The Drums of Fu-Manchu (14 page)

Good Good! Did he suspect Ardatha?

“In the absence of Sir Denis”—the words seemed to reach me
indistinctly—“I must request
you
, Mr Kerrigan, to take my message. It is very simple. It is this: Sir Denis has fought with me for many years. I have come to respect him as one respects an honourable enemy, but forces difficult to control now demand that I should act swiftly. Listen, and I will explain what I mean to do.”

That forceful voice died away unaccountably. My brain suggested that the instrument, operated by an unknown principle, had failed. But then conscious thought petered out altogether, I suppose. The eyes regarding me from the screen, although the image was colourless, seemed, aided by memory, to become
green
… Then they merged together and became one contemplative eye. That eye grew enormous—it dominated the picture—it became a green lake—and a remorseless urge impelled me to plunge into its depths…

I stood up, or so I thought, from the ottoman on which I had been seated and walked forward into the lake.

Miraculously I did not sink. Stepping across a glittering green expanse, I found myself upon solid land. Here I paused, and the voice of Dr. Fu-Manchu spoke:

“Look!—this is China.”

I saw a swamp, a vast morass wherein no human thing could dwell, a limitless and vile corruption… I saw guns buried in the mud; in pools I saw floating corpses: the foetid air was full of carrion, and all about me I heard wailing and lamentations. So desolate was the scene that I turned my head aside until the voice spoke again:

“Look! It is Spain.”

I saw a waste which once had been a beautiful village: the shell of an old church; ruins of a house upon whose scarred walls bougainvillea bloomed gaily. People, among them women and children, were searching in the ruins. I wondered for what they were searching. But out of the darkness the Voice came again:

“Look! This is London.”

From my magic carpet I looked down upon Whitehall. Almost that spectacle conquered the magic of the Voice. I fought against mirage, but the mood of rebellion passed… I saw the cenotaph partly demolished. I heard crashes all around me, muted but awful. Where I thought familiar buildings should be there were gaping caverns. Strange figures, antlike as I looked down upon them, ran in all directions.

“
Your
world!” said the Voice. “Come, now, into mine…”

And Ardatha was beside me!

It was a rose garden, the scent of the flowers intoxicating. Below where the roses grew I saw steps leading down to a marble pool upon the cool surface of which lotus blossoms floated. Bees droned amid the roses, and gaily plumaged birds darted from tree to tree. An exquisite sense of well being overcame me. I turned to Ardatha—and her lips were irresistible.

“Why did you ever doubt what I told you?” she whispered.

“Only because I was a fool.”

I lost myself in a kiss which realised all the raptures of which I had ever dreamed…

Ardatha melted from my arms… I sought her, called her name—“Ardatha! Ardatha!” But the rose garden had vanished: I was in darkness—alone, helpless, though none constrained me…

Flat on the carpet of Nayland Smith’s apartment, as I had fallen back from the ottoman, I lay!—fully alive to my environment, but unable to speak—to move!

T
he screen, the magical screen, was black. Faint light came through the windows. Something—some damnable thing—had happened. I had gone mad—or been bewitched. That power, suspected but now experienced, of the dreadful Chinese doctor had swept me up.

With what purpose?

There seemed to be nothing different about the room—but how long had I been unaware of what was going on? Most accursed thing of all, I could think, but I couldn’t move! I lay there flat on my back, helpless as one dead. My keen mental activity in this condition was a double agony.

As I lay I could see right into the lobby—and now I became aware of the fact that I was not alone!

A small, dark man had opened the outer door quietly, glanced in my direction, and then set down a small handbag which he had seemed to carry with great care. He wore thick-rimmed glasses. He opened the bag, and I saw him doing something to the telephone.

I tried to command nerve and muscle—I tried to move. It was futile.

My body was dead: my brain alone lived…

I saw the man go. Even in that moment of mental torment I must watch passively, for I could not close my eyes!

Here I lay at the point from which my journeys to China, to Spain, to an enchanted rose garden had begun, and so lying, unable to move a muscle, again I heard a key inserted in the door… The door opened and Nayland Smith dashed into the room. He looked down at me.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, and bent over me.

My eyes remained fixed: they continued to stare towards the lobby.

“Kerrigan! Kerrigan! Speak, old man! What happened?”

Speak! I could not stir…

He placed his ear to my chest, tested my pulse, stood up and seemed to hesitate for a moment. I heard and partly saw him going from room to room, searching. Then he came back and again fully into view. He stared down at me critically. He had switched up all the lights as he had entered. He walked across to the lobby, and I knew that, he was about to take up the telephone!

His intentions were obvious. He was going to call a doctor.

A scream of the spirit implored me to awake, to warn him not to touch that telephone. This, was the supreme moment of torture…

I heard the faint tinkling of the bell as Nayland Smith raised the receiver.

* * *

I became obsessed with the horrible idea that Dr. Fu-Manchu had in some way induced a state of catalepsy! I should be buried alive! But not even the terror caused by this ghastly possibility would make me forget that small, sinister figure engaged in doing something to the telephone.

That it was something which meant death, every instinct told me.

Yet I lay there, myself already in a state of living death!

Smith stood, the receiver in his hand, and I could see and hear him dialling a number.

But it was not to be…

A crashing explosion shook the entire building! It shattered several panes of glass in one window, and it accomplished that which my own brain had failed to accomplish. It provided a shock against which the will of Dr. Fu-Manchu was powerless.

I experienced a sensation exactly as that of some tiny but tough thread which had held the cells of my brain immured in inertia being snapped. It was a terrifying sensation—but its terrors were forgotten in the instant when I realised that I was my own master again!

“Smith!” I cried, and my voice had a queer, hysterical ring—“Smith!
Don’t touch that telephone!
”

Perhaps the warning was unnecessary. He had replaced the receiver on the hook and was staring blankly across the apartment in the direction of the shattered window.

“Kerrigan!”

He sprang forward as I scrambled to my feet.

I can’t explain yet,” I muttered (the back of my head began to ache madly) “except that you must not touch that telephone.”

He grabbed me by the shoulders, stared into my eyes.

“Thank God you’re all right, Kerrigan! I can’t tell you what I feared—but will tell you later. Somewhere down the river there has been a catastrophe.”

“It has saved us from a catastrophe far greater.”

Smith turned, threw a window open (I saw now that he had been deeply moved) and craned out. Away downstream black smoke was rising over a sullen red glow.

Police whistles shrieked and I heard the distant clangour of a fire
engine… Later we learned—and the tragedy was front-page news in the morning—of that disastrous explosion on a munition barge in which twelve lives were lost. At the moment, I remember, we were less concerned with the cause of the explosion than with its effect.

Smith turned from the window and stared at me fixedly.

“How did you get in, Kerrigan? Where is Fey?”

“Fey let me in, then he was called up by Inspector Gallaho from Scotland Yard to meet you there.”

“I have not been there—and I have reason to know that Gallaho is not in London. However, go on.”

“Fey evidently had no doubt that Gallaho was the speaker. He gave me a drink, told me that you would return directly he, Fey, reached Scotland Yard, and went out.”

“What happened then?”

“Then the incredible happened.”

“You are sure that you feel perfectly restored?”

“Certain.”

Smith pushed me down into an armchair and crossed to the buffet.

“Go on,” he said quietly.

“The television screen lighted up. Doctor Fu-Manchu appeared.”

“What!”

He turned, his hand on a syphon and his expression very grim.

“Yes! You wondered for what purpose he had caused the thing to be installed here, Smith. I can give you an example of
one
use he made of it! Perhaps I am particularly susceptible to the influence of this man. I think you believe I am, for you observed on a former occasion that I was behaving strangely as I watched those awful eyes. Well this time I succumbed altogether. I had a series of extraordinary visions, almost certainly emanations from the brain of Doctor Fu-Manchu.
And then I became fully conscious but quite incapable of movement!”

“That was your condition when I returned,” Smith snapped. He crossed to me with a tumbler in his hand.

“I had been in that condition for some time before your return. A man admitted himself to the lobby with a key.”

“Describe him.”

“A small man with straight black hair, who wore what seemed to be powerful spectacles. He carried a bag which he handled with great care. He proceeded to make some adjustment to the mouthpiece of the telephone, and then with a glance in my direction—I was lying on the floor as you found me—he went out again as quietly as he had come.”

“Clearly,” said Smith, staring into the lobby, “your unexpected appearance presented a problem. They did not know you were coming. It had been arranged for Fey to be lured away by this unknown mimic who can evidently imitate Gallaho’s voice; but you, the unexpected intruder, had to be dealt with in a different manner. I am wondering about two things now, Kerrigan. Do you feel fit to investigate?”

“Perfectly.”

“First: how long you would have remained in that state in which I found you, failing the unforeseen explosion which shocked you into consciousness; and second: what the small man with the black hair did to the telephone.”

“For heaven’s sake be careful!”

He crossed to the lobby and very gently raised the instrument. I stood beside him. Apart from a splitting headache I felt perfectly normal. He tipped up the mouthpiece and stared curiously into it.

“You are sure it was the mouthpiece that he adjusted?”

“Quite sure.”

And now he turned it round to the light which was streaming through the doorway of the sitting room.

We both saw something.

A bead, quite colorless and no larger than a small pea, adhered to the instrument just below the point where a speaker’s lips would come…

“Good God!” Nayland Smith whispered. “Kerrigan! You understand!”

I nodded. I could not find my voice—for the appalling truth had come to me.

“Anyone speaking loudly would burst this bubble and inhale its contents! God knows what it contains—but we know at last how General Quinto and Osaki died!”

“The Green Death!”

“Undoubtedly. It was a subtle brain, Kerrigan, which foresaw that finding you unconscious, I should immediately call a doctor, that my voice would be agitated. The usual routine, as you must see now, was for someone to call the victim and complain that his voice was not audible, thus causing him to speak close to the receiver and to speak loudly.”

Very gently he replaced the instrument.

At this moment the door was partly opened and Fey came in. He glanced from face to face.

“Glad, sir! Frightened! Something funny going on!”

“Very funny, Fey. I suppose when you got to the Yard you found that the summons did not come from there?”

“Yes sir.”

The phone bell rang. Fey stepped forward.

“Stop! On no account are you to touch the telephone, Fey, until further orders.”

“Very good, sir.”