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

a dangerous weapon.

 

A cry rang out behind me. I turned quickly. And a singular

sight met my gaze.

 

Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy woman!

His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her out into

the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing—silently, fiercely.

 

Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that

he was become bereft of reason. I ran back; and I had almost reached

the scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put

to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,

leaped from the caravan.

 

One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the river.

 

Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.

 

“After him, Petrie!” he cried. “After him. Don’t let him escape.

It’s a dacoit!”

 

My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my friend

had lost his senses, the word “dacoit” was sufficient.

 

I started down the road after the fleetly running man.

Never once did he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion

to fear pursuit. The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.

That sense of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days

of our struggle with the titantic genius whose victory meant the victory

of the yellow races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.

I was an actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.

 

Out over the grass and down to the river’s brink ran the gypsy

who was no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood,

the dacoits. I was close upon his heels. But I was not

prepared for him to leap in among the rushes at the margin

of the stream; and seeing him do this I pulled up quickly.

Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that he held some

object in his hand. He waded out; he dived; and as I gained

the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished completely.

Only ever—widening rings showed where he had been.

I had him.

 

For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from

either bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could,

if necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.

I waited. A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this

strange invasion of his precincts. A full minute I waited.

From the lane behind me came Smith’s voice:

 

“Don’t let him escape, Petrie!”

 

Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.

But still the dacoit did not rise. I searched the surface in all

directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed

above it. Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply,

become entangled in the weeds and was drowned. With a final glance

to right and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy—

this grim going out of a life at glorious noonday—I turned away.

Smith had the woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards

him when a faint splash behind warned me. Instinctively I ducked.

From whence that saving instinct arose I cannot surmise,

but to it I owed my life. For as I rapidly lowered my head,

something hummed past me, something that flew out over the grass bank,

and fell with a jangle upon the dusty roadside. A knife!

 

I turned and bounded back to the river’s brink. I heard a faint

cry behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.

Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water. The reach was lonely

of rowers. Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along,

and her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon

the river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.

 

To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed.

That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous attention

I could not doubt. But where in Heaven’s name WAS he?

He could not humanly have remained below water for so long;

yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface,

concealed amongst the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.

 

There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me.

It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming

a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith.

My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon

which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand rejoined my friend.

 

He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently

exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with

an extraordinary expression.

 

“What does it mean, Smith?” I began.

 

But he interrupted me.

 

“Where is the dacoit?” he demanded rapidly.

 

“Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,”

I replied, “I cannot pretend to say.”

 

The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.

Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith

held captive; it was familiar, too.

 

I started and looked closely into the wizened face.

 

“He’s tricked you,” said Smith, an angry note in his voice.

“What is that you have in your hand?”

 

I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.

 

“I know,” he rapped. “I saw it. He was in the water not

three yards from where you stood. You must have seen him.

Was there nothing visible?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.

 

“A wild-fowl,” I added; “nothing else.”

 

“A wild-fowl,” snapped Smith. “If you will consult your

recollections of the habits of wild-fowl you will see

that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It’s an

old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in decoying.

A dacoit’s head was concealed in that wild-fowl! It’s useless.

He has certainly made good his escape by now.”

 

“Smith,” I said, somewhat crestfallen, “why are you detaining

this gypsy woman?”

 

“Gypsy woman!” he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made

an impatient movement. “Use your eyes, old man.”

 

He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud

of disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.

 

“A wet sponge will do the rest,” he said.

 

Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes

of the captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming

features of the slave girl. There were tears on the whitened lashes,

and she was submissive now.

 

“This time,” said my friend hardly, “we have fairly captured her—

and we will hold her.”

 

From somewhere upstream came a faint call.

 

“The dacoit!”

 

Nayland Smith’s lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.

 

Another call answered, and a third responded.

Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle,

and I noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall,

mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a welcome offering.

 

The surrounded mansion was in flames!

 

“Curse it!” rapped Smith. “So this time we were right. But, of course,

he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects. I knew that.

The man’s daring is incredible. He has given himself till the very

last moment—and we blundered upon two of the outposts.”

 

“I lost one.”

 

“No matter. We have the other. I expect no further arrests,

and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor’s

servants that nothing can save it. I fear its ashes will afford

us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should

serve to disturb Fu-Manchu’s world.”

 

He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.

She looked up proudly.

 

“You need not hold me so tight,” she said, in her soft voice.

“I will come with you.”

 

That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me

thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes;

but of the many such scenes in that race—drama wherein Nayland

Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none

more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.

 

Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into

our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London,

for my friend’s authority was supreme. A strange trio we were,

and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came

to an end at last. Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room—

the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story

of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought

to upset the balance of the world—to place Europe and America

beneath the scepter of Cathay.

 

I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands;

Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened

briar a dozen times in as many minutes. In the big arm-chair

the pseudogypsy was curled up. A brief toilet had converted

the wizened old woman’s face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.

Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb.

She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us

through lowered lashes.

 

Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate,

and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful

eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved.

Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul,

yet I strove not to think of them. Accomplice of an arch-murderer she

might be; but she was dangerously lovely.

 

“That man who was with you,” said Smith, suddenly turning

upon her, “was in Burma up till quite recently. He murdered

a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left.

The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head.

Am I right?”

 

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

 

“Suppose—What then?” she asked.

 

“Suppose I handed you over to the police?” suggested Smith.

But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we

both had owed our lives to this girl.

 

“As you please,” she replied. “The police would learn nothing.”

 

“You do not belong to the Far East,” my friend said abruptly.

“You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no

kin of Fu-Manchu.”

 

“That is true,” she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

 

“Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?”

 

She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.

 

Smith walked to the door.

 

“I must make out my report, Petrie,” he said. “Look after the prisoner.”

 

And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was

expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.

What attitude should I adopt? How should I go about my delicate task?

In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances

saw captive in my rooms.

 

“You do not think we would harm you?” I began awkwardly.

“No harm shall come to you. Why will you not trust us?”

 

She raised her brilliant eyes.

 

“Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,”

she said; “those others whom HE has sought for?”

 

Alas! it had been of none, and I knew it