The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu - Sax Rohmer (best finance books of all time .TXT) 📗

by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver. It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence.”

Later.

“Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung’s accomplice has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary. In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt had failed.

“⁠—Reuter.”

“It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi, near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.

“They fired at the house and set it in flames. There were in the house about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.

“The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make the most vigorous representations on the subject.

“⁠—Reuter.”

Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:⁠—

“Ho-Nan. Have abandoned visit.⁠—Eltham.”

I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw himself into an armchair, facing me across the table. I showed him the cutting.

“I am glad, for Eltham’s sake⁠—and for the girl’s,” was his comment. “But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu! Just Heaven! Why is retribution delayed!”

Smith’s darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.

“I have seen Sir Lionel Barton,” he said abruptly; “and, to put the whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me! During the months that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt. He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter to the Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!”

Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end. Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca, he now had turned his attention again to Tibet⁠—thereby signing his own death-warrant.

“That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?” I suggested.

Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.

“England at present is the web,” he replied. “The spider will be waiting. Petrie, I sometimes despair. Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd. You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle. Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived today, and he is working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby’s auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus. He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!”

“Chinese!”

“Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee. I don’t like him. Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face. He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish notes for Barton’s forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples. By the way, all Sir Lionel’s baggage disappeared from the landing-stage⁠—including his Tibetan notes.”

“Significant!”

“Of course. But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London. I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute.”

“He is wasting no time.”

“Wasting time! In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet, he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has unearthed in Egypt. As I came away, a van drove up from the docks and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat. It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum after he has examined it. The man crams six months’ work into six weeks; then he is off again.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“What can I do? I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him. I cannot doubt it. Ugh! that house gave me the shudders. No sunlight, I’ll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue. There’s a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other. It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture. I tell you, the place was made for murder.”

“Have you taken any precautions?”

“I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but⁠—”

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“What is Sir Lionel like?”

“A madman, Petrie. A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely shaves⁠—I don’t know which. I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears, pottery and whatnot⁠—sometimes kicking a book from his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask⁠—alternately dictating and conversing. Phew!”

For some time we were silent.

“Smith,”