The Hand of Fu Manchu (2 page)

Only one of the two lamps was alight—that above the bed; and on the
bed a man lay writhing. He was incredibly gaunt, so that the suit of
tropical twill which he wore hung upon him in folds, showing if such
evidence were necessary, how terribly he was fallen away from his
constitutional habit. He wore a beard of at least ten days' growth,
which served to accentuate the cavitous hollowness of his face. His
eyes seemed starting from their sockets as he lay upon his back
uttering inarticulate sounds and plucking with skinny fingers at his
lips.

Smith bent forward peering into the wasted face; and then started back
with a suppressed cry.

"Merciful God! can it be Hale?" he muttered. "What does it mean? what
does it mean?"

I ran to the opposite side of the bed, and placing my arms under the
writhing man, raised him and propped a pillow at his back. He
continued to babble, rolling his eyes from side to side hideously;
then by degrees they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of
returning sanity entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed
upon Nayland Smith, who bending over the bed, was watching Sir Gregory
(for Sir Gregory I concluded this pitiable wreck to be) with an
expression upon his face compound of many emotions.

"A glass of water," I said, catching the glance of the man Beeton,
who stood trembling at the open doorway.

Spilling a liberal quantity upon the carpet, Beeton ultimately
succeeded in conveying the glass to me. Hale, never taking his gaze
from Smith, gulped a little of the water and then thrust my hand away.
As I turned to place the tumbler upon a small table the resumed the
wordless babbling, and now, with his index finger, pointed to his
mouth.

"He has lost the power of speech!" whispered Smith.

"He was stricken dumb, gentlemen, ten minutes ago," said Beeton in a
trembling voice. "He dropped off to sleep out there on the floor, and
I brought him in here and laid him on the bed. When he woke up he was
like that!"

The man on the bed ceased his inchoate babbling and now, gulping
noisily, began to make quick nervous movements with his hands.

"He wants to write something," said Smith in a low voice. "Quick! hold
him up!" He thrust his notebook, open at a blank page, before the man
whose movement were numbered, and placed a pencil in the shaking
right hand.

Faintly and unevenly Sir Gregory commenced to write—whilst I
supported him. Across the bent shoulders Smith silently questioned me,
and my reply was a negative shake of the head.

The lamp above the bed was swaying as if in a heavy draught; I
remembered that it had been swaying as we entered. There was no fog in
the room, but already from the bleak corridor outside it was entering;
murky, yellow clouds steaming in at the open door. Save for the gulping
of the dying man, and the sobbing breaths of Beeton, there was no
sound. Six irregular lines Sir Gregory Hale scrawled upon the page;
then suddenly his body became a dead weight in my arms. Gently I laid
him back upon the pillows, gently his finger from the notebook, and,
my head almost touching Smith's as we both craned forward over the
page, read, with great difficulty, the following:—

"Guard my diary.... Tibetan frontier ... Key of India. Beware man ...
with the limp. Yellow ... rising. Watch Tibet ... the
Si-Fan
...."

From somewhere outside the room, whether above or below I could not be
sure, came a faint, dragging sound, accompanied by a
tap—tap—tap
....

The faint disturbance faded into silence again. Across the dead man's
body I met Smith's gaze. Faint wreaths of fog floated in from the
outer room. Beeton clutched the foot of the bed, and the structure
shook in sympathy with his wild trembling. That was the only sound
now; there was absolutely nothing physical so far as my memory serves
to signalize the coming of the brown man.

Yet, stealthy as his approach had been, something must have warned us.
For suddenly, with one accord, we three turned upon the bed, and
stared out into the room from which the fog wreaths floated in.

Beeton stood nearest to the door, but, although he turned, he did not
go out, but with a smothered cry crouched back against the bed. Smith
it was who moved first, then I followed, and close upon his heels
burst into the disordered sitting-room. The outer door had been closed
but not bolted, and what with the tinted light, diffused through the
silken Japanese shade, and the presence of fog in the room, I was
almost tempted to believe myself the victim of a delusion. What I saw
or thought I saw was this:—

A tall screen stood immediately inside the door, and around its end,
like some materialization of the choking mist, glided a lithe, yellow
figure, a slim, crouching figure, wearing a sort of loose robe. An
impression I had of jet-black hair, protruding from beneath a little
cap, of finely chiseled features and great, luminous eyes, then, with
no sound to tell of a door opened or shut, the apparition was gone.

"You saw him, Petrie!—you saw him!" cried Smith.

In three bounds he was across the room, had tossed the screen aside
and thrown open the door. Out he sprang into the yellow haze of the
corridor, tripped, and, uttering a cry of pain, fell sprawling upon
the marble floor. Hot with apprehension I joined him, but he looked
up with a wry smile and began furiously rubbing his left shin.

"A queer trick, Petrie," he said, rising to his feet; "but
nevertheless effective."

He pointed to the object which had occasioned his fall. It was a small
metal chest, evidently of very considerable weight, and it stood
immediately outside the door of Number 14a.

"That was what he came for, sir! That was what he came for! You were
too quick for him!"

Beeton stood behind us, his horror-bright eyes fixed upon the box.

"Eh?" rapped Smith, turning upon him.

"That's what Sir Gregory brought to England," the man ran on almost
hysterically; "that's what he's been guarding this past two weeks,
night and day, crouching over it with a loaded pistol. That's what
cost him his life, sir. He's had no peace, day or night, since he
got it...."

We were inside the room again now, Smith bearing the coffer in his
arms, and still the man ran on:

"He's never slept for more than an hour at a time, that I know of, for
weeks past. Since the day we came here he hasn't spoken to another
living soul, and he's lain there on the floor at night with his head
on that brass box, and sat watching over it all day."

"'Beeton!' he'd cry out, perhaps in the middle of the night—'Beeton—
do you hear that damned woman!' But although I'd begun to think I
could hear something, I believe it was the constant strain working on
my nerves and nothing else at all.

"Then he was always listening out for some one he called 'the man with
the limp.' Five and six times a night he'd have me up to listen with
him. 'There he goes, Beeton!' he'd whisper, crouching with his ear
pressed flat to the door. 'Do you hear him dragging himself along?'

"God knows how I've stood it as I have; for I've known no peace since
we left China. Once we got here I thought it would be better, but it's
been worse.

"Gentlemen have come (from the India Office, I believe), but he would
not see them. Said he would see no one but Mr. Nayland Smith. He had
never lain in his bed until to-night, but what with taking no proper
food nor sleep, and some secret trouble that was killing him by inches,
he collapsed altogether a while ago, and I carried him in and laid him
on the bed as I told you. Now he's dead—now he's dead."

Beeton leant up against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his
hands, whilst his shoulders shook convulsively. He had evidently been
greatly attached to his master, and I found something very pathetic in
this breakdown of a physically strong man. Smith laid his hands upon
his shoulders.

"You have passed through a very trying ordeal," he said, "and no man
could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have
proved too strong for you. I am Nayland Smith."

The man spun around with a surprising expression of relief upon his
pale face.

"So that whatever can be done," continued my friend, "to carry out
your master's wishes, will be done now. Rely upon it. Go into your
room and lie down until we call you."

"Thank you, sir, and thank God you are here," said Beeton dazedly, and
with one hand raised to his head he went, obediently, to the smaller
bedroom and disappeared within.

"Now, Petrie," rapped Smith, glancing around the littered floor,
"since I am empowered to deal with this matter as I see fit, and since
you are a medical man, we can devote the next half-hour, at any rate,
to a strictly confidential inquiry into this most perplexing case. I
propose that you examine the body for any evidences that may assist
you determining the cause of death, whilst I make a few inquiries here."

I nodded, without speaking, and went into the bedroom. It contained not
one solitary item of the dead man's belongings, and in every way bore
out Beeton's statement that Sir Gregory had never inhabited it. I bent
over Hale, as he lay fully dressed upon the bed.

Saving the singularity of the symptom which had immediately preceded
death—viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation—I should
have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a
cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that
view. Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment
I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst
the litter of the outer room, when I made a curious discovery.

Lying in a fold of the disordered bed linen were a few petals of some
kind of blossom, three of them still attached to a fragment of slender
stalk.

I collected the tiny petals, mechanically, and held them in the palm
of my hand studying them for some moments before the mystery of their
presence there became fully appreciable to me. Then I began to wonder.
The petals (which I was disposed to class as belonging to some species
of
Curcas
or Physic Nut), though bruised, were fresh, and therefore
could not have been in the room for many hours. How had they been
introduced, and by whom? Above all, what could their presence there
at that time portend?

"Smith," I called, and walked towards the door carrying the mysterious
fragments in my palm. "Look what I have found upon the bed."

Nayland Smith, who was bending over an open despatch case which he had
placed upon a chair, turned—and his glance fell upon the petals and
tiny piece of stem.

I think I have never seen so sudden a change of expression take place
in the face of any man. Even in that imperfect light I saw him blanch.
I saw a hard glitter come into his eyes. He spoke, evenly, but hoarsely:

"Put those things down—there, on the table; anywhere."

I obeyed him without demur; for something in his manner had chilled me
with foreboding.

"You did not break that stalk?"

"No. I found it as you see it."

"Have you smelled the petals?"

I shook my head. Thereupon, having his eyes fixed upon me with the
strangest expression in their gray depths, Nayland Smith said a
singular thing.

"Pronounce, slowly, the words
Sâkya Mûni,
'" he directed.

I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but—

"I mean it!" he rapped. "Do as I tell you."

"Sâkya Mûni," I said, in ever increasing wonder.

Smith laughed unmirthfully.

"Go into the bathroom and thoroughly wash your hands," was his next
order. "Renew the water at least three times." As I turned to fulfill
his instructions, for I doubted no longer his deadly earnestness:
"Beeton!" he called.

Beeton, very white-faced and shaky, came out from the bedroom as I
entered the bathroom, and whist I proceeded carefully to cleanse my
hands I heard Smith interrogating him.

"Have any flowers been brought into the room today, Beeton?"

"Flowers, sir? Certainly not. Nothing has ever been brought in here
but what I have brought myself."

"You are certain of that?"

"Positive."

"Who brought up the meals, then?"

"If you'll look into my room here, sir, you'll see that I have enough
tinned and bottled stuff to last us for weeks. Sir Gregory sent me out
to buy it on the day we arrived. No one else had left or entered these
rooms until you came to-night."

I returned to find Nayland Smith standing tugging at the lobe of his
left ear in evident perplexity. He turned to me.

"I find my hands over full," he said. "Will you oblige me by
telephoning for Inspector Weymouth? Also, I should be glad if you
would ask M. Samarkan, the manager, to see me here immediately."

As I was about to quit the room—

"Not a word of our suspicions to M. Samarkan," he added; "not a word
about the brass box."

I was far along the corridor ere I remembered that which, remembered
earlier, had saved me the journey. There was a telephone in every suite.
However, I was not indisposed to avail myself of an opportunity for a
few moments' undisturbed reflection, and, avoiding the lift, I
descended by the broad, marble staircase.

To what strange adventure were we committed? What did the brass coffer
contain which Sir Gregory had guarded night and day? Something
associated in some way with Tibet, something which he believed to be
"the key of India" and which had brought in its train, presumably,
the sinister "man with a limp."

Who was the "man with the limp"? What was the Si-Fan? Lastly, by what
conceivable means could the flower, which my friend evidently regarded
with extreme horror, have been introduced into Hale's room, and why
had I been required to pronounce the words "Sâkya Mûni"?