The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (7 page)

Nayland Smith wasted no time in pursuing the plan of campaign
which he had mentioned to Inspector Weymouth. Less than forty-eight
hours after quitting the house of the murdered Slattin, I found
myself bound along Whitechapel Road upon strange enough
business.

A very fine rain was falling, which rendered it difficult to see
clearly from the windows; but the weather apparently had little
effect upon the commercial activities of the district. The cab was
threading a hazardous way through the cosmopolitan throng crowding
the street. On either side of me extended a row of stalls,
seemingly established in opposition to the more legitimate shops
upon the inner side of the pavement.

Jewish hawkers, many of them in their shirt-sleeves, acclaimed
the rarity of the bargains which they had to offer; and, allowing
for the difference of costume, these tireless Israelites, heedless
of climatic conditions, sweating at their mongery, might well have
stood, not in a squalid London thoroughfare, but in an equally
squalid market-street of the Orient.

They offered linen and fine raiment; from footgear to hair-oil
their wares ranged. They enlivened their auctioneering with
conjuring tricks and witty stories, selling watches by the aid of
legerdemain, and fancy vests by grace of a seasonable anecdote.

Poles, Russians, Serbs, Roumanians, Jews of Hungary, and
Italians of Whitechapel mingled in the throng. Near East and Far
East rubbed shoulders. Pidgin English contested with Yiddish for
the ownership of some tawdry article offered by an auctioneer whose
nationality defied conjecture, save that always some branch of his
ancestry had drawn nourishment from the soil of Eternal Judea.

Some wearing mens' caps, some with shawls thrown over their oily
locks, and some, more true to primitive instincts, defying,
bare-headed, the unkindly elements, bedraggled women—more often
than not burdened with muffled infants—crowded the pavements and
the roadway, thronged about the stalls like white ants about some
choicer carrion.

And the fine drizzling rain fell upon all alike, pattering upon
the hood of the taxi-cab, trickling down the front windows;
glistening upon the unctuous hair of those in the street who were
hatless; dewing the bare arms of the auctioneers, and dripping,
melancholy, from the tarpaulin coverings of the stalls. Heedless of
the rain above and of the mud beneath, North, South, East, and West
mingled their cries, their bids, their blandishments, their
raillery, mingled their persons in that joyless throng.

Sometimes a yellow face showed close to one of the streaming
windows; sometimes a black-eyed, pallid face, but never a face
wholly sane and healthy. This was an underworld where squalor and
vice went hand in hand through the beautiless streets, a
melting-pot of the world's outcasts; this was the shadowland, which
last night had swallowed up Nayland Smith.

Ceaselessly I peered to right and left, searching amid that
rain-soaked company for any face known to me. Whom I expected to
find there, I know not, but I should have counted it no matter for
surprise had I detected amid that ungracious ugliness the beautiful
face of Karamaneh the Eastern slave-girl, the leering yellow face
of a Burmese dacoit, the gaunt, bronzed features of Nayland Smith;
a hundred times I almost believed that I had seen the ruddy
countenance of Inspector Weymouth, and once (at which instant my
heart seemed to stand still) I suffered from the singular delusion
that the oblique green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu peered out from the
shadows between two stalls.

It was mere phantasy, of course, the sick imaginings of a mind
overwrought. I had not slept and had scarcely tasted food for more
than thirty hours; for, following up a faint clue supplied by
Burke, Slattin's man, and, like his master, an ex-officer of New
York Police, my friend, Nayland Smith, on the previous evening had
set out in quest of some obscene den where the man called
Shen-Yan—former keeper of an opium-shop—was now said to be in
hiding.

Shen-Yan we knew to be a creature of the Chinese doctor, and
only a most urgent call had prevented me from joining Smith upon
this promising, though hazardous expedition.

At any rate, Fate willing it so, he had gone without me; and
now—although Inspector Weymouth, assisted by a number of C. I. D.
men, was sweeping the district about me—to the time of my departure
nothing whatever had been heard of Smith. The ordeal of waiting
finally had proved too great to be borne. With no definite idea of
what I proposed to do, I had thrown myself into the search, filled
with such dreadful apprehensions as I hope never again to
experience.

I did not know the exact situation of the place to which Smith
was gone, for owing to the urgent case which I have mentioned, I
had been absent at the time of his departure; nor could Scotland
Yard enlighten me upon this point. Weymouth was in charge of the
case—under Smith's direction—and since the inspector had left the
Yard, early that morning, he had disappeared as completely as
Smith, no report having been received from him.

As my driver turned into the black mouth of a narrow,
ill-lighted street, and the glare and clamor of the greater
thoroughfare died behind me, I sank into the corner of the cab
burdened with such a sense of desolation as mercifully comes but
rarely.

We were heading now for that strange settlement off the West
India Dock Road, which, bounded by Limehouse Causeway and
Pennyfields, and narrowly confined within four streets, composes an
unique Chinatown, a miniature of that at Liverpool, and of the
greater one in San Francisco. Inspired with an idea which promised
hopefully, I raised the speaking tube.

"Take me first to the River Police Station," I directed; "along
Ratcliffe Highway."

The man turned and nodded comprehendingly, as I could see
through the wet pane.

Presently we swerved to the right and into an even narrower
street. This inclined in an easterly direction, and proved to
communicate with a wide thoroughfare along which passed brilliantly
lighted electric trams. I had lost all sense of direction, and
when, swinging to the left and to the right again, I looked through
the window and perceived that we were before the door of the Police
Station, I was dully surprised.

In quite mechanical fashion I entered the depot. Inspector
Ryman, our associate in one of the darkest episodes of the campaign
with the Yellow Doctor two years before, received me in his
office.

By a negative shake of the head, he answered my unspoken
question.

"The ten o'clock boat is lying off the Stone Stairs, Doctor," he
said, "and co-operating with some of the Scotland Yard men who are
dragging that district—"

I shuddered at the word "dragging"; Ryman had not used it
literally, but nevertheless it had conjured up a dread
possibility—a possibility in accordance with the methods of Dr.
Fu-Manchu. All within space of an instant I saw the tide of
Limehouse Reach, the Thames lapping about the green-coated timbers
of a dock pier; and rising—falling—sometimes disclosing to the
pallid light a rigid hand, sometimes a horribly bloated face—I saw
the body of Nayland Smith at the mercy of those oily waters. Ryman
continued:

"There is a launch out, too, patrolling the riverside from here
to Tilbury. Another lies at the breakwater"—he jerked his thumb
over his shoulder. "Should you care to take a run down and see for
yourself?"

"No, thanks," I replied, shaking my head. "You are doing all
that can be done. Can you give me the address of the place to which
Mr. Smith went last night?"

"Certainly," said Ryman; "I thought you knew it. You remember
Shen-Yan's place—by Limehouse Basin? Well, further east—east of the
Causeway, between Gill Street and Three Colt Street—is a block of
wooden buildings. You recall them?"

"Yes," I replied. "Is the man established there again,
then?"

"It appears so, but, although you have evidently not been
informed of the fact, Weymouth raided the establishment in the
early hours of this morning!"

"Well?" I cried.

"Unfortunately with no result," continued the inspector. "The
notorious Shen-Yan was missing, and although there is no real doubt
that the place is used as a gaming-house, not a particle of
evidence to that effect could be obtained. Also—there was no sign
of Mr. Nayland Smith, and no sign of the American, Burke, who had
led him to the place."

"Is it certain that they went there?"

"Two C. I. D. men who were shadowing, actually saw the pair of
them enter. A signal had been arranged, but it was never given; and
at about half past four, the place was raided."

"Surely some arrests were made?"

"But there was no evidence!" cried Ryman. "Every inch of the
rat-burrow was searched. The Chinese gentleman who posed as the
proprietor of what he claimed to be a respectable lodging-house
offered every facility to the police. What could we do?"

"I take it that the place is being watched?"

"Certainly," said Ryman. "Both from the river and from the
shore. Oh! they are not there! God knows where they are, but they
are not there!"

I stood for a moment in silence, endeavoring to determine my
course; then, telling Ryman that I hoped to see him later, I walked
out slowly into the rain and mist, and nodding to the taxi-driver
to proceed to our original destination, I re-entered the cab.

As we moved off, the lights of the River Police depot were
swallowed up in the humid murk, and again I found myself being
carried through the darkness of those narrow streets, which, like a
maze, hold secret within their labyrinth mysteries as great, and at
least as foul, as that of Pasiphae.

The marketing centers I had left far behind me; to my right
stretched the broken range of riverside buildings, and beyond them
flowed the Thames, a stream more heavily burdened with secrets than
ever was Tiber or Tigris. On my left, occasional flickering lights
broke through the mist, for the most part the lights of taverns;
and saving these rents in the veil, the darkness was punctuated
with nothing but the faint and yellow luminance of the street
lamps.

Ahead was a black mouth, which promised to swallow me up as it
had swallowed up my friend.

In short, what with my lowered condition and consequent frame of
mind, and what with the traditions, for me inseparable from that
gloomy quarter of London, I was in the grip of a shadowy menace
which at any moment might become tangible—I perceived, in the most
commonplace objects, the yellow hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

When the cab stopped in a place of utter darkness, I aroused
myself with an effort, opened the door, and stepped out into the
mud of a narrow lane. A high brick wall frowned upon me from one
side, and, dimly perceptible, there towered a smoke stack, beyond.
On my right uprose the side of a wharf building, shadowly, and some
distance ahead, almost obscured by the drizzling rain, a solitary
lamp flickered. I turned up the collar of my raincoat, shivering,
as much at the prospect as from physical chill.

"You will wait here," I said to the man; and, feeling in my
breast-pocket, I added: "If you hear the note of a whistle, drive
on and rejoin me."

He listened attentively and with a certain eagerness. I had
selected him that night for the reason that he had driven Smith and
myself on previous occasions and had proved himself a man of
intelligence. Transferring a Browning pistol from my hip-pocket to
that of my raincoat, I trudged on into the mist.

The headlights of the taxi were swallowed up behind me, and just
abreast of the street lamp I stood listening.

Save for the dismal sound of rain, and the trickling of water
along the gutters, all about me was silent. Sometimes this silence
would be broken by the distant, muffled note of a steam siren; and
always, forming a sort of background to the near stillness, was the
remote din of riverside activity.

I walked on to the corner just beyond the lamp. This was the
street in which the wooden buildings were situated. I had expected
to detect some evidences of surveillances, but if any were indeed
being observed, the fact was effectively masked. Not a living
creature was visible, peer as I could.

Plans, I had none, and perceiving that the street was empty, and
that no lights showed in any of the windows, I passed on, only to
find that I had entered a cul-de-sac.

A rickety gate gave access to a descending flight of stone
steps, the bottom invisible in the denser shadows of an archway,
beyond which, I doubted not, lay the river.

Still uninspired by any definite design, I tried the gate and
found that it was unlocked. Like some wandering soul, as it has
since seemed to me, I descended. There was a lamp over the archway,
but the glass was broken, and the rain apparently had extinguished
the light; as I passed under it, I could hear the gas whistling
from the burner.

Continuing my way, I found myself upon a narrow wharf with the
Thames flowing gloomily beneath me. A sort of fog hung over the
river, shutting me in. Then came an incident.

Suddenly, quite near, there arose a weird and mournful cry—a cry
indescribable, and inexpressibly uncanny!

I started back so violently that how I escaped falling into the
river I do not know to this day. That cry, so eerie and so wholly
unexpected, had unnerved me; and realizing the nature of my
surroundings, and the folly of my presence alone in such a place, I
began to edge back toward the foot of the steps, away from the
thing that cried; when—a great white shape uprose like a phantom
before me!…

There are few men, I suppose, whose lives have been crowded with
so many eerie happenings as mine, but this phantom thing which grew
out of the darkness, which seemed about to envelope me, takes rank
in my memory amongst the most fearsome apparitions which I have
witnessed.