The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other Stories

by Sax Rohmer

  “We’re not going to the bar. You don’t mind? We’ve having drinks in the purser’s quarters—just you and me, and Mrs Simmonds and Lorkin. Too dull?”

  “Oh, no!” When Maureen’s eyes were turned to Shaun they seemed to be dancing. “If it isn’t too dull for you.”

  “Just thought I’d like you all to myself—if only for a few minutes.”

  They were outside the purser’s door before Maureen spoke again.

  “How do you manage these things? You’re not a director of the line, are you?”

  Shaun smiled holding the curtain aside for Maureen. “Not my kind of luck. But my own kind is pretty good.”

  Shaun now had all the information he was likely to get from Port Said. All that remained was to pin some evidence of his crimes on Leidler. But how could he be sure Leidler really had such evidence among his belongings?

  And where did Maureen come in?

  At one time, watching Maureen on deck with Leidler, Shaun asked himself whether it could be possible that this naïve little girl knew more about the matter than she pretended. Mrs Simmonds had seemed to clear her of any past acquaintance with Leidler. Shaun was far too experienced in the Secret Service game to discount other possibilities. He had been fooled before. But somehow this particular two and two didn’t seem to make four. Maureen, almost eagerly, had told him all about herself, how hard she had worked and saved up for this cruise. She was a fashion artist and dress designer, and apparently a successful one. The dress she planned to wear on St Patrick’s night was of her own designing.

  Shaun sauntered up to Maureen and took out his cigarette case. She opened a box which lay beside her. “Won’t you try one of these?”

  Shaun drew a deep breath. The box was half full of uncommonly long cigarettes, rose-tipped. It was the stub of one of these which he had seen on a brassy tray in the Arab café—near the dead man!

  “Highly exotic! Where did you get them?”

  “They come from Istanbul. Mr Leidler insisted on presenting me with a dozen boxes…”

  * * *

  For St Patrick’s night a space had been cleared for dancing in the Antonia’s dining room. Green candles decorated the tables and on each were bunches of shamrock especially shipped from Ireland. Weather was ideal, the Mediterranean like a lake.

  Shaun, looking clean-cut and bronzed in his white tuxedo, sat watching the fancy dresses as singly and in pairs the passengers came in to dinner. Some won applause; others laughs. Most of the dresses were of the stock variety and only a few of the women had made any attempt to rise to the special occasion.

  Nothing like enthusiasm was shown until Maureen made a rather timid entrance. She wore a lace frock covered with hand-painted shamrocks, leaving her arms and shoulders bare; green shoes, green silk gloves. Emerald earrings, too large for her small ears, and a blazing green and white necklace, completed the ensemble.

  Amid the cries and clapping of hands, Shaun stood silent, staring like a man struck dumb. Maureen, who seemed to be really frightened, cast an anxious glance around. She saw Shaun, smiled more happily, and waved her hand. He waved back and as Maureen went to her table at the other end of the room, sat down with a sudden sickening feeling that he wanted to clutch his head.

  Maureen looked unreally lovely—but tonight it wasn’t this that had overpowered him. Now he was racked by doubt, mentally lost in a fog of hopeless misunderstanding…

  When dancing began, it was a long time before he managed to get Maureen for a partner. Even then, while Leidler danced with Shelley Downing, the dark man’s glance followed Maureen ravenously about the room. Shelley had come as a leprechaun. It was plain that she knew nothing of the Irish climate, for she evidently thought leprechauns wore next to no clothes.

  “Your friend, Theo,” said Shaun, when he and Maureen were alone in the crowd of dancers, “seems to regard you as his private property!”

  “Yes. He’s getting to be a real nuisance.” Maureen changed this subject quickly. “Do you think I deserve the first prize? Mr Lorkin says I shall win it.”

  “You have my vote, Maureen. Your dress is a dream. Did you have the earrings and necklace already, or are they those you bought in Port Said?”

  “In Port Said I got the earrings at Simon Arzt’s, and the shoes. I dyed my own stockings! The necklace I picked up at Suleyman’s.”

  The band stopped, showed signs of resting; but Shaun, into whose mind the name, Suleyman, had crashed as a revelation, applauded persistently. Leidler, who had led Shelley back to her table, watched Maureen like a hungry wolf preparing to spring on a gazelle. The band started again. As Shaun and Maureen resumed dancing: “You did say Suleyman’s, didn’t you?” Shaun asked.

  “Yes. Hadji Suleyman’s. Do you know it? I’d just come from there when—I met you. It was the necklace you picked up!”

  And then, while relief flooded through Shaun, Maureen laughingly told him all about the queer old woman who didn’t know the price of anything, but all the same had charged her five dollars for a trinket worth fifty cents. “It’s so heavy! It’s fraying my neck. I’m going to my room in a minute to take it off.”

  Shaun started to remonstrate but the band stopped just then and they were hemmed in the crowd. “I’ll only be a minute,” Maureen said, and before Shaun could stop her she was gone.

  Back in her cabin, Maureen dropped the heavy necklace on her dresser and paused to adjust her hair and make-up with hasty care. Then she ran out to return to the dance. For a moment she hesitated by a dark alleyway next to her room. She had a sense that someone was standing there in the shadows. Then she hurried on.

  Maureen had hardly turned the corner by the purser’s office when Shaun stepped out of the shadowy alleyway, glanced swiftly left and right, then opened the door of Maureen’s room and glided inside. He reclosed the door. He had had no more time than to take cover when another man came in!

  The second visitor wasted not a moment. He scooped up the green necklace, inhaling sharply, moved away, was about to turn, when: “What’s the hurry, Leidler?” a casual voice inquired.

  In a wing of Maureen’s mirror, his own face suddenly blanched under the bronze, Theo Leidler saw Shaun Bantry standing at his elbow, holding an automatic.

  “I’m here—” Leidler swallowed audibly—“at Miss Lonergan’s request—”

  “Sure you are! But at my request you’re coming along to see the captain. No! Leave the necklace in your pocket!”

  In Captain McAndrew’s quarters the story was told, that grim seaman presiding over the meeting. Shaun Bantry had done most of the talking.

  “The Egyptian police have recovered an unusual cigarette stub left behind in the café. And they have a glass of râki which Hadji Suleyman was drinking. It had enough dope in it to kill ten men!”

  Leidler moistened dry lips. “What has this to do with me?”

  “Six witnesses have described you—and I saw you come out of the café. You may have meant just to send Suleyman to sleep. Instead, you sent him to Paradise! Don’t waste your breath to interrupt me. We have the facts in line. I’ve figured out the set-up at Suleyman’s.”

  Shaun paused to light a cigarette. An armed quarter-master who stood behind Leidler’s chair looked hypnotised. Lorkin was studying the captain’s angry face.

  “When an agent of the gang dumped a valuable piece there, Suleyman put it in amongst a lot of junk. If there was any trouble he could say he’d bought it for a few piastres and didn’t know its value. But he was taking big risks. And he wanted a big cut on profits.”

  “You’re talking nonsense!” Leidler broke in hotly.

  “Silence!” Captain McAndrew spoke in his bridge voice.

  “You met at the café to settle terms. You had found out that Suleyman’s wife knew nothing about her husband’s underground connections, had no knowledge of precious stones. But he had! Having put Suleyman to sleep, you counted on getting this—” he pointed to the necklace lying on the captain’s desk—”for the price of
a packet of cigarettes. Maybe you were desperate. It might have been your last deal. I’m just guessing. In any case, it is your last deal, Leidler.”

  Leidler’s eyes darted furtively around the room, seeking a means of escape. Then, seeing the hopelessness of his situation, he shrugged his shoulders in an elegant gesture.

  “Well…well,” boomed Captain McAndrew. “Have you anything to say for yourself, man?”

  Leidler smiled thinly. “In moments of this sort,” he said, “I find it better to keep my own counsel.”

  The Captain stirred impatiently. “As you wish.” He nodded to the quartermaster. ‘Take the prisoner below. Mr Bantry, congratulations on a fine piece of work.”

  Now it was Shaun’s turn to smile. “I’ve been waiting a long time to play out this little scene, sir,” he said, softly. “Now I feel at sort of a loose end.”

  * * *

  It was very late when Shaun leaned on the rail beside Maureen looking out across a dark Mediterranean. The band had packed up. St Patrick’s night was over, dawn not far away. “What’s that light, Shaun, over there? Not on the African side.”

  “Malta.”

  They were silent for a while. Shaun’s hand lay over Maureen’s on the rail.

  “Shaun, will you tell me something—now?” Her voice was barely audible above the lullaby of the sea as it swept the bows of the big ship.

  “Anything.”

  ”What really happened tonight?” She turned to him and her eyes were bright in the dim lights along the deck. “And why was my necklace stolen from my room? It only cost me five dollars!”

  Shaun put his arm around her shoulders. “Five dollars was what it cost you, Maureen. But that necklace has been valued at two hundred and fifty thousand!”

  “Shaun!”

  He smiled down at her. “The emeralds alone are worth a fortune, without the diamonds. It’s the famous necklace which Catherine II of Russia presented to Marie Antoinette.”

  She was silent a moment, shivering a little till his arm tightened around her and she was drawn against him. Her eyes were lifted, and now there was laughter behind their serious depths. “And that’s what you were after all the time?” she asked.

  “All the time,” he agreed, solemnly.

  “And nothing else?”

  “Darling!” was what Shaun said.

  A HOUSE POSSESSED

  I strode briskly up the long beech avenue. The snow that later was to carpet the drive, and to clothe the limbs of the great trees, now hung suspended in dull grey cloud banks over Devrers Hall. Thus I first set eyes upon the place.

  W. Earl Ryland had seen it from the car when motoring to Stratford, had delayed one hour and twenty-five minutes to secure the keys and look over the house, and had leased it for three years. That had been two days ago. Now, as I passed the rusty, iron gates and walked up the broad stairs of the terrace to the front door, the clatter of buckets and a swish of brushes told me that the workmen were busy within. It is, after all, a privilege to be the son of a Wall Street hustler.

  Faithful to my promise, I inspected the progress made by the decorating contractor, and proceeded to look over the magnificent old mansion. Principally, I believe, it was from designs by Vanbrugh. The banqueting hall impressed me particularly with its fretwork ceiling, elaborate mouldings, and its large, stone-mullioned windows with many-hued, quarrel-pane lattices.

  I had this wing of the building quite to myself, and passing through into what may have been a library, I saw at the farther end a low, arched door in the wall. It was open, and a dim light showed beyond. I approached it, passed down six stone steps and found myself in a small room, evidently of much earlier date than the rest of the house.

  It had an elaborately carved chimney piece reaching to the ceiling, and the panelling was covered with extraordinary designs. One small window lighted the room. Before the window, his back towards me, stood a cowled monk!

  At my gasp of mingled fear and surprise, he turned a red, bearded face to me. To my great amazement, I saw that the mysterious intruder was smoking a well-coloured briar!

  “Did I frighten you?” he inquired, with a strong Irish brogue. “I’m sorry! But it’s years since I saw over Devrers, and so I ventured to trespass. I’m Father Bernard from the monastery yonder. Are you Mr Ryland?”

  I gasped again, but with relief. Father Bernard, broad-shouldered and substantial, puffing away at his briar, was no phantom after all, but a very genial mortal.

  “No,” I replied. “He will be down later. I am known as Cumberly.”

  He shook my hand very heartily; he seemed on the point of speaking again, yet hesitated.

  “What a grand old place it is,” I continued. “This room surely, is older than the rest?”

  “It is part of the older mansion,” he replied, “Devereaux Hall. Devrers is a corruption.”

  “Devereaux Hall,” I said. “Did it belong to that family?”

  Father Bernard nodded.

  “Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, owned it. There’s his crest over the door. He never lived here himself, but if you can make out medieval Latin, this inscription here will tell you who did.”

  He watched me curiously while I struggled with the crabbed characters:

  “Here by grace of his noble patron, Robert Devereaux, my lord of Essex,” I read, “laboured Maccabees Nosta of Padua, a pupil of Michel de Notredame, seeking the light.”

  “Nosta was a Jewish astrologer and magician,” explained the monk, “and according to his own account, as you see, a pupil of the notorious Michel de Notredame, or Nostradamus. He lived here under the patronage of the Earl until 1601, when Essex was executed. Legend says that he was not the pupil of Nostradamus, but his master the devil, and that he brought about the fall of his patron. What became of Nosta of Padua nobody knows.”

  He paused, watching me with something furtive in his blue eyes.

  “I’m a regular guidebook, you’re thinking?” he went on. “Well, so I am. We have it all in the old records at the monastery. A Spanish family acquired the place after the death of Robert Devereaux—the Miguels, they called themselves. They were shunned by the whole country; and it’s recorded that they held Black Masses and Devil’s Sabbaths here in this very room!”

  “Good heavens!” I cried. “The house has an unpleasant history!”

  “The last of them was burned for witchcraft in the marketplace at Ashby, as late as 1640!”

  I suppose I looked as uncomfortable as I felt, glancing apprehensively about the gloomy apartment.

  “When Devereaux, or Devrers, Hall was pulled down and rebuilt, this part was spared for some mysterious reason. But let me tell you that from 1640 till 1863—when a Mr Nicholson leased it—nobody has been able to live here!”

  “What do you mean? Ghosts?”

  “No, fires!”

  “Fires!”

  “That same! If you’ll examine the rooms closely, you’ll find that some of them have been rebuilt and some partially rebuilt, at dates long after Vanbrugh’s day. It’s where the fires have been! Seven poor souls have burned to death in Devrers since the Miguels’ time, but the fires never spread beyond the rooms they broke out in!”

  “Father Bernard,” I said, “tell me no more at present! This is horrible! Some of the best friends I have are coming to spend Christmas here!”

  “I’d have warned Mr Ryland if he’d given me time,” continued the monk. “But it’s likely he’d have laughed at me for my pains! All you can do now, Mr Cumberly, is to say nothing about it until after Christmas. Then induce him to leave. I’m not a narrow-minded man, and I’m not a superstitious one, I think, but if facts are facts, Devrers Hall is possessed!”

  * * *

  The party that came together that Christmas at Devrers Hall was quite the most ideal that one could have wished for or imagined. There was no smartset boredom, for Earl’s friends were not smart set bores. Old and young there were, and children too. What Christmas gathering is complete without c
hildren?

  Mr Ryland, Sr, and Mrs Ryland were over from New York, and the hard-headed man of affairs proved the most charming old gentleman one could have desired at a Christmas party. A Harvard friend of Earl’s, the Rev. Lister Hanson, Mrs Hanson, Earl’s sister, and two young Hansons were there. They, with Mrs Van Eyck, a pretty woman of thirty whose husband was never seen in her company, completed the American contingent.

  But Earl had no lack of English friends, and these, to the round number of twenty, assisted at the Christmas housewarming.

  On the evening of the twenty-third of December, as I entered the old banqueting hall bright with a thousand candles, the warm light from the flaming logs danced upon the oak leaves, emblems of hospitality which ornamented the frieze. Searching out strange heraldic devices upon the time-blackened panelling, I stood in the open door in real admiration.

  A huge Christmas tree occupied one corner by the musicians’ gallery, and around this a group of youngsters had congregated, looking up in keen anticipation at the novel gifts which swung from the frosted branches. Mr Ryland, Sr, his wife and another grey-haired lady, with Father Bernard from the monastery, sat upon the black oak settles by the fire; they were an oddly assorted, but merry group. In short, the interior of the old hall made up a picture that would have delighted the soul of Charles Dickens.

  “It’s just perfect, Earl!” came Hanson’s voice.

  I turned, and saw that he and Earl Ryland stood at my elbow.

  “It will be, when Mona comes!” was the reply.

  “What has delayed Miss Verek?” I asked. Earl’s fiancée, Mona Verek, and her mother were to have joined us that afternoon.

  “I can’t quite make out from her wire,” he answered quietly, a puzzled frown ruffling his forehead. “But she will be here by tomorrow, Christmas Eve.”

  Hanson clapped him on the back and smiled. “Bear up, Earl,” he said. “Hello! Here comes Father Bernard, and he’s been yarning again. Just look how your governor is laughing.”

  Earl turned, as with a bold gait the priest came towards them, his face radiating with smiles, his eyes alight with amusement. It was certainly a hilarious group the monk had left behind him. As he joined us, he linked his arm in that of the American clergyman and drew him aside for a private chat, I thought what a broad-minded company we were. When the two, in intimate conversation, walked off together, they formed one of the most pleasant pictures imaginable. The true spirit of Christmas reigned.