by Sax Rohmer
“Fleurette!”
“If I could love you without wronging them, I would—but I can’t.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “Please say good-bye to me. You must hurry—you must hurry!”
Then she was in my arms, and as her lips met mine I knew that the greatest decision of my life was being asked of me.
The philosophy of a young girl, crazy though it may be, is intensely difficult to upset—and beyond doubt there was fatalism in Fleurette’s blood. Yet—how could I let her go?
My heart seemed to be beating like a steam hammer. I wanted to pick her up, to carry her from that accursed house. She began to plead.
“If you force me to go,” I said, “I shall get you back—follow you if necessary all around the world.”
“It would be useless. I can never belong to you—I belong to him.”
I wanted to curse the name of Fu Manchu and to curse all his works. Knowing, as I knew, that he was a devil incarnate, a monster, an evil superhuman, the monument which he stood for in the mind of this beautiful child—for she was little more— was a shrine I yearned to shatter.
Yet. for all the frenzy of passion which burned me up, enough of common sense remained to warn me that this was not the time; that such an attempt must be worse than futile.
I held her tightly, cruelly, kissing her eyes, her hair, her neck, her shoulders. I found myself on the verge of something resembling hysteria.
“I can’t leave you here!” I said hoarsely; “I won’t—I daren’t. »
A dim throbbing sound had become perceptible. This at first I had believed to be a product of excitement. But now Fleurette seemed to grow suddenly rigid in my arms....
“Oh. God!” she whispered. “Quick! quick! Someone has found out! Listen!”
A cold chill succeeded fever.
“They are closing the section doors! Quick, for your life...and for my sake!”
It was inevitable. For her sake?—yes! If I should be found there...
She sprang to the control button.
The door remained closed.
She twisted about, her back pressed against the door, her arms outstretched—such terror in her eyes as I had hoped never to see there.
‘ “All the doors have been locked as well,” she whispered. “It is impossible to get out!”
“But, Fleurette!” I began.
“It’s useless! It’s hopeless!”
“But if I am found here?”
“It’s unavoidable now.”
“I could hide.”
“No one can hide from him. He could force me to tell him.”
Her lips began to tremble, and I groaned impotently, knowing well that I could do nothing to comfort her—that I, and I alone, was the cause of this disaster about to fall.
And through those dreadful moments, the vibration of the descending doors might faintly be detected, together with that muted gong note which I had learned to dread.
“There must be something we can do!”
“There is nothing.”
Silence.
The section doors were closed.
And in that stillness I seemed to live again through years of life. I had in my pocket the means of saving the world. Useless, now! Within call, perhaps within sight from the terrace, eagerly awaiting me, were Sir Denis—freedom—sanity!
And here was I, helpless as a mouse in a trap, awaiting...what?
My heart, which had been beating so rapidly, seemed to check, to grow cold; my brain jibbed at the task.
What would be Fleurette’s fate if I were discovered there, in her room, by Dr Fu Manchu?
chapter thirty-sixth
THE UNSULLIED MIRROR
Many minutes elapsed, every one laden with menace. Then— came that eerie note which I knew.
Fleurette stood quite still. Used now to its significance and purpose, I could detect the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet, given at a speed which only an adept could have followed.
The sound ceased.
Fleurette dropped into an armchair, looking up at me, hopelessly.
“They are searching for you,” she said, in a dull tone. “He doesn’t know yet.”
I stood there dumb of tongue and numb of brain for long moments; then ideas began to come. Someone had called me—possibly Trenck—and I had not replied. Nayland Smith had received those messages.
What had they been, and how had he construed them?
This uncertainty only added to the madness of the situation. I had an idea born of experience.
“Fleurette,” I said, dropping upon my knees beside her, “why could I not have come in here as you came into my room when the alarm sounded?”
She looked at me; her face was like a beautiful mask:
immutable, expressionless.
“It would be useless,” she replied. “No one can lie to Dr. Fu Manchu.”
And I accepted the finality of those words, for I believed it. I sprang upright. I had become aware of a faint distant vibration.
“Can the doors be raised separately?”
“Yes; any one of them can be raised alone.”
I stepped across the room and pressed the control button. There was no response. I bent close to the metal, listening intently. I formed the impression, and it was a definitely horrible impression, that the control doors were being raised, one by one...that someone was approaching this room in which I was trapped with Fleurette.
Beyond doubt, that ominous sound was growing nearer— growing in volume. And finally the vibration grew so great that I could feel it upon the metal against which my head rested.
I stepped back—my fists automatically clenched. The door slid open—and Dr. Fu Manchu stood there watching me!
His majestic calm was terrible. Those long, brilliant eyes glanced aside, and I knew that he was studying Fleurette.
“Woman—the lever which a word can bend,” he said softly.
He made a signal with his long-nailed hand, and two of his Chinese servants sprang in.
I stepped back debating my course.
“Heroics are uncalled for,” he added, “and could profit no one.”
For an instant I glanced aside at Fleurette.
Her beautiful eyes were raised to Dr. Fu Manchu, and her expression was that of a saint who sees the Holy Vision!
He spoke rapidly in Chinese and entered the room, giving me not another glance. My arms were grasped and I found myself propelled forcibly out into the corridor. The strength of these little immobile men was amazing.
The section door at the corner where those stairs terminated which led down to the radio research room was not yet fully raised: two feet or more still protruded from the slot in the ceiling which accommodated it.
Our human brains possess very definite limitations: mine had reached the edge of endurance....
My memory registers a blank from the moment that I left Fleurette’s room to that when I found myself seated in a hard, high-backed chair in the memorable study of Dr. Fu Manchu. Beside me, Yamamata was seated, and at the moment at which I suppose my brain began to function again—suddenly that door which I knew led into the palm house opened—and Fah Lo Suee came in.
She wore a bright green pyjama suit and was smoking a cigarette in a jade holder. One glance I received from her unfathomable eyes—but if it conveyed a message, the message failed to reach me.
She closed the door by which she had entered and dropped onto a little settee close beside it.
I glanced at Yamamata. His yellow skin was clammy with perspiration. In doing so, I noticed that the door in the archway was open—and now through the opening came Dr. Fu Manchu; silent—with cat-like dignity.
The door closed behind him.
Yamamata stood up, and so did Fah Lo Suee. It was farcically like a court of law. I wrenched my head aside, clenching my teeth. My passion for Fleurette had thrown true perspective out of focus.
This man who assumed the airs of an emperor was, in fact, a common criminal: th
e hangman awaited him. And then I heard his guttural voice:
“Stand up!”
All that was me, all that I had proudly been wont to regard as my personality, fought against this command—for a command it was. Yet—the plain fact must be recorded: I stood up....
He took his seat in the dragon-carved chair behind the big table. I had kept my eyes deliberately averted, but now, in the silence which followed, I stole a glance at him. He was staring intently at Fah Lo Suee.
Suddenly he spoke:
“Companion Yamamata,” he said softly, “you may go.”
Yamamata sprang up; I saw his lips move, but no sound issued from them. He bowed, and opening the door which led into the big laboratory, went out, closing it behind him.
Dr. Fu Manchu began to speak rapidly in Chinese, and at the end of the first sentence Fah Lo Suee, dropping her jade cigarette holder into a bronze tray upon the floor, came down to her knees on the carpet and buried that evilly beautiful face in upraised hands—delicate ivory hands—patrician hands—shadows, etherialised, of those of her formidable father.
He continued to speak, and she shrank lower and lower, but spoke no word—uttered no sound. Then:
“Alan Sterling,” he said, suddenly expressing himself in English; “the ill-directed cunning of one woman and the frailty of another have taken your fate out of my control. There are men to whom women are dangerous—you, unhappily, would seem to be one of them.”
And as he spoke, the remarkable fact disclosed itself to me that, although Fah Lo Suee had spoken no word, already he knew her part in the conspiracy!
Good heavens! A suspicion sprang to my mind: Had Fah Lo Suee been watching? Was it she who had trapped me with Fleurette? Was this the end to which she had preserved my life: Fleurette’s swift ruin, my own speedy death?
In its classic simplicity the scheme was Chinese, I thought.
I looked at her where she crouched, abject.
The voice—the strange, haunting voice—spoke on:
“Millions of useless lives cumber the world to-day. Among them I must now include your own. The ideal state of the Greek philosopher took no count of these. There can be no human progress without selection; and already I have chosen the nucleus of my new state. The East has grown in spirit, while the West has been building machinery....
“My new state will embody the soul of the East.
“I am not ready yet for my warfare against the numerous but helpless army of the rejected. The Plagues of Egypt I hold in my hands, but I cannot control the course of the sun....
“It may be that you, a gnat on the flywheel, have checked the machinery of the gods. Alone, you could never have cast a shadow upon my path: one of my own blood is the culprit.”
He stuck a little gong which hung close to his hand upon the table, and the door facing me as I sat opened instantaneously and silently. One of those white-robed, image-like Chinamen entered, to whom Fu Manchu spoke briefly, rapidly.
The men bowed and went out. Fah Lo Suee’s slender body seemed to diminish. She sank down until her head touched the carpet.
Dr. Fu Manchu tapped with a long nail upon the table, glancing aside at her where she crouched.
“Your Western progress, Alan Sterling,” he said, “has resulted in the folly of women finding a place in the councils of state. That myth you call ‘chivalry’ has tied your hands and stricken you mute. In the China to which I belong—a China which is not dead but only sleeping—we use older simpler, methods....We have whips....”
The door suddenly opened again, and two powerfully built negresses entered. Their attire consisted of red-and-white striped skirts fastened by girdles about their waists.
Dr. Fu Manchu addressed them rapidly, but now, I knew, he was not speaking Chinese.
He ceased, and pointed.
One of the negresses stooped; but even as she did so, Fah Lo Suee sprang to her feet with an elastic movement, turned flaming eyes upon that dreadful figure in the high-backed chair, and then, a negress at either elbow, walked out into the palm house beyond.
I glanced at Dr. Fu Manchu, and he caught and held that glance. I realised that I was incapable of turning my eyes away.
“Alan Sterling,” he said, “it is my purpose to save the world from itself. And to this end there must be a great purging. Today or tomorrow, my dream will be fulfilled. One of those bunglers acting for what is sometimes termed Western civilisation may bring about my death by violence. There is none to succeed me....My daughter—trained for a great purpose, as few women have been trained and endowed with that physical perfections of a carefully selected mother, inherits the taint of some traitor ancestor....
“I desire that a son shall succeed to what I shall build. The mother of that son I have chosen. Sex determination is a problem which at last I have conquered. Neither love nor passion will enter into the union. But if you, Alan Sterling, have cast a shadow of either upon the unsullied mirror which I had patiently burnished to reflect my will...then the work of eighteen years is undone.”
His guttural voice sank lower and lower, and the last few words sounded like a sibilant whisper....
He struck the gong twice....
I found myself seized by my arms and lifted off the chair in which I had been seated! Two of his Chinamen—unheard, unsuspected—had entered behind me.
Brief guttural words, and I was swung around, as Dr. Fu Manchu stood up, tall, gaunt, satanic, and from a hook upon the wall took down a whip resembling a Russian knout.
As I was swept about to face the door which communicated with the radio research room, one horrifying glimpse I had in the palm house, dimly lighted, of an ivory body hanging by the wrists....
chapter thirty-seven
THE GLASS MASK
In a frame of mind which I must leave to the imagination, I paced up and down the little sitting room of the apartment numbered eleven.
I was alone, and the door was unopenable; some ten minutes before, I had heard the section doors being closed, also. Whichever way my thoughts led me, I found stark madness lurking there.
Fleurette! What would be the fate of Fleurette? For Dr. Fu Manchu was not human in the accepted sense of the word. He was a remorseless intelligence. Where he could not use, he destroyed. Perhaps he would spare Fleurette because of her remarkable beauty. But spare her—for what?
Petrie! He was helpless indeed, desperately ill. And as for myself, I suffered those hundred deaths which the coward is said to die, during the unaccountable period that I paced up and down that small room.
My mad passion for Fleurette had brought this down upon all of us! In those feverish moments while I had been pleading with her, I should have been clear of this ghastly house. My freedom meant the safety of the world. I had sacrificed this to my own selfish desires. Only by wrecking the elaborate organisation of the Si-Fan—the scope of which hitherto I had never suspected—could I hope to win Fleurette.
Fool—mad fool!—to have supposed that a newly awakened passion could upset traditions so carefully emplanted and nurtured.
What was happening?
I tried to work out what Nayland Smith would be likely to do—to estimate the chances of a raid taking place before it was too late. I could not forget the imperturbable figure in the yellow robe.
That Dr. Fu Manchu was prepared for such an emergency as this it was impossible to doubt. His manner had not been that of a criminal trapped.
I pressed my ear against the door and listened....
But I could detect no sound.
I crossed to the further wall, in which I knew there was another door, but one I had never been able to open. I listened there also, for I remembered that there was a corridor beyond.
Silence. I was shut into a narrow section of the house between barriers of steel.
I estimated that fully an hour elapsed. I knew from experience that these apartments were practically soundproof. My brain was a phantom circus, and I was rapidly approaching a state of nervous exhaust
ion.. My frame of mind had been all but unendurable when I had thought that I was dead, when I had thought that I was in a state of delirium. But now, knowing that the horrors accumulated about me, the monstrosities, parodies of nature, the living dead men, the incalculable machines were real and not figments of fevered imagination—now, when I should have been most sane, I was more likely to lose my mental poise than at any time during the past.
A dream which I had scarcely dared to entertain had come true—only to be shattered in the very hour of its realisation. That I should ever leave this place alive, I did not believe for a moment. But surely no man had ever held so much in his hands, ever needed life as I needed it at this moment, when I knew I faced death.
I dropped down into a little armchair—one in which I remembered miserably Fleurette had sat—and buried my face in my hands.
If only I could conjure up one spark of hope—find something to think about which did not lead to insanity!
Then I sprang to my feet. It had reached me unmistakably...that dim vibration which told of the section doors being raised!
What did it mean?
That my fate had been decided upon and that they were coming for me? I crossed and pressed the control button. There was no response.
Again, as in Fleurette’s room earlier that night, I felt like a mouse in a trap. It could profit no one, myself least of all, but a determination came to me at this moment which did much to steady me.
I would die fighting.
I tested the weight of the little armchair in which I had been seated. It was about heavy enough for my purpose. I would hurl it at whoever entered.
I pulled open the drawers of a large cabinet which occupied a great portion of one wall. It contained laboratory appliances, presumably belonging to a former occupant, and including a glass mask and rubber gloves. But I found no weapon there.
A pedestal lamp stood upon the table. I wrenched the flex from it, removed the lamp and the shade, and realised that it made a very good club. Armed with this I would rush out and see what account I could give of myself in the corridors.