The Drums of Fu-Manchu (8 page)

I called for a double scotch and soda.

“Traveller?”

“Yes. London.”

He stared at me with his curiously unblinking deep-set brown eyes, then turned, tipped out two measures from an inverted bottle, squirted soda into the glass and set it before me. I paid, and he banged down my change on the counter. A cigarette drooping from his thick underlip he stood, arms folded, just in front of the
rush curtain, watching me with that unmoving stare. I sipped my drink, and:

“Weather bad for trade?” I suggested.

He nodded but did not speak.

“I found you almost by accident. Lost my way. How far is it to the station?”

“What station?”

This was rather a poser, but:

“The nearest, of course,” I replied.

“Mile and a half, straight along the lane from my door.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at my watch. “What time does the next train leave?”

“Where for?”

“London.”

“Six-eleven.”

I lingered over my drink and knocking out my pipe began to refill it. The unmoving stare of those wicked little eyes was vaguely disconcerting, and as I stood there stuffing tobacco into the hot bowl, a possible explanation occurred to me: perhaps Pallant mistook me for a revenue officer!

“Is the fishing good about here?” I asked.

“No.”

“You don’t cater for fishermen then?”

“I don’t.”

Then with a final penetrating stare he turned, swept the rush curtain aside and went out. I heard his curiously light retreating footsteps.

As I had paid for my drink he evidently took it for granted that I should depart now, and clearly was not interested in the possibility that I might order another. However, I sat for a while on a stool,
lighted my pipe and finished my whisky and soda at leisure. A moment later no doubt I should have left, but a slight, a very slight movement beyond the curtain drew my glance in that direction.

Through the strings of rushes, almost, invisible, except that dim light from the bar shone upon her eyes, I saw a girl watching me. Nor was it humanly possible to mistake those eyes!

The formidable Jim Pallant was forgotten—everything was forgotten. Raising a flap in one end of the counter I stepped into the bar, crossed it and just as she turned to run along a narrow passage beyond, threw my arms around Ardatha!

“Let me go!” She struggled violently. “Let me go! I warned you, and you are mad—mad, to come here. For God’s sake if you value your life, or mine, let me go!”

But I pulled her through the curtain into the dingy bar and held her firmly.

“Ardatha!” I spoke in a guarded, low voice. “God knows why you can’t see what it means to be mixed up with these people, but
I
can, and I can’t bear it. Listen! You have nothing, nothing in the world to fear. Come away! My friend who is in charge of the case will absolutely guarantee your safety. But please, please, come away with me now!”

She wore a silk pullover, riding breeches and the muddy boots which I remembered. Her slender body writhed in my grasp with all the agility of a captured eel.

One swift upward glance she gave me, a glance I was to remember many, many times, waking and sleeping. Then with a sudden unexpected movement she buried her wicked little teeth in my hand!

Pained and startled I momentarily released her. The reed curtain crackled as she turned and ran. I heard her pattering footsteps on an uncarpeted stair.

Clenching my fist I stood there undetermined what to do—until, realising that an uncommonly dangerous man for whom I might not prove to be a match was somewhere in the house, for once I chose discretion.

I was crossing to the barroom door when, heralded only by a crash of the curtain and a dull thud, Pallant vaulted
over
the counter behind me, twisted my right arm into the small of my back and locked the other in a hold which I knew myself powerless to break!

“I know your sort!” he growled in my ear. “Anyone that tries games with my guests goes the same way!”

“Don’t be a fool!” I cried angrily as he hustled me out of the building. “I have met her before—”

“Well—she don’t want to meet you again, and she ain’t likely to!”

Down the three worn steps he ran me, and across the misty courtyard to the gate. He was heavier and undoubtedly more powerful than I, and ignominiously I was rushed into the lane.

“I’ve broke a man’s neck for less,” Pallant remarked.

I said nothing. The tone was very menacing.

“For two pins,” he continued, “I’d chuck you in the river.”

However, the gateway reached, he suddenly released his hold. Seizing me from behind by both shoulders, he gave me a shove which sent me reeling for three or four yards.

“Get to hell out of here!” he roared.

At the end of that tottering run I pulled myself up. What prompted the lunacy I really cannot say, except perhaps that a Rugby Blue doesn’t enjoy being hustled out of the game in just that way.

I came about in one jump, ran in and tackled him low!

It was on any count a mad thing to do, but he wasn’t expecting it. He went down beautifully, I half on top of him—but I was first up. As I stood there breathing heavily I was weighing my chances. And
looking at the bull neck and span of shoulders, an uncomfortable conviction came that if Seaman Pallant decided to fight it out I was probably booked for a first-class hiding.

However, he did not move.

I watched him second after second, standing poised with clenched fists; I thought it was a trick. Still he did not move. Very cautiously, for I knew the man to be old in ringcraft, I approached and bent over him. And then I saw why he lay there.

A pool of blood was forming under his head. He had pitched on to the jagged edge of the gatepost—and was quite insensible!

For a long minute I waited, trying to find out if accidentally I had killed him. But satisfied that he was merely stunned, those counsels of insanity which I count to be hereditary, which are responsible for some of the tightest corners in which I have ever found myself, now prevailed.

Ardatha’s dangerous bodyguard was out of the way. I might as well take advantage of the fact.

Turning, I ran back into the barroom, raised the flap, crossed the bar, and gently moving the rush curtain, stood again in the narrow passage. On my extreme right was a closed door; on the left, lighted by another of the paper-covered hanging lamps, I saw an uncarpeted staircase. I had heard Ardatha’s footsteps going up those stairs, and now, treading softly, I began to mount.

That reek of stale spirits and tobacco smoke which characterised the bar was equally perceptible here. Two doors opened on a landing. I judged that on my left to communicate with a room overlooking the front of the Monks’ Arms, and I recalled that as I returned from my encounter with Pallant I had seen no light in any of the windows on this side of the house. Therefore, creeping forward on tiptoe, I tried the handle of the other door.

It turned quite easily and a dim light shone out as I pushed the door open.

The room was scantily furnished: an ancient mahogany chest of drawers faced me as I entered and I saw some chairs of the same wood upholstered with horsehair. A lamp on an oval table afforded the only light, and at the far end of the room, which had a sloping ceiling, there was a couch or divan set under a curtained window.

Upon this a man was reclining, propped upon one elbow and watching me as I stood in the doorway…

He wore a long black overcoat having an astrakhan collar, and upon his head a Russian cap, also of astrakhan. One slender hand with extraordinarily long fingernails rested upon an outstretched knee; his chin was cupped in the other! He did not stir a muscle as I entered, but simply lay there watching me.

A physical chill of a kind which sometimes precedes an attack of malaria rose from the base of my spine and stole upwards. I seemed to become incapable of movement. That majestic, evil face fascinated me in a way I cannot hope to make clear. Those long, narrow, emerald-green eyes commanded, claimed, absorbed me. I had never experienced a sensation in my life resembling that which held me nailed to the floor as I watched the man who reclined upon the divan.

For this was the substance of that dreadful shadow I had seen on the screen in Nayland Smith’s room… it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

M
otionless I stood there staring at the most dangerous man in the world.

In that moment of realisation it was a strange fact that no idea of attacking him, of attempting to arrest him, crossed my mind. The complete unexpectedness of his appearance, a
danse macabre
which even in that sordid little room seemed to move behind him like a diabolical ballet devised by an insane artist, stupefied me.

The windows were closed and there was no sound, for how many seconds I cannot say. I believe that during those seconds my sensations were akin to the visions of a drowning man; I must in some way have accepted this as death.

I seemed to see and to hear Nayland Smith seeking for me, urgently calling my name. The whole pageant of my history joined and intermingled with a phantom army, invisible but menacing, which was the aura of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Dominating all was the taunting face of Ardatha, an unspoken appeal upon her lips; and the thought, like a stab of the spirit, that unquestionably Ardatha was the woman associated with the assassination of General Quinto,
the willing accomplice of this Chinese monster, and a party to the murder of Sergeant Hythe.

Dr. Fu-Manchu did not move; the gaze of his unnatural green eyes never left my face. That bony hand with its long, highly polished nails lay so motionless upon the pile of the black coat that it might have been an ivory carving.

Then after those moments of stupefaction the spell broke. My duty was plain, my duty to Nayland Smith, to humanity at large. As quick resolve claimed my mind Dr. Fu-Manchu spoke:

“Useless, Mr Kerrigan.” His thin lips barely parted. “I am well protected; in fact I was expecting you.”

He bluffed wonderfully, I told myself; I plunged for my automatic.

“Stand still!” he hissed; “don’t stir, you fool!”

And so tremendous was the authority in that sibilant voice, in the swiftly opened magnetic eyes, that even as my hand closed upon the weapon I hesitated.

“Now, slowly—very slowly, I beg of you, Mr Kerrigan—move your head to the left. You will see from what I have saved you!”

Strange it may sound, strange it appears to me now, but I obeyed, moving my head inch by inch. In that position, glancing out of the corner of my eye, I became again stricken motionless.

The blade of a huge curved knife resembling a sickle was being held motionless by someone who stood behind me, a hair’s breadth removed from my neck! I could see the thumb and two fingers of a muscular brown hand which clutched the hilt. One backward sweep of such a blade would all but sever a man’s head from his body. In that instant I knew how Sergeant Hythe had died.

“Yes”—Dr. Fu-Manchu’s voice was soft again; and slowly, inch by inch, I turned as he began to speak—“that was how he died, Mr Kerrigan: your doubts are set at rest.”

Even before the astounding fact that he had replied to an unspoken thought had properly penetrated, he continued:

“I regret the episode. It has seriously disarranged my plans: it was unnecessary and clumsily done—due to overzealousness on the part of one of my bodyguards. These fellows are difficult to handle. They are
Thugs
, members of a religious brotherhood specialising in murder—but long ago stamped out by the British authorities as any textbook will tell you. Nevertheless I find them useful.”

I was breathing hard and holding myself so tensely that every muscle in my body seemed to be quivering. Dr. Fu-Manchu did not stir, his eyes were half closed again, but their contemplative gaze was terrifying.

“I can only, suppose,” I said, and the sound of my own voice muffled in the little room quite startled me, “that much learning has made you mad. What have you or your cause—if you have a cause—to gain by this indiscriminate murder? Let me draw your attention to the state of China, to which country I believe you belong. There is room there for your particular kind of activity.”

This speech had enabled me somewhat to regain control of myself, but in the silence that followed I wondered how it would be accepted.

“My particular activities, Mr. Kerrigan, are at the moment directed to the correction of certain undesirable menaces to China. You are thinking of the armies who clash and vainly stagger to and fro in my country. I assure you that the real danger to China lies not within her borders, but outside. The surgeon seeks below the surface. Muscles are useless without nerves and brain. My concern is with nerves and brain. However, these details cannot interest you, as I fear you will not be in a position to impart them to Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Had your talents been outstanding I might have employed you—but
they are not; therefore I have no use for you.”

Following those softly spoken words came a high, guttural order.

A cloth was whipped over my mouth and secured before I fully realised what had happened. In less time than it takes to write of it I was lashed wrist and ankle by some invisible expert stationed behind me! The curved blade of the knife I could see out of the corner of my left eye.