by Sax Rohmer
“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 looked 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 XXXVI
THE VORTLAND LAMP
“You observe,” saidDr. 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 she 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 doomedto 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 Adion’. 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 be
hind 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 me 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 Mome la Selle!
“One must remain wholly within focus. By the use of this lamp I obtained a view of Christophers chart during that meeting in New York—and took appropriate steps . . . . ”
I found myself in half light surrounded by glass cases the fronts of which were flush with the wall. These cases had interior illumination as in an aquarium.
“A good collection,” saidDr. 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 walls were smoothly polished. I saw unfamiliar aquatic plants and a surface of green slime.
“Particularly note the fem-like grass growing on the margins. Some of this was introduced among the roses which decorated Colonel Kennard Wood’s apartment at the Prado in New York. Hoemadipsa zeylanica has an affinity for this grass, from which it is not readily distinguishable. Before feeding, this creature resembles a fragment of string or a bristle from a brush. These examples actually come from a swampy area south of Port au Prince and are much larger, more active and voracious than any I have examined.”
He gave an abrupt order. From a sort of cupboard the Burman took out the body of a newly-slain kid and attached it to the hook of a tackle fitted over the pit. He lowered the kid to a point some six feet above the scum and marginal plants, when it began to spin slowly.
“Hoemadipsa works in the dark,” mutteredDr. Fu Manchu. All the lights went out. “Listen!”
Scarcely had he hissed the word when I heard again that evil thing—The Snapping Fingers!
“Now watch, and you will see them.”
Lights sprang up; and I saw a strange, a revolting sight.One has seen caterpillars arch their bodies in moving forward; now, I saw a number of pale, slender things some two inches in length arching their threadlike bodies all over the suspended carcase. But in this case the movement served a different purpose. One by one they sprang back to the long feather grass, each spring creating a sound almost exactly like that of snapping fingers!
“They shun light. Even when feeding, they drop off if light disturbs the feast. The largest land-leech known to me, Mr. Kerrigan. When sated, they can, nevertheless, compress themselves in such a way that they can pass through very narrow apertures—such as between the slats of a shutter . . . .”
He proceeded to details so nauseating that once more I became fighting mad and turned on him, fists clenched. I met a glance from full-opened green eyes which checked me like a blow.
“Anticipating a further display of Celtic berserker, ordered a guard to attend me.One more attempted assault, and I shall order him to throw you into the pit, and to extinguish the lights.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE SUBTERRANEAN HARBOUR
I looked along a stone passage, or tunnel, which was patently illuminated: I mean that the effect was of a badly-lighted arcade. An insidious acceptance of fatality, of the hopelessness of this fight, was beginning to prevail. Smith had told me many things about the power behind Dr. Fu Manchu, of the resources of the Si-Fan; but I had not properly appreciated his words. Here, in this veritable
town concealed behind the sisal factory, I grasped some part of their significance.
“You may wonder—indeed, you are wondering—why I take you so closely into my confidence,” said Dr. Fu Manchu. “This will be made clear, later. No doubt you have appreciated the fact that my daughter, known as Korean!, a second time, under certain influence, has presumed to challenge me. Her part, as the Queen Mamaloi, she has successfully played for nearly two years, and has enslaved the Voodoo elements of the Republic. She has, naturally, access to the higher secrets of the creed and therefore control of its devotees. Follow.”
But I had followed no more than three paces, when I paused.
The luminous patches which I have mentioned were due to the presence of a series of crystal coffins (I cannot otherwise describe them) each having a shaded light directed upon it. In these, bolt upright, their glassy eyes staring dreadfully before them, I saw men and women—some of whom I remembered to have seen “smelt out” by the Sword Bearer at the Voodoo temple!
“Follow,” Fu Manchu rasped.
I had been standing astounded before the figure of the handsome Negro who had passed Smith and myself on the mountain road. Unashamed, in statuesque nakedness he glared out at me from his glass sarcophagus.
“They are all—dead.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Kerrigan, they are all alive.”
Before one sarcophagus containing the rigid form of a mulatto, a young man with a fine head and intellectual brow, Dr. Fu Manchu raised his claw-like hands and shook them frienziedly before the glass. He poured out a torrent of vituperation in the Haitian dialect, his voice rising shrilly, demoniacally, as once I had heard it raised before. These outbursts from one normally more imperturbable than any man I had known, inclined me to believe that Smith was right. Smith had maintained for many years that in the case of the Chinese Doctor genius had overstepped the narrow borderland—that Fu Manchu was insane.
He laughed and turned away. It was an appalling exhibition.
“Do not suppose, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said, “that I waste my words. They can see—they can hear.”