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

visit as ours,

I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.

 

“But, Mr. Smith,” he said, “surely I am safe enough here!

The place is full of American visitors at present,

and I have had to be content with a room right at the top;

so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire.”

 

“There is another danger,” replied Smith. “The fact that

you are at the top of the building enhances that danger.

Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke

out in Rangoon in 1908—the deaths due to the Call of Siva?”

 

“I read of it in the Indian papers,” said Guthrie uneasily.

“Suicides, were they not?” “No!” snapped Smith. “Murders!”

 

There was a brief silence.

 

“From what I recall of the cases,” said Guthrie, “that seems impossible.

In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows

of locked rooms—and the windows were quite inaccessible.”

 

“Exactly,” replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver

gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.

“Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions tonight

are identical. Silence, please, I hear a clock striking.”

 

It was Big Ben. It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete.

In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below,

high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving

crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me.

Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man

may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert. I was glad that I

was not alone in that room—marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu;

and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.

 

I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became

so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here—

I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a

visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be

made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,

I waited in the darkness. Some invisible herald went ahead of the

dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one’s body.

It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence

of the priests of death.

 

A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences

to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.

 

“My God!” hissed Guthrie, “what was that?”

 

“The Call of Siva,” whispered Smith.

 

“Don’t stir, for your life!”

 

Guthrie was breathing hard.

 

I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;

that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of

the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not

ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.

It was awful—that tense waiting—for—what?

 

Three taps sounded—very distinctly upon the window.

 

Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.

 

“It’s supernatural!” he muttered—all that was Celtic in his blood

recoiling from the omen. “Nothing human can reach that window!”

“S-sh!” from Smith. “Don’t stir.”

 

The tapping was repeated.

 

Smith softly crossed the room. My heart was beating painfully.

He threw open the window. Further inaction was impossible.

I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.

 

“Don’t come too near, Petrie!” he warned over his shoulder.

 

One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down

at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames,

at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot

Tower starting above them all.

 

Three taps sounded on the panes above us.

 

In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny

as this. What Burmese ghoul had he loosed? Was it outside, in the air?

Was it actually in the room?

 

“Don’t let me go, Petrie!” whispered Smith suddenly.

“Get a tight hold on me!”

 

That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful

fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!

Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped

forward to help.

 

Smith leaned from the window and looked up.

 

One choking cry he gave—smothered, inarticulate—and I found him slipping

from my grip—being drawn out of the window—drawn to his death!

 

“Hold him, Guthrie!” I gasped hoarsely. “My God, he’s going!

Hold him!”

 

My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.

The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,

carrying me with him.

 

But as I fell I heard a scream above. Smith’s revolver went

hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape—

flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.

 

“The light! The light!” I cried.

 

Guthrie ran and turned on the light. Nayland Smith, his eyes

starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken

cord which showed tight about his throat.

 

“It was a Thug!” screamed Guthrie. “Get the rope off! He’s choking!”

 

My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.

 

“A knife! Quick!” I cried. “I have lost mine!”

 

Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.

I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith’s swollen neck,

and severed the deadly silken thing.

 

Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.

 

When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had

been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the brow—

close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.

 

“The mark of Kali,” he said. “The man was a phansigar—

a religious strangler. Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his

service I might have expected that he would have Thugs.

A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma;

so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak

of thuggee—on slightly improved lines! I had suspected something

of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon.

My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope.

You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?

That was unscientific. The true method, as practiced

by the group operating in Burma, was to throw the line

about the victim’s neck and jerk him from the window.

A man leaning from an open window is very nicely poised:

it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.

No loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell,

remained in the hand of the murderer. No clew! Therefore we

see at once what commended the system to Fu-Manchu.”

 

Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.

 

“I owe you my life, Mr. Smith,” he said. “If you had come

five minutes later—”

 

He grasped Smith’s hand.

 

“You see,” Guthrie continued, “no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma!

And no one thought of the ROOF! These fellows are as active as monkeys,

and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely

at home. I might have chosen my room especially for the business!”

 

“He slipped in late this evening,” said Smith. “The hotel detective saw him,

but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise, despite their

having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have survived.”

 

“Didn’t you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?” I asked.

 

“Yes,” was the reply; “and I know of what you are thinking.

The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron

roof over the top deck. The Thug must have been lying up there

as the Colassie passed on the deck below.”

 

“But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?” I continued.

 

“Partly religious,” he explained, “and partly to wake the victims!

You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over

such people as phansigars? I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has secret

knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all,

at last I begin to score.”

 

“You do,” I agreed; “but your victory took you near to death.”

 

“I owe my life to you, Petrie,” he said. “Once to your strength of arm,

and once to—”

 

“Don’t speak of her, Smith,” I interrupted.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu may have discovered the part she played!

In which event—”

 

“God help her!”