The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (10 page)

Dr. Fu-Manchu bent forward until his face was so close to mine
that I could see the innumerable lines which, an intricate network,
covered his yellow skin.

"Speak!" he hissed. "You lift up my heart from a dark pit!"

"I can restore your white peacock," I said; "I and I alone, know
where it is!"—and I strove not to shrink from the face so close to
mine.

Upright shot the tall figure; high above his head Fu-Manchu
threw his arms—and a light of exaltation gleamed in the now widely
opened, catlike eyes.

"O god!" he screamed, frenziedly—"O god of the Golden Age! like
a phoenix I arise from the ashes of myself!" He turned to me.
"Quick! Quick! make your bargain! End my suspense!"

Smith stared at me like a man dazed; but, ignoring him, I went
on:

"You will release me, now, immediately. In another ten minutes
it will be too late; my friend will remain. One of
your—servants—can accompany me, and give the signal when I return
with the peacock. Mr. Nayland Smith and yourself, or another, will
join me at the corner of the street where the raid took place last
night. We shall then give you ten minutes grace, after which we
shall take whatever steps we choose."

"Agreed!" cried Fu-Manchu. "I ask but one thing from an
Englishman; your word of honor?"

"I give it."

"I, also," said Smith, hoarsely.

Ten minutes later, Nayland Smith and I, standing beside the cab,
whose lights gleamed yellowly through the mist, exchanged a
struggling, frightened bird for our lives—capitulated with the
enemy of the white race.

With characteristic audacity—and characteristic trust in the
British sense of honor—Dr. Fu-Manchu came in person with Nayland
Smith, in response to the wailing signal of the dacoit who had
accompanied me. No word was spoken, save that the cabman suppressed
a curse of amazement; and the Chinaman, his sinister servant at his
elbow, bowed low—and left us, surely to the mocking laughter of the
gods!

I leaped up in bed with a great start.

My sleep was troubled often enough in these days, which
immediately followed our almost miraculous escape, from the den of
Fu-Manchu; and now as I crouched there, nerves
aquiver—listening—listening—I could not be sure if this dank panic
which possessed me had its origin in nightmare or in something
else.

Surely a scream, a choking cry for help, had reached my ears;
but now, almost holding my breath in that sort of nervous tensity
peculiar to one aroused thus, I listened, and the silence seemed
complete. Perhaps I had been dreaming…

"Help! Petrie! Help!… "

It was Nayland Smith in the room above me!

My doubts were dissolved; this was no trick of an imagination
disordered. Some dreadful menace threatened my friend. Not delaying
even to snatch my dressing-gown, I rushed out on to the landing, up
the stairs, bare-footed as I was, threw open the door of Smith's
room and literally hurled myself in.

Those cries had been the cries of one assailed, had been
uttered, I judged, in the brief interval of a life and death
struggle; had been choked off…

A certain amount of moonlight found access to the room, without
spreading so far as the bed in which my friend lay. But at the
moment of my headlong entrance, and before I had switched on the
light, my gaze automatically was directed to the pale moonbeam
streaming through the window and down on to one corner of the
sheep-skin rug beside the bed.

There came a sound of faint and muffled coughing.

What with my recent awakening and the panic at my heart, I could
not claim that my vision was true; but across this moonbeam passed
a sort of gray streak, for all the world as though some long thin
shape had been withdrawn, snakelike, from the room, through the
open window… From somewhere outside the house, and below, I heard
the cough again, followed by a sharp cracking sound like the
lashing of a whip.

I depressed the switch, flooding the room with light, and as I
leaped forward to the bed a word picture of what I had seen formed
in my mind; and I found that I was thinking of a gray feather
boa.

"Smith!" I cried (my voice seemed to pitch itself, unwilled, in
a very high key), "Smith, old man!"

He made no reply, and a sudden, sorrowful fear clutched at my
heart-strings. He was lying half out of bed flat upon his back, his
head at a dreadful angle with his body. As I bent over him and
seized him by the shoulders, I could see the whites of his eyes.
His arms hung limply, and his fingers touched the carpet.

"My God!" I whispered—"what has happened?"

I heaved him back onto the pillow, and looked anxiously into his
face. Habitually gaunt, the flesh so refined away by the consuming
nervous energy of the man as to reveal the cheekbones in sharp
prominence, he now looked truly ghastly. His skin was so sunbaked
as to have changed constitutionally; nothing could ever eradicate
that tan. But to-night a fearful grayness was mingled with the
brown, his lips were purple… and there were marks of strangulation
upon the lean throat—ever darkening weals made by clutching
fingers.

He began to breathe stentoriously and convulsively, inhalation
being accompanied by a significant gurgling in the throat. But now
my calm was restored in face of a situation which called for
professional attention.

I aided my friend's labored respirations by the usual means,
setting to work vigorously; so that presently he began to clutch at
his inflamed throat which that murderous pressure had threatened to
close.

I could hear sounds of movement about the house, showing that
not I alone had been awakened by those hoarse screams.

"It's all right, old man," I said, bending over him; "brace
up!"

He opened his eyes—they looked bleared and bloodshot—and gave me
a quick glance of recognition.

"It's all right, Smith!" I said—"no! don't sit up; lie there for
a moment."

I ran across to the dressing-table, whereon I perceived his
flask to lie, and mixed him a weak stimulant with which I returned
to the bed.

As I bent over him again, my housekeeper appeared in the
doorway, pale and wide-eyed.

"There is no occasion for alarm," I said over my shoulder; "Mr.
Smith's nerves are overwrought and he was awakened by some
disturbing dream. You can return to bed, Mrs. Newsome."

Nayland Smith seemed to experience much difficulty in swallowing
the contents of the tumbler which I held to his lips; and, from the
way in which he fingered the swollen glands, I could see that his
throat, which I had vigorously massaged, was occasioning him great
pain. But the danger was past, and already that glassy look was
disappearing from his eyes, nor did they protrude so
unnaturally.

"God, Petrie!" he whispered, "that was a near shave! I haven't
the strength of a kitten!"

"The weakness will pass off," I replied; "there will be no
collapse, now. A little more fresh air… "

I stood up, glancing at the windows, then back at Smith, who
forced a wry smile in answer to my look.

"Couldn't be done, Petrie," he said, huskily.

His words referred to the state of the windows. Although the
night was oppressively hot, these were only opened some four inches
at top and bottom. Further opening was impossible because of iron
brackets screwed firmly into the casements which prevented the
windows being raised or lowered further.

It was a precaution adopted after long experience of the
servants of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Now, as I stood looking from the half-strangled man upon the bed
to those screwed-up windows, the fact came home to my mind that
this precaution had proved futile. I thought of the thing which I
had likened to a feather boa; and I looked at the swollen weals
made by clutching fingers upon the throat of Nayland Smith.

The bed stood fully four feet from the nearest window.

I suppose the question was written in my face; for, as I turned
again to Smith, who, having struggled upright, was still fingering
his injured throat ruefully:

"God only knows, Petrie!" he said; "no human arm could have
reached me… "

For us, the night was ended so far as sleep was concerned.
Arrayed in his dressing-gown, Smith sat in the white cane chair in
my study with a glass of brandy-and-water beside him, and (despite
my official prohibition) with the cracked briar which had sent up
its incense in many strange and dark places of the East and which
yet survived to perfume these prosy rooms in suburban London,
steaming between his teeth. I stood with my elbow resting upon the
mantelpiece looking down at him where he sat.

"By God! Petrie," he said, yet again, with his fingers straying
gently over the surface of his throat, "that was a narrow shave—a
damned narrow shave!"

"Narrower than perhaps you appreciate, old man," I replied. "You
were a most unusual shade of blue when I found you… "

"I managed," said Smith evenly, "to tear those clutching fingers
away for a moment and to give a cry for help. It was only for a
moment, though. Petrie! they were fingers of steel—of steel!"

"The bed," I began…

"I know that," rapped Smith. "I shouldn't have been sleeping in
it, had it been within reach of the window; but, knowing that the
doctor avoids noisy methods, I had thought myself fairly safe so
long as I made it impossible for any one actually to enter the
room… "

"I have always insisted, Smith," I cried, "that there was
danger! What of poisoned darts? What of the damnable reptiles and
insects which form part of the armory of Fu-Manchu?"

"Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose," he replied. "But as it
happened none of those agents was employed. The very menace that I
sought to avoid reached me somehow. It would almost seem that Dr.
Fu-Manchu deliberately accepted the challenge of those screwed-up
windows! Hang it all, Petrie! one cannot sleep in a room
hermetically sealed, in weather like this! It's positively Burmese;
and although I can stand tropical heat, curiously enough the heat
of London gets me down almost immediately."

"The humidity; that's easily understood. But you'll have to put
up with it in the future. After nightfall our windows must be
closed entirely, Smith."

Nayland Smith knocked out his pipe upon the side of the
fireplace. The bowl sizzled furiously, but without delay he stuffed
broad-cut mixture into the hot pipe, dropping a liberal quantity
upon the carpet during the process. He raised his eyes to me, and
his face was very grim.

"Petrie," he said, striking a match on the heel of his slipper,
"the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu are by no means exhausted. Before
we quit this room it is up to us to come to a decision upon a
certain point." He got his pipe well alight. "What kind of thing,
what unnatural, distorted creature, laid hands upon my throat
to-night? I owe my life, primarily, to you, old man, but,
secondarily, to the fact that I was awakened, just before the
attack—by the creature's coughing—by its vile, high-pitched
coughing… "

I glanced around at the books upon my shelves. Often enough,
following some outrage by the brilliant Chinese doctor whose genius
was directed to the discovery of new and unique death agents, we
had obtained a clue in those works of a scientific nature which
bulk largely in the library of a medical man. There are creatures,
there are drugs, which, ordinarily innocuous, may be so employed as
to become inimical to human life; and in the distorting of nature,
in the disturbing of balances and the diverting of beneficent
forces into strange and dangerous channels, Dr. Fu-Manchu excelled.
I had known him to enlarge, by artificial culture, a minute species
of fungus so as to render it a powerful agent capable of attacking
man; his knowledge of venomous insects has probably never been
paralleled in the history of the world; whilst, in the sphere of
pure toxicology, he had, and has, no rival; the Borgias were
children by comparison. But, look where I would, think how I might,
no adequate explanation of this latest outrage seemed possible
along normal lines.

"There's the clue," said Nayland Smith, pointing to a little
ash-tray upon the table near by. "Follow it if you can."

But I could not.

"As I have explained," continued my friend, "I was awakened by a
sound of coughing; then came a death grip on my throat, and
instinctively my hands shot out in search of my attacker. I could
not reach him; my hands came in contact with nothing palpable.
Therefore I clutched at the fingers which were dug into my
windpipe, and found them to be small—as the marks show—and hairy. I
managed to give that first cry for help, then with all my strength
I tried to unfasten the grip that was throttling the life out of
me. At last I contrived to move one of the hands, and I called out
again, though not so loudly. Then both the hands were back again; I
was weakening; but I clawed like a madman at the thin, hairy arms
of the strangling thing, and with a blood-red mist dancing before
my eyes, I seemed to be whirling madly round and round until all
became a blank. Evidently I used my nails pretty freely—and there's
the trophy."

For the twentieth time, I should think, I carried the ash-tray
in my hand and laid it immediately under the table-lamp in order to
examine its contents. In the little brass bowl lay a blood-stained
fragment of grayish hair attached to a tatter of skin. This
fragment of epidermis had an odd bluish tinge, and the attached
hair was much darker at the roots than elsewhere. Saving its
singular color, it might have been torn from the forearm of a very
hirsute human; but although my thoughts wandered unfettered, north,
south, east and west; although, knowing the resources of Fu-Manchu,
I considered all the recognized Mongolian types, and, in quest of
hirsute mankind, even roamed far north among the blubbering
Esquimo; although I glanced at Australasia, at Central Africa, and
passed in mental review the dark places of the Congo, nowhere in
the known world, nowhere in the history of the human species, could
I come upon a type of man answering to the description suggested by
our strange clue.

Nayland Smith was watching me curiously as I bent over the
little brass ash-tray.

"You are puzzled," he rapped in his short way.

"So am I—utterly puzzled. Fu-Manchu's gallery of monstrosities
clearly has become reinforced; for even if we identified the type,
we should not be in sight of our explanation."

"You mean," I began…

"Fully four feet from the window, Petrie, and that window but a
few inches open! Look"—he bent forward, resting his chest against
the table, and stretched out his hand toward me. "You have a rule
there; just measure."

Setting down the ash-tray, I opened out the rule and measured
the distance from the further edge of the table to the tips of
Smith's fingers.

"Twenty-eight inches—and I have a long reach!" snapped Smith,
withdrawing his arm and striking a match to relight his pipe.
"There's one thing, Petrie, often proposed before, which now we
must do without delay. The ivy must be stripped from the walls at
the back. It's a pity, but we can not afford to sacrifice our lives
to our sense of the aesthetic. What do you make of the sound like
the cracking of a whip?"

"I make nothing of it, Smith," I replied, wearily. "It might
have been a thick branch of ivy breaking beneath the weight of a
climber."

"Did it sound like it?"

"I must confess that the explanation does not convince me, but I
have no better one."

Smith, permitting his pipe to go out, sat staring straight
before him, and tugging at the lobe of his left ear.

"The old bewilderment is seizing me," I continued. "At first,
when I realized that Dr. Fu-Manchu was back in England, when I
realized that an elaborate murder-machine was set up somewhere in
London, it seemed unreal, fantastical. Then I met—Karamaneh! She,
whom we thought to be his victim, showed herself again to be his
slave. Now, with Weymouth and Scotland Yard at work, the old secret
evil is established again in our midst, unaccountably—our lives are
menaced—sleep is a danger—every shadow threatens death… oh! it is
awful."