The Bride of Fu-Manchu (23 page)

“A friend... you need not be afraid... Fleurette.”

“Fleurette? My God! Am I growing delirious?”

I assisted him back on to his pillows. His manner was alarmingly strange.

“Who is she?”

“She is a victim of Dr. Fu-Manchu—but we are going to get her away.”

“Great heaven!” He closed his eyes. “Can it be true? Is it possible?... Don’t wait, Sterling—go... go!”

Indeed I knew that I had no alternative; and squeezing his hand hard, I ran out of the room.

Fleurette was standing just beyond the door, which she closed instantly upon my appearance.

“Someone is coming!” she said, in a low voice. “I think it is Companion Yamamata. Quick!—this way!”

She led me along a short passage to the head of a descending stair.

“Don’t make a noise,” she warned.

We crept to the bottom, my arm about her waist.

“Who is Dr. Petrie?” she whispered. “He stared at me as though he knew me; yet I have never seen him in my life before.”

“He is one of my oldest friends,” I replied, “and unfortunately I hadn’t time to ask him. But I saw how he looked at you. Yes! He thinks he knows you.”

And now I wondered what knowledge was common to Dr. Petrie and Sir Denis but not shared by me...

Both
had recognized Fleurette!

We turned a corner, and I saw that we stood directly under a little green lamp.

“There is your way,” said Fleurette, “straight ahead. It is the only door on to the terrace.”

At which moment I realized that we were standing directly outside her room.

“Darling, at last!” I exclaimed, and felt my heart leap. “Come on! Hurry! There isn’t a moment to waste!”

She slipped by me and opened the door of her room. I stared at her in blank amazement—and her expression baffled me. She took my hand, pulled me gently forward... and then closed the door.

“Someone might see or hear us in the corridor,” she said. “We are safe here. Please say goodbye to me.”

“What!”

She watched me, and in the dim light of that room which Nayland Smith had described as the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, her eyes looked like violets wet with dew.

“What did you think I meant to do?” she asked softly. “I have never cared for anyone before. I suppose I am to blame because I cared for you? But although you have not told me—I know what you think of Dr. Fu-Manchu... of all of us. You belong to the poor ignorant world. You are not really one of us. You are a spy.”

I tried to take her in my arms, but she eluded me.

“Fleurette! This is madness!”

“The world is mad—Alan.” That moment of hesitation before my name was a rainbow. “But you belong to it, and you must go back. I should hate to believe that you could think me capable of deserting those who have never denied me anything as long as I can remember. No, dear, I sink or swim with my friends! I am betraying them, now, by letting you go. But the moment you have reached safety—I shall warn them.”

“Fleurette!”

“If I could love you without wronging them, I would—but I can’t.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “Please say goodbye to me. You must hurry—you must hurry!”

Then she was in my arms, and as her lips met mine I knew that the greatest decision of my life was being asked of me.

The philosophy of a young girl, crazy though it may be, is intensely difficult to upset—and beyond doubt there was fatalism in Fleurette’s blood. Yet—how could I let her go?

My heart seemed to be beating like a steam hammer. I wanted to pick her up, to carry her from that accursed house. She began to plead.

“If you force me to go,” I said, “I shall get you back—follow you if necessary all around the world.”

“It would be useless. I can never belong to you—I belong to him.”

I wanted to curse the name of Fu-Manchu and to curse all his works. Knowing, as I knew, that he was a devil incarnate, a monster, an evil superhuman, the monument which he stood for in the mind of this beautiful child—for she was little more—was a shrine I yearned to shatter.

Yet for all the frenzy of passion which burned me up, enough of common sense remained to warn me that this was not the time; that such an attempt must be worse than futile.

I held her tightly, cruelly, kissing her eyes, her hair, her neck, her shoulders. I found myself on the verge of something resembling hysteria.

“I can’t leave you here!” I said hoarsely; “I won’t—I daren’t.”

A dim throbbing sound had become perceptible. This, at first, I had believed to be a product of excitement. But now Fleurette seemed to grow suddenly rigid in my arms.

“Oh, God!” she whispered. “Quick!
Quick!
Someone has found out! Listen!”

A cold chill succeeded fever.

“They are closing the section doors! Quick, for your life... and for
my
sake!”

It was inevitable. For her sake?—yes! If I should be found there...

She sprang to the control button.

The door remained closed.

She twisted about, her back pressed against the door, her arms outstretched—such terror in her eyes as I had hoped never to see there.

“All the doors have been locked as well,” she whispered. “It is impossible to get out!”

“But, Fleurette!” I began.

“It’s useless! It’s hopeless!”

“But if I am found here?”

“It’s unavoidable now.”

“I could hide.”

“No one can hide from him. He could force me to tell him.”

Her lips began to tremble, and I groaned impotently, knowing well that I could do nothing to comfort her—that I, and I alone, was the cause of this disaster about to fall.

And through those dreadful moments, the vibration of the descending doors might faintly be detected, together with that muted gong note which I had learned to dread.

“There must be something we can do!”

“There is nothing.”

Silence.

The section doors were closed.

And in that stillness I seemed to live again through years of life. I had in my pocket the means of saving the world. Useless, now! Within call, perhaps within sight from the terrace, eagerly awaiting me, was Sir Denis—freedom—sanity!

And here was I, helpless as a mouse in a trap, awaiting... what?

My heart, which had been beating so rapidly, seemed to check, to grow cold; my brain jibbed at the task.

What would be Fleurette’s fate if I were discovered there, in her room, by Dr. Fu-Manchu?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

M
any minutes elapsed, every one laden with menace. Then— came that eerie note which I knew.

Fleurette stood quite still. Used now to its significance and purpose, I could detect the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet, given at a speed which only an adept could have followed.

The sound ceased.

Fleurette dropped into an armchair, looking up at me, hopelessly.

“They are searching for you,” she said, in a dull tone. “He doesn’t know yet.”

I stood there dumb of tongue and numb of brain for long moments; then ideas began to come. Someone had called me—possibly Trenck— and I had not replied. Nayland Smith had received those messages.

What had they been, and how had he construed them?

This uncertainty only added to the madness of the situation. I had an idea born of experience.

“Fleurette,” I said, dropping upon my knees beside her, “why could I not have come in here as you came into my room when the alarm sounded?”

She looked at me; her face was like a beautiful mask: immutable, expressionless.

“It would be useless,” she replied. “No one can lie to Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

And I accepted the finality of those words, for I believed it. I sprang upright. I had become aware of a faint distant vibration.

“Can the doors be raised separately?”

“Yes; any one of them can be raised alone.”

I stepped across the room and pressed the control button.

There was no response. I bent close to the metal, listening intently. I formed the impression, and it was a definitely horrible impression, that the control doors were being raised, one by one... that someone was approaching this room in which I was trapped with Fleurette.

Beyond doubt, that ominous sound was growing nearer— growing in volume. And finally the vibration grew so great that I could feel it upon the metal against which my head rested.

I stepped back—my fists automatically clenched. The door slid open—and Dr. Fu-Manchu stood there watching me!

His majestic calm was terrible. Those long, brilliant eyes glanced aside, and I knew that he was studying Fleurette.

“Woman—the lever which a word can bend,” he said softly.

He made a signal with his long-nailed hand, and two of his Chinese servants sprang in.

I stepped back debating my course.

“Heroics are uncalled for,” he added, “and could profit no one.”

For an instant I glanced aside at Fleurette.

Her beautiful eyes were raised to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and her expression was that of a saint who sees the Holy Vision!

He spoke rapidly in Chinese and entered the room, giving me not another glance. My arms were grasped and I found myself propelled forcibly out into the corridor. The strength of these little immobile men was amazing.

The section door at the corner where those stairs terminated which led down to the radio research room was not yet fully raised: two feet or more still protruded from the slot in the ceiling which accommodated it.

Our human brains possess very definite limitations: mine had reached the edge of endurance.

My memory registers a blank from the moment that I left Fleurette’s room to that when I found myself seated in a hard, high-backed chair in the memorable study of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Beside me, Yamamata was seated, and at the moment at which I suppose my brain began to function again—suddenly that door which I knew led into the palm house opened—and Fah Lo Suee came in.

She wore a bright green pyjama suit and was smoking a cigarette in a jade holder. One glance I received from her unfathomable eyes— but if it conveyed a message, the message failed to reach me.

She closed the door by which she had entered and dropped on to a little settee close beside it.

I glanced at Yamamata. His yellow skin was clammy with perspiration. In doing so, I noticed that the door in the archway was open—and now through the opening came Dr. Fu-Manchu; silent— with cat-like dignity.

The door closed behind him.

Yamamata stood up, and so did Fah Lo Suee. It was farcically like a court of law. I wrenched my head aside, clenching my teeth. My passion for Fleurette had thrown true perspective out of focus.

This man who assumed the airs of an emperor was, in fact, a common criminal: the hangman awaited him. And then I heard his guttural voice:

“Stand up!”

All that was me, all that I had proudly been wont to regard as my personality, fought against this command—for a command it was. Yet—the plain fact must be recorded: I stood up...

He took his seat in the dragon-carved chair behind the big table. I had kept my eyes deliberately averted, but now, in the silence which followed, I stole a glance at him. He was staring intently at Fah Lo Suee.

Suddenly he spoke:

“Companion Yamamata,” he said softly, “you may go.” Yamamata sprang up; I saw his lips move, but no sound issued from them. He bowed, and opening the door which led into the big laboratory, went out, closing it behind him.

Dr. Fu-Manchu began to speak rapidly in Chinese, and at the end of the first sentence Fah Lo Suee, dropping her jade cigarette holder into a bronze tray upon the floor, came down to her knees on the carpet and buried that evilly beautiful face in upraised hands— delicate ivory hands—patrician hands—shadows, etherialized, of those of her formidable father.

He continued to speak, and she shrank lower and lower, but spoke no word—uttered no sound. Then:

“Alan Sterling,” he said, suddenly expressing himself in English; “the ill-directed cunning of one woman and the frailty of another have taken your fate out of my control. There are men to whom women are dangerous—you, unhappily, would seem to be one of them.”

And as he spoke, the remarkable fact disclosed itself to me that, although Fah Lo Suee had spoken no word, already he knew her part in the conspiracy!

Good heavens! A suspicion sprang to my mind: Had Fah Lo Suee been watching? Was it
she
who had trapped me with Fleurette? Was this the end to which she had preserved my life: Fleurette’s swift ruin, my own speedy death?

In its classic simplicity the scheme was Chinese, I thought.

I looked at her where she crouched, abject.

The voice—the strange, haunting voice—spoke on:

“Millions of useless lives cumber the world today. Among them I must now include your own. The ideal state of the Greek philosopher took no count of these. There can be no human progress without selection; and already I have chosen the nucleus of my new state. The East has grown in spirit, while the West has been building machinery...

“My new state will embody the soul of the East.

“I am not ready yet for my warfare against the numerous but helpless army of the rejected. The Plagues of Egypt I hold in my hands, but I cannot control the course of the sun...