The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (24 page)

Later was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had
lived a wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of
land which lay between the village and the suburb on the
neighboring hill. Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery
and some of his food had been that of the lower animals, though he
had not scrupled to steal, as we learned when his lair was
discovered.

He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had
seen him, in the dusk, and fled from him. They never learned that
the object of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth. How, having
escaped death in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we
never knew; but his trick of knocking upon his own door at
half-past two each morning (a sort of dawning of sanity
mysteriously linked with old custom) will be a familiar class of
symptom to all students of alienation.

I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the
knocking.

In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we
sped through the deserted streets to New Inn Court. I, who had
followed Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his
mission, knew that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified
the confidence placed in him by the highest authorities.

We were admitted to an untidy room-that of a student, a traveler
and a crank-by a plain-clothes officer. Amid picturesque and
disordered fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair
placed before a towering statue of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed
man. His white hair and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great
dignity. But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked
glasses which he wore.

Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.

"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"
reported the man who had opened the door. "He has made no
statement. I hope there isn't a mistake."

"I hope not," rapped Smith.

He strode across the room. He was consumed by a fever of
excitement. Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the
snowy wig dashed the smoked glasses upon the floor.

A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes,
which fixed themselves upon him with an expression I never can
forget.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

One intense moment of silence ensued-of silence which seemed to
throb. Then:

"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.

Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly
evil smile which I knew so well. A manacled prisoner he sat as
unruffled as a judge upon the bench. In truth and in justice I am
compelled to say that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.

"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth, sibilant
tones-"by affairs of great urgency. His well-known personality and
ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"

Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood
tugging at his ear and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the
wondering detectives.

"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.

"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I
call you."

The three withdrew. I divined now what was coming.

"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly. "I
cannot save you from the hangman, nor"-his fists clenched
convulsively-"wouldy I if I could; but-"

Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.

"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.
I do not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction
and what I have done of necessity are separated-are seas apart. The
brave Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle, in
self-defense; but I regret his condition as greatly as you do. I
respect such a man. There is an antidote to the poison of the
needle."

"Name it," said Smith.

Fu-Manchu smiled again.

"Useless," he replied. "I alone can prepare it. My secrets shall
die with me. I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth, but no
one else shall be in the house but he and I."

"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.

"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements. In
that ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.
Arrange for me to visit him where and when you will-"

"I distrust you utterly. It is some trick," jerked Smith.

Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great
height. His manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity
which was his. He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture
and fixed his piercing gaze upon Nayland Smith.

"The God of Cathay hear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note
in his voice-"I swear-"

The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England,
the end of the visit of Fu-Manchu was
characteristic-terrible-inexplicable.

Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird being had
conceived some kind of admiration or respect for the man to whom he
had wrought so terrible an injury. He was capable of such
sentiments, for he entertained some similar one in regard to
myself.

A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was
vacant, and in the early dawn of that morning became the scene of
outre happenings. Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we
removed there (Smith having secured the key from the astonished
agent). I suppose so strange a specialist never visited a patient
before-certainly not under such conditions.

For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a
ring of police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in
which, his work of healing complete, he was to be borne to
prison-to death!

Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend
that the enemy of the white race might heal one of those who had
hunted him down!

No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come;
no concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master;
but within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those
miracles of science which in other circumstances had made the fame
of Dr. Fu-Manchu to live forever.

Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head as a
man who has passed through the Valley of the Shadow-but
sane-sane!-walked out into the porch!

He looked towards us-his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome
wildness of insanity.

"Mr. Smith!" he cried-and staggered down the path-"Dr. Petrie!
What-"

There came a deafening explosion. From EVERY visible window of
the deserted cottage flames burst forth!

"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream-"into the
house!"

He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying
there like a drunken man. I was close upon his heels. Behind me
came the police.

The door was impassable! Already, it vomited a deathly heat,
borne upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit. We
burst a window. The room within was a furnace!

"My God!" cried someone. "This is supernatural!"

"Listen!" cried another. "Listen!"

The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or
night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already. But upon
all descended a pall of silence.

From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself-a voice
raised, not in anguish but in TRIUMPH! It chanted barbarically-and
was still.

The abnormal flames rose higher-leaping forth from every
window.

"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely. "Call up the brigade!"

I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a
trust-the trust of my reader. For having limned in the colors at my
command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my
task as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of
finality, to write Finis to the end of my narrative.

It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily
idle-that I have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having
a hundred phases. One sequel I hope for, and against all the
promptings of logic and Western bias. If my hope shall be realized
I cannot, at this time, pretend to state.

The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from
me.

I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing
my work; for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the
reader burdened is shared by the writer.

With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor
Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage; I
have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my
account something of the breathless scurry which characterized
those happenings.

My canvas may seem sketchy: it is my impression of the reality.
No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
Fu-Manchu arrested-Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming
forth; the place in flames.

And then?

To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which
pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes which held NO
TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!

It has been asked of me: Was there no possibility of Fu-Manchu's
having eluded us in the ensuing confusion? Was there no loophole of
escape?

I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce
have quitted the building undetected. Yet that Fu-Manchu had, in
some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency,
produced those abnormal flames, I cannot doubt. Did he voluntarily
ignite his own funeral pyre?

As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of
vellum. It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all
but illegible hand. This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth
(to this day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged
garments.

When it was written I leave you to judge. How it came to be
where Weymouth found it calls for no explanation:

"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE-

"Greeting! I am recalled home by One who may not be denied. In
much that I came to do I have failed. Much that I have done I would
undo; some little I have undone. Out of fire I came-the smoldering
fire of a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go. Seek
not my ashes. I am the lord of the fires! Farewell.

"FU-MANCHU."

Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who
penned that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter of a
madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means, or the gibe of
a preternaturally clever scientist and the most elusive being ever
born of the land of mystery-China.

For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your
verdict. A day may come though I pray it do not-when I shall be
able to throw new light upon much that is dark in this matter. That
day, so far as I can judge, could only dawn in the event of the
Chinaman's survival; therefore I pray that the veil be never
lifted.

But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story which
I can contemplate with a different countenance. How, then, shall I
conclude this very unsatisfactory account?

Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed
Karamaneh, on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?

No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland
Smith:

"
I
sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie. I have leave
to break my journey at the Ditch. How would a run up the Nile fit
your programme? Bit early for the season, but you might find
something to amuse you!"