The Bride of Fu-Manchu (2 page)

The water was quite warm, and it had that queer odour of stagnation peculiar to this all but tideless sea. I swam around the point, and twenty yards out from the beach my feet touched bottom.

At the same moment I saw her...

She was seated on the smooth sand, her back towards me, and she was combing her hair. As I stumbled, groped, and began to make my way inland, I told myself that this sole inhabitant of Ste Claire was probably one of those fabulous creatures, a mermaid—or, should I say, a siren.

I halted, wading ashore, and watched her.

Her arms, her shoulders, and her back were beautiful. Riviera salt and sun had tanned her to a most delectable shade of brown. Her wavy hair was of a rich red mahogany colour. This was all I could see of the mermaid from my position in the sea.

I made the shore without disturbing her.

It became apparent, then, that she was not a mermaid; a pair of straight, strong, and very shapely brown legs discredited the mermaid theory. She was a human girl with a perfect figure and glorious hair, wearing one of those bathing suits fashionable in Cannes...

What it was, at this moment, which swamped admiration and brought
fear
—which urged me to go back—to go back—I could not imagine. I fought against this singular revulsion, reminding myself that I was newly convalescent from a dangerous illness. This alone, I argued, accounted for the sudden weird chill which had touched me.

Why, otherwise, should I be afraid of a pretty girl?

I moved forward.

And as I began to walk up the gently sloping beach she heard me and turned.

I found myself staring, almost in a frightened way, at the most perfect face I thought I had ever seen. Those arms and shoulders were so daintily modelled that I had been prepared for disillusionment: instead, I found glamour.

She was bronzed by the sun, and, at the moment, innocent of make-up. She had most exquisitely chiselled features. Her lips were slightly parted showing the whitest little teeth. Big, darkly fringed eyes—and they were blue as the Mediterranean—were opened widely, as if my sudden appearance had alarmed her.

I may have dreamed, as some men do, of flawless beauty, but I had never expected to meet it; when:

“How did
you
get here?” the vision asked and rolled over onto one elbow, looking up at me.

Her voice had a melodious resonance which suggested training, and her cool acceptance of my appearance helped to put me more at ease.

“I just swam ashore,” I replied. “I hope I didn’t frighten you?”

“Nothing frightens me,” she answered in that cool, low tone, her unflinching eyes—the eyes of a child, but of a very clever and very inquisitive child—fixed upon me. “I was certainly surprised.”

“I’m sorry. I suppose I should have warned you.”

Her steady regard never wavered; it was becoming disconcerting. She was quite young, as the undisguised contours of her body revealed, but about her very beauty there hovered some aura of mysteriousness which her typically nonchalant manner could not dispel. Then, suddenly, I saw, and it greatly relieved me to see, a tiny dimple appear in her firm round chin. She smiled—and her smile made me her slave.

“Please explain,” she said; “this isn’t an accident, is it?”

“No,” I confessed; “it’s a plot.”

She shifted to a more easy position, resting both elbows on the sand and cupping her chin in two hands.

“What do you mean ‘a plot’?” she asked, suddenly serious again.

I sat down, peculiarly conscious of my angular ugliness.

“I wanted to have a look at Ste Claire,” I replied. “It used to be open to inspection and it’s a spot of some historical interest. I found the road barred. And I was told that a certain Mahdi Bey had bought the place and had seen fit to close it to the public. I heard that the enclosed property ran down to the sea, so I explored and saw this little bay.”

“And what were you going to do?” she asked, looking me over in a manner which struck me as almost supercilious.

“Well...” I hesitated, hoping for another smile. “I had planned to climb up to Ste Claire, and if I should be discovered, explain that I had been carried away by the current which works around the headland and been compelled to swim ashore.”

I watched eagerly for the dimple. But no dimple came. Instead, I saw a strange, faraway expression creep over the girl’s face. In some odd manner it transformed her; spiritually, she seemed to have withdrawn—to a great distance, to another land; almost, I thought, to another world. Her youth, her remarkable beauty, were transfigured as though by the occult brush of a dead master. Momentarily, I experienced again that insane desire to run away.

Then she spoke. Her phrases were commonplace enough, but her voice too was far away; her eyes seemed to be looking right through me, to be fixed upon some very distant object.

“You sound enterprising,” she said. “What is your name?”

“Alan Sterling,” I answered, with a start.

I had an uncanny feeling that the question had not come from the girl herself, although her lips framed the words.

“I suppose you live somewhere near here?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Alan Sterling,” she repeated; “isn’t that Scotch?”

“Yes, my father was a Scotsman—Dr. Andrew Sterling—but he settled in the Middle West of America, where I was born.”

The mahogany curls were shaken violently. It was, I thought, an act of rebellion against that fey mood which had claimed her. She rose to her knees, confronting me; her fingers played with the sand. The rebellion had succeeded. She seemed to have drawn near again, to have become human and adorable. Her next words confirmed my uncanny impression that in mind and spirit she had really been far away.

“Did you say you were American?” she asked.

Rather uncomfortably I answered:

“I was born in America. But I took my degree in Edinburgh, so that really I don’t quite know what I am.”

“Don’t you?”

She sank down upon the sand, looking like a lovely idol.

“And now please tell me
your
name,” I said; “I have told you mine.”

“Fleurette.”

“But Fleurette what?”

“Fleurette nothing. Just Fleurette.”

“But, Mahdi Bey—”

I suppose my thoughts were conveyed without further words, for:

“Mahdi Bey,” Fleurette replied, “is—”

And then she ceased abruptly. Her glance strayed away somewhere over my shoulder. I had a distinct impression that she was listening—listening intently for some distant sound.

“Mahdi Bey,” I prompted.

Fleurette glanced at me swiftly.

“Really, Mr. Sterling,” she said, “I must run. I mustn’t be caught talking to you.”

“Why?” I exclaimed. “I was hoping you would show me over Ste Claire.”

She shook her head almost angrily.

“As you came out of the sea, please go back again. You can’t come with me.”

“I don’t understand why—”

“Because it would be dangerous.”

Composedly she tucked a comb back into a bag which lay upon the sand beside her, picked up a bathing cap, and stood up.

“You don’t seem to bother about the possibility of my being drowned!”

“You have a motorboat just around the headland,” she replied, glancing at me over one golden shoulder. “I heard your engine.” This was a revelation.

“No wonder you weren’t frightened when I came ashore.”

“I am never frightened. In fact, I am rather inhuman, in all sorts of ways. Did you ever hear of Derceto?”

Her abrupt changes of topics, as of moods, were bewildering, but:

“Vaguely,” I answered. “Wasn’t she a sort of fish goddess?”

“Yes. Think of me, not as Fleurette, but as Derceto. Then you may understand.”

The words conveyed nothing at the time, although I was destined often to think about them, later. And what I should have said next I don’t know. But the whole of my thoughts, which were chaotic, became suddenly focused... upon a sound.

To this day I find myself unable to describe it, although, as will presently appear, before a very long time had elapsed I was called upon to do so. It more closely resembled the note of a bell than anything else—yet it was not the note of a bell. It was incredibly high. It seemed at once to come from everywhere and from nowhere. A tiny sound it was, but of almost unendurable sweetness: it might be likened to a fairy trumpet blown close beside one’s ear.

I started violently, looking all around me. And as I did so, Fleurette, giving me no parting word, no glance, darted away!

Amazed beyond words, I watched her slim brown figure bounding up a rocky path, until, at a bend high above, Fleurette became invisible. She never once looked back.

And then—the desire to get away, and as soon as possible, from the beach of Ste Claire de la Roche claimed me again, urgently...

CHAPTER TWO

W
hen presently I climbed on board the motorboat and pushed off, I found myself to be in a state of nervous excitement. But as I headed back for the landing place below Petrie’s tiny villa, I grew more and more irritated by my memories.

Fleurette was not only the most delightful but also the most mysterious creature who had ever crossed my path; and the more I thought about her, reviewing that odd conversation, the nearer I drew to what seemed to be an unavoidable conclusion. Of course, she had been lying to me—acting the whole time. A beautiful girl in the household of a wealthy Egyptian—in what capacity was she there?

Common sense supplied the answer. It was one I hated to accept—but I could see no alternative. The queer sound which had terminated that stolen interview, I preferred not to think about. It didn’t seem to fit in...

As I secured the boat to the ring and started a long, hot climb up to the Villa Jasmin, I found myself wondering if I should ever see Fleurette again, and, more particularly, if she wanted to see
me
.

I supposed Mme Dubonnet had gone into the village to do her midday shopping, which included an aperitif with one of her cronies outside a certain little café. Petrie I knew would be hard at work in the laboratory at the bottom of the garden.

Mixing myself a cool drink, I sat down on the flower-draped verandah and allowed my glance to stray over the well-stocked little kitchen-garden. Beyond and below were more flower-covered walls and red roofs breaking through the green of palm and vine, and still beyond was a distant prospect of the jewel-like Mediterranean.

I reflected that this was a very pleasant spot in which to recuperate. And then I began to think about Fleurette...

No doubt my swim had overtired me, but stretched out there in a deck-chair, the hot sun making my skin tingle agreeably, I presently fell asleep. And almost immediately, as I suppose, I began to dream.

I dreamed that I lay in just such a deck-chair, under an equally hot sun, on a balcony or platform of an incredibly high building. I have since decided that it was the Empire State Building in New York. I was endowed with telescopic vision. Other great buildings there were, with mile after mile of straight avenues stretching away to the distant sea.

The sky was sapphire blue, and a heat haze danced over the great city which lay at my feet.

Then there came a curious, high sound. It reminded me of something I had heard before—but of something which in my dream I could not place. A cloud appeared, no larger than my hand, on the horizon, miles and miles away—over that blue ocean. It was a purple cloud; and it spread out, fan-wise, and the sections of the fan grew ever larger. So that, presently, half of the sky was shadowed.

And then a tiny glittering point, corresponding, I thought, to the spot where the hinge of this purple shadow-fan should have been, I saw a strange jewel. The fan continued to open, to obscure more and more the sky.

It was advancing towards me, this shadowy thing; and now the jewel took shape.

I saw that it was a dragon, or sea serpent, moving at incredible speed towards me. Upon its awful crested head a man rode. He wore a yellow robe which, in the light focused upon him, for the sun was away to my left as I dreamed, became a golden robe.

His yellow face glittered also, like gold, and he wore a cap surmounted by some kind of gleaming bead. He was, I saw, a Chinaman.

And I thought that his face had the majesty of Satan—that this was the Emperor of the Underworld come to claim a doomed city.

So much I saw, and then I realized that the dragon carried a second rider: a woman, robed in queenly white and wearing a jewelled diadem. Her beauty dazzled me, seeming more than human. But I knew her...

It was Fleurette.

The purple shadow-fan obscured all the sky, and complete darkness came. The darkness reached me, and where there had been sunshine was shadow. I shuddered and opened my eyes, staring up, rather wildly, I suppose.

Dr. Petrie had just stepped on to the verandah. His shadow touched me where I lay.

“Hullo, Sterling,” he said briskly. “What’s wrong? Been overdoing it again?”

I struggled upright. Then, in a moment, I became fully awake. And as I looked up at Petrie, seated on the low wall beside a big wine jar which had been converted into a flower pot, I realized that this was a very sick man.