THE SACRED ORDER
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 farther 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 towards us, was a portly Chinaman
who wore a yellow, silken robe. His face it was impossible to see; but
he was beating his fists 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 centre of the ceiling gleamed upon the great,
dome-like brow, this tall man paced sombrely 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 one sees 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
vice. 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 worshippers 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!"
Handing the lamp to Smith, I stooped and carefully raised the
trap-door. At which moment, a singular and a dramatic thing happened.
A softly musical voice--the voice of my dreams!--spoke.
"Not that way! Oh, 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 jewelled hand resting
upon Smith's arm, stood Kâramanèh!
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 Kâramanèh.
"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 again 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!
Kâramanèh 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. Kâramanèh 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 riot of maëlstrom 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 shadows, 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 I, the mighty Pharaoh who
lives in the Cairo Museum.
Down the passage came leaping and gambolling the Doctor's marmoset.
Uttering its shrill, whistling cry, it leapt on to his shoulder,
clutched with its tiny fingers at the scanty, neutral-coloured 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 laboured 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 honour has been conferred
upon me, and, in the hour of this supreme honour, dishonour 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.
"Oh, 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 honours, 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 honour--I will
restore the sacred peacock!"
Dr. Fu-Manchu bent forward until his face was so close to mine that I
could see the innumerable lines which, an intricate network, covered
his yellow skin.
"Speak!" he hissed. "You lift up my heart from a dark pit!"
"I can restore your white peacock," I said; "I, and I alone, know
where it is!"--and I strove not to shrink from the face so close to
mine.
Upright shot the tall figure; high above his head Fu-Manchu threw his
arms--and a light of exaltation gleamed in the now widely-opened,
catlike eyes.
"Oh, god!" he screamed frenziedly. "Oh, god of the Golden Age! like a
phoenix I arise from the ashes of myself!" He turned to me. "Quick!
Quick! make your bargain! End my suspense!"
Smith stared at me like a man dazed; but, ignoring him, I went on:
"You will release me, now, immediately. In another ten minutes it will
be too late; my friend will remain. One of your--servants--can
accompany me, and give the signal when I return with the peacock. Mr.
Nayland Smith and yourself, or another, will join me at the corner of
the street where the raid took place last night. We will then give you
ten minutes' grace, after which we shall take whatever steps we
choose."
"Agreed!" cried Fu-Manchu. "I ask but one thing from an Englishman;
your word of honour?"
"I give it."
"I, also," said Smith hoarsely.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, Nayland Smith and I, standing beside the cab, whose
lights gleamed yellowly through the mist, exchanged a struggling,
frightened bird for our lives--capitulated with the enemy of the white
race.
With characteristic audacity--and characteristic trust in the British
sense of honour--Dr. Fu-Manchu came in person with Nayland Smith, in
response to the wailing signal of the dacoit who had accompanied me.
No word was spoken, save that the cabman suppressed a curse of
amazement; and the Chinaman, his sinister servant at his elbow, bowed
low--and left us, surely to the mocking laughter of the gods!