by Sax Rohmer
CHAPTER XXIII
"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"
The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery) puffed athis cigar indignantly. Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had ledhim to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure,and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor.
"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon thelatter, his gray eyes ablaze. "Save for the heir, who is abroad onforeign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider.The word rests with you. If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal,there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer--"
"My own, sir!"
"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer,Mr. Henderson."
The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered overhim menacingly.
"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend. "If I couldhave placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt whatmy answer had been. Why do you hesitate? Why do you experience thisfeeling of horror?"
Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire. His constitutionally ruddyface was pale.
"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith. We have not the necessarypowers--"
Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch fromhis pocket and glancing at it.
"I am vested with the necessary powers. I will give you a writtenorder, sir."
"The proceeding savors of paganism. Such a course might be admissiblein China, in Burma--"
"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles? Do you suppose that,granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance such a thingif he doubted the necessity?"
Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended the ceremonyto-day. They--"
"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith. "Good God!why do you delay?"
"You wish it to be kept secret?"
"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now. We require noother witnesses. We are answerable only to our consciences."
The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous adecision in so short a time," he confessed. But, aided by Smith'sindomitable will, he made his decision. As its result, we three,looking and feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneatha moon whose placidity was a rebuke to the turbulent passions whichreared their strangle-growth in the garden of England. Not a breath ofwind stirred amid the leaves. The calm of perfect night soothedeverything to slumber. Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubthim), the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and Ifound myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up. Even now thedread Chinaman must be near to us.
As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to NaylandSmith. His face twitched oddly.
"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."
"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent upwithin that lean frame. He stood motionless, listening--and I knew forwhom he listened. He peered about him to right and left--and I knewwhom he expected but dreaded to see.
Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from theaspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to ourjourney's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--or soit seemed.
By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery hadpassed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going; by that pathseveral generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place.
To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access. No branch,no leaf, intervened. Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly. The keyswhich he carried rattled in his hand.
"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into theshadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried. Heturned to the solicitor.
"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly. "It is your plain duty toyour client."
"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson, and opened thedoor.
We descended the steps. The air beneath was damp and chill. Ittouched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not whollyphysical.
Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the greatengineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at mefor support. Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncannytask, and rightly.
With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst myfriend and myself set to work. In the pursuit of my profession I hadundertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such asthis. It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turnof every screw.
At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questionedthe intruding light. Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid barwhen he raised the lantern. Later, I knew, there would be a suddenreleasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--butnot until his work was finished.
That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thingsolely--professional zeal. For, under conditions which, in the eventof failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by theBritish Medical Association, I was about to attempt an experiment neverbefore essayed by a physician of the white races.
Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before theB.M.A., or any other council, was improbable; in the former event, allbut impossible. But the knowledge that I was about to practicecharlatanry, or what any one of my fellow-practitioners must havedesignated as such, was with me. Yet so profound had my belief becomein the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the worldthat I reveled in my immunity from official censure. I was glad thatit had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--though blindly--intothe FUTURE of medical science.
So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead. Unhesitatingly, Iwould have given a death certificate, save for two considerations. Thefirst, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests ofDr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would servethe yellow group better than his death. The second, I had seen the boyAziz raised from a state as like death as this.
From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me, I charged theneedle syringe. I made the injection, and waited.
"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith. "It seems incredible that hecan have survived for three days without food. Yet I have known afakir to go for a week."
Mr. Henderson groaned.
Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
A second passed; another; a third. In the fourth the miracle began.Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life. It came inwaves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakenedheart; which swept fuller and stronger; which filled and quickened thechilled body.
As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one,Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up, looked about him withhalf-glazed eyes, and fell back. "My God!" cried Smith.
"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice hadassumed a professional tone. "A little brandy from my flask is allthat is necessary now."
"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
He extinguished the light.
I supported Lord Southery. "What has happened?" he kept moaning."Where am I? Oh, God! what has happened?"
I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coatabout him. The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had reclosedbut not relocked
. Now, as I upheld the man whom literally we hadrescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen. To aid Henderson Icould make no move. Smith was breathing hard beside me. I dared notthink what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon LordSouthery in his exhausted condition.
Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touchingthe last stone of the stairway.
A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr.Fu-Manchu stood at the head of the stairs. Although I could not see myfriend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,and I reached into my pocket for mine.
At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap. It wouldrequire all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night. Unless hissuspicions were aroused by the unlocked door, his capture was imminent.
Someone was descending the steps.
In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about LordSouthery, I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I haverarely known.
The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone. Insome way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened fromhis swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood lookingup the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
Smith was past him at a bound. Something flashed towards him as thelight was extinguished. I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring uponthe floor.
I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up thestairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brownman scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he washit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take charge of LordSouthery. Here is my flask on the floor. I rely upon you."
Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair. Blackagainst the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall. Ashe fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
Instantly I was at his side. Somewhere along the black aisle beneaththe trees receding footsteps pattered.
"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
He got upon his feet.
"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curvedknife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained."A near thing for me, Petrie."
I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
"We have lost him," said Smith.
"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said. "Fu-Manchu will credit uswith a skill as great as his own."
"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.Ugh! my left arm is useless."
"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith. "Stradwick Hall is less thanten miles from the coast. There is only one practicable means ofconveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so. His clearing-house isprobably on the Thames."
"A boat?"
"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness. Fu-Manchumay even have designed to ship him direct to China."
Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost in thenight's silence.
"Only half a triumph," he replied. "But we still have anotherchance--the raid on his house. When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
Southery spoke in a weak voice.
"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newlyburied man speak from the mold of his tomb.
"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven aloneknows how many men of genius. The yellow society lacks a Southery, butthat Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years ago I have reason tobelieve; so that, even without visiting the grave of your greatTeutonic rival, who suddenly died at about that time, I venture topredict that they have a Von Homber. And the futurist group in Chinaknows how to MAKE men work!"