The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (22 page)

The clammy touch of the mist revived me. The culmination of the
scene in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes
which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness. Now I
knew that I was afloat on the river. I still was bound:
furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth, and I was
secured to a ring in the deck.

By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the
oily water; by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of
the empurpled face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and
gagged, lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland
Smith. For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see
more.

We were aboard an electric launch. I heard the hated guttural
voice of Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm, and my heart
leaped to hear the voice that answered him. It was that of
Karamaneh. His triumph was complete. Clearly his plans for
departure were complete; his slaughter of the police in the
underground passages had been a final reckless demonstration of
which the Chinaman's subtle cunning would have been incapable had
he not known his escape from the country to be assured.

What fate was in store for us? How would he avenge himself upon
the girl who had betrayed him to his enemies? What portion awaited
those enemies? He seemed to have formed the singular determination
to smuggle me into China-but what did he purpose in the case of
Weymouth, and in the case of Nayland Smith?

All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.
Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.
Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great
waterway; but through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling
of bells.

The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether. The launch
lay heaving slightly upon the swells.

A distant throbbing grew louder-and something advanced upon us
through the haze.

A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself-a
voice which I knew. I felt Weymouth writhing impotently beside me;
heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew that he, too, had
recognized the voice.

It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their
launch was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!

"'Hoy! 'Hoy!"

I trembled. A feverish excitement claimed me. They were hailing
us. We carried no lights; but now-and ignoring the pain which shot
from my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left-the port
light of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist.

I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my
companions were equally helpless. It was a desperate position. Had
the police seen us or had they hailed at random? The light drew
nearer.

"Launch, 'hoy!"

They had seen us! Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly-and
our screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank of
darkness. Faint grew the light of the police launch-and was gone.
But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.

"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness. "Port!
Port!"

Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us
we were racing deeper into the fog banks-speeding seaward; though
of this I was unable to judge at the time.

On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells. Once, a
black, towering shape dropped down upon us. Far above, lights
blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog. The launch pitched
and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so
nearly had concluded this episode. It was such a journey as I had
taken once before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow
Peril; but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were
utterly in Fu-Manchu's power.

A voice mumbled in my ear. I turned my bound-up face; and
Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly
slipped the bandage from his mouth.

"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy
cellars," he whispered. "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got
out a knife and freed my ankles-"

Smith had kicked him with his bound feet. The detective slipped
the bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.
Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft. He
was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists. He seated himself on the
cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him. Now, I could
see her face-and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me
writhe.

Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible
in the dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.

"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home
in China. You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry. Mr.
Smith, I fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it
possible for you to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you
have a confidant. Where your memory fails you, and my files and
wire jackets prove ineffectual, Inspector Weymouth's recollections
may prove more accurate."

He turned to the cowering girl-who shrank away from him in
pitiful, abject terror.

"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged
with a rare culture. It is the link between the bacilli and the
fungi. You have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach
and pearl which render my Karamaneh so delightful, In the supple
grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes. You can never
devote your whole mind to those studies which I have planned for
you whilst such distractions exist. A touch of this keen point, and
the laughing Karamaneh becomes the shrieking hag-the maniacal,
mowing-"

Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!

Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank
to the deck-and lay still. I managed to writhe into a half-sitting
posture, and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman
crashed down together.

Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat; with
his left he grasped the Chinaman's right. It held the needle.

Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so
far as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was
aboard-the half-clad brown man who navigated her-and who had
carried us through the cellars. The murk had grown denser and now
shut us in like a box. The throb of the motor-the hissing breath of
the two who fought-with so much at issue-these sounds and the wash
of the water alone broke the eerie stillness.

By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth. His
clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place. His
powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous. His
breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly, but
Weymouth was palpably tiring.

The latter suddenly changed his tactics. By a supreme effort, to
which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity of the
needle, he raised Fu-Manchu-by the throat and arm-and pitched him
sideways.

The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers
dropped, a writhing mass, upon the port cushions. The launch heeled
over, and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the
bandage. For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he
overbalanced-fell back-and, bearing Weymouth with him-slid into the
river!

The mist swallowed them up.

There are moments of which no man can recall his mental
impressions, moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our
memory retains nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was
one of them. A chaos ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that
the Burman, forward, glanced back. Then the course of the launch
was changed. How long intervened between the tragic end of that
Gargantuan struggle and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly
up before us I cannot pretend to state.

With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued,
and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the
fog-which was the last I saw of him.

Water began to wash aboard.

Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that
bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I
began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death
from drowning, within six feet of the bank.

Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting. I think his
object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her. Where
he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded. A silent
prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her
stir-when I saw her raise her hands to her head-and saw the big,
horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.

We quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern
settled down into the river. Where the mud-bank upon which we found
ourselves was situated we had no idea. But at least it was terra
firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Smith stood looking out towards the river.

"My God!" he groaned. "My God!"

He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.

And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the
mud-flats below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison
cellars was eight men, we also heard news of our brave
companion.

"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was
in charge, and his voice was under poor command, "there was an
uncanny howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream
about for weeks-"

Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child,
shivered; and I knew that the needle had done its work, despite
Weymouth's giant strength.

Smith swallowed noisily.

"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said. "I would
sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a
grappling-iron!"

We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that
night. It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave
the spot-so nearly as we could locate it-where Weymouth had put up
that last gallant fight. Our helplessness was pathetic, and
although, had the night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could
have acted otherwise, it came to me that this stinking murk was a
new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.

But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous
the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had
matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.

There was Karamaneh to be considered-Karamaneh and her brother.
A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the
present they should be lodged at a hotel.

"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was
watching us, "to have the place patrolled night and day."

"You cannot suppose-"

"Petrie! I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with
my own eyes I have seen him so!"

Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her
brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting. I
will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be
accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake. Members of the
fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of
the victims wrapped in their living shrouds… .

From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of
herself.

"What am I? Does my poor history matter-to anyone?" was her
answer to questions respecting herself.

And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.

The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
numbered seven, we learned. As you, having followed me thus far,
will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans. Probably
only one now remained in England. They had lived in a camp in the
grounds of the house near Windsor (which, as we had learned at the
time of its destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The
Thames had been his highway.

Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various
parts of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities
congregate. Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters. He had
employed the hulk from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for
a certain class of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place
of residence.

Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had
had a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.
She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon
it, and could give us no information respecting its character. It
had sailed for China.

"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually
left?"

"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another
route."

"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a
passenger boat?"

"I cannot say what were his plans."

In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be
understood, we passed the days following the tragedy which had
deprived us of our fellow-worker.

Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day
that we visited it. I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's
brother. Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last
scene.

"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed
very unreal."

"I wish to God it had been!"

"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth. But your brother made a gallant
finish. If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed
to his credit, his life had been well spent."

James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence. Though but
four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint little
cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which
had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were, was a
spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England. But another
shadow lay upon it to-day-chilling, fearful. An incarnate evil had
come out of the dim East and in its dying malevolence had touched
this home.

"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir,"
continued Weymouth. "What was the meaning of the horrible laughter
which the river police heard in the fog? And where are the
bodies?"

Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words. Smith,
whose restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in his
aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.

In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of
the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more
lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him. His long
residence in Burma had rendered him spare and had burned his
naturally dark skin to a coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had
grown feverishly bright and his face so lean as at times to appear
positively emaciated. But I knew that he was as fit as ever.

"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.
"She and her brother were for some time in the household of Dr.
Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies,
was a slave."

Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely
veiled distrust. "You don't look as though you had come from China,
miss," he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.

"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh. "My father was a
pure Bedawee. But my history does not matter." (At times there was
something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent
added force.) "When your brave brother, Inspector Weymouth, and Dr.
Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up by the river, Fu-Manchu held a
poisoned needle in his hand. The laughter meant that the needle had
done its work. Your brother had become mad!"

Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion. "What was on the
needle?" he asked huskily.

"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of
swamp adder," she answered. "It produces madness, but not always
death."

"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been
in complete possession of his senses. At the time of the encounter
we must have been some considerable distance from shore, and the
fog was impenetrable."

"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies
have been recovered?"

"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that
point are not always recovered-or not until a considerable time
later."

There was a faint sound from the room above. The news of that
tragic happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated
poor Mrs. Weymouth.

"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law.
"She doesn't know about-the poisoned needle. What kind of fiend was
this Dr. Fu-Manchu?" He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious
resentment. "John never told me much, and you have let mighty
little leak into the papers. What was he? Who was he?"

Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.

"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate
expression of Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once
in many generations. He was a superman of incredible genius, who,
had he willed, could have revolutionized science. There is a
superstition in some parts of China according to which, under
certain peculiar conditions (one of which is proximity to a
deserted burial-ground) an evil spirit of incredible age may enter
unto the body of a new-born infant. All my efforts thus far have
not availed me to trace the genealogy of the man called Dr.
Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this. But I have
sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old
Kiangsu family-and that the peculiar conditions I have mentioned
prevailed at his birth!"

Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly, and
quite mirthlessly.

"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked. "I suppose my labors are
finished; but I am far from triumphant. Is there any improvement in
Mrs. Weymouth's condition?"

"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious
state since the news came. No one had any idea she would take it
so. At one time we were afraid her brain was going. She seemed to
have delusions."

Smith spun round upon Weymouth.

"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.

The other pulled nervously at his mustache.

"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since-it
happened; and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried
out at the same time-half-past two-that someone was knocking on the
door."

"What door?"

"That door yonder-the street door."

All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.

"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued
Weymouth; "so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her
mind. But last night-and it's not to be wondered at-my wife
couldn't sleep, and she was wide awake at half-past two."

"Well?"

Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.

"She heard it, too!"

The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room; but I
will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily. Karamaneh
laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion peculiarly
her own. Her hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me. For
Karamaneh was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl-a pearl of
the East such as many a monarch has fought for.

"What then?" asked Smith.

"She was afraid to move-afraid to look from the window!"

My friend turned and stared hard at me.

"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"

"In all probability," I replied. "You should arrange that your
wife be relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth. It is too
great a strain for an inexperienced nurse."