A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages, the last
regular habitations abutting upon the marshes. Between us and the
cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land through which at this
season there were, however, numerous dry paths. Before us the flats
again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of
the cool breeze that the river flowed round the bend ahead. It was
very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I
tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely
place.
Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought
that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the capture of the
formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with
Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
A light came into view far ahead of us.
"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith. "If we keep that straight
before us, according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little
weapon was curiously reassuring. I have endeavored, perhaps in
extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there
rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other
men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his
path, rendered him an object supremely sinister. I despair of
conveying to those who may read this account any but the coldest
conception of the man's evil power.
Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm. We stood listening.
"What?" I asked.
"You heard nothing?"
I shook my head.
Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way. He
turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked. "We are trusting her
blindly."
Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms against the
innuendo.
"I don't," I said shortly.
He nodded. We pressed on.
Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered always
about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of
communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces. The opium
den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream, at that hour a
smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes. Always he made
his headquarters upon the river. It was significant; and even if
to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew for our future
guidance.
"Bear to the right," directed Smith. "We must reconnoiter before
making our attack."
We took a path that led directly to the river bank. Before us lay the
gray expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy shipping of the
great mercantile city. But this life of the river seemed widely
removed from us. The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with
human activity. Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it
looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
we played our parts. When I had lain in the East End opium den, when
upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a peaceful
Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness, of utter
detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
I made no comment.
"There's the hulk," he added.
The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level of the
running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--for we
perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--a rough pier showed.
Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon
threw far out upon the softly eddying water. Only one dim light was
visible amid this darkness.
"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to the
staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down to the deck
below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier. With every motion
of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rings creaking
harshly, against the crazy railing.
"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and
commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared below the
level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled,
and for one breathless moment looked down upon the glittering surface
streaking the darkness beneath me. My foot had slipped, and but that I
had a firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had
marked the end of my share in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had
a narrow escape. I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the
weird creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk, and the
lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound of the splash
as my revolver dropped into the river.
Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck. He had
witnessed my accident, but--
"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear. "We dare not turn back now."
He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I perforce
following.
At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found
ourselves. It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of
shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific
paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes,
holding living organisms, and with instruments--some of them of a form
unknown to my experience. I saw too that books, papers and rolls of
parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose
above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding:
"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects
upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the
shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium. But,
most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
lay chained in the cell!
Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens. A faint
smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel of one of
the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated, leaped
and chattered a little marmoset.
That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything--for anything
except for what really happened.
The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion. The
lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks." His voice
quivered with excitement. "The game's up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to
tie him up with, Petrie."
I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in the
narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing
groaning, creaking--and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with
a sound infinitely dreary.
"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the
impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace,
revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed
eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
He spoke softly, sibilantly.
"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker. The
gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced quickly over
my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me. A
lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held
a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein. A
slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around. For God's sake keep
him covered. But a dacoit has his knife at my throat!"
Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled. But his glance never
wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently
upon his jaw.
I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but
a few seconds. To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any
of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and
through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!
"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when
we had entered.
"But my faithful servant followed you," he added. "I thank him. The
honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a
whistling voice.
"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely. "I warn you!"
Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment. "And to-day you
compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people,
too. I congratulate you. She would not betray me though lashed with
scorpions."
The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I
think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make. I assume
that you would not accept my word for anything?"
"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone
marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours. Of your resources
outside this cabin I know nothing. You, I take it, know as little of
mine. My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you
and I will follow. We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three
hundred yards. You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging
me your word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps.
I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of
the specified period, to act as you see fit. Is it agreed?"
Smith hesitated. Then:
"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated. Fu-Manchu
smiled his evil smile again.
"Agreed. Shall I lead the way?"
"No!" rapped Smith. "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with
its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie, I will
accept your word to adhere to the terms."
"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and
strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of
Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now
gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit, dressed solely
in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife, and
sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes. Never before, I
venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a scene in that place.
"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
The man threw his knife upon the ground.
"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith. "He may have a second concealed."
The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty
garments.
"Now search Fu-Manchu."
This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense of
revulsion from any human being. I shuddered, as though I had touched a
venomous reptile.
Smith threw down his revolver.
"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said. "No one could dispute
my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in
Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my friend's
word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped
just retribution at that moment. Fiend though he was, I admired his
courage; for all this he, too, must have known.
The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back. Nayland Smith's
next move filled me with surprise. For just as, silently, I was
thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar,
and waistcoat.
"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely. "We
have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit. To-night, Petrie, we
literally have to run for our lives."
We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to
owe their survival to their fleetness of foot. At Smith's words I
realized in a flash that such was to be our fate to-night.
I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory. East and west,
then, we had nothing to hope for. To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even
as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the
weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered--was
answered again.
"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits. Hopeless."
"Take the revolver," I cried. "Smith, it's--"
"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth. "A servant of the Crown in
the East makes his motto: 'Keep your word, though it break your neck!'
I don't think we need fear it being used against us. Fu-Manchu avoids
noisy methods."
So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come. It
was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--and
another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
was practically nil.
At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
decide our fate. The professional murderers who pursued us ran like
panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell upon those
yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives. For a long time
neither of us looked back.
On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
Should I, too, look back? Yes. It was impossible to resist the horrid
fascination.
I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
And never while I live shall I forget what I saw. Two of the pursuing
dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or fellows), and were actually
within three hundred yards of us.
More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent
forward, with their faces curiously uptilted. The brilliant moonlight
gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even
in that quick, agonized glance, and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped
knives.
"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith. "We must make an attempt to
break into the empty cottage. Only chance."
I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
cannot speak. But I am confident that the next half-mile was done in
time that would not have disgraced a crack man. Not once again did
either of us look back. Yard upon yard we raced forward together. My
heart seemed to be bursting. My leg muscles throbbed with pain. At
last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles. Once I
stumbled.
"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
But I recovered myself. Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and
panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard put to
it by the killing pace we had made.
"Smith," I whispered, "look in front. Someone!"
As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the
shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again. It could only be
another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly
whispered words, crashed open the gate and hurled himself blindly at
the door.
It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
into the interior darkness. Flat upon the floor he lay, for as, with a
last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost
fell over his recumbent body.
Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open. I kicked the
foot away, and banged the door to. As I turned, the leading dacoit,
his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon
leaped wildly through the gateway.
That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
accident my weak hands found the bolt. With the last ounce of strength
spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--as a full six inches
of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.
I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
Weakly he grasped my hand. "My fault. I shouldn't have let you come."
From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long
tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report. And the yellow
face at the window was blotted out.
One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his
account.
A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken
window.
Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the
reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered. In
the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles
pattering upon the path outside stole to me. Two runners, I thought
there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail. The
room was full of pungent smoke. I staggered to my feet as the gray
figure with the revolver turned towards me. Something familiar there
was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought
so.
It was my gray rain-coat.
"Karamaneh," I whispered.
And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which
sounded like "God bless her!"
The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that
quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
"I followed you," she said. "Did you not know I should follow you?
But I had to hide because of another who was following also. I had but
just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
She broke off and turned to Smith.
"This is your pistol," she said naively. "I found it in your bag.
Will you please take it!"
He took it without a word. Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
"Now go. Hurry!" she said. "You are not safe yet."
"But you?" I asked.
"You have failed," she replied. "I must go back to him. There is no
other way."
Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous escape
from death, I opened the door. Coatless, disheveled figures, my friend
and I stepped out into the moonlight.
Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes
upcast to the peace of the blue heavens. Karamaneh had shot to kill,
for both had bullets in their brains. If God ever planned a more
complex nature than hers--a nature more tumultuous with conflicting
passions, I cannot conceive of it. Yet her beauty was of the sweetest;
and in some respects she had the heart of a child--this girl who could
shoot so straight.
"We must send the police to-night," said Smith. "Or the papers--"
"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness of the
cottage.
It was a singular situation. My very soul rebelled against it. But
what could we do?
"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
"Hurry. I shall be suspected. Do you want him to kill me!"
We moved away. All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
faintly ahead. Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.