by Sax Rohmer
Dr. Fu Manchu consented to enlighten me from point to point.
At an early stage he drew my attention to species which I had sought in vain in the forests of Brazil; to orchids which Borneo, during one long expedition, had failed to reveal to me:
Indian varieties and specimens from the Burmese swamps.
“This is mango-apple, a fruit which first appeared here two months ago....Notice near its roots the beautiful flowers which occasion the heavy perfume—Cypripedium-Cycaste; a hybrid cultivated in these houses successfully for the first time...the very large blooms are rose-peonies—scentless, of course, but interesting....”
At one point in a very narrow path, overhung by a most peculiar type of hibiscus in full bloom, he paused and pointed.
I saw pitcher plants of many species, and not far away drosophyllum—of that kind of which I had already met with two specimens.
These insectivorous varieties,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “have proved useful in certain experiments. I have outlined several inquiries, upon which I shall request you to commence work shortly, relating to this interesting subject. We come now to the botanical research room...”
He opened a door, and with one long-nailed yellow hand beckoned me imperiously to follow.
I obeyed.
He closed the door and adjusted the gauge, continuing to speak as he did so.
“You will work under the direction of Companion Herman Trenck——”
“What!” His words aroused me from a sort of stupor. “Dr. Trenck? Trenck died five years ago in Sumatra!”
Dr. Fu Manchu opened the second door, and I saw a beautifully equipped laboratory, but much smaller than that in which I had first found myself.
A Chinaman wearing white overalls resembling my own, bowed to my guide and stood aside as we entered.
Bending over a microscope was a grey-haired, bearded man. I had met him once; twice heard him lecture. He stood upright and confronted us.
No possibility of doubt remained. It was Herman Trenck...who had been dead for five years!
Dr. Fu Manchu glanced aside at me.
“It will be your privilege, Mr. Sterling,” he said, “to meet under my roof many distinguished dead men.”
He turned to the famous Dutch botanist.
“Companion Trenck,” he continued, “allow me to introduce to you your new assistant. Companion Alan Sterling, of whose work I know you have heard.”
“Indeed, yes,” said the Dutchman cordially, and advanced with outstretched hand. “It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sterling, and a great privilege to enjoy such assistance. Your recent work in Brazil for the Botanical Society is well known to me.”
I shook hands. I was a man in a dream. This was a dream meeting.
Of the bona fides of Dr. Trenck in life there could never have been any question. His was one of the great names in botany. But now, I thought, I had entered a spirit world, under the guidance of a master magician.
“If you will pardon me,” said Trenck, “there is something here to which I must draw the doctor’s attention.”
I made no reply. I stood stricken silent, now most horribly convinced that my first impression had been the true one— that definitely I was dead. And I watched, as that tall, gaunt figure in the yellow robe bent over the microscope. Herman Trenck studied his every movement with intense anxiety; and presently:
“Not yet,” said the Chinaman, standing upright. “But you are very near.”
“I agree,” said the Dutch botanist earnestly.
“That I am still wrong?”
“It is more probable, doctor, that I am wrong....”
And it was at this moment, while I firmly believed that I had stepped into the other world, that a phrase flashed through my mind, spoken in a low, musical voice: “Think of me as Derceto....”
Fleurette!
This thought was powerful enough to drag me away from that phantasmal laboratory—powerful enough to make me forget, for a moment. Dr. Fu Manchu, and the dead Dutch botanist who talked with him so earnestly.
Was Fleurette also a phantom?
Did Fleurette belong to the life of which until recently I had believed myself to form a unit, or was she one of the living-dead? In either case, she belonged to Dr. Fu Manchu; and every idea which I had formed respecting her was scrapped, swept away by this inexorable tidal wave which had carried me into a ghost world....
A new thought: Perhaps this was insanity!
In the course of my struggle with the dacoit I might have received a blow upon the skull, and all this be but a dream within a dream: delirium, feverish fancy...
Through all these chaotic speculations a guttural voice issued a command:
“Follow.”
And dumbly, blindly I followed.
chapter twentieth
DREAM CREATURES
I pound myself in a long, gloomily lighted corridor.
My frame of mind by this time was one which I cannot hope to convey in words. In a setting fantastic, chimerical, I had found myself face to face with that eerie monster whose existence I had seriously doubted—Dr. Fu Manchu. I had been made helpless by means of some electrical device outside my experience. I had seen botanical monstrosities which challenged sanity...and I had shaken the hand of a dead man!
Now, as I followed my tall, yellow-clad guide:
The radio research room,” he said, “in which you recently found yourself, is in charge of Companion Henrik Ericksen.”
This was too much; it broke through the cloud of apathy which had been descending upon me.
“Ericksen!” I exclaimed—”inventor of the Ericksen Ray? He died during the World War—or soon after!”
“The most brilliant European brain in the sphere of what is loosely termed radio. Van Rembold, the mining engineer, also is with us. He ‘died,’ as you term it, a few months before Ericksen. His work in the radium mines of Ho Nan has proved to be valuable.”
Yet another door was opened, and I entered into half light to find myself surrounded by glass cases, their windows set flush with the walls and illuminated from within.
“My mosquitoes and other winged insects,” said Dr Fu Manchu. “I am the first student to have succeeded in producing true hybrids. The subject is one which possibly does not interest you, Mr. Sterling, but one or two of my specimens possess characteristics which must appeal even to the lay mind.”
Yes; this was delirium. I recognized now that connecting link, which, if sought for, can usually be found between the most fantastic dream and some fact previously observed, seemingly forgotten, but stored in that queer cupboard which we call the subconscious.
The ghastly fly which had invaded Petrie’s laboratory—this was the link!
I proceeded, now, as a man in a dream, convinced that ere long I should wake up.
“My principal collection,” the guttural voice went on, “is elsewhere. But here, for instance, are some specimens which have spectacular interest.”
He halted before the window of a small case and, resting one long, yellow hand upon the glass, tapped with talon-like nails.
Two gigantic wasps, their wasted bodies fully three inches long, their wingspan extraordinary, buzzed angrily against the glass pane. I saw that there was a big nest of some clay-like material built in one comer of the case.
“An interesting hybrid,” said my guide, “possessing saw-fly characteristics, as an expert would observe, but with the pugnacity of the wasp unimpaired, and its stinging qualities greatly increased. Merely an ornamental experiment and comparatively useless.”
He moved on. I thought that such visions as these must mean that I was in high fever, for I ceased to believe in their reality.
“I have greatly improved the sand-fly,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued; “a certain Sudanese variety had proved to be most amenable to treatment.”
He paused before another case, the floor thickly sanded, and I saw flea-like, winged creatures nearly a large as common houseflies....
“The spiders may interest you....”
He had moved on a few steps. I closed my eyes, overcome by sudden nausea.
The dream, as is the way with such dreams, was becoming horrible, appalling. A black spider, having a body a large as a big grapefruit, and spiny legs which must have had a span of twenty-four inches, sat amidst a putrid-looking litter in which I observed several small bones, watching us with eyes which gleamed in the subdued light like diamonds.
It moved slightly forward as we approached. Unmistakably, it was watching us; it had intelligence!
No horror I had ever imagined could have approximated to this frightful, gorged insect, this travesty of natural laws.
“The creature,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “has a definitely developed brain. It is capable of elementary reasoning. In regard to this I am at present engaged upon a number of experiments. I find that certain types of ant respond also to suitable suggestion. But the subject is in its infancy, and I fear I bore you. We will just glance at the bacteria, and you might care to meet Companion Frank Narcomb, who is in charge of that department.”
I made no comment—I was not even shocked.
Sir Frank Narcomb—for some time physician to the English royal family, and one of the greatest bacteriologists in Europe, had been a friend of my father’s!
I had been at Edinburgh at the time of his death, and had actually attended his funeral in London!
A door set between two cases slid open as my guide approached it. In one of these cases I saw an ant-hill inhabited by glittering black ants, and in the other, a number of red centipedes moving over the leaves of a species of cactus, which evidently grew in the case....
In a small but perfectly equipped laboratory a man wearing a long white coat was holding up a test tube to a lamp and inspecting its contents critically. He was quite bald, and his skull had a curious, shrivelled appearance.
But when, hearing us enter, he replaced the tube in a rack and turned, I recognized that this was indeed my father’s old friend, aged incredibly and with lines of suffering upon his gaunt face, but beyond any question Sir Frank Narcomb himself!
“Ah, doctor!” he exclaimed.
I saw an expression of something very like veneration spring into the tired eyes of this man who, in life, had acknowledged none his master in that sphere which he had made his own.
“The explanation eludes me,” he said. “Russia persistently remains immune!”
“Russia!”
I had never heard the word spoken as Dr. Fu Manchu spoke it. Those hissing sibilants were venomous.
“Russia! It is preposterous that those half-staved slaves of Stalin’s should survive when stronger men succumb. Russia!”
With the third repetition of the name a sort of momentary frenzy possessed the speaker. During one fleeting instant I looked upon this companion of my dream as a stark maniac. The madman discarded the gown of the scientist and revealed himself in his dreadful, naked reality.
Then, swiftly as it had come, the mood passed. He laid a long yellow hand upon the shoulder of Sir Frank Narcomb.
“Yours is the most difficult task of all, companion,” he said. “This I appreciate, and I am arranging that you shall have more suitable assistance.” He glanced in my direction, and I saw that queer film flicker across his brilliant eyes. “This is Mr. Alan Sterling, with whom, I am informed, you are already acquainted.”
Sir Frank stared hard. As I remembered him he had been endowed with a mass of bushy white hair; now he was a much changed man, but the shrewd, wrinkled face remained the same. Came a light of recognition.
“Alan!” he said, and stretched out his hand. “It’s good to meet you here. How is Andrew Sterling?”
Mechanically I shook the extended hand.
“My father was quite well, Sir Frank,” I replied in a toneless voice, “when I last heard from him.”
“Excellent! I wish he could join us.”
In the circumstances, I could think of nothing further to say, but:
“Follow!” came the guttural order.
And once more I followed.
chapter twenty-first
THE HAIRLESS
MAN
our route led up a flight of stairs, rubber-covered like every other place I had visited, with the exception of that strange study pervaded with opium fumes.
“The physiological research room,” Dr. Fu Manchu said, “would not interest you. It is very small in this establishment, although Companion Yamamata, who is at present in charge, is engaged upon a highly important experiment in synthetic genesis.”
We entered a long, well lighted corridor, with neat white doors right and left, each bearing a number like those in a hotel. These doors were perfectly plain and possessed neither handles nor keyholes.
“Some of the staff reside here,” my guide explained.
He pressed a button in the wall beside a door numbered eleven, and the door slid noiselessly open. I saw a very neat sitting room, with other rooms opening out of it.
“Temporarily...” the guttural voice continued.
There was a strange interruption.
A sort of quivering note sounded, a gong-like note, more a vibration of the atmosphere than an actual sound. But Dr. Fu Manchu stood rigidly upright, and his extraordinary eyes glanced swiftly left along the corridor.
“Quick!” he said harshly, “inside! And close the door—there is a corresponding button in the wall. One pressure closes the door; two open it. Remain there until you are called, if you value your life....”
His harsh imperious manner had its effect. Some of the secret of this strange man’s power lay in the fact that he never questioned his own authority, or the obedience of those upon whom he laid his orders.
The force behind those orders was uncanny.
With no other glance in my direction he set off along the corridor, moving swiftly, yet with a sort of cat-like dignity.
With his withdrawal, some part of my real self began to clamour for recognition. I hesitated on the threshold of the little room, watching him as he went. And when the tall figure, with never a backward glance, disappeared where the corridor branched right, something like a cold wave of sanity came flooding back to my brain.
This was neither delirium nor death! It was mirage. This place was real enough—the long corridor and the white doors—but the rest was hypnotism; a trick played for what purpose I could not imagine, by a master of that dangerous art!
That the woman called Fah Lo Suee was an adept. Sir Denis had admitted. This was her father, and her master.
Those living-dead men were phantoms, conjured up by his brain and displayed before me as an illusionist displays the seemingly impossible. Those vast forcing houses, the big laboratory, the horrible insects in their glass cases! It was perhaps his method of achieving conquest of my personality, submerging me and then using me.
Very well! I was not conquered yet. I could still fight!
That curious throbbing, as of a muted gong, continued incessantly.
What did it mean? What was the explanation of Dr. Fu Manchu’s sudden change of manner and his hurried departure?
“Close the door...and remain there until you are called, if you value your life!”
These had been his words. He had spoken with apparent sincerity.
And now, as I watched, I saw a strange thing. At the foot of the stairs which we had ascended, I saw a door dropping slowly from the roof. I could feel the slight vibration of the mechanism controlling it.
I glanced swiftly left, along the corridor.
A similar door was descending just where the passage branched off!
They were stone doors, or something very like them, such as are used in seagoing ships. Was this the meaning of that constant vibrating note which now was beginning to tell upon my nerves?
What had happened? Had fire broken out? If so, I might well be trapped between the two doors, for I knew of no other exit. Further reflection assured me that these devices could not
be intended for use in such an emergency as fire. What then was their purpose, and what was it that Dr. Fu Manchu had feared?
The answer came, even as the question flashed into my mind.
Heralded by a hoarse, roaring sound, a Thing, neither animal nor human, a huge, naked, misshapen creature resembling an animated statue by Epstein, burst into view at the end of the corridor!
It had a huge head set upon huge shoulders. The head was hairless, and the entire face, trunk, and limbs glistened moistly like the skin of an earthworm. The arms were equally massive; but I saw that the hands were misformed, the fingers webbed, and the thumbs scarcely present.
The legs were out of all proportion to that mighty trunk, being stumpy, dwarfed, and terminating in feet of a loathsome pink colour—feet much smaller than the great hands, but also webbed.
From the appalling glistening, naked face, two tiny eyes set close together beside a flattened nose with distended nostrils, glared redly, murderously in my direction.
Uttering a sound which might have proceeded from a wounded buffalo, the creature hurled itself towards me....
chapter twenty-second
HALF-WORLD
I sprang back, looking wildly right and left for the button which controlled the door.
The worm-man was almost upon me, and transcending all fear of a violent death was the horror of contact with those moistly glistening limbs. The control button proved to be on the right. I pressed it.
And the door began to close rapidly and smoothly.
In the very instant of its closing, a loathsome moist mass appeared at the narrowing opening.
My heart leapt and then seemed to stop. I thought that one of those great pink arms was about to be thrust through. Judging the door to be a frail one, I looked in those few instances upon a fate more horrible than any which had befallen man since prehistoric times.
The door closed.
And now came a hollow booming, and a perceptible vibration of the floor upon which I stood.
That unnameable thing was endeavouring to batter a way in! I inhaled deeply, and knew such a sense of relief as I could not have believed possible under the roof of Dr. Fu Manchu.