The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu - Sax Rohmer (best ebook reader TXT) 📗

is but a pretense,” I said. “Why do you keep the secrets

of that man, when they mean death to so many?”

 

“Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert—

seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.

I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon.

I have known the lash myself. Death! What does it matter?”

 

She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again,

and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful

to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type

of beauty, might have been a cultured European.

 

“Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man’s service.

Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman,” I said.

 

She shrugged her shoulders.

 

“I do not know that. But if you will carry me off”—she clutched me

nervously—“so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,

beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is

my master I will never betray him. Tear me from him—by force,

do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.

Ah! but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities’—

your police. Police! Ah, I have said enough.”

 

A clock across the common began to strike. The girl

started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.

There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.

 

“You do not understand,” she whispered. “Oh, will you

never understand and release me from him! I must go.

Already I have remained too long. Listen. Go out without delay.

Remain out—at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here.”

 

“And Nayland Smith?”

 

“What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my lips?

You are in danger—you hear me, in danger! Go away from here tonight.”

 

She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she turned,

stamping her foot passionately.

 

“You have hands and arms,” she cried, “and yet you let me go.

Be warned, then; fly from here—” She broke off with something

that sounded like a sob.

 

I made no move to stay her—this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer,

Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps paltering down the stairs, I heard

her open and close the door—the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key.

Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key

grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.

 

“Did you see her?” I began.

 

But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told

him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.

 

“How can she have passed through London in that costume?”

I cried in bewilderment. “Where can she have come from?”

 

Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broadcut mixture

into the familiar cracked briar.

 

“She might have traveled in a car or in a cab,” he said;

“and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

You should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we

have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let

her go free.”

 

“Smith,” I replied, “I couldn’t. She came of her own free will to give

me a warning. She disarms me.”

 

“Because you can see she is in love with you?” he suggested, and burst

into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.

“She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don’t know

the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl’s position.

She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!

If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar,

hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you

everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with

the reflection that speech was forced from her. I am not joking;

it is so, I assure you. And she would adore you for your savagery,

deeming you forceful and strong!”

 

“Smith,” I said, “be serious. You know what her warning meant before.”

 

“I can guess what it means now,” he rapped. “Hallo!”

 

Someone was furiously ringing the bell.

 

“No one at home?” said my friend. “I will go. I think I know

what it is.”

 

A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.

 

“From Weymouth,” he explained, “by district messenger.

I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any

evidence which subsequently he found. This will be fragments

of the mummy.”

 

“What! You think the mummy was abstracted?”

 

“Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else

was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.

A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use

of the rubber stopper becomes evident—ventilation. How this

person killed Strozza I have yet to learn.”

 

“Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the green mist?”

 

Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.

 

“The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.

Remember, we have only one man’s word that it existed.

It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach

a fictitious importance.”

 

He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop

in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.

Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining,

such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached

to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid

at once raised and tilted it.

 

Then happened a singular thing.

 

Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud—

an oily vapor—and an inspiration, it was nothing less,

born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor,

came to me.

 

“RUN, SMITH!” I screamed. “The door! the door, for your life!

Fu-Manchu sent that box!” I threw my arms round him.

As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.

I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.

We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light,

I saw that Smith’s tanned face was unusually drawn,

and touched with pallor.

 

“It is a poisonous gas!” I said hoarsely; “in many respects

identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove

it to be something else—God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!

It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching

powder works. We have been blind—I particularly. Don’t you see?

There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough

of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!”

 

Smith clenched his fists convulsively.

 

“My God!” he said, “how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme?

I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned,

and Kwee’s part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string—after Sir

Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I take it, is heavier than air.”

 

“Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470,” I said;

“two and a half times heavier than air. You can pour it from

jar to jar like a liquid—if you are wearing a chemist’s mask.

In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points

of difference would not interest you. The sarcophagus would

have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed,

with no clew remaining—except the smell.”

 

“I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course,

was unfamiliar with it. You may remember that you were

prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel?

The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have

drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff,

capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas—”

 

“Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee

was crouching. Croxted’s breaking the window created sufficient draught

to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the floor now.

I will go and open both windows.”

 

Nayland raised his haggard face.

 

“He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton,”

he said; “and contemptuously—you note the attitude, Petrie?—

contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is justified.

I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is by no wit

of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure.”