by Sax Rohmer
“That’s clear, Sir Denis. But have you any idea what it is?”
“Except that it’s stamped with the sign of the Si-Fan, none whatsoever”
“Sign of the Si-Fan? What is the Si-Fan?”
Nayland Smith laughed shortly. “It’s a world-wide secret society of which Dr Fu-Manchu is president.”
“Then why did Kenealy — ?”
“The disc chained around his neck? Top marks to a brave man. He had joined the Si-Fan.”
“Good heavens!”
“He had brains and nerve. But he must have slipped up. He was expecting another visitor tonight. And it wasn’t Nadia. To the end, he hoped to bluff it out. Hence his destruction of all evidence against him. Is this clear to you, Forbes?”
“Yes — now it is. And it’s horrible.”
“The ways of Dr Fu-Manchu are always horrible.”
The door of Nayland Smith’s flat in Whitehall Court was opened by a manservant whose prominent jaw and grim expression inspired confidence.
“Good evening, Begby,” Sir Denis said. “Any messages?”
“Yes, sir. A Mr West reported at ten-thirty-three.”
“Good. Drinks in the study.”
A moment later Malcolm was in a room which he could have recognised with his eyes shut from its overpowering smell of tobacco. As Sir Denis began to re-fill his hot pipe from a very large pouch, Begby came in with whisky and soda on a tray.
Begby put the drinks down, then:
“Going by way of Bayswater Road with this lady, Mr West got hit by a heavy truck that came out of a side-turning. He was knocked out, but not hurt, sir. The lady had vanished when he come round. They hung on to the truck driver.”
“Thanks, Begby.” Nayland Smith poured out drinks as his servant withdrew, and shrugged his shoulders. “You see, Forbes? We’re dealing with Fu-Manchu.”
He sat at his large, orderly desk, putting the mysterious disc on the blotting-pad; began to study it through a powerful lens. Malcolm crossed and bent over his shoulder.
“Might I take a look, Sir Denis?”
Nayland Smith handed the lens to Malcolm and presently: “The hieroglyphic means nothing to me,” Malcolm confessed; “but what metal is this thing made of?”
He picked the disc up, weighing it in his hand, when Begby rapped on the study door, came in and announced in a queerly muffled voice:
“Dr Fu-Manchu, sir!”
“What!”
Nayland Smith sprang up. Malcolm slipped the disc into his pocket. “At last you have him!” he whispered.
“Show Dr Fu-Manchu in here,” Sir Denis said quietly, sat down and opened a desk drawer.
A tall figure came into the study, that of a man who wore a black overcoat with a heavy astrakhan collar and who carried a black hat. Begby retired and closed the door.
Malcolm became lost in fascination at the most wonderful face he had ever seen. The high, scholarly brow, the incredibly long, green eyes, the lined, intellectual features, the tremendous aura of power of Dr Fu-Manchu. He stood, stock-still, watching him.
“Good evening, Sir Denis.” It was a high, metallic voice, the words precisely spoken. “This gentleman I assume to be Mr Malcolm Forbes, in whose career you take an interest. You may close the desk drawer. There will be no need for the revolver you keep there. I have taken the liberty of calling upon you only for the purpose of recovering a small metal disc which I believe you have in your possession.”
Nayland Smith, his face set like a mask, watched him but did not speak.
“As I note a hand-lens there, perhaps the disc you have been examining is in your desk. Would you be good enough to let me see it?”
Malcolm, uneasily, slipped his hand into his coat pocket. The terrifying green eyes were flashed in his direction at the very instant that Nayland Smith, his elbow resting on his desk, covered Dr Fu-Manchu with a Service revolver.
“Dr Fu-Manchu, you are under arrest.”
But Dr Fu-Manchu, his manner unperturbed, dropped the soft, black hat on the carpet and raised his hand. He held a small dial studded with several buttons.
“Take your hand from your pocket, Mr Forbes,” he said sibilantly. “I know that the disc is there. I have my finger on the button which will connect it with the power centre. Your shot would come too late, Sir Denis, to save Mr Forbes. You have seen tonight how enemies of the Si-Fan die.”
Malcolm, seeing again the grey face of Sergeant Kenealy, obeyed. His forehead was damp. Nayland Smith still covered Fu-Manchu.
“Put away your obsolete weapon, Sir Denis,” the mocking voice went on, “unless you really believe my death to be worth the life of your friend. I have conquered a new vibration. The disc in Mr Forbes’ pocket is tuned to it. A recruit to our order carries such a disc. If he proves unworthy, he is removed.”
Nayland Smith grew pale under his tan. “What are your terms?” he demanded.
“Make no terms,” Malcolm cried out. “I’ll take a chance if you will!”
“I admire your courage,” Dr Fu-Manchu spoke softly. “I need such men.”
“What are your terms?” Sir Denis repeated tensely.
“Your word, which I respect, as you have learned to respect mine, that you will order your man, directly as I leave here, to take the disc, carefully packed, to André Messina, a guest at the Savoy hotel, and that you will take no further action until your man reports that it is delivered. I give you my word that I will take none.”
Nayland Smith’s grey eyes were angry, but he said, “Agreed,” and pressed a bell. Begby came in. “Show Dr Fu-Manchu to the door, Begby.”
Dr Fu-Manchu picked up his black hat, bowed formally and went out. Before the door had closed, Malcolm had snatched the disc from his pocket and dashed it on the floor.
Smiling wryly, Nayland Smith stooped to pick it up.
“Don’t touch it, Sir Denis!” Malcolm’s voice quivered. “For God’s sake don’t touch it!”
But Nayland Smith picked it up without hesitation.
“Forbes, you are new to the wiles and ways of Dr Fu-Manchu. Cunning and ruthless to all who stand in his way. Treacherous in all but one thing. He never breaks his word — for good or evil. In this, Forbes, lies his great strength…
THE MIND OF FU-MANCHU
She woke in completely incomprehensible surroundings. There was a vague smell of what she thought might be incense, a strange heaviness of all her limbs. “Where am I? Who am I?” — were questions which danced mockingly across her brain. Then came helpless fear, fear of the silence, the void around her. Had she been abducted? An accident? Was she suffering from amnesia? She lost control, wanted to cry out — but couldn’t utter a sound.
And then, to crown growing panic, she became conscious of a presence. Softly came a voice, a sibilant, commanding voice: “You are quite safe, Miss Merton. There is no danger.”
That voice! Its strange tones magically awakened her memory. She knew herself. She was Pat Merton. She knew the voice and where she had heard it before. Clearly, as though a veil had been raised, she remembered the crowded room in the Mayflower Hotel. A reception for Bruce Garfield and some of his colleagues was being held there. But his old friend Nayland Smith was arriving from Hong Kong and had wired him to meet his plane on a matter of vital importance, and so Bruce had phoned, asking her to rush over to the hotel and apologise for his unavoidable delay.
Bruce’s colleagues assembled at the reception knew Pat and introduced her to some of the dignitaries in the throng. One of them was a Swiss scientist whose name she now failed to remember. But she recalled that he wore tinted glasses. Feeling rather uncomfortable as his voice droned on she had decided to leave, and then — this memory was crystal clear — the Swiss gentleman had removed his glasses, and a stare of long, narrow emerald-green eyes was fixed upon her. Apart from a hazy impression that he saw her from the hotel to a cab or car, the rest was a blank. But this was his voice. And then almost silently a tall figure appeared beside her.
Pa
t’s inclination, as she looked up, was to scream. But a sense of horror, or, rather, of supernatural dread, reduced her to passive submission. This was the man she had met at the hotel, but he had changed. As the Swiss scientist, he must have worn a wig, for now his massive skull was only sparsely covered by hair. It was a wonderful face, the face of a genius, but of a genius inspired by hell.
He spoke softly, watching her, and his words soothed her terror strangely.
“I regret that you were overcome by the heat of the room at the Mayflower, Miss Merton. I took the liberty of bringing you here and restoring you.” His eyes seemed to grow larger, to absorb her in their green depth; but she recovered in time to hear the words, “My. car is at your service.”
* * * *
The cool night breeze outside refreshed her as a courteous chauffeur in smart uniform made her comfortable in a limousine.
Numbly, she began to study her surroundings. The chauffeur had navigated several narrow, sordid streets. From one dark alleyway she had seen Chinese faces peering out in the gleam of the headlights. Over the low roofs there was a glow of night labour; she heard the hoarse minor note of a steamer’s whistle. This was the East End dock area, of which she knew nothing.
Now they were speeding along a wide, straight thoroughfare, almost deserted, toward a part of the city with which she was acquainted. She had a glimpse of the Mansion House. There was Ludgate Hill… They were in the Strand… Charing Cross… Piccadilly.
The car pulled up. The chauffeur opened the door. Pat stepped out and found herself at the entrance to the Mayflower Hotel.
“Two o’clock!” Pat said in astonishment, when the night-doorman told her the time.
“Yes, miss.” He looked at her in an odd way. “You are staying here?”
“No, I’m not. Will you please call a taxi?” Bruce will be frantic. She must get to him.
Pat opened her handbag, momentarily wondering if her money was still there. Everything was in order. She tipped the doorman and gave the taxi driver the address of Bruce’s flat in Knightsbridge. As there were frequent occasions when she had to go there while Bruce was working, she had a key.
Bruce occupied a mews flat which Pat had helped to furnish and decorate. When the taxi pulled up, she saw that the windows were lighted; there were sounds of excited conversation coming through an open window. She hesitated for a moment, rang the bell.
The voices ceased. Then came footsteps on the short stair.
The door opened.
“Pat! Pat, darling! Thank God you’re safe.” Pat went into Bruce’s arms.
She was so emotionally exhausted that he had almost to carry her up to the living room. The first person she saw, a tall lean man with sunburned skin, white streaks on dark hair above his temples, and grey eyes, she knew and welcomed: Sir Denis Nayland Smith, former Scotland Yard Commissioner and one of Bruce’s oldest friends. The very man she had hoped would be there.
“A nice fright you have given us, young lady,” he rapped in his crisp fashion. “Four divisions of the Metropolitan Police are combing London for you. This is Inspector Haredale of Scotland Yard” — indicating the third man— “who has been directing the search.”
The inspector was so typical a police officer — fresh-coloured, frank blue eyes and a grey toothbrush moustache — that Pat could have guessed his profession. When the excitement of her unheralded, dramatic appearance had calmed down, Nayland Smith spoke.
“Before you attempt to explain your disappearance, let me bring you up to date about what has happened since you vanished from the Mayflower Hotel. Garfield found nothing remarkable in your leaving after giving his message of apology. After the reception, I went to my flat in Whitehall Court and Garfield came here. He made an unpleasant discovery.”
He paused to relight his pipe which had gone out. Bruce crossed to Pat’s chair and sat on the arm, his hand resting on her shoulder. “Don’t let what has happened bother you, Pat. You’re in no way responsible.”
But Pat, looking from face to face, sensed that whatever had happened during those lost hours was intimately tied in with Bruce’s flat.
“A report of a paper read by Garfield before a group of scientists a week ago,” Nayland Smith went on, “had reached me in Hong Kong. It outlined his revolutionary theory of travel in outer space without rocket propulsion. He spoke of a scale model on which he was still working — and I knew he was in deadly danger.”
“Why?” Pat whispered.
“Because I knew that Dr Fu-Manchu was in London. Scientists all over the world have been disappearing. What they had in common was that each one was working in the problem of anti-gravity.” He sighed. “You don’t know Dr Fu-Manchu, Pat—”
“Oh, but I do!” Pat burst out. “He’s horrible. I don’t think he’s quite human—”
Nayland Smith checked her words with upraised hand and boyish smile which belied his greying hair. “I have often thought the same, Pat. You see, Dr Fu-Manchu claims to have solved the puzzle of anti-gravity, though we still don’t know whether that is true. I knew he would want to see Garfield’s model. And so I flew home at the earliest possible moment. But I was too late.”
“What do you mean, Sir Denis, you were too late?”
“He means,” Bruce told her gently, “that while he and I were at the reception, this flat was burgled. I discovered it on my return from the Mayflower and called you at once. There was no reply. Ten minutes’ enquiry convinced me that you had disappeared from the moment you left the hotel with some unidentified man.”
“I have identified him,” Nayland Smith rapped. “Dr Fu-Manchu. Pat, the scale model of Garfield’s interplanetary vehicle has been stolen. Only he and you knew where it was hidden. And you alone may be able to give us a clue leading to Fu-Manchu’s London base.”
Pat had got no further than her misty recollections of leaving the hotel when Nayland Smith broke in: “You hadn’t been gone an hour before your description was known to most of the Metropolitan police.”
Pat looked up at Bruce and went ahead with her story. Her awakening in the silent room, the smell of incense, the complete inertia of brain and body, seemed to convey some message to Nayland Smith, for she saw him nod significantly to Bruce.
“As I thought, Garfield,” he said. “And now Pat, please be very detailed about your return from this place — if you can. Do you remember anything at all?”
Pat described the midnight drive, the narrow streets, the Asiatic faces, the wide, deserted thoroughfare, the steamer whistles…
“The picture is clear. You agree, Inspector?”
“Entirely, Sir Denis. When your signal from Hong Kong reached us last week saying that Dr Fu-Manchu had left for London, I got busy. Every known or suspected hideaway of Dr Fu-Manchu was combed quietly. The only report that seemed at all warm came from K Division, Limehouse, as I have already told you. I have drawn a ring around a small area down there. I think the place where Miss Merton found herself tonight is inside that ring.”
“Then let’s not waste a moment,” Nayland Smith said, getting to his feet. “We may be too late, Inspector, but we’ll have a go at capturing Fu-Manchu. He has an inordinately high opinion of his hypnotic powers and may think himself quite safe. But my guess is that Pat came out of her trance sooner than he intended.”
* * * *
As they drove toward Limehouse in a police car, Nayland Smith explained the rest of the story to Pat. “Dr Fu-Manchu had learned that you had a key to this flat, that you knew where the model was hidden. The door in the panelling which only you and Bruce know how to open is closed. But the model has gone. To be sure the plans are locked up in the War Office, but to a man of Fu-Manchu’s genius, the model would be enough. He brought you here from the Mayflower under hypnosis. You opened the panel and were taken to some hideaway where he could examine the model at leisure.”
“I’ll never, forgive myself,” Pat said sadly.
“Nonsense,” Bruce said quickly, “There was nothing
you could do about it…”
Their police car raced on through the dark, still streets. Pat remembered the route, began to recognise certain landmarks. A man standing on the corner of a narrow street flashed a light three times as the car approached. “We’re inside the cordon,” Inspector Haredale reported.
And suddenly, “I remember that alleyway!” Pat exclaimed.
“Pull in on the right here,” Haredale directed the driver. “This is where the hard work begins.”
The car swung into a dead-end alley and, as they all got out, a man half hidden in its shadows saluted the inspector.
“Any movement, Elkin?”
“Not a thing, sir. If there was anybody in there, he’s in there now.”
A riverside warehouse, boarded up and marked for demolition, was suspected to be secretly used by Dr Fu-Manchu as a temporary base. One of K Division’s detectives had found a way into it from a neighbouring building.
“We’re in for some climbing, Pat,” Nayland Smith warned grimly. “We need you or I wouldn’t drag you along. Lead the way, Inspector.”
The way was through a building which had an exit on the blind alley. Pat found herself climbing a narrow stair, guided by the beam of a flashlight held by Inspector Haredale. The climb continued until they came to the seventh and final landing. Pat saw an iron ladder leading to a trap in the roof.
“I’ll go first, miss,” the local detective told her. “It’s a darkish night, but I don’t want to show a light.”
He went up, opened the trap, and stretched his hand down. Pat mounted, Bruce following, Nayland Smith and Haredale bringing up the rear. They stood in a narrow gutter, a sloping slate roof on one side and a sheer drop to the street on the other. An iron ladder to the top of a higher building adjoining led to a flat roof. A few yards away, in fleeting moonlight, Pat saw an oblong skylight.