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

secretly had invaded London and the triumph

of his cause—the triumph of the yellow races.

 

I glanced at our notes. “Lord Southery,” I replied.

 

Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.

 

“Look,” he said shortly. “He’s dead.”

 

I read the account of the peer’s death, and glanced at

the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.

He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a

short illness, had died from some affection of the heart.

There had been no intimation that his illness was of a

serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his flock—

the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu—with jealous zeal,

had not suspected that the end was so near.

 

“Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?” I asked.

 

My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long

ringer upon one of the sub-headings to the account:

 

“SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE.”

 

“You see,” said Smith, “Southery died during the night,

but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,

unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope,

and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious.”

 

I looked at him thoughtfully.

 

“Sir Frank is a great physician,” I said slowly; “but we must

remember he would be looking for nothing suspicious.”

 

“We must remember,” rapped Smith, “that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu

is responsible for Southery’s death, except to the eye

of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see.

Fu-Manchu leaves no clews.”

 

“Are you going around?” I asked.

 

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

 

“I think not,” he replied. “Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu

has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work

so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter.”

 

Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,

littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,

which went out every few minutes.

 

“It’s no good, Petrie,” he burst out suddenly; “it cannot be a coincidence.

We must go around and see him.”

 

An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and

its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face

of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.

The mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction

of the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived

the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring

two great continents, a full week’s journey nearer one to the other.

But now it would plan no more.

 

“He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,”

explained the family physician; “but I had not anticipated a fatal

termination so soon. I was called about two o’clock this morning,

and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.

I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.

But shortly before his arrival the patient expired.”

 

“I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery

for angina pectoris?” I said.

 

“Yes,” was the reply, “for some months.”

 

“You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent

with a death from that cause?”

 

“Certainly. Do you observe anything unusual yourself?

Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me. There is surely

no room for doubt?”

 

“No,” said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.

“We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir.”

 

The physician seemed puzzled.

 

“But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?”

asked the physician.

 

“Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,”

answered Smith. “But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent

questions as confidential.”

 

As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen

visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused,

detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.

 

“You were Lord Southery’s valet?”

 

The man bowed.

 

“Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?”

 

“I was, sir.”

 

“Did you see or hear anything unusual—anything unaccountable?”

 

“Nothing, sir.”

 

“No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?”

 

The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.

 

“Perhaps this business is making me imaginative,” he said;

“but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder—

something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible

death-mark of Fu-Manchu.”

 

“You are right, Smith!” I cried. “I hesitated to mention the matter, but I,

too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor’s presence.

Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he

has brought about Lord Southery’s death as if I had seen him strike the blow.”

 

It was in that torturing frame of mind—chained, helpless,

in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman’s

supernormal genius—that we lived throughout the ensuing days.

My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever.

Yet, we could not act.

 

In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I

stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale

outside a second-hand bookseller’s in New Oxford Street.

One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me

as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call

the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.

 

I turned around rapidly—and was looking into the darkly beautiful

eyes of Karamaneh! She—whom I had seen in so many guises—

was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much

of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.

 

She glanced about her apprehensively.

 

“Quick! Come round the corner. I must speak to you,” she said,

her musical voice thrilling with excitement.

 

I never was quite master of myself in her presence.

He must have been a man of ice who could have been,

I think for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity;

she was a mystery—and mystery adds charm to a woman.

Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would

have risked much to save her from it.

 

As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:

 

“I am in distress. You have often asked me to enable you to capture

Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so.”

 

I could scarcely believe that I heard right.

 

“Your brother—” I began.

 

She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.

 

“You are a doctor,” she said. “I want you to come and see him now.”

 

“What! Is he in London?”

 

“He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

 

“And you would have me –”

 

“Accompany me there, yes.”

 

Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against

trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.

Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling

eastward in a closed cab. Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I

turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression

in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there

was something else—something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.

The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,

the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early

adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about

the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.

Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from

burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.

In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world

of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.

 

I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared

the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,

and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down

a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,

hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.

But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze

of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,

so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this

girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character

was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask

the cunning of a serpent.

 

I spoke to her.

 

“S-SH!” She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.

 

The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock

building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable

stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through

a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.

The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.

I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow

of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.

 

For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors

of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume

which now I had come to associate with her. Absolute darkness

was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she,

was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led

along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.

A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely

furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp

which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean

of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow

richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.

 

Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood

listening intently for a moment.

 

The silence was unbroken.

 

Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two

tiny bright eyes looked up at me. Peering closely, I succeeded

in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu’s marmoset. “This way,” whispered Karamaneh.

 

Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more

unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration

of prudence could now be of avail.

 

The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted. Following the direction

of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend

as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.

Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked

down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist

within many a mile of that district.

 

The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into

which first we had come. Here, as there, piles of cushions formed

splashes of gaudy color about the floor. Three lamps hung by chains

from the ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.

One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases containing

chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications

of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s pursuits, whilst close against another lay

the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room—

a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy.

In the light of a lamp which hung directly above him, his olive

face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh—

save that the girl’s coloring was more delicate. He had black,

curly hair, which