FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly on to
other things. I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen, to round my
incidents; they were not of my choosing. I may not pause to make you
better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of
mine. Often enough, in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of
Omar:
We are no other than a moving show
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
I have been asked many times since the days with which these records
deal: Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu? Let me confess here that my final answer
must be postponed. I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my
reasoning, and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of
the Manchus? The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
"Young China." This is unsatisfactory. What do we mean by Young
China? In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn,
association with the whole of that movement; and assuming that the name
were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no
Republican.
The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish. These
youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction with older but no
less ill-balanced provincial politicians, may be said to represent
Young China. Amid such turmoils as this we invariably look for, and
invariably find, a Third Party. In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one
of the leaders of such a party.
Another question often put to me was: Where did the Doctor hide during
the time that he pursued his operations in London? This is more
susceptible of explanation. For a time Nayland Smith supposed, as I
did myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliff Highway was
the Chinaman's base of operations; later we came to believe that the
mansion near Windsor was his hiding-place, and later still, the hulk
lying off the downstream flats. But I think I can state with
confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was neither
of these, but the East End riverside building which I was the first to
enter. Of this I am all but sure; for the reason that it not only was
the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh, and of her brother, Aziz, but the
home of something else--of something which I shall speak of later.
The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid
upon the place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a
horrible case. Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located the whilom
warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which
within was a place of wondrous luxury. At the moment selected by our
beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives
entirely surrounded it; a river police launch lay off the wharf which
opened from it on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black
night, than which a better could not have been chosen.
"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh, and looked up
into my face.
She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the
hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first, and
bring out Aziz. Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--you
are to make no attempt upon--"
"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to
pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did. "But how can we be sure
that there is no trap laid for us?"
The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the
integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of
the Chinaman's.
"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent
more noticeable than usual. "There is only one of the Burmese men in
the house, and he--he dare not enter without orders!"
"But Fu-Manchu?"
"We have nothing to fear from him. He will be your prisoner within ten
minutes from now! I have no time for words--you must believe!" She
stamped her foot impatiently. "And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
"He also."
"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked
the door in the high brick wall which divided the gloomy, evil-smelling
court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"Make no noise," she warned. And Smith and myself followed her along
the uncarpeted passage beyond.
Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in
command, brought up the rear. The door was reclosed; a few paces
farther on a second was unlocked. Passing through a small room,
unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony. The transition was
startling.
Darkness was about us now, and silence: a perfumed, slumberous
darkness--a silence full of mystery. For, beyond the walls of the
apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds
that is the hymn of the great industrial river. About the scented
confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the
Lower Thames.
From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from
the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in
and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had
come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim
enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the
greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--the
bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--penetrated
to this perfumed place. In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike
figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled form bending over him.
"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister
Chinaman must be fraught with danger. We stood, not in the lion's den,
but in the serpent's lair.
From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this
advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu
rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night. The millions might
sleep in peace--the millions in whose cause we labored!--but we who
knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had
fastened upon England--a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr.
Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left
no clew behind.
"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell
upon the lovely face of the slave girl. She who had been a pliant
instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu now was to be the means whereby
society should be rid of him.
She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through the
gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light, and, Karamaneh
beside me, stood looking down upon the boy. It was Aziz, her brother;
dead so far as Western lore had power to judge, but kept alive in that
deathlike trance by the uncanny power of the Chinese doctor.
"Be quick," she said; "be quick! Awaken him! I am afraid."
From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe and a phial
containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid. It was a drug not to
be found in the British Pharmacopoeia. Of its constitution I knew
nothing. Although I had had the phial in my possession for some days I
had not dared to devote any of its precious contents to analytical
purposes. The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled
success for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for the fiendish
Chinaman.
I raised the white coverlet. The boy, fully dressed, lay with his arms
crossed upon his breast. I discerned the mark of previous injections
as, charging the syringe from the phial, I made what I hoped would be
the last of such experiments upon him. I would have given half of my
small worldly possessions to have known the real nature of the drug
which was now coursing through the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the
grayed face with the olive tone of life; which, so far as my medical
training bore me, was restoring the dead to life.
But such was not the purpose of my visit. I was come to remove from
the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to
him. The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl
would be broken.
My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics. The
peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of
her--which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving. In a
few moments all will be well with him."
The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to
open. The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed
inconceivable that all about us was the discordant activity of the
commercial East End. Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming
oppressive; it began positively to appall me.
Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn
appeared beside me. "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"
"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of
Aziz.
I peered around the shadowy walls. Tall glass cases there were,
shelves and niches: where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the
tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of
unfamiliar lore, the impedimenta of the occult student and man of
science--the visible evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.
Shelves--cases--niches--were bare. Of the complicated appliances
unknown to civilized laboratories, wherewith he pursued his strange
experiments, of the tubes wherein he isolated the bacilli of
unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound volumes for a glimpse at
which (had they known of their contents) the great men of Harley Street
would have given a fortune--no trace remained. The silken cushions;
the inlaid tables; all were gone.
The room was stripped, dismantled. Had Fu-Manchu fled? The silence
assumed a new significance. His dacoits and kindred ministers of death
all must have fled, too.
"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly. "You promised to aid us
to capture him--to send us a message--and you have delayed until--"
"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again. "Oh! is he not
reviving slowly? Are you sure you have made no mistake?"
Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me. I
again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my busy
professional career.
As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--which
were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's eager arms
tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that
softly spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to
Nayland Smith. I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
"My promise is fulfilled!" I said. "You are free! Now for Fu-Manchu!
But first let us admit the police to this house; there is something
uncanny in its stillness."
"No," she replied. "First let my brother be taken out and placed in
safety. Will you carry him?"
She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was
written awe and wonder.
The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed
through the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in
the gloom. Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly. He turned to
Karamaneh.
"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly. "We have done our
part; it remains for you to do yours."
"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged. "HE is near us--and, oh,
God, I fear him so!"
"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--but from
the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that, her brother
safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone. Those glances sent my
blood dancing; for Karamaneh was an Eastern jewel which any man of
flesh and blood must have coveted had he known it to lie within his
reach. Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once, I
had known the desire to explore.
"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not
enter. Even as he is, I fear him."
Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something
extraordinary. Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart. Though we
were two, and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most
cunning murderer who ever came out of the East.
It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a
door, to which Karamaneh had pointed. Then, upon looking into the dim
place beyond, all else save what it held was forgotten.
We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining in a
corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon a low
table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--was Dr.
Fu-Manchu!
At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me. My
hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him. The lids veiled the
malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile. Then Smith
silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe. A sickly
perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation of the hushed
silence, and the ease with which we had thus far executed our plan,
came to me. The cunning mind was torpid--lost in a brutish world of
dreams.
Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered the
yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes. At last
we had triumphed.
I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was
about to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium
fumes, when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
Her little hand grasped my arm. She drew Smith and myself back from
the door.
"There is danger there!" she whispered.
"Do not enter that room! The police must reach him in some way--and
drag him out! Do not enter that room!"
The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage
flame. The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her
now; but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet. Inspector Weymouth came down
the stairs and joined us.
"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said. "The
divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive, Dr. Petrie.
All is ready now. The launch is just off the wharf and every side of
the place under observation. Where's our man?"
He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised his eyebrows
interrogatively. The absence of sound--of any demonstration from the
uncanny Chinaman whom he was there to arrest--puzzled him.
Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped to the
draped door. He was a man who drove straight at his goal and saved
reflections for subsequent leisure. I think, moreover, that the
atmosphere of the place (stripped as it was it retained its heavy,
voluptuous perfume) had begun to get a hold upon him. He was anxious
to shake it off; to be up and doing.
He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room. Smith and I
perforce followed him. Just within the door the three of us stood
looking across at the limp thing which had spread terror throughout the
Eastern and Western world. Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired
terror now, though the giant intellect was inert--stupefied.
In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter a
stifled scream. But it came too late.
As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions, the inlaid table
with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls, the sprawling figure with
the ghastly light playing upon its features--quivered, and shot upward!
So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered, too
late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's private
apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us. A trap had been
released beneath our feet.
I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--of
the shock marking the drop. I only remember fighting for my life
against a stifling something which had me by the throat. I knew that I
was being suffocated, but my hands met only the deathly emptiness.
Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank. I could not cry out. I was
helpless. Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--could surmise
nothing. Then . . . all consciousness ended.