Emperor Fu-Manchu (18 page)

“So I see,” Nayland Smith spoke quietly. “We must wait awhile, in case there are others to come. We might venture a little further and then take cover. That banyan twenty yards ahead will be good cover.”

Three minutes later, having forced a way through tangled undergrowth, they stood in the shade of the huge tree. The gate in the wall was clearly in view. It was a metal-studded teak door, evidently of great strength. At the moment it remained open.

“Someone else is expected,” Sir Denis muttered. They waited. And Tony, watching the open door in the wall, realized for the first time that the high wall alone separated two implacable enemies. The thought appalled him. He and Nayland Smith were alone; on the other side of the wall, in the person of the governor, all the strength of the Red regime was entrenched.

“Hullo! What’s this?”

Nayland Smith grabbed his arm.

Four bearers appeared from somewhere along the lane, carrying the Chinese equivalent of a sedan chair. They stopped before the open door; set the chair down.

A tall man wearing a mandarin robe and a black cap with a coral bead came out and stepped into the chair. The bearers took it up and passed so close to the banyan that Sir Denis dragged Tony down onto his knees. The chair went by. Nayland Smith, still grasping his arm, stared into Tony’s eyes.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

Neither spoke for a long minute. Then Tony said, “It’s too optimistic to hope that he’s leaving Szechuan.”

“I’m afraid so,” Nayland Smith agreed. “But, with a revolver in my pocket, I’m wondering if I should have missed such an opportunity.”

Oddly enough, this aspect of the situation had never occurred to Tony. Only as Sir Denis spoke did he realize how deep an impression the personality of Fu-Manchu had made upon him. The regal dignity and consciousness of power which surrounded the Chinese doctor like a halo seemed to set him so far above common men.

“I wonder, too.”

“Don’t fall for the spell he casts, McKay. I admit he’s a genius. But…”

Tony looked hard at Nayland Smith. “Could you do it?”

“Once I could have done it. Now that I have learned to assess the phenomenal brilliance of that great brain, I doubt myself. My hand would falter. But we can at least carry out our investigations without meeting Fu-Manchu. He, alone, would know me. You have no one to fear but the big Nubian.”

They came out of their cover. The chair with its bearers had disappeared in the direction of the town. They walked to the door in the wall. Nayland Smith examined it carefully, turned away. “Pretty hopeless,” he said.

The lane was deserted, and they followed the high wall for a quarter of a mile without finding another entrance. Nayland Smith scanned it yard by yard and at a point where the pink blossom of a peach tree evidently trained against the wall peeped over the top, he paused.

“Apparently an orchard. Do you think you could find the spot at night, McKay?”

“Quite sure.”

“Good.”

Tony asked no questions as they passed on. Another twenty yards and they came to a corner. The wall was continued at a right angle along an even narrower lane, a mere footpath choked with weeds. They forced a way through. Nayland Smith studied the wall with eager concentration. It ended where they had a prospect of a river, and turned right again on a wider road spanned by a graceful bridge from the grounds of the big house.

Tony saw a landing stage to which a motor cruiser was tied.

“That river will be the Tung Ho, I suppose,” Nayland Smith muttered, staring up at the bridge, “and this will be the governor’s watergate.”

“He must be a wealthy man.”

Sir Denis grinned. “Huan Tsung-Chao is a fabulously wealthy man. He’s a survivor of imperial days, and God alone knows his age. How he came to hold his present position under the Peiping regime is a mystery.”

“Why?”

“He is Dr. Fu-Manchu’s chief of staff. I met him once and whatever else he may be, he is a gentleman, however misguided.”

Tony then saw, several hundred yards up the road, what was evidently a main entrance. A man in military uniform stood outside.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“Turn back. I don’t want that fellow to see us. Come on.”

They retreated around the corner and made their way back along the wall.

* * *

Before a gate in a barbed-wire fence, Dr. Fu-Manchu stepped out of his chair. A soldier on duty there saluted the Master as he went in. There were flowering trees and shrubs in the enclosure surrounding a group of buildings of obviously recent construction. A path bordered by a cactus hedge led to the door of the largest of these.

The door was thrown open as Fu-Manchu appeared, and the Burmese doorman bowed low. Fu-Manchu ignored him and went on his way, walking slowly with his strange, catlike step. The place was unmistakably a hospital, with clean, white-walled corridors. Before a door at the end of one of these corridors, Fu-Manchu paused and pressed a button.

A trap masking a grille in the door slid aside and someone looked out. At almost the same moment, the door was opened. Matsukata, the Japanese physician, stood inside.

“Your report,” Fu-Manchu demanded tersely.

“There is no change, Master.”

“Show me the chart.”

They went into a small dressing room. Fu-Manchu removed his robe and cap and put on a white jacket similar to the one worn by the Japanese. Matsukata turned away as Fu-Manchu completed his change of dress.

“Here is the chart, Master.”

It was snatched from his hand. Dr. Fu-Manchu scanned it rapidly.

“You have checked everything—the temperature inside, the oxygen supply?”

“Everything.”

Fu-Manchu walked out of the room and into a larger one equipped as an operating room. In addition to the operating table and other customary equipment, there were several quite unusual pieces here and one feature which would have arrested the attention of any modem surgeon.

This was a glass case, like those in which Egyptian mummies are exhibited, and the resemblance was heightened by the fact that it contained a lean, nude, motionless body. But here the resemblance ended.

The heavy case rested upon what were, apparently, finely adjusted scales. A dial with millesimal measurements recorded the weight of the case and its contents. A stethoscopic attachment to the body was wired to a kind of clock. There was an intake from a cylinder standing beside the case, a mechanism which showed the quality of the air inside, and two thermometers. An instrument for checking blood pressure was strapped to an arm of the inert gray figure and connected with a mercury manometer outside the case. There were also a number of electric wires in contact with the body.

Dr. Fu-Manchu checked everything with care, comparing what he saw with what appeared on the chart.

He began to pace the floor.

“Are you sure, Master,” Matsukata ventured, “that in repairing the spinal fracture you did not injure the cord?”

Fu-Manchu halted as suddenly as if he had walked into a brick wall. Then he turned, and his eyes blazed murderously, madly.

“Are you presuming to question my surgery?” he shouted. “Am I, now, to return to Heidelberg, to the Sorbonne, to Edinburgh, and beg to be re-enrolled as a student—I who took highest honors at all of them?”

He was in the grip of one of those outbursts of maniacal frenzy which, years before, had led Nayland Smith and others to doubt his sanity.

Matsukata seemed to shrink physically. He became speechless.

Fu-Manchu raised clenched hands above his head. “God of China!” he cried, “give me strength to conquer myself or I shall kill this man!”

He dropped down onto a chair, sank his head in his hands. Matsukata began to steal away.

“Stand still!” Fu-Manchu commanded.

Matsukata stood still.

There was complete silence for several minutes. Then Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up. He was calm; the frenzy had passed.

“Prepare the cold room,” he ordered. “I must re-examine the patient.”

* * *

On his return from the early morning investigation, Nayland Smith’s behavior was peculiar. After a hasty meal, he appeared dressed as a workingman. He grinned at Tony and Moon Flower.

“I’m off again,” he announced. “All I want you two to do is to stay indoors until I come back. Can you bear it?”

Tony and Moon Flower exchanged glances. Tony’s inclinations and his sense of duty were at war. “Can’t I be of any use, Sir Denis?” he asked.

“There’s not a thing you could do, McKay, that I can’t do better alone.”

And off he went.

“Chi Foh.” Moon Flower spoke almost in a whisper. “It’s wonderful for us to be together again. I know that Sir Denis is working to rescue Father. But you must feel, as I do, that to stay inactive is dreadful.”

Tony threw his arms around her. “You weren’t inactive, Moon Flower, in finding Shun-Hi and I don’t think it will be long before we are active again. I’m learning a lot about Sir Denis. When he tells me to stay put, I stay put. He’s a grand man, and I’m glad to take his orders.”

The interval of waiting, to these affianced lovers, was rapturous. But even with Moon Flower’s arms around him, Tony had pangs of conscience. Nayland Smith was on the big job, and he was dallying.

As the day wore on and Sir Denis didn’t return, this uneasiness became alarm.

Where had he gone? What was he doing?

With the coming of dusk, both were wildly uneasy. Tony’s glimpse of Dr. Fu-Manchu that morning had sharpened his dread of the Master. He was painfully aware of the fact that if anything happened to Nayland Smith they would be helpless; two wanderers lost behind the second Bamboo Curtain.

Tony paced the room. Moon Flower rarely stirred from the window.

“If only I had some idea of where he went,” Tony said desperately.

He heard a crisp step on the landing. Nayland Smith walked in.

“Thank God!” Tony said with relief.

Moon Flower turned in a flash. “I didn’t see you on the street.”

“No, Jeanie. I came another way and entered by the back door. I had an uneasy feeling I was being followed.”

“I hope you were wrong,” Tony said.

“So do I,” Sir Denis admitted, opening the closet where they kept a scanty supply of liquor. “A stiff Scotch and soda is clearly indicated.”

“I had hoped to hear from Shun-Hi,” Moon Flower began.

“No luck today,” Nayland Smith rapped. “I have seen her. She’ll try again tomorrow. By that time we’ll be ready to go into action.”

Sir Denis grinned in his impish way. “I had to clear the course,” he stated cryptically, and began to fill his pipe.

T
ony woke early on the following morning. Looking across the room which he shared with Nayland Smith, he saw that the bed was empty. He thought little about it, for Sir Denis’s hours of rising were unpredictable. He took a shower, went into the living room, and lighted a cigarette.

When the woman who looked after their apartment came in to set the table for breakfast, he asked her, in Chinese, what time Sir Denis had gone out. They always spoke Chinese in the presence of the servants. She looked surprised and told him that it must have been before six o’clock, as no one had gone out since.

Moon Flower joined him half an hour later. “Isn’t Sir Denis up yet?” she asked in surprise.

“Very much up,” Tony told her. “He must have gone out around dawn.”

She stared at him in a puzzled way. “He’s behaving very oddly, isn’t he? Of course, I know it all has something to do with getting Father free, but I wish he wouldn’t scare us by these disappearances.”

“Who’s scaring you?” barked a voice from the direction of the doorway.

Tony turned—and there was Nayland Smith smiling at them. He wore his workman’s clothes.

“Where on earth have you been?” Tony asked. “And at what time did you start?”

“I started some time before daylight, McKay. I’ve been finishing the job of clearing the course. All we’re waiting for now is word from Cameron-Gordon.”

During breakfast, in spite of Moon Flower’s cross-examination, Nayland Smith evaded any explanation of his plans. “I believe, Jeanie, I have done all that can be done so far. Our next move will be touch-and-go. And I don’t want to raise false hopes.”

He spent the forenoon smoking his pipe near the window, constantly watching the passersby. Once he spoke aside to Tony, out of Moon Flower’s hearing. “If they once suspected we were here, all my plans would be shattered.”

Tony felt like a greyhound on the leash, and Moon Flower, reproachfully, retired to her own room.

During luncheon Nayland Smith tried to divert their gloomy thoughts with memories of his many encounters with Dr. Fu-Manchu, particularly those in which he had foiled the cunning Chinese scientist. “I’m only a moderately competent policeman. This man is a criminal genius. But I have had him on the mat more than once. Unfortunately, he always got up again.”

The afternoon was passed in the same way; but when evening drew near, Nayland Smith’s imperturbable calm began to show signs of breaking down. Several times he looked at his watch, then out the window again.

Suddenly he cried out, “Here she is!” and sprang to the door in his eagerness.