The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (15 page)

"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of
killing you?"

"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully. "Do I seem one to fear
for myself?"

"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.

She looked at me oddly.

"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly,
"my sister was taken, too, and my brother-a child." She spoke the
word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it
the more soft. "My sister died in the desert. My brother lived.
Better, far better, that he had died, too."

Her words impressed me intensely.

"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned. "You speak of
slave-raids, of the desert. Where did these things take place? Of
what country are you?"

"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn. "Of what country am I?
A slave has no country, no name."

"No name!" I cried.

"You may call me Karamaneh," she said. "As Karamaneh I was sold
to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased. We were cheap
at the price he paid." She laughed shortly, wildly.

"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me. My brother is
all that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power
of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand? It is upon him the blow will
fall. You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of
protection. Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"

I shook my head sadly.

"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders-why,
if I would, I dare not betray him."

I walked to the window and looked out. How could I answer her
arguments? What could I say? I heard the rustle of her ragged
skirts, and she who called herself Karamaneh stood beside me. She
laid her hand upon my arm.

"Let me go," she pleaded. "He will kill him! He will kill
him!"

Her voice shook with emotion.

"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no
way to blame," I said angrily. "We arrested you; you are not here
of your own free will."

She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her
eyes I could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous
decision.

"Listen." She was speaking rapidly, nervously. "If I help you to
take Dr. Fu-Manchu-tell you where he is to be found ALONE-will you
promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to
the place where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you
will let us both go free?"

"I will," I said, without hesitation. "You may rest assured of
it."

"But there is a condition," she added.

"What is it?"

"When I have told you where to capture him you must release
me."

I hesitated. Smith often had accused me of weakness where this
girl was concerned. What now was my plain duty? That she would
utterly decline to speak under any circumstances unless it suited
her to do so I felt assured. If she spoke the truth, in her
proposed bargain there was no personal element; her conduct I now
viewed in a new light. Humanity, I thought, dictated that I accept
her proposal; policy also.

"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame
now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation, perhaps of
fear.

She laid her hands upon my shoulders.

"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.

"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."

"Not for my sake."

"Then for your brother's."

"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper. "For your own."

A cool breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the
Thames. Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes. Between us
and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land through which
at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths. Before us
the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with
the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round the bend
ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps, as
Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the
stillness of that lonely place.

Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had
thought that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the
capture of the formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out
our compact with Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been
that the police must not be acquainted with her share in the
matter.

A light came into view far ahead of us.

"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith. "If we keep that
straight before us, according to our information we shall strike
the hulk."

I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the
little weapon was curiously reassuring. I have endeavored, perhaps
in extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu
there rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not
as other men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came
in contact, the terrors which he controlled and hurled at
whomsoever cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely
sinister. I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.

Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm. We stood listening.
"What?" I asked.

"You heard nothing?"

I shook my head.

Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.
He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar
expression.

"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked. "We are trusting her
blindly."

Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms
against the innuendo.

"I don't," I said shortly.

He nodded. We pressed on.

Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the
Thames. Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities
centered always about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his
highway, his line of communication, along which he moved his
mysterious forces. The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion
upstream, at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off
the marshes. Always he made his headquarters upon the river. It was
significant; and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this
was a clew for our future guidance.

"Bear to the right," directed Smith. "We must reconnoiter before
making our attack."

We took a path that led directly to the river bank. Before us
lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy
shipping of the great mercantile city. But this life of the river
seemed widely removed from us. The lonely spot where we stood had
no kinship with human activity. Its dreariness illuminated by the
brilliant moon, it looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a
drama as that wherein we played our parts. When I had lain in the
East End opium den, when upon such another night as this I had
looked out upon a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge
of aloofness, of utter detachment from the world of living men, had
come to me.

Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.

"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.

I made no comment.

"There's the hulk," he added.

The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
of the running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow
inlet-for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory-a
rough pier showed. Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of
gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.

"That will be the cabin," said Smith.

Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to
the staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down to the
deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier. With
every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its
rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.

"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered
Smith.

"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.

Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared below
the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.

The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I
stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon the
glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me. My foot had
slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung, that
instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share in the fight
with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape. I felt something
slip from my hip pocket, but the weird creaking of the ladder, the
groans of the laboring hulk, and the lapping of the waves about the
staging drowned the sound of the splash as my revolver dropped into
the river.

Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck. He had
witnessed my accident, but-

"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear. "We dare not turn
back now."

He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I
perforce following.

At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light
streaming out from the singular apartments at the entrance to which
we found ourselves. It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I
had of shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with
scientific paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary
shapes, holding living organisms, and with instruments-some of them
of a form unknown to my experience. I saw too that books, papers
and rolls of parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith's
voice rose above the confused sounds about me, incisive,
commanding:

"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.

The picture that he presented at that moment is one which
persistently clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his
masklike, intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of
singular objects upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in
the light of the shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes,
filmed and green, raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms
of delirium. But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his
surroundings tallied, almost identically, with the dream-picture
which had come to me as I lay chained in the cell!

Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens. A
faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was
seated, leaped and chattered a little marmoset.

That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything-for
anything except for what really happened.

The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.

"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks." His
voice quivered with excitement. "The game's up, Fu-Manchu. Find
something to tie him up with, Petrie."

I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in
the narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living
thing groaning, creaking-and the water lapped about the rotten
woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.

"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.

Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the
impassive features-a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace,
revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the
filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.

He spoke softly, sibilantly.

"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he
moves."

Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
quickly over my shoulder-and stifled a cry of pure horror.

A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and
jaundiced eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches
of me. A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like
cords, held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my
jugular vein. A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of
the fearful weapon, I doubt not, would have severed my head from my
body.

"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around. For God's
sake keep him covered. But a dacoit has his knife at my
throat!"

Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled. But his glance
never wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr.
Fu-Manchu. He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood
out prominently upon his jaw.

I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery
prevailed but a few seconds. To me those seconds were each a
lingering death.

There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me
before; and through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had
betrayed us!

"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I
was."

Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow
mask when we had entered.

"But my faithful servant followed you," he added. "I thank him.
The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"

Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a
whistling voice.

"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely. "I warn you!"

Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.

"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.

"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith
brazenly.

"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment. "And to-day
you compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my
people, too. I congratulate you. She would not betray me though
lashed with scorpions."

The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein,
I think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those
words.

"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make. I
assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"

"I would not," replied Smith promptly.

"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours. Of your
resources outside this cabin I know nothing. You, I take it, know
as little of mine. My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead
the way, then; you and I will follow. We will strike out across the
marsh for, say, three hundred yards. You will then place your
pistol on the ground, pledging me your word to leave it there. I
shall further require your assurance that you will make no attempt
upon me until I have retraced my steps. I and my good servant will
withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of the specified period,
to act as you see fit. Is it agreed?"

Smith hesitated. Then:

"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated. Fu-Manchu
smiled his evil smile again.

"Agreed. Shall I lead the way?"

"No!" rapped Smith. "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I
last."

A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the
cabin, with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange
instruments, and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.

"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."

"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.

We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
cover of Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit, dressed
solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge
knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a
scene in that place.

"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his
follower.

The man threw his knife upon the ground.

"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith. "He may have a second
concealed."

The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's
scanty garments.

"Now search Fu-Manchu."

This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense of
revulsion from any human being. I shuddered, as though I had
touched a venomous reptile.

Smith threw down his revolver.

"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said. "No one could
dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."

Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my
friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr.
Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment. Fiend though he
was, I admired his courage; for all this he, too, must have
known.

The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back. Nayland
Smith's next move filled me with surprise. For just as, silently, I
was thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat,
collar, and waistcoat.

"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
"We have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit. To-night,
Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."