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

CHAPTER XVII

A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.

Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low’s Cottages,

the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.

Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land

through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.

Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,

with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round

the bend ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps,

as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,

broke the stillness of that lonely place.

 

Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,

I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure

alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;

but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;

and one of her stipulations had been that the police must

not be acquainted with her share in the matter.

 

A light came into view far ahead of us.

 

“That’s the light, Petrie,” said Smith. “If we keep that straight before us,

according to our information we shall strike the hulk.”

 

I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence

of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.

I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,

to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere

of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men.

The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,

the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever

cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.

I despair of conveying to those who may read this account

any but the coldest conception of the man’s evil power.

 

Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.

We stood listening. “What?” I asked.

 

“You heard nothing?”

 

I shook my head.

 

Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.

He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.

 

“You don’t think it’s a trap?” he jerked. “We are trusting her blindly.”

 

Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms

against the innuendo.

 

“I don’t,” I said shortly.

 

He nodded. We pressed on.

 

Ten minutes’ steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.

Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu’s activities centered

always about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway,

his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.

The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,

at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.

Always he made his headquarters upon the river. It was significant;

and even if tonight’s expedition should fail, this was a clew

for our future guidance.

 

“Bear to the right,” directed Smith. “We must reconnoiter

before making our attack.”

 

We took a path that led directly to the river bank.

Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it

moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.

But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.

The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.

Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked

indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein

we played our parts. When I had lain in the East End opium den,

when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon

a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,

of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.

 

Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.

 

“Karamaneh merely means a slave,” he said irrelevantly.

 

I made no comment.

 

“There’s the hulk,” he added.

 

The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level

of the running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet—

for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory—

a rough pier showed. Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch

of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.

Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.

 

“That will be the cabin,” said Smith.

 

Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on

to the staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down

to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.

With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,

its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.

 

“How are we going to get down without being detected?” whispered Smith.

 

“We’ve got to risk it,” I said grimly.

 

Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder

and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared

below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.

 

The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,

I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon

the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.

My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,

that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share

in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.

I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird

creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,

and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound

of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.

 

Rather, white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.

He had witnessed my accident, but—

 

“We must risk it,” he whispered in my ear. “We dare not turn back now.”

 

He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,

I perforce following.

 

At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out

from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.

It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of shelves loaded

with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,

with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,

and with instruments—some of them of a form unknown to my experience.

I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare

wooden floor. Then Smith’s voice rose above the confused sounds

about me, incisive, commanding:

 

“I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!”

 

For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.

 

The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently

clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,

intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon

the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded

lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,

raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.

But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,

almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I

lay chained in the cell!

 

Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.

A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel

of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,

leaped and chattered a little marmoset.

 

That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything—

for anything except for what really happened.

 

The doctor’s wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.

The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew

momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.

 

“Put up your hands!” rapped Smith, “and attempt no tricks.”

His voice quivered with excitement. “The game’s up,

Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie.”

 

I moved forward to Smith’s side, and was about