by Sax Rohmer
“What? I don’t know about this.” “He flogged her....” Sir Denis and Petrie exchanged glances. “Details can wait,” rapped the former. “Inhuman though the sentiment may be, I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry.”
“Can you imagine, Sterling,” Petrie went on, “that from the time I recovered consciousness and found Fah Lo Suee in the room, I was aware of everything that happened?” “You don’t mean——” Sir Denis nodded shortly.
“Yes...even that,” Petrie assured me. “Somehow, when I saw that she-cat coiling herself about you, I forced speech—I tried to warn you. It was the last evidence of which I was capable to show you that I still lived!
“I heard myself pronounced dead; I saw Carrier’s tears. I was hurried away—a plague case. The undertakers dealt with me, and I was put into a coffin.”
“My God!” I groaned, and wondered at the man’s fortitude. “Do you know what I thought, Sterling, as I lay there in the mortuary?—I prayed that nothing would interfere with the plans of Dr. Fu Manchu! For the purpose of it all was clear to me. And I knew—try to picture my frame of mind!—that if my friends should upset his plans, I should be——” “Buried alive!”
Nayland Smith’s voice sounded like a groan. “Exactly, old man. You have noticed my hair? That was when it happened. When I heard the screws being removed, and saw two evil-looking Burmans bending over me—or rather, I saw them at rare intervals, for it was impossible to move my eyes—I sent up a prayer of thankfulness!
“They lifted me out—my body, of course, was quite rigid, placed me in a hammock and hurried me out to a car in the lane beyond. Of the substitution of which you have told me, I saw nothing. I was taken by road to Ste Claire, carried to the room in which you found me, Sterling, and placed in the care of a Japanese doctor who informed me that his name was Yamamata.
“He gave me an injection which relaxed the rigidity, and then a draught of that preparation which looks like brandy but tastes like death.
“You and I, Smith—” he glanced aside at Sir Denis—”have met with it before!”
“Is Dr. Yamamata on board?” I asked.
“No. I was carried in a sort of litter down to that water cave which Smith tells me you have visited, across it in a collapsible boat which I assume is part of the equipment of the submarine; and from there up to a rock tunnel and down to the beach. A launch belonging to this yacht was waiting, in which I was brought on board. Dr. Fu Manchu in person superintending. Fleurette was with us. We joined the yacht in sight of Monaco. I resigned myself to becoming a subject of the new Chinese Emperor of the World.”
chapter forty-eighth
“IT
MEANS
EXTRADITION”
I had rarely, if ever seen a display of Gallic emotion to equal that of Dr. Cartier when he entered Petrie’s room in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.
He beheld before him a man whom he had certified to be dead; whom he had seen buried. Perhaps his behaviour was excusable. Brisson, who was with him, controlled himself better.
“Because I am the cause of this,” said Petrie, “I naturally feel most embarrassed. But you may take it, Cartier, that weakness now is the only trouble. It’s a question of getting me on my feet again.”
“I will arrange for a nurse.”
The door opened, and Fleurette came in.
As her accepted lover, the incense of worship which the Frenchmen silently offered should perhaps have been flattering. Oddly enough, I resented it.
“This is my daughter, gentlemen,” said Petrie—with so much pride and such happiness in his voice that all else was forgotten.
She crossed and seated herself at his side, clasping his outstretched hand.
“This, dear, is Dr. Cartier...Dr. Brisson, my friends and allies.”
Fleurette smiled at the French doctors. That intoxicating dimple appeared for a moment in her chin, and I knew that they were her slaves.
“I shall require no other nurse,” Petrie added.
It was hard to go; but a nod from Fleurette gave me my dismissal. With a few words of explanation I left the room.
Sir Denis was waiting for me in the lobby.
“I hate to drag you away, Sterling,” he said. “But if any sort of progress has been made at Ste Claire, you can probably help.”
We joined a car which was waiting. I could not fail to recall in the early stages of the journey, that night when, learning at Quinto’s that Petrie was dead, I had launched what was meant to be a vendetta.
I had set out to seek the life of any servant of Dr. Fu Manchu who might cross my path!
And even now, when the fact had become plain to me that the unscrupulous methods of the great Chinaman, his indifference to human life, were not dictated by any prospect of personal gain but belonged to an ideal utterly beyond my Western comprehension, I did not regret the death of that Burmese strangler with whom I had fought to a finish on the Comiche road.
“The big villa at Ste Claire,” said Nayland Smith, “has obviously been a European base of the group for many years past. It’s impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact, Sterling, that this Si-Fan movement, whatever it may embody, has gained momentum since the days when I first realised the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. You have told me that he claims to be responsible for that financial chaos which at that moment involves the whole world. That he had defeated age, I know. And I gather that he professes to have solved the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.”
We were clear of Monaco now, and mounting higher and higher.
“In all this, there is one thing which we must bear in mind:
it has taken me many years to leam as little as I know of the Mandarin Fu Manchu. But at last I have discovered his term of official office, and with many blanks I have built up something of his pedigree.
“Tell me,” I said eagerly.
“He administered the Province of Ho Nan, under the Empress. Judging by the evidence which I have accumulated, he appeared to be of the same age in those days as he appears now!
“What ever age is the man?”
“Heaven only knows. Sterling! This I doubt if we shall ever find out. He is affiliated to those who once ruled China. His place in the scheme of things, I take it, may be compared to that once held by the Pretender, in England. But he has a legitimate claim to the title of Prince.”
“Sir Denis, this is amazing!”
“Dr. Fu Manchu is the most amazing figure living in the world to-day. He holds degrees of four universities. He is a Doctor of Philosophy as well as a Doctor of Medicine. I have reason to believe that he speaks every civilised language with facility; and I know that he represents a movement which already had pushed Europe and America very near to the brink—and which, before long, may push both of them right over.”
“You have prevented that, Sir Denis. An army is helpless without its leader.”
I glanced aside at him as we sped along the Comiche road:
he was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
“How do we know that he is the leader?” he snapped. “Think of the living-dead whom we chance to have identified. How many more belong to the Si-Fan whose identities we don’t even suspect? His ‘submersible yacht,” the existence of which, even if I had doubted Dr. Fu Manchu’s word (and this I have never doubted), is established by the disappearance of every member of his household! The French authorities have never had so much as a suspicion that such a vessel was on their coasts!
“That pool may have been known to the monks in the old days; but you will search for it in vain in Baedeker. Do you grasp what I mean, Sterling? We in the West follow our well trodden paths; no one of us sees more than the others see. But, under the street along which we are walking, at the back of a house which we have passed a hundred times, lies something else—something unsuspected.
“These are the things that Dr. Fu Manchu has discovered— or rediscovered. This is the secret of his influence. He is behind us, under us, and over us.”
&nb
sp; “At the moment,” I said savagely, “he is in a French prison!”
“Why?” murmured Nayland Smith.
“What do you mean?”
“His submersible yacht, for a sight of which I would give much, is almost certainly armed—probably with torpedoes, improved by Ericksen or some other specialist possessing a first-class brain stolen form the tomb to work for Dr. Fu Manchu. Therefore why did he submit to arrest?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I agree that the circumstances were peculiar, and possibly I am pessimistic. But I am not satisfied. I have been in touch with the Foreign Office. The Naval resources of Europe already will be combing the Mediterranean for the mysterious submarine. But—” he turned, and I met the glance of the steel-gray eyes—”do you think they will find it?”
“Why not?”
He snapped his teeth together and pulled out from his pocket a very large and dilapidated rubber pouch, and at the same time a big-bowled and much charred briar. I recognized the pouch, remembering when and where I had last seen it.
“I thought I had lost that for you, Sir Denis!” I said.
“So did I,” he rapped; “but I found it on my way down. It’s an old friend which I should have hated to lose. Hello! here we are.”
As he began to charge his pipe, the driver of the car had turned into that steeply sloping lane which led up to the iron gates of the Villa Ste Claire.
“I don’t expect to learn anything here. Sterling,” said Sir Denis, “which is worth while. But there’s no other line of investigation open at the moment. Dr. Fu Manchu’s arrest is a very delicate matter. He has already applied to his Consul, and demanded that the Chinese Legation in Paris shall be notified of the state of affairs! To put the thing in a nutshell:
unless there is some evidence here—and I don’t expect to find it—to connect him with the recent outrages in the neighbourhood or to establish his association with the epidemic, which is frankly hopeless, it means extradition.”
“Have you arranged for it?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes. But even if we get him back to England—and I know his dossier at Scotland Yard from A to Z——”
He paused and stuffed the big pouch into his pocket; some coarse-cut mixture which overhung the bowl of his briar lent it the appearance of a miniature rock garden.
“What!”
“The law of England has many loopholes.”
chapter forty-ninth
MAITREFOLI
the absence of reporters from Ste Claire, the gate of which was guarded by police, amazed me.
“There are some things which are too important for publicity,” said Sir Denis. “And in France, as well as in England, we have this advantage over America: we can silence the newspapers. The only witnesses of any use in a court of law which we have captured so far are the four Chinese bodyservants of the doctor’s who were on board the yacht. Some of these you can identify, I believe?”
“Three of them I have seen before.”
Sir Denis opened the door of the car. We had reached the end of that sanded drive which swept around the side of the villa and terminated near the southerly wing of the terrace.
“Have you ever tried to interrogate a Chinaman who didn’t want to commit himself?” he asked.
“Yes, I have employed Chinese servants, and I know what they can be like.”
Nayland Smith turned to me—he was standing on the drive.
“They are loyal, Sterling,” he snapped. “Bind them to a tradition, and no human power can tear them away from it....”
Many of the section doors had been forced, but more than half the party remained imprisoned. Under instructions from Sir Denis, I gathered, a party had been landed in that tiny bay which was the sea-bound terminus of the exit from the water cave. Suitably prepared, they had landed there, and were operating upon the first of the section doors in order to liberate members of the raiding party trapped in that long glass-lined corridor. The local Chief of Police was still among the missing.
“I think,” said Sir Denis, “we can afford to overlook infection from the hybrid flies, and even from other insects which you have described to me. Those used experimentally by Dr. Fu Manchu—for instance, the fly in Petrie’s laboratory— seem to have survived the evening chill. But you may have noticed that there has been a drop in the temperature during the last two days. I think it was these eccentricities of climate which baffled the doctor. His flying army couldn’t compete with them.”
We spent an hour at Ste Claire; but it was an hour wasted.
When, presently, we left for Nice, where Dr. Fu Manchu was temporarily confined, I reflected that if Ste Claire was a minor base of the Si-Fan, as Fleurette had given me to understand, then the organisation must be at least as vast as Sir Denis Nayland Smith believed.
Ste Claire was a scientific fortress; its destruction in one way and another represented a loss to human knowledge which could not be estimated. His section doors had checked pursuit of the doctor so effectively that, failing my adventurous swim across the pool and discovery of that other exit, the fugitive could conveniently have landed from the motor yacht Lola at any one of many ports before the radio had got busy with his description.
I wondered if the measures taken to ensure secrecy would prove to be effective.
The very air was charged with rumours; the Nice police had caught the infection. Such suppressed excitement prevailed that the atmosphere vibrated with it.
Dr. Fu Manchu had declined to be transported to Paris until he had had an opportunity of consulting with his legal adviser. In this he was acting within his rights, as he had pointed out; and the departmental authorities, at a loss, welcomed the arrival of Sir Denis.
M. Chamrousse awaited us, his magisterial dignity definitely disturbed....
There was a guard before the doubly locked door, but in due course it was opened. The Prefet conducted Sir Denis and myself into the apartment occupied by Dr. Fu Manchu.
This officially was a cell; actually, a plainly furnished bed-sitting room.
At the moment of my entrance the scene was unreal— wholly chimerical. During my acquaintance with the Chinese doctor I had formed the opinion, reinforced later by what I had heard from Sir Denis of the monstrous tentacles of the organisation called Si-Fan, that ordinary frail human laws did not apply to this man who transcended the normal.
And, as I saw him seated in a meanly furnished room, this feeling of phantasy, of unreality, claimed me.
It was just as fantastic, I thought, as the mango-apple; the tsetse fly crossed with the plague flea; the date palms growing huge figs; the black spider which could reason....
He had discarded his astrakhan cap and fur coat, and I saw that he wore a yellow robe of a kind with which I was familiar. Chinese slippers were upon his feet. Something strikingly unusual in his appearance at first defeated me; then I realised what it was. He did not wear the little cap which hitherto he had worn.
For the first time I appreciated the amazing frontal development of his skull. I had never seen such a head. I had thought of him as resembling Seti the First; but the great king had the skull of a babe in comparison with that of Dr. Fu Manchu.
He sat there watching us as we entered. There was no expression whatever in that wonderful face—a face which might well have looked upon centuries of the ages known to man.
“I shall be glad to see you, Sir Denis,” came the guttural, imperturbable voice, “and Mr. Sterling may also remain. Pray be seated.”
He fixed a glance of his emerald-green eyes upon the prefet, and I knew and sympathised with the effect which that glance had upon its recipient. The dignified official backed towards the door. Sir Denis saved his dignity.
“It may be better if you leave us for a few moments, M. Chamrousse,” he whispered....When we were alone:
“Alan Sterling,” said Dr. Fu Manchu. And prisoner though he was, he was not so truly a prisoner as I; for he had caught and held my glance as no other man in
the world had ever had power to do. I knew that my will was helpless. A dreadful sense of weakness possessed me, which I cannot hope to make clear to anyone lacking experience of that singular regard.
“I speak as one,” the guttural voice continued, “who may be at the end of his career. You lack brilliance, but you have qualities which I respect. You may look upon Dr. Petrie’s daughter as your woman, since she has chosen you. Take her, and hold her—if you can.”
He turned his eyes away. And it was as though a dazzling light had been moved so that I could see the world again in true perspective; then:
“Sir Denis,” he continued.
I twisted aside and looked at Nayland Smith. His jaws were clenched. It was plain that every reserve of his enormous vitality, mental energy, his will, was being called upon as he stared into the face of the uncanny being whom he had captured, who was his prisoner.
“In order that we may understand one another more completely,” the imperious voice continued, “I desire to make plain to you. Sir Denis Nayland Smith, that the laws of France, the laws of England, the laws of Europe, are cobwebs which I blow aside. It is your wish that I shall be carried to Paris, and thence to London. You believe that your English courts can end my labours....
“I have this to say to you: the work of a world reformer is a work in which there is no sleep—no rest. That which he achieves is always in the past, as he moves forward upon his endless path. Himself, he is alone—always looking into the future. You have fought me; but because you are untiring as myself, you have stimulated. You have checked me. But you cannot hold back the cloudburst nor stifle the volcano. I may fall—thanks to you. But what I have made stands granite fast.
“Ask me no questions: I shall answer none.”
I stared again at Sir Denis. His profile was as grimly mask-like as that of the Chinaman. He made no reply.
“Maitre Foli,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued, “my French legal adviser, has been detained unavoidably, but will be here at any moment.”
chapter fiftieth