The Drums of Fu-Manchu (28 page)

Quickly we released the struggling man. He spoke a little English and the situation was soon explained. He had been struck down from behind as he patrolled the deck, and had recovered consciousness
to find himself bound in the cabin. His opposite number, when we released him in turn, proved to be insensible, but alive.

“Now,” snapped Smith. “Yes or no…”

The cabin was locked.

‘This is awful!” I groaned. “But we could blow the lock out.”

“Yes—fortunately we’re armed, for these men’s carbines have gone. But wait—”

He sprang to the porthole, worked feverishly for a few seconds and then:

“A different fitting,” he gasped. “I have it open!”

I climbed through onto the deck… and the key was in the cabin door. We were on the starboard side of Silver Heels; the launch lay at the port ladder. And from the ladder-head at this moment sounds of disturbance arose. Facing us a small lifeboat hung at the davits; forward, just abaft the bridge, an alleyway connected the two decks.

“Do you know anything about boats?” Smith snapped.

“Not much.”

“Do you?” to the police officer.

“Yes sir. I was at sea before I joined the Carabinieri.”

“Right! Kerrigan, steal through that alleyway and watch what is going on. You”—to the ex-seaman—“lend a hand with your friend.”

They began to haul the insensible man across the deck. I turned and crept along the alleyway. Soon I had a view of the ladder-head. The portside was in shadow, relieved only by the light of a solitary hurricane lantern.

One man stood there. He was tapping his foot impatiently upon the deck and watching a door which I thought led to the engine room. It was Lopez. Heralded by a rattling of feet on iron rungs, a man wearing dungarees, burst into view.

“You have set it?”

“Yes.”

“Down quickly!—not a moment to waste!”

“But Doctor Chang! Where is the doctor? I have not seen him.”

“His orders were to join the launch immediately she was swung out.”

“Doctor Chang is not on board,” came a voice from the foot of the ladder.

“How long have we?”

“Three minutes.”

Silver Heels, her wheel abandoned, creaked and groaned: it became difficult to hear the speakers.

“I shall not sacrifice myself for the doctor!” Lopez spoke furiously. “Already he has taxed my patience… Hoy!”—he hailed—“Doctor!”

“Doctor Chang!”

Other voices joined in the cry.

But Dr. Chang—whoever Dr. Chang may have been—did not appear.

At the head of the ladder the man in dungarees hesitated, looking back over his shoulder, whereupon:

“Down, I say!” cried Lopez, a note of cold authority in his voice. “Who is in charge here? Always the doctor was mad. If he wishes to be destroyed who cares? There is not a moment to spare! Everyone for himself!”

* * *

Nayland Smith and the police officer had succeeded in lowering away the ship’s boat with the insensible Carabinier on board, for when I got back to the starboard rail it was already riding an oil swell, fended off by the man in uniform. Smith, bathed in perspiration as I could see, was watching for my return.

“Well?”

“They’ve gone. The ship will blow up in two minutes! But Wilton—”

“Come on! The ladder is down.”

“But—”

“There are no ‘buts.’ Come on!”

Although I have said that the swell was subsiding, boarding that boat was no easy matter. We accomplished it, however, so that I am in a position to testify to the fact that some prayers are answered.

As dimly we heard the launch racing away from Silver Heels, we began furiously to pull around the stern of the vessel. We rowed as though our lives depended upon our efforts.

And this indeed was the case.

I was too excited at the time, too exhausted, to be competent to say now how far from Silver Heels we lay when it happened… but the effect was as though a volcano had belched up from the sea.

A shattering explosion came—and the graceful yacht seemed to split in the middle. Minor explosions followed. Flames roared up as if to lick the clouds.

Her end, I think, was a matter of minutes…

I can hear myself now as that deafening explosion came, and Silver Heels disappeared below the waves, creating a maelstrom which wildly rocked the boat:

“Smith! I don’t understand!… Why did we desert Brownlow Wilton? He died a terrible death, and we—”

“He deserved it. God knows how or when the real Wilton died! The staff engaged in Venice had never seen Wilton. It was a plot to trap Adlon. The man who died on Silver Heels was a double, a servant of Doctor Fu-Manchu!”

“Good heavens, Smith! A memory has come back!”

“Dictators have no monopoly of doubles. Doctor Fu-Manchu employs them with notable success.”

“Those fellows were crying out for someone called Doctor Chang, who was missing—”

“Wilton’s impersonator, no doubt! I suspected a Mongolian streak. He lay drugged—by his own hand! I saw it all in the mirror, Kerrigan, hence my remarkable behaviour! The man, Lopez, was directing; he is senior to the other in the Si-Fan. But ‘doctor’ is significant. Probably Doctor Chang, apart from his resemblance to Brownlow Wilton, is a poison specialist—”

“I know he is, Smith—I know it! He is the man who came to your rooms and fixed the Green Death to the telephone!”

“Poor devil! You mean he
was
the man…”

T
he wheels seemed to turn very swiftly in those strange days, and nights during which I found myself beside Nayland Smith in his battle to hold the world safe from Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Throughout the week that followed our escape from Silver Heels so many things happened that I find it difficult to select a point from which to carry on my story, since I realise that this story, almost against my will, from the first has wound itself insidiously about the figure of Ardatha.

First had come what Smith called “the great hush-up.”

Since Rudolf Adlon’s double had been reviewing troops at the time when the real Adlon had been at Palazzo da Rosa, it was impossible for his government to divulge the fact that he had died (or disappeared) in Venice. When it became necessary to admit his death to a public which had looked up to him as to a god, they were told that he had died in his bed. The double, Rudolf Adlon No. 2, ceased to exist. It was done adroitly: the newspapers were muzzled. Patriotic physicians issued fictitious bulletins, then the final news for which a breathless Europe waited.

Mourning millions filed past a guarded dummy lying in state…

Next came the retirement from public life of the ruler of Turkey, “a bloodless victory for Fu-Manchu” was Nayland Smith’s comment. (Pietro Monaghani, I should mention, had failed to keep the appointment with Adlon in Venice. He had accepted the orders of the Si-Fan.)

When an astonishing fact became undeniable—the fact that Fu-Manchu with all his people, including Ardatha, had vanished from Venice as though they had never entered the City of the Lagoons, I remember that I advocated a secret departure to some base unsuspected by the Chinese doctor.

“Will you never realise, Kerrigan,” Nayland Smith had said, “that from the point of view of the organisation controlled by Fu-Manchu, there is no such thing as a secret base. He knew that Adlon was going to be in Venice before the combined intelligence services of Europe knew it. He brought a crew of highly trained criminal specialists to deal with the situation and dispersed them into thin air when their work was done, as a conjurer vanishes a bowl of goldfish. And think of the pack of cutthroats who left Silver Heels in the murder launch. The explosion was heard for miles—we were picked up ten minutes later; but what of the launch? It hasn’t been traced to this day, nor anybody on board!”

And so on one never-to-be-forgotten evening I found myself back at my flat in Bayswater Road.

I stared from my window across the park as dusk gathered and pedestrians moved in the direction of the gates. I had not seen Nayland Smith since the forenoon. At this time, frankly, I was terrified whenever he was out of my sight. That he continued to live while the awful hand of Fu-Manchu was extended against him became every hour a miracle more worshipful.

Presently the behaviour of a man who had just reached the gate nearly opposite my window began to intrigue me.

He was a tall, rather shabby-looking man, bearded and bespectacled. His wide-brimmed hat suggested a colonial visitor, and he walked with a stoop, leaning heavily upon an ash stick. Under one arm he carried a bulky portfolio. He was accompanied by a park-keeper and a policeman who assisted his every step. But it was something else which had arrested my attention.

He was staring up intently at my window!

Now as I drew the curtain aside and peered out, he raised his stick and lowered it, pointing to the front door!

That he was directing me to go down and admit him was an unmistakable fact, for I saw during a halt in the traffic that he was being shepherded across. I delayed only long enough to slip an automatic into my pocket and then went out and began to descend.

Mrs Merton, my daily help, had gone, for I was not dining at home. As the flat below remained unoccupied and my upstairs neighbour was away, I confess that my steps to the front door were not unfearful. But I knew that this growing dread of the demoniac Dr. Fu-Manchu was something I must combat with all my strength. Fear was his weapon.

I threw the door open and stood looking out at the man who waited there.

With a terse nod to his two supporters, he stepped in.

“Shut the door,” he snapped.

It was Nayland Smith!

* * *

“Smith,” I said reproachfully, “you promised you would never go about alone!”

“I was
not
alone!”

He removed the wide-brimmed hat, the glasses, and straightened bent shoulders.

“I cannot complete the transformation in the best stage tradition,” he said, with a grim smile. “False whiskers, if they are to sustain close scrutiny, must be attached with some care.”

“But Smith, I don’t understand!”

“My dramatic appearance, Kerrigan, is easily explained. I was in a flying squad car with Gallaho. Nearly at the top of Sloane Street, just before one reaches Knightsbridge, there is a narrow turning on the right. Out of this at the very moment that we were about to pass, a lorry shot—I use the word advisedly—for the acceleration pointed to an amazing engine. It struck the bonnet of our car, turned us completely around. We capsized—and before the lorry driver could check his mad career, it resulted in the destruction of a taxicab, and, I fear, of the taximan!”

“But, Smith, do you mean—”

“That it was deliberate? Of course!” The pipe and pouch came from the pocket of his shabby coat. “Gallaho was knocked out, and I am afraid our driver was badly injured. As you see”—he indicated the side of his skull—“I did not escape entirely.”

I saw a jagged gash which was still bleeding.

“Some iodine, Smith?”

“Later. A scratch.”

“What happened then? How do you come to be here?”

“What happened was this: In spite of my disguise I had been recognised. This was a planned attempt to recover something which I had in my possession! In the tremendous disturbance which followed I climbed out of the window of the overturned car and lost myself in the crowd which began to collect. The casualties were
receiving attention. My business was to slip away.”

He paused, stuffing tobacco into the briar bowl and staring at me, familiar grey eyes in that unfamiliar bearded face leaving an odd impression.

“I always carry the badge of a king’s messenger.” He pulled back the lapel of his coat and I saw the silver greyhound. “It ensures prompt official assistance in an emergency without long explanations. I grabbed a constable, told him to come along, and made straight across the park. Here I roped in a park-keeper. Even so, I kept as much as possible to open spaces and checked up on anybody walking in the same direction.”

He stared through the window across to the darkening park.

“What should you have done if I had not been looking out or if I had not replied?”

“I should have been compelled to ring the bell, meaning delay—which I feared. But I knew you would be at home for I had promised to communicate.”

As I crossed to the dining room for refreshments he dropped into an armchair and began to light his pipe. The big portfolio he set upon the floor beside him. On my return:

“The full facts of the Venice plot are now to hand,” he said bitterly. “Our pursuit of Silver Heels may or may not have been forseseen, but in any event it is certain that they meant to destroy the vessel.”

“Why?”

“The story of engine trouble had been circulated. She was, as you know, a Diesel engine ship. By the simple device of blowing her up at sea, everybody on board having first slipped away on the motor launch, the death of James Brownlow Wilton would be satisfactorily explained. I think we may take it for granted that the launch did not make for land. I am postulating, though I may never be able to prove it,
some other craft in the neighbourhood by which they were picked up.”