The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu - Sax Rohmer (best ebook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Sax Rohmer
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I did not! I did not! I watched him, spied upon him—yes! But, listen:
it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.
I could not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you.
I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away.
I came twice and could not find it. There, will you let me go?”
“If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu—yes.”
Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.
A new terror was to be read in her face.
“I dare not! I dare not!”
“Then you would—if you dared?”
She was watching me intently.
“Not if YOU would go to find him,” she said.
And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant
of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot
blood leap to my cheek at all which the words implied.
She grasped my arm.
Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?
“The authorities—”
“Ah!” Her expression changed. “They can put me on the rack if they choose,
but never one word would I speak—never one little word.”
She threw up her head scornfully. Then the proud glance softened again.
“But I will speak for you.”
Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
“Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody,
and I will no longer be his slave.”
My heart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this
warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt of.
For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality
and the art of her pleading she bad brought me down from my judgment seat—
had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to justice.
Now, I was disarmed—but in a quandary. What should I do?
What COULD I do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth,
in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time
that I stepped across the room until I glanced back.
But she had gone!
As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
“Ma ‘alesh!” came her soft whisper; “but I am afraid to
trust you—yet. Be comforted, for there is one near who would
have killed you had I wished it. Remember, I will come to you
whenever you will take me and hide me.”
Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled
cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.
The front door opened and closed.
“Shen-Yan’s is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway,”
said Inspector Weymouth.
“`Singapore Charlie’s,’ they call it. It’s a center for some of
the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers
use it. There have never been any complaints that I know of.
I don’t understand this.”
We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet
of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments
from poor Cadby’s grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done
her work that combustion had not been complete.
“What do we make of this?” said Smith. “`…Hunchback…lascar
went up…unlike others…not return…till Shen-Yan’
(there is no doubt about the name, I think) `turned me out…
booming sound…lascar in…mortuary I could ident…
not for days, or suspici…Tuesday night in a different make
…snatch…pigtail…’”
“The pigtail again!” rapped Weymouth.
“She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together,”
continued Smith. “They lay flat, and this was in the middle.
I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we
have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this:
A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere—
presumably upstairs—at Shen-Yan’s, and did not come down again.
Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound.
Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.
We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan’s,
but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar’ as the dacoit
who was murdered by Fu-Manchu! It is sheer supposition, however.
But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a
different `make-up’ or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday
night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction.
The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because
of what was found on Cadby’s body.”
Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
“Exactly ten-twenty-three,” he said. “I will trouble you, Inspector,
for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe. There is time to spend an hour
in the company of Shen-Yan’s opium friends.”
Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
“It might be risky. What about an official visit?”
Nayland Smith laughed.
“Worse than useless! By your own showing, the place is open to inspection.
No; guile against guile! We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate
essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern
Orient has produced.”
“I don’t believe in disguises,” said Weymouth, with a certain truculence.
“It’s mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure.
Still, if you’re determined, sir, there’s an end of it. Foster will make
your face up. What disguise do you propose to adopt?”
“A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.
I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure
of my disguise.”
“You are forgetting me, Smith,” I said.
He turned to me quickly.
“Petrie,” he replied, “it is MY business, unfortunately, but it
is no sort of hobby.”
“You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?”
I said angrily.
Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look
of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
“My dear old chap,” he answered, “that was really unkind.
You know that I meant something totally different.”
“It’s all right, Smith;” I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung
his hand heartily. “I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another.
I shall be going, too, Inspector.”
As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes
later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into
the wilderness of London’s night. In this theatrical business
there was, to my mind, something ridiculous—almost childish—
and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim
tragedy lurked so near to farce.
The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey’s end Fu-Manchu
awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections—Fu-Manchu, who,
with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him,
pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within
this very area which was so sedulously patrolled—Fu-Manchu, whom
I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!
Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor tonight.
I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths,
and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
“We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
is close to the riverside. Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your fellows
will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the whistle.”
“Yes,” assented Weymouth; “I’ve arranged for that.
If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?”
“I don’t know,” said Smith thoughtfully. “Even in that event
I might wait awhile.”
“Don’t wait too long,” advised the Inspector. “We shouldn’t be
much wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel,
somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing.”
The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been
seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector,
who followed us in.
“Guthrie and Lisle,” he said briskly, “get along and find a dark corner
which commands the door of Singapore Charlie’s off the old Highway.
You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep
on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.
Don’t move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders,
and note everybody that goes in and comes out. You other two belong
to this division?”
The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
“Well, you’re on special duty tonight. You’ve been prompt,
but don’t stick your chests out so much. Do you know of a back
way to Shen-Yan’s?”
The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
“There’s an empty shop nearly opposite, sir,” replied one of them.
“I know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.
Then we could get through to the front and watch from there.”
“Good!” cried the Inspector. “See you are not spotted, though; and if you
hear the whistle, don’t mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside Shen-Yan’s
like lightning. Otherwise, wait for orders.”
Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
“Launch is waiting,” he said.
“Right,” replied Smith thoughtfully. “I am half afraid, though, that the
recent alarms may have scared our quarry—your man, Mason, and then Cadby.
Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there has
been no clew pointing to this opium den. Remember, he thinks Cadby’s
notes are destroyed.”
“The whole business is an utter mystery to me,” confessed Ryman.
“I’m told that there’s some dangerous Chinese devil hiding
somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at
Shen-Yan’s. Supposing he uses that place, which is possible,
how do you know he’s there tonight?”
“I don’t,” said Smith; “but it is the first clew we have had
pointing to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives
where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned.”
“Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?”
“I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal.
He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth
for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is
enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do you follow me?
He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher,
and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it.”
Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out,
passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.
With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung
out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again
and hugged the murky shore.
The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks
to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again and show
the muddy swirls about us. The view was not extensive from the launch.
Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge,
or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large vessel.
In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing
darkness
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