The Bride of Fu-Manchu (13 page)

But I might fail... and pay the price nevertheless.

These were my thoughts as I drew nearer and nearer to the glass door. I had almost reached it when Fu-Manchu spoke again.

“Dismiss any idea of personal attack,” he said in a soft voice, the sibilants more than usually pronounced. “Accept my assurance that it could not possibly succeed. Follow!”

He moved on, and I crossed the threshold into a small room furnished as a library. Many of the volumes burdening the shelves were in strange bindings, and their lettering in characters even less familiar. There was a commodious table upon which a number of books lay open. Also, there was a smell in the room which I thought I identified as that of burning opium; and a little jade pipe lying in a bronze tray served to confirm my suspicion.

The library was lighted by one silk-shaded lantern suspended from the ceiling, and by a queer globular lamp set in an ebony pedestal on a corner of the table.

So much I observed as I crossed this queer apartment, richly carpeted, and came by means of a second doorway into the largest glasshouse I had seen outside Kew Gardens. Its floor was covered with that same rubber-like material used in the “radio research room.”

The roof was impressively lofty, and the vast conservatory softly lighted by means of some system of hidden lamps. Tropical heat prevailed, and a damp, miasmatic smell. There were palms there, and flowering creepers, rare shrubs in perfect condition, and banks of strange orchids embedded amid steaming moss.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
he place was a bulb-hunter’s paradise, a dream jungle, in parts almost impenetrable by reason of the fact that luxurious growths had overrun the sometimes narrow paths.

I discovered as we proceeded that it was divided into sections, and that the temperature, in what was really a series of isolated forcing houses, varied from tropical to subtropical. The doors were very ingenious. There was a space between them large enough to accommodate several persons, and a gauge set beside a thermometer which could be adjusted as one door was closed before the next was opened.

Let me confess that I myself had ceased to exist. I was submerged in the flowers, in the jungle, in the vital, intense personality of my guide. This was phantasy—yet it was not phantasy. It was a mad reality: the dream of a super-scientist, a genius whose brilliance transcended anything normally recognized, expressed in rare foliage, in unique blooms.

Dr. Fu-Manchu consented to enlighten me from point to point.

At an early stage he drew my attention to species which I had sought in vain in the forests of Brazil; to orchids which Borneo, during one long expedition, had failed to reveal to me: Indian varieties and specimens from the Burmese swamps.

“This is mango-apple, a fruit which first appeared here two months ago... Notice near its roots the beautiful flowers which occasion the heavy perfume—
Cypripedium-Cycaste;
a hybrid cultivated in these houses successfully for the first time... the very large blooms are rose-peonies—scentless, of course, but interesting...”

At one point in a very narrow path, overhung by a most peculiar type of hibiscus in full bloom, he paused and pointed.

I saw pitcher plants of many species, and not far away
drosophyllum
—of that kind of which I had already met with two specimens.

“These insectivorous varieties,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “have proved useful in certain experiments. I have outlined several inquiries, upon which I shall request you to commence work shortly, relating to this interesting subject. We come now to the botanical research room...”

He opened a door, and with one long-nailed yellow hand beckoned me imperiously to follow.

I obeyed.

He closed the door and adjusted the gauge, continuing to speak as he did so.

“You will work under the direction of Companion Herman Trenck—”

“What!” His words aroused me from a sort of stupor. “Dr. Trenck? Trenck died five years ago in Sumatra!”

Dr. Fu-Manchu opened the second door, and I saw a beautifully equipped laboratory, but much smaller than that in which I had first found myself.

A Chinaman wearing white overalls resembling my own bowed to my guide and stood aside as we entered.

Bending over a microscope was a grey-haired, bearded man. I had met him once; twice heard him lecture. He stood upright and confronted us.

No possibility of doubt remained. It was Herman Trenck... who had been dead for five years!

Dr. Fu-Manchu glanced aside at me.

“It will be your privilege, Mr. Sterling,” he said, “to meet under my roof many distinguished dead men.”

He turned to the famous Dutch botanist.

“Companion Trenck,” he continued, “allow me to introduce to you your new assistant. Companion Alan Sterling, of whose work I know you have heard.”

“Indeed, yes,” said the Dutchman cordially, and advanced with outstretched hand. “It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sterling, and a great privilege to enjoy such assistance. Your recent work in Brazil for the Botanical Society is well known to me.”

I shook hands. I was a man in a dream. This was a dream meeting.

Of the bona fides of Dr. Trenck in life, there could never have been any question. His was one of the great names in botany. But now, I thought, I had entered a spirit world, under the guidance of a master magician.

“If you will pardon me,” said Trenck, “there is something here to which I must draw the doctor’s attention.”

I made no reply. I stood stricken silent, now most horribly convinced that my first impression had been the true one—that definitely I was dead. And I watched, as that tall, gaunt figure in the yellow robe bent over the microscope. Herman Trenck studied his every movement with intense anxiety; and presently:

“Not yet,” said the Chinaman, standing upright. “But you are very near.”

“I agree,” said the Dutch botanist earnestly.

“That I am still wrong?”

“It is more probable, doctor, that I am wrong...”

And it was at this moment, while I firmly believed that I had stepped into the other world, that a phrase flashed through my mind, spoken in a low, musical voice:

“Think of me as Derceto...”

Fleurette!

This thought was powerful enough to drag me away from that phantasmal laboratory—powerful enough to make me forget, for a moment, Dr. Fu-Manchu, and the dead Dutch botanist who talked with him so earnestly.

Was Fleurette also a phantom?

Did Fleurette belong to the life of which until recently I had believed myself to form a unit, or was she one of the living-dead? In either case, she belonged to Dr. Fu-Manchu; and every idea which I had formed respecting her was scrapped, swept away by this inexorable tidal wave which had carried me into a ghost world...

A new thought. Perhaps this was insanity!

In the course of my struggle with the Dacoit I might have received a blow upon the skull, and all this be but a dream within a dream; delirium, feverish fancy.

Through all these chaotic speculations a guttural voice issued a command:

“Follow.”

And dumbly, blindly, I followed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
found myself in a long, gloomily lighted corridor.

My frame of mind by this time was one which I cannot hope to convey in words. In a setting fantastic, chimerical, I had found myself face to face with that eerie monster whose existence I had seriously doubted—Dr. Fu-Manchu. I had been made helpless by means of some electrical device outside my experience. I had seen botanical monstrosities which challenged sanity... and I had shaken the hand of a dead man!

Now, as I followed my tall, yellow-clad guide:

“The radio research room,” he said, “in which you recently found yourself, is in charge of Companion Henrick Ericksen.”

This was too much; it broke through the cloud of apathy which had been descending upon me.

“Ericksen!” I exclaimed. “Inventor of the Ericksen Ray? He died during the World War—or soon after!”

“The most brilliant European brain in the sphere of what is loosely termed radio. Van Rembold, the mining engineer, also is with us. He ‘died,’ as you term it, a few months before Ericksen. His work in the radium mines of Ho Nan has proved to be valuable.”

Yet another door was opened, and I entered into half light to find myself surrounded by glass cases, their windows set flush with the walls and illuminated from within.

“My mosquitoes and other winged insects,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu. “I am the first student to have succeeded in producing true hybrids. The subject is one which possibly does not interest you, Mr. Sterling, but one or two of my specimens possess characteristics which must appeal even to the lay mind.”

Yes; this was delirium. I recognized now that connecting link, which, if sought for, can usually be found between the most fantastic dream and some fact previously observed, seemingly forgotten, but stored in that queer cupboard which we call the subconscious.

The ghastly fly which had invaded Petrie’s laboratory—this was the link!

I proceeded, now, as a man in a dream, convinced that ere long I should wake up.

“My principal collection,” the guttural voice went on, “is elsewhere. But here, for instance, are some specimens which have spectacular interest.”

He halted before the window of a small case and, resting one long, yellow hand upon the glass, tapped with talon-like nails.

Two gigantic wasps, their wasted bodies fully three inches long, their wingspan extraordinary, buzzed angrily against the glass pane. I saw that there was a big nest of some clay-like material built in one corner of the case.

“An interesting hybrid,” said my guide, “possessing sawfly characteristics, as an expert would observe, but with the pugnacity of the wasp unimpaired, and its stinging qualities greatly increased. Merely an ornamental experiment and comparatively useless.”

He moved on. I thought that such visions as these must mean that I was in high fever, for I ceased to believe in their reality.

“I have greatly improved the sandfly,” Dr. Fu-Manchu continued; “a certain Sudanese variety had proved to be most amenable to treatment.”

He paused before another case, the floor thickly sanded, and I saw flea-like, winged creatures nearly as large as common houseflies...

“The spiders may interest you.”

He had moved on a few steps. I closed my eyes, overcome by sudden nausea.

The dream, as is the way with such dreams, was becoming horrible, appalling. A black spider, having a body as large as a big grapefruit, and spiny legs which must have had a span of twenty-four inches, sat amidst a putrid-looking litter in which I observed several small bones, watching us with eyes which gleamed in the subdued light like diamonds.

It moved slightly forward as we approached. Unmistakably, it was watching us; it had intelligence!

No horror I had ever imagined could have approximated to this frightful, gorged insect, this travesty of natural laws.

“The creature,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “has a definitely developed brain. It is capable of elementary reasoning. In regard to this I am at present engaged upon a number of experiments. I find that certain types of ant respond also to suitable suggestion. But the subject is in its infancy, and I fear I bore you. We will just glance at the bacteria, and you might care to meet Companion Frank Narcomb, who is in charge of that department.”

I made no comment—I was not even shocked.

Sir Frank Narcomb—for some time physician to the English royal family, and one of the greatest bacteriologists in Europe, had been a friend of my father’s!

I had been at Edinburgh at the time of his death, and had actually attended his funeral in London!

A door set between two cases slid open as my guide approached it. In one of these cases I saw an anthill inhabited by glittering black ants, and in the other, a number of red centipedes moving over the leaves of a species of cactus, which evidently grew in the case...

In a small but perfectly equipped laboratory, a man wearing a long white coat was holding up a test tube to a lamp and inspecting its contents critically. He was quite bald, and his skull had a curious, shrivelled appearance.