my organization,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “is an important one. She is the successor to some of the most beautiful women who have decorated the world. I employ beauty, Mr. Kerrigan, as a swordsman employs a rapier. Now, she has gone the way of her predecessors. I accept the fact because you have twice succeeded in transmuting the base metal of feminine caprice into the gold of love.”
Ardatha stood motionless, watching me. In the subdued light of Fu-Manchu’s study she looked like a lovely phantom; her eyes seemed to hold some message which I could not read. Dr. Fu-Manchu opened his jade snuff-box.
“I said” — he spoke softly— “that I would restore her: there is, as you know, a blind spot in her memory, which I shall presently correct.” He raised a pinch of snuff; Ardatha did not move. “You have had an opportunity of meeting members of my staff, of glancing over some of the results which we have achieved. There has been, for the second time within ten years, an attempt, and an attempt from the same quarter, to disturb my authority. Ardatha was one of the enemy’s prizes. I recovered her.”
He took up a sycamore box from the desk and opened it.
“This attempt shall be the last.”
His long nails scratched unpleasantly on the surface. He took out a small telescopic rod attached to a metal base, and set it on the desk before him. From a projecting arm at the top of the rod an object which resembled a large black diamond hung suspended upon what seemed to be two strands of silk.
“A form of lignite — known to commerce as jet; a remarkably fine specimen from an ancient British barrow of the Bronze Age.”
Fu-Manchu turned the fragment of mineral between his long fingers until the suspended strands were knotted. His gaze became fixed upon me.
“You have my word,” he said softly, “that I design no harm to Ardatha. I merely propose to correct that blind spot in her memory to which I have referred.”
He turned to Ardatha, who stood less than two paces from the ebony chair in which he was seated.
“Come forward!” She obeyed, moving like an automaton. “Bend down, and watch closely.”
He released the piece of cut jet and it began to spin.
“Tell me what you see. Speak!”
“A spot of bright light,” Ardatha whispered. “It grows larger… it is a gleaming mirror… a picture is forming in it.”
“Describe the picture.”
“It is of myself. I am going into a hut on a river bank: I am seeking for something… Ah! a man is hiding there! He stands between me and the door—”
“Who is the man?”
“It is too misty to see.”
Ardatha was describing our second meeting! It had taken place in an eel-fisher’s hut on a Norfolk river.
“Go on.”
“I talk with him.” There was a subtle change in the tone of her voice which hastened my heart beats. “I trick him… I escape.”
“Do you wish to escape?”
“No — I wish to stay.”
“Follow this man and tell me his name.”
And as I watched Ardatha bending over the spinning lignite, the light of the globular lamp striking sparks from her hair, she described every one of our meetings, in London, in Venice, in Paris. The jet became stationary, but she went on without a pause, her voice that of one speaking in a trance. At last:
“Name this man,” Dr. Fu-Manchu said softly.
“It is Bart — Bart Kerrigan!”
“Do you love him?”
An instant’s pause, and then:
“Yes,” she whispered.
But she remained there, bending forward even when Fu-Manchu raised his eyes — brilliant green in concentration — and addressed me.
“A device which we owe to the Arabs. It stimulates the subconscious mind.” He clapped his hands sharply. “Return Ardatha. Is this the man you desire?”
Ardatha stood upright, sighed, and locked about her as one suddenly awakened; then, as her gaze rested on me, she grew so suddenly pale that I thought she was about to collapse. But, as I watched her hungrily, a wave of crimson swept to her pale cheeks and a glory came into her eyes which was heaven.
“Bart!” she sobbed. “Oh, my darling, where have you been?”
Momentarily, that sinister figure in the ebony chair seemed to have ceased to exist for her. She ran to me with a joyous cry and threw herself into my arms.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. THE VORTLAND LAMP
“You observe,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “that residence here is not without its attractions.”
Ardatha he had sent away in charge of Hassan, whom he had summoned. As I last glimpsed her, those beautiful eyes were radiant. His sibilant tones brought me down to realities. Love can raise some natures to great heights. I faced him more fearlessly than I had supposed ever to be possible.
“I owe you my gratitude. But what do you ask in return?”
He began to toy with the jade snuff-box.
“I am not a hunter, Mr. Kerrigan. It lies in my power to do with you as I please. Let us suppose that I give you leave to go.”
“It would not be real freedom. Ardatha is bound to you by a tie sh
e cannot break — and live.”
“So? In what I may, perhaps, term your second romance, she confided this to you? Here I perceive, is some deep affinity. You must certainly marry. The progeny of such a union could not fail to be interesting.”
His voice remained low, sibilant. Was he mocking me?
“That member of my staff responsible,” he went on, “treated Ardatha psychologically. The injection to which she submitted was harmless; the antidote is a mild stimulant. Localized amnesia I induced by hypnosis; I have removed it. There is no finer example of physical fitness in the world than that afforded by Ardatha.”
An emotional wave swept me. Ardatha was not doomed to the living-death! Then came the aftermath — a vision of those long months of slavery, horror, fear, which she had endured.
“Your methods are those of hell!” I blazed. “Yes, I have met members of your ‘staff’, men who once were good men, honest men. Now, they are zombies, automata, their sense of proportion destroyed—”
“A simple operation, Mr. Kerrigan. The drug used — a discovery of my own — is known as 973.”
But I went on, fist clenched, speaking at the top of my voice:
“They live in a dream world, labouring day and night to achieve some damnable ambition of yours!”
Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up, and I prepared for the worst.
“Must my ambitions necessarily be damnable?” he asked, in that low, even tone. “In order that any radical change be brought about, it is inevitable that thousands shall suffer. Where is the ethical difference between poisoning an enemy in his sleep and bombing his house by night? You have not angered me. I admire your spirit, although it is so correctly English; as correct as the attitude of your Foreign Office which compelled you to alter your account of certain facts in my previous encounter with Sir Denis Nayland Smith—”
This touched me professionally: it was true.
“In order that his identity might be hidden, they demanded that you should describe the funeral of ‘Rudolph Adlon’. Actually, he was at his usual post at the time. Nevertheless, you have not only disturbed a molar which has served me for a period of years longer than you might credit, but also defied me in my own fortress. Come, I have plans for you.”
He pressed a bell, a door opened, and one of those short, thick-set Burmans of whom I had had experience in the past, entered. He wore a sort of blue uniform: his yellow face was expressionless.
“Follow,” Fu-Manchu commanded in English.
The Burman saluted and stood aside. Dr. Fu-Manchu, with an imperious gesture of the hand to me, walked along that passage where earlier I had set out with Allington. Fu-Manchu led, however, in a different direction, walking quite silently in thick-soled slippers. I discovered that he was fully an inch taller than myself, but the difference might have been due to the padded slippers: his catlike tread was deceptively swift.
Opening a door set in the wall of a large building which possessed no windows:
“Here you change your shoes,” he said.
I saw a row of what looked like goloshes ranged along a shelf, but on inspection they proved to have unusually thick soles. I unlaced and discarded my shoes, and as the Burman knelt to assist me, I was transported in spirit to an Eastern mosque.
A metal door being opened, I found myself in a vast laboratory. The floor was covered with some substance which might have been rubber; the walls and ceiling were apparently opaque glass. Numerous pieces of mechanism, some in motion, were set about the place; and suspended from the centre of the ceiling was a copper globe some twelve feet in diameter. On one wall was a huge switchboard. There were glass-topped benches supporting chemical appliances of a kind I had never seen — vessels of all sorts containing brightly coloured fluids. There was a perceptible, although not an audible, throbbing. Some powerful plant was working. But there was no one on duty.
“My private laboratory, Mr. Kerrigan. As your knowledge of Science is slight, I will not burden you with details concerning the Ferris Globe — which, nevertheless, has revolutionized all earlier systems of lighting. Sir John Ferris is with us. This is a Stendl radio transmitter — no larger than a typewriter. A receiver, as you are aware, could be contained in this snuff-box and operated without electrical power.”
He tapped the jade snuff-box which he carried. I glanced at him, striving to retain the fighting spirit; but my challenge faltered before those glittering green eyes.
“My purpose in bringing you here,” he continued in the manner of a professor addressing a class, “was to relieve your mind regarding certain recent occurrences. Follow.”
I obeyed, and the Burmese bodyguard was a pace behind me.
“This — is the Vortland infra-azure lamp.”
And standing on a long, narrow, glass-topped table, I saw just such a lamp as that which I had seen in the Thames-side workshop!
“Johann Vortland died before he completed the lamp — a martyr to Science. Sir William Crooks was pursuing almost parallel inquiries. I acquired all his material and began a series of experiments which I carried out uninterruptedly for three years. You may recall that I was at work on this subject in London. Many other martyrs (I narrowly escaped canonization myself) went the way of the inventor. Vortland, the physicist, had triumphed: I, the chemist, failed. The lamp did its appointed work, but he who used it either died or suffered serious injury. You may remember some characteristic specimens I had collected, and the unusual appearance of the late Dr. Ostler.”
An added sibilance on the last four words chilled me uncomfortably.
“Hassan, the Nubian who came to me with Ardatha, in many respects advanced my inquiries. Exposure to the lamp had no deleterious effects. He was born blind. But complete leucodermia supervened. From coal black he became snow white. The texture and glands of the skin remained normal. There was no organic reaction. From this point I began to make headway.”
My blood seemed to be turning cold. This monster, this Satanic genius, spoke of human suffering as a bacteriologist speaks of germs.
“If,” he continued, “during any of my visits to the Regal Athenian in New York, a trained observer had been present, he could not well have failed to notice a small, lucent object, no larger than a grain of mustard seed, moving at a uniform height above the floor.”
As he spoke he was enveloping his gaunt body in just such a green garment as that which he had worn in the room beside the Thames. Gloves and a mask were added. He presented a terrifying appearance. Muffled, his strident tones came through the mask.
“I will now ignite the infra-azure lamp.”
He bent and touched a switch. Again that strange amethyst light appeared.
“You will observe that above the lamp there is a smaller lamp, and above that a third, smaller still. I shall now ignite the smaller lamp.”
He did so… and the larger one disappeared!
“Finally, the third—”
The entire apparatus vanished!
“Look closely,” the imperious voice directed. “The top of the third lamp remains faintly visible, you see it?”
“Yes — I see it.”
“The reflector is adjusted in a particular manner: the lamp can be attached to the headdress — in this way.”
Raising the lamp, he fitted it to the top of the mask… and disappeared!
My heart leapt madly. This man was not a scientist; he was a wizard.
“I have not become transparent,” his voice said out of space; “the effect is on the vision of the beholder. Movement is constrained of course. I was clumsy when I came to recover Peko in Colon. Observe.”
A green-gloved hand appeared — and disappeared.
This it was that Barton had seen in Colon — that I had seen on Morne la Selle!
“One must remain wholly within focus. By the use of this lamp I obtained a view of Christophe’s chart during that meeting in New York — and took appropriate steps…”
I found myself in half light surrounded by glass cases the front
s of which were flush with the wall. These cases had interior illumination as in an aquarium.
“A good collection,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “was destroyed in France some years ago but in certain respects this is better.”
He paused before one of the glass windows. The case had a thick floor of moist sand and over it ran some kind of spiny weed. Silent, he stood there looking in. The Burman remained a pace away. I looked also — and presently I saw one of the inhabitants. It was a monstrous centipede, a thing incredibly swift in its movements; and its colour was brilliant red.
“Owing to a number of mysterious deaths along a certain caravan route in Burma,” the harsh voice explained, “I personally visited the neighbourhood. It was then that Police Commissioner Nayland Smith (now Sir Denis) first crossed my path. The incidence was particularly marked in the zayats, or rest houses, along this route. It was near one of them that I found my first specimen. These were the creatures responsible.”
He moved on.
I knew, as I followed the high-shouldered figure, and his yellow guard followed me, that I was in the company of a scientist greater than any whose fame fills whole pages of encyclopedias. He had the intellect of a Shakespeare and the soul of Satan. When he paused again I grew physically sick. He scratched with his long nails upon the front of a case littered with birds’ feathers and fragments of limbs and claws.
From a sort of clay nest there sprang out the most gigantic black spider I had ever seen: Indeed, I had not supposed such a spider to exist. Its hairy legs were as thick as a man’s finger; its body was at large as an orange. I could see the eyes of this horror — watching me.
“The Soldier Spider, found in Sumatra. He instantly attacks any intruder; and his bite is fatal in thirty-five seconds. There is a female in the nest. I have succeeded in isolating the neurotoxin which distinguishes this insect’s venom: it is new to science.”
He turned from the glass cases and walked to a low wall which surrounded a pit in the centre of the place. In obedience to a guttural command, the Burman switched on a group of suspended lights. I became aware of a miasmatic smell, and I looked down into a miniature swamp. The interior wails were smoothly polished. I saw unfamiliar aquatic plants and a surface of green slime.