by Sax Rohmer
“Your request is very easily complied with,” Nayland Smith replied, “You wore a beard and mustache in those days, but you were known as Dr. Gwalia in Rangoon in 1912. I was assistant commissioner of police at the time, and the death of your wife, a very wealthy woman, came under my notice. She died, Dr. Gwalia—continue to smile if it pleases you—of what was known in India as the Hanuman Death, or the Mark of the Monkey. My department was advised, but was helpless. You left Burma, taking your wife’s fortune with you.”
“Bah! this is madness,” Pine murmured. “I am an American citizen, and my name is John Randolph Pine.”
“The handkerchief, Petrie.” said Smith.
I handed him the tied-up handkerchief which I had been carrying, and he opened it upon the table before Pine. So opened, it disclosed a little mound of purple dust.
As the Eurasian’s eyes rested upon it, I witnessed such a change in his expression as must have told the truth to the purblind. He glanced towards the door by which he had entered. But Nayland Smith, who had been edging all the time in that direction, now stood squarely in the opening.
In that sudden silence, I heard the patter of footsteps, and Isola Marsburg entered the room.
“John!” she cried. “John! Thank God, you have come back!”
She threw her arms about the man, clung to him.
He kissed her and then set her gently aside, one arm around her shoulders.
“You have surprised our secret, gentlemen,” said he. “The lady you know as Miss Marsburg has been my wife for the past three months.”
Followed a moment of silence which seemed to me vibrant, then:
“Miss Marsburg,” said Nayland Smith, “my job is a very unhappy one. But I must do it.”
He turned his eyes again upon the Eurasian doctor.
“The past comes hack to me,” he went on. “You possess, I believe, an unusual power over reptiles, animals and children. It was suspected that this power extends to women.”
Isola Marsburg watched the speaker dumbly, in a state which I knew to border upon hysteria.
“You left Burma with a moderate fortune and evidently went to the United States. Miss Marsburg is her father’s only heir and this was a prize indeed. I suggest that what has happened tonight was in your mind from the first hour that you entered the service of Henry Marsburg. The accomplishment of your plan was delayed. But the conditions which you found upon Dartmoor during the great heat which we have experienced in the last two months gave you new hope. I am inclined to think that you have a correspondent in India or in Burma from whom you recently obtained spores of a deadly species of puffball. You cultivated this thing in a suitable spot upon the moor, the continued high temperature favoring your plan. It grew rapidly, fungus fashion. You experimented upon the dog.”
“What?”
The word came as a whisper from the girl. Nayland Smith, ignoring her, went on.
“The poor brute, infected with the poison, ran away. You didn’t discover his body until the following morning. You recognized, then, that the Devon-raised fungus was deadly and consigned the body to the mire. This morning, before leaving the cottage, you advised Mr. Marsburg of an extraordinary discovery you had made in the old mine on the moor, and marked the spot on the map, with a note as to the exact location of the growth. Something disturbed your usual presence of mind—possibly the necessity of preventing Miss Marsburg, your wife, from meeting her father before your departure and learning of the quest on which you had sent him—the quest which ended in his death…”
* * *
A low moan drew my attention from the blazing eyes of Dr. Gwalia and the iron profile of Nayland Smith—and I saw Isola Marsburg as she fell back upon the sofa.
Distant voices reached my ears as I hurried to reach the girl. “The police from Princetown,” said Smith.
A horrible cackling laughter drew me sharply about.
Dr. Gwalia, known as Mr. Pine, had buried his face in the purple-stained handkerchief.
As I turned and Smith stood staring, the Eurasian tottered back, wavered for a long moment and crashed to the floor.
A red-faced police sergeant came running into the room, to stand stock-still in the doorway, a man petrified.
Nayland Smith stared at Isola Marsburg, unconscious on the sofa, and:
“Poor soul,” he said. Then, glancing at the writhing man on the floor: “Poetic justice, after all, Petrie… the Hanuman Death.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sax Rohmer was born Arthur Henry Ward in 1883, in Birmingham, England, adding “Sarsfield” to his name in 1901. He was four years old when Sherlock Holmes appeared in print, five when the Jack the Ripper murders began, and sixteen when H.G. Wells’ Martians invaded.
Initially pursuing a career as a civil servant, he turned to writing as a journalist, poet, comedy sketch writer, and songwriter in British music halls. At age 20 he submitted the short story “The Mysterious Mummy” to Pearson’s magazine and “The Leopard-Couch” to Chamber’s Journal. Both were published under the byline “A. Sarsfield Ward.”
Ward’s Bohemian associates Cumper, Bailey, and Dodgson gave him the nickname “Digger,” which he used as his byline on several serialized stories. Then, in 1908, the song “Bang Went the Chance of a Lifetime” appeared under the byline “Sax Rohmer.” Becoming immersed in theosophy, alchemy, and mysticism, Ward decided the name was appropriate to his writing, so when “The Zayat Kiss” first appeared in The Story-Teller magazine in October, 1912, it was credited to Sax Rohmer.
That was the first story featuring Fu-Manchu, and the first portion of the novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Novels such as The Yellow Claw, Tales of Secret Egypt, Dope, The Dream Detective, The Green Eyes of Bast, and Tales of Chinatown made Rohmer one of the most successful novelists of the 1920s and 1930s.
There are fourteen Fu-Manchu novels, and the character has been featured in radio, television, comic strips, and comic books. He first appeared in film in 1923, and has been portrayed by such actors as Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Sellers, and Nicolas Cage.
Rohmer died in 1959, a victim of an outbreak of the type A influenza known as the Asian flu.
APPRECIATING DR. FU-MANCHU
BY LESLIE S. KLINGER
The “yellow peril”—that stereotypical threat of Asian conquest—seized the public imagination in the late nineteenth century, in political diatribes and in fiction. While several authors exploited this fear, the work of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, stood out.
Dr. Fu-Manchu was born in Rohmer’s short story “The Zayat Kiss,” which first appeared in a British magazine in 1912. Nine more stories quickly appeared and, in 1913, the tales were collected as The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu in America). The Doctor appeared in two more series before the end of the Great War, collected as The Devil Doctor (The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu) and The Si-Fan Mysteries (The Hand of Fu-Manchu).
After a fourteen-year absence, the Doctor reappeared in 1931, in The Daughter of Fu-Manchu. There were nine more novels, continuing until Rohmer’s death in 1959, when Emperor Fu-Manchu was published. Four stories, which had previously appeared only in magazines, were published in 1973 as The Wrath of Fu-Manchu.
The Fu-Manchu stories also have been the basis of numerous motion pictures, most famously the 1932 MGM film The Mask of Fu Manchu, featuring Boris Karloff as the Doctor.
In the early stories, Fu-Manchu and his cohorts are the “yellow menace,” whose aim is to establish domination of the Asian races. In the 1930s Fu-Manchu foments political dissension among the working classes. By the 1940s, as the wars in Europe and Asia threaten terrible destruction, Fu-Manchu works to depose other world leaders and defeat the Communists in Russia and China.
Rohmer undoubtedly read the works of Conan Doyle, and there is a strong resemblance between Nayland Smith and Holmes. There are also marked parallels between the four doctors, Petrie and Watson as the narrator-comrades, a
nd Dr. Fu-Manchu and Professor Moriarty as the arch-villains.
The emphasis is on fast-paced action set in exotic locations, evocatively described in luxuriant detail, with countless thrills occurring to the unrelenting ticking of a tightly wound clock. Strong romantic elements and sensually described, sexually attractive women appear throughout the tales, but ultimately it is the fantastic nature of the adventures that appeal.
This is the continuing appeal of Dr. Fu-Manchu, for despite his occasional tactic of alliance with the West, he unrelentingly pursued his own agenda of world domination. In the long run, Rohmer’s depiction of Fu-Manchu rose above the fears and prejudices that may have created him to become a picture of a timeless and implacable creature of menace.
* * *
A complete version of this essay can be found in The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, also available from Titan Books.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS:
THE COMPLETE FU-MANCHU SERIES
Sax Rohmer
Available now:
THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU
THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU
THE HAND OF DR. FU-MANCHU
DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU
THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU
THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU
THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU
PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU
Coming soon:
THE ISLAND OF FU-MANCHU
THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU
RE-ENTER FU-MANCHU
EMPEROR FU-MANCHU
THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU AND OTHER STORIES
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s timeless creation returns in a series of handsomely designed detective stories.
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THE ECTOPLASMIC MAN
by Daniel Stashower
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
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THE SCROLL OF THE DEAD
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THE STALWART COMPANIONS
by H. Paul Jeffers
THE VEILED DETECTIVE
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THE MAN FROM HELL
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SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE
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THE SEVENTH BULLET
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THE ANGEL OF THE OPERA
by Sam Siciliano
THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA
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THE PEERLESS PEER
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THE STAR OF INDIA
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