The Island of Fu-Manchu (6 page)

Dr. Fu-Manchu smiled!

He revealed a row of small, even, yellow teeth. It was as though a mummy of one who had lived when the world was young jeered at me. He spoke, but his words sounded as words spoken at the end of a long tunnel.

“They were live cartridges; they had not been exchanged for blanks. I wished you to attempt to add me to your bag, but I observed that you aimed at my breast. The brain, Mr. Kerrigan, and not the heart, is the seat of power. The Ancient Egyptians knew…”

But I had turned away. I tossed the Colt on to the settee and dropped down beside it. I had witnessed a miracle, and I was shaken to my soul. Only the manner of my death remained in doubt.

That odd, indefinable vibration which I had noted at the moment of his entrance suddenly ceased, as Dr. Fu-Manchu’s voice again broke through the blanket of stupor which had settled upon my brain.

“A consciousness of cerebral pressure is relieved, no doubt? You experience a sense of restful silence. The explanation is a simple one. If you will be good enough to leave your automatic where it lies and accept this chair, we can approach the real purpose of our present interview.”

I stood up and faced him. His eyes were filmy, contemplative; they lacked that emerald lustre which I could never face unmoved. One clawlike hand was stretched across the bench, indicating a metal chair.

With some of the feelings of a whipped cur, I rose and moved forward. At the red line I paused.

“You may cross safely.”

I crossed and dropped down in the chair facing Dr. Fu-Manchu. Save for the hissing sound of the burner, the room was silent. Dr. Fu-Manchu rested his chin upon one skeleton hand: his proximity imparted a sense of chill, as though I had sat with a corpse.

“You observe, Mr. Kerrigan, that I am employing those primitive methods here which gave Paracelsus such excellent results, and by means of which van Helmont performed his transmutations. But before we proceed to the subject of my present experiments—a subject of some personal interest to yourself” (at those words my heart grew cold)—“it is only fair to explain why your bullets failed to reach me.”

I clenched my teeth.

“When you were very young, Dr. Sven Ericksen died, and the newspapers of the world were filled with stories of the Ericksen Ray which that distinguished physicist had never perfected. Although legally dead, he has since completed his inquiries, with some slight assistance from myself.”

This statement evoked ghastly memories; but I remained silent.

“The so-called ‘ray’ is, in fact, a sound wave, or chord. Ericksen discovered that a certain combination of incalculably high notes, inaudible to the human ear, could reduce nearly any substance to its original particles. It was a problem of pure physics: that of disturbing harmonic equilibrium. A belt or curtain of these sound waves can be thrown across this room by merely depressing a switch. Continued exposure to such vibrations, however, is highly injurious. Therefore I have disconnected the apparatus.”

I looked up quickly, and as quickly down again. Dr. Fu-Manchu was watching me; and even when veiled contemplatively I could not sustain the regard of those magnetic eyes.

“Your bullets are still present; not in the form of lead and nickel but in that of their component elements: they are disintegrated. The importance of this discovery it would be difficult to exaggerate. I am acquainted with only one substance capable of penetrating a zone protected by Ericksen Chords…”

I heard a faint buzzing sound—and all the lights went out!

M
y first idea, naturally enough, was that Dr. Fu-Manchu had given some signal, unobserved, for my dismissal; that I was to be dispatched in darkness. The burner hissing under the retort and its gruesome contents became silent. I sprang to my feet. At least I could go down fighting. Out of impenetrable gloom came the imperious voice, guttural now:

“Pray remain seated. Owing to certain extemporized measures, power in the laboratory is controlled from an outside switchboard—and it has been cut off. This means an air-raid warning, Mr. Kerrigan; but it need not disturb you.”

An air-raid warning? Then a terrifying idea which I had been grimly repelling—an idea that unconsciousness had lasted for a long time; that this secret laboratory was situated perhaps far away from England—need disturb me no more. However, I remained standing, and with courage greater than I had ever known in the visible presence of Dr. Fu-Manchu:

“You appear to be dangerously ill,” I said.

And the ghostly voice replied:

“I have brought myself close to death. Science is my mistress and I serve her too well. You may have noticed a small lamp (it is extinguished now) producing a violet light. The condition in which you find me is due to my experiments with this lamp. The green jacket I wear affords some slight protection; but I can discover no formula to reinforce the human economy so that it may cancel its deleterious effects. Dr. Oster, my assistant in these inquiries, developed opacity of the crystalline lens accompanied by other notable pigmentary changes; and although, a fact to which the specimens you have inspected bear witness, racial types react variously, none can sustain these emanations without suffering permanent injury. But you remain standing.”

I sat down.

Whether it was imagination, or whether, as I had sometimes suspected, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu possessed a chatoyant quality, I thought that I could see them watching me—shining greenly in the dark like the eyes of a great cat.

“I have submitted certain proposals to Sir Denis Nayland Smith,” he went on, “Although, thanks to my recovery of the chart found by Sir Lionel Barton, I can take suitable precautions, any interference with my plans in the Caribbean may alter the world’s history. You are my hostage. If Sir Denis refuses to pay your ransom (I gather that you hold a minor science degree) I shall invite you to take the place of Companion Oster—of whose services you deprived me—and to carry on those inquiries, under my direction, which his death has interrupted.”

It is beyond the power of my pen to convey any idea of the cloud of horror which swept down upon me as I listened to his words. Before my mind’s eye they appeared, those ghastly fragments of men who had died martyrs to the lust for knowledge which animated this devil in human shape. To their tormented company I was to be added!

How I should have acted, what reply I should have made to that monstrous statement, I cannot say. Although I had detected no movement, Dr. Fu-Manchu had retired from his place on the other side of the glass-topped bench, for when he spoke again it was from beyond the hidden doorway.

“I must leave you for a time, Mr. Kerrigan. I strongly urge you to remain seated. Many of the objects here are lethal. I will arrange for the lamps to be relighted. You may smoke if you wish.”

A faint sound indicated that the door had been closed.

I was alone—alone with the violet lamp which blinded, which changed men from white to yellow, which had shattered the supernormal constitution of its Chinese creator; alone with the amputated remains of some who had suffered that this dream of Dr. Fu-Manchu might be realized. What was the purpose of these merciless experiments? What power resided in the lamp?

Fumbling in my pocket, I learned that my torch remained undisturbed. Any fate was preferable to the fate ordained by the devil Doctor. I flashed a ray about that awesome room, that silent room which smelled like a mortuary.

It glittered momentarily upon my Colt lying on the couch. It brought to life the head of the Negro grinning in a big jar, and lent uncanny movement to those discoloured hands which for ever had ceased to move.

I stepped towards the red line.

“Consciousness of cerebral pressure” mentioned by Dr. Fu-Manchu was not perceptible; the Ericksen apparatus remained disconnected. I crossed the red line and took up my automatic. At the moment I retrieved the Colt an abnormally-tensed sense of hearing told me that the sliding door had been opened.

In a flash I had turned, a ray focused on the wall behind the bench, my finger alert on the trigger.

No doubt the mystery of the lamp had inflamed my imagination, but I thought that by magic a
djinn
had been summoned. Although I had the apparition covered by my pistol, consternation threatened me as the torchlight wavered on a gigantic figure framed in the doorway. It was that of a herculean man who wore a white robe and a red sash; a tarbush on his head. His thick lips, flattened nostrils and frizzy hair were those of a Nubian—but his skin was white as ivory I Common sense dispersed fantasy. The man was a strangler sent by Dr. Fu-Manchu to dispatch me.

“Put up your hands!” I ordered.

Blinking in the light, the white Negro obeyed, raising thick, sinewy blond hands, and:

“No so loud, sir,” he said hoarsely, “you spoil your chances if you speak so loud.”

That he spoke in English, and spoke with an American intonation, provided a further shock: his seeming friendliness I distrusted.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“My name—Hassan, sir. I want to help you—”

“Why?”

“White Lady wishes.” He touched his brow as he spoke. “When White Lady wishes Hassan obeys.”

And now my heart gave a great leap.

“The White Lady—Ardatha?”

Hassan touched his brow again.

“Her family I serve, and my father, his father before; long, long time before. White Lady’s order more high than Master’s order, more high than any but God Almighty. Follow Hassan.”

A hundred questions I longed to ask, for this man perhaps held the clue to that torturing mystery never far from my mind; but a quick decision was imperative—and I made it.

“Lead the way,” I said, and stepped forward. “I will use my torch.”

“No light,” he whispered—”no light. Come close and take my hand.”

It was in no spirit of childish confidence that I grasped the muscular white hand; but as I had reached the Nubian’s side and finally switched off my torch, those blinking eyes had told me the truth—Hassan was blind.

“No sound,” he said, in a low voice. “Hassan see with inner eye. Trust Hassan…”

Along a short passage apparently covered in rubber he led me. Another silent door he opened and closed. The peculiarly nauseating smell of the laboratory was no longer perceptible; the air was cool. We crept up a stone stair, and stood at the top for a while. I thought that Hassan was listening. I could detect no sound, no glimmer of light.

His grip tightened suddenly, and he dragged me sharply to the left for three paces and then stood still again.

Faint footsteps sounded—grew nearer—louder. A beam of yellow light shone past an arched opening not ten feet from where we hid. I watched, holding my breath. The moving rays revealed a stone passage. And now came the bearer of the light—a short, stocky brown man, one of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s Burmese bodyguard. He carried a hurricane lamp. He passed. Behind him came two others—they bore a body on a stretcher.

They, too, passed; the sound of footsteps faded, the light grew dim: complete darkness returned.

The most dreadful premonitions attacked me; I grew sick with dread. Whose was the muffled body? What place was this, with its stone-paved passages, which Dr. Fu-Manchu had chosen for his lair? As if Hassan divined how near I was to speech;

“Ss!” he hissed—and led me on.

Our route lay in that direction from which the bearers had come; and just as I thought I detected a faint light ahead, a sound echoed hollowly through the stone passages, a sound which robbed me almost of my last spark of courage. It was the note of a gong!

Hassan stopped dead. He bent to my ear.

“That call for me,” he whispered. “Must go. Listen very careful. Straight before is opening—wide and high. River below—very far below. But iron ladder straight under opening. Take much care, sir. Barge lie there; tide rising. If someone is on barge—shoot. Then wade through mud to wooden steps beyond bows…”

A second gong stroke reverberated through the building.

“Hurry!” Hassan whispered, “hurry!”

He released my hand, and was gone.

The prospect was far from pleasing; but I preferred a broken neck to the fate in store for me at the hands of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I set out towards that distant glimmer. I had formed a mental picture of the “opening—wide and high”, and having no desire to plunge headlong into the mud of the Thames ventured to use my light. At sight of what lay before me my hopes were dashed.

This was an old warehouse. The passage led to wide double doors beside which I saw rusty winding gear. There was an iron-barred opening in each of the doors—which were closed and locked.

I was trapped!

Although my spirits had touched zero I went on to the doors and tried the heavy padlock. It was fast. Cold, damp air came through the grilles as I stared out, hopelessly. So dark was the night, so far below lay the River, that I could have formed no impression of the scene if searchlights bad not helped me. The blackness was slashed by swords of silver. They formed a changing pattern in the sky, and this was reproduced in the oily mirror of the River far beneath.

From the distance of buildings dimly discernible on the further bank, which I assumed to be the Surrey shore, I judged that I was well below bridges and in the heart of dockland. But that great heart pulsed slowly tonight. A red glow here, a vague iridescence there, and an uneasy burn, like that of a vast hive imprisoned, alone represented the normal Wagnerian symphony of London. Above, the questing searchlights; below, a
pianissimo
in the song of industry until the hawk’s shadow should pass.

Turning with a smothered groan, I looked back along the passage.

At a point which I estimated to be beyond that at which Hassan and I had hidden, a bar of yellow light lay across the stone floor. Action was imperative. Walking softly, I approached this bar of light. Apart from fears of a personal character, I was filled with the wildest apprehensions concerning Smith. A theory to account for my presence in this deserted warehouse had occurred to me; for I had recalled the fact that the Regent Canal came out at Limehouse.