The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (9 page)

Smith stepped quietly across the room and tried the door. It
proved to be unlocked, and an instant later, we were both outside
in the passage. Coincident with our arrival there, arose a sudden
outcry from some place at the westward end. A high-pitched, grating
voice, in which guttural notes alternated with a serpent-like
hissing, was raised in anger.

"Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith, grasping my arm.

Indeed, it was the unmistakable voice of the Chinaman, raised
hysterically in one of those outbursts which in the past I had
diagnosed as symptomatic of dangerous mania.

The voice rose to a scream, the scream of some angry animal
rather than anything human. Then, chokingly, it ceased. Another
short sharp cry followed—but not in the voice of Fu-Manchu—a dull
groan, and the sound of a fall.

With Smith still grasping my wrist, I shrank back into the
doorway, as something that looked in the darkness like a great ball
of fluff came rapidly along the passage toward me. Just at my feet
the thing stopped and I made it out for a small animal. The tiny,
gleaming eyes looked up at me, and, chattering wickedly, the
creature bounded past and was lost from view.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.

Smith dragged me back into the room which we had just left. As
he partly reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a
condition of most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new,
ominous sound proclaimed itself. Some heavy body was being dragged
into the passage. I heard the opening of a trap. Exclamations in
guttural voices told of a heavy task in progress; there was a great
straining and creaking—whereupon the trap was softly reclosed.

Smith bent to my ear.

"Fu-Manchu has chastised one of his servants," he whispered.
"There will be food for the grappling-irons to-night!"

I shuddered violently, for, without Smith's words, I knew that a
bloody deed had been done in that house within a few yards of where
we stood.

In the new silence, I could hear the drip, drip, drip of the
rain outside the window; then a steam siren hooted dismally upon
the river, and I thought how the screw of that very vessel, even as
we listened, might be tearing the body of Fu-Manchu's servant!

"Have you some one waiting?" whispered Smith, eagerly.

"How long was I insensible?"

"About half an hour."

"Then the cabman will be waiting."

"Have you a whistle with you?"

I felt in my coat pocket.

"Yes," I reported.

"Good! Then we will take a chance."

Again we slipped out into the passage and began a stealthy
progress to the west. Ten paces amid absolute darkness, and we
found ourselves abreast of a branch corridor. At the further end,
through a kind of little window, a dim light shone.

"See if you can find the trap," whispered Smith; "light your
lamp."

I directed the ray of the pocket-lamp upon the floor, and there
at my feet was a square wooden trap. As I stooped to examine it, I
glanced back, painfully, over my shoulder—and saw Nayland Smith
tiptoeing away from me along the passage toward the light!

Inwardly I cursed his folly, but the temptation to peep in at
that little window proved too strong for me, as it had proved too
strong for him.

Fearful that some board would creak beneath my tread, I
followed; and side by side we two crouched, looking into a small
rectangular room. It was a bare and cheerless apartment with
unpapered walls and carpetless floor. A table and a chair
constituted the sole furniture.

Seated in the chair, with his back toward us, was a portly
Chinaman who wore a yellow, silken robe. His face, it was
impossible to see; but he was beating his fist upon the table, and
pouring out a torrent of words in a thin, piping voice. So much I
perceived at a glance; then, into view at the distant end of the
room, paced a tall, high-shouldered figure—a figure unforgettable,
at once imposing and dreadful, stately and sinister.

With the long, bony hands behind him, fingers twining and
intertwining serpentinely about the handle of a little fan, and
with the pointed chin resting on the breast of the yellow robe, so
that the light from the lamp swinging in the center of the ceiling
gleamed upon the great, dome-like brow, this tall man paced
somberly from left to right.

He cast a sidelong, venomous glance at the voluble speaker out
of half-shut eyes; in the act they seemed to light up as with an
internal luminance; momentarily they sparkled like emeralds; then
their brilliance was filmed over as in the eyes of a bird when the
membrane is lowered.

My blood seemed to chill, and my heart to double its pulsations;
beside me Smith was breathing more rapidly than usual. I knew now
the explanation of the feeling which had claimed me when first I
had descended the stone stairs. I knew what it was that hung like a
miasma over that house. It was the aura, the glamour, which
radiated from this wonderful and evil man as light radiates from
radium. It was the vril, the force, of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

I began to move away from the window. But Smith held my wrist as
in a vise. He was listening raptly to the torrential speech of the
Chinaman who sat in the chair; and I perceived in his eyes the
light of a sudden comprehension.

As the tall figure of the Chinese doctor came pacing into view
again, Smith, his head below the level of the window, pushed me
gently along the passage.

Regaining the site of the trap, he whispered to me: "We owe our
lives, Petrie, to the national childishness of the Chinese! A race
of ancestor worshipers is capable of anything, and Dr. Fu-Manchu,
the dreadful being who has rained terror upon Europe stands in
imminent peril of disgrace for having lost a decoration."

"What do you mean, Smith?"

"I mean that this is no time for delay, Petrie! Here, unless I
am greatly mistaken, lies the rope by means of which you made your
entrance. It shall be the means of your exit. Open the trap!"

Handling the lamp to Smith, I stooped and carefully raised the
trap-door. At which moment, a singular and dramatic thing
happened.

A softly musical voice—the voice of my dreams!—spoke.

"Not that way! O God, not that way!"

In my surprise and confusion I all but let the trap fall, but I
retained sufficient presence of mind to replace it gently. Standing
upright, I turned… and there, with her little jeweled hand resting
upon Smith's arm, stood Karamaneh!

In all my experience of him, I had never seen Nayland Smith so
utterly perplexed. Between anger, distrust and dismay, he wavered;
and each passing emotion was written legibly upon the lean bronzed
features. Rigid with surprise, he stared at the beautiful face of
the girl. She, although her hand still rested upon Smith's arm, had
her dark eyes turned upon me with that same enigmatical expression.
Her lips were slightly parted, and her breast heaved
tumultuously.

This ten seconds of silence in which we three stood looking at
one another encompassed the whole gamut of human emotion. The
silence was broken by Karamaneh.

"They will be coming back that way!" she whispered, bending
eagerly toward me. (How, in the most desperate moments, I loved to
listen to that odd, musical accent!) "Please, if you would save
your life, and spare mine, trust me!"—She suddenly clasped her
hands together and looked up into my face, passionately—"Trust
me—just for once—and I will show you the way!"

Nayland Smith never removed his gaze from her for a moment, nor
did he stir.

"Oh!" she whispered, tremulously, and stamped one little red
slipper upon the floor. "Won't you heed me? Come, or it will be too
late!"

I glanced anxiously at my friend; the voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
now raised in anger, was audible above the piping tones of the
other Chinaman. And as I caught Smith's eye, in silent query—the
trap at my feet began slowly to lift!

Karamaneh stifled a little sobbing cry; but the warning came too
late. A hideous yellow face with oblique squinting eyes, appeared
in the aperture.

I found myself inert, useless; I could neither think nor act.
Nayland Smith, however, as if instinctively, delivered a pitiless
kick at the head protruding above the trap.

A sickening crushing sound, with a sort of muffled snap, spoke
of a broken jaw-bone; and with no word or cry, the Chinaman fell.
As the trap descended with a bang, I heard the thud of his body on
the stone stairs beneath.

But we were lost. Karamaneh fled along one of the passages
lightly as a bird, and disappeared as Dr. Fu-Manchu, his top lip
drawn up above his teeth in the manner of an angry jackal, appeared
from the other.

"This way!" cried Smith, in a voice that rose almost to a
shriek—"this way!"—and he led toward the room overhanging the
steps.

Off we dashed with panic swiftness, only to find that this
retreat also was cut off. Dimly visible in the darkness was a group
of yellow men, and despite the gloom, the curved blades of the
knives which they carried glittered menacingly. The passage was
full of dacoits!

Smith and I turned, together. The trap was raised again, and the
Burman, who had helped to tie me, was just scrambling up beside Dr.
Fu-Manchu, who stood there watching us, a shadowy, sinister
figure.

"The game's up, Petrie!" muttered Smith. "It has been a long
fight, but Fu-Manchu wins!"

"Not entirely!" I cried. I whipped the police whistle from my
pocket, and raised it to my lips; but brief as the interval had
been, the dacoits were upon me.

A sinewy brown arm shot over my shoulder and the whistle was
dashed from my grasp. Then came a whirl of maelstrom fighting with
Smith and myself ever sinking lower amid a whirlpool, as it seemed,
of blood-lustful eyes, yellow fangs, and gleaming blades.

I had some vague idea that the rasping voice of Fu-Manchu broke
once through the turmoil, and when, with my wrists tied behind me,
I emerged from the strife to find myself lying beside Smith in the
passage, I could only assume that the Chinaman had ordered his
bloody servants to take us alive; for saving numerous bruises and a
few superficial cuts, I was unwounded.

The place was utterly deserted again, and we two panting
captives found ourselves alone with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The scene was
unforgettable; that dimly lighted passage, its extremities masked
in shadow, and the tall, yellow-robed figure of the Satanic
Chinaman towering over us where we lay.

He had recovered his habitual calm, and as I peered at him
through the gloom I was impressed anew with the tremendous
intellectual force of the man. He had the brow of a genius, the
features of a born ruler; and even in that moment I could find time
to search my memory, and to discover that the face, saving the
indescribable evil of its expression, was identical with that of
Seti, the mighty Pharaoh who lies in the Cairo Museum.

Down the passage came leaping and gamboling the doctor's
marmoset. Uttering its shrill, whistling cry, it leaped onto his
shoulder, clutched with its tiny fingers at the scanty,
neutral-colored hair upon his crown, and bent forward, peering
grotesquely into that still, dreadful face.

Dr. Fu-Manchu stroked the little creature; and crooned to it, as
a mother to her infant. Only this crooning, and the labored
breathing of Smith and myself, broke that impressive stillness.

Suddenly the guttural voice began:

"You come at an opportune time, Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith,
and Dr. Petrie; at a time when the greatest man in China flatters
me with a visit. In my absence from home, a tremendous honor has
been conferred upon me, and, in the hour of this supreme honor,
dishonor and calamity have befallen! For my services to China—the
New China, the China of the future—I have been admitted by the
Sublime Prince to the Sacred Order of the White Peacock."

Warming to his discourse, he threw wide his arms, hurling the
chattering marmoset fully five yards along the corridor.

"O god of Cathay!" he cried, sibilantly, "in what have I sinned
that this catastrophe has been visited upon my head! Learn, my two
dear friends, that the sacred white peacock brought to these misty
shores for my undying glory, has been lost to me! Death is the
penalty of such a sacrilege; death shall be my lot, since death I
deserve."

Covertly Smith nudged me with his elbow. I knew what the nudge
was designed to convey; he would remind me of his words—anent the
childish trifles which sway the life of intellectual China.

Personally, I was amazed. That Fu-Manchu's anger, grief, sorrow
and resignation were real, no one watching him, and hearing his
voice, could doubt.

He continued:

"By one deed, and one deed alone, may I win a lighter
punishment. By one deed, and the resignation of all my titles, all
my lands, and all my honors, may I merit to be spared to my
work—which has only begun."

I knew now that we were lost, indeed; these were confidences
which our graves should hold inviolate! He suddenly opened fully
those blazing green eyes and directed their baneful glare upon
Nayland Smith.

"The Director of the Universe," he continued, softly, "has
relented toward me. To-night, you die! To-night, the arch-enemy of
our caste shall be no more. This is my offering—the price of
redemption… "

My mind was working again, and actively. I managed to grasp the
stupendous truth—and the stupendous possibility.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was in the act of clapping his hands, when I
spoke.

"Stop!" I cried.

He paused, and the weird film, which sometimes became visible in
his eyes, now obscured their greenness, and lent him the appearance
of a blind man.

"Dr. Petrie," he said, softly, "I shall always listen to you
with respect."

"I have an offer to make," I continued, seeking to steady my
voice. "Give us our freedom, and I will restore your shattered
honor—I will restore the sacred peacock!"