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CHAPTER XXIV
FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly
on to other things. I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen,
to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing.
I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure
of my drama; its scheme is none of mine. Often enough,
in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of Omar:
We are no other than a moving show
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal:
Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu? Let me confess here that my final answer must
be postponed. I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my reasoning,
and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow
of the Manchus? The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
"Young China." This is unsatisfactory. What do we mean by Young China?
In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the
whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one,
he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no Republican.
The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.
These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction
with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians,
may be said to represent Young China. Amid such turmoils as this
we invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party.
In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party.
Another question often put to me was: Where did the Doctor
hide during the time that he pursued his operations in London?
This is more susceptible of explanation. For a time Nayland
Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent
to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations;
later we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his
hiding-place, and later still, the hulk lying off the downstream flats.
But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had
chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End riverside
building which I was the first to enter. Of this I am all but sure;
for the reason that it not only was the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh,
and of her brother, Aziz, but the home of something else--
of something which I shall speak of later.
The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the
place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case.
Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located
the whilom warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab
and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury.
At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice,
Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it;
a river police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it
on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black night,
than which a better could not have been chosen.
"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh,
and looked up into my face.
She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow
of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first,
and bring out Aziz. Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--
you are to make no attempt upon--"
"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh
hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.
"But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us?"
The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity
of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinaman's.
"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more
noticeable than usual. "There is only one of the Burmese men in the house,
and he--he dare not enter without orders!"
"But Fu-Manchu?"
"We have nothing to fear from him. He will be your prisoner
within ten minutes from now! I have no time for words--
you must believe!" She stamped her foot impatiently.
"And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
"He also."
"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience,
and unlocked the door in the high brick wall which divided
the gloomy, evil-smelling court from the luxurious apartments
of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"Make no noise," she warned. And Smith and myself followed her along
the uncarpeted passage beyond.
Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his
second in command, brought up the rear. The door was reclosed;
a few paces farther on a second was unlocked. Passing through
a small room, unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.
The transition was startling.
Darkness was about us now, and silence: a perfumed, slumberous darkness--
a silence full of mystery. For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon
we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn
of the great industrial river. About the scented confines which bounded
us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.
From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life,
from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow
in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity,
we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp
painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls,
and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--
the bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--
penetrated to this perfumed place. In the pool of tinted light
lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled
form bending over him.
"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity
to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.
We stood, not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair.
From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit
of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of
Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.
The millions might sleep in peace--the millions in whose
cause we labored!--but we who knew the reality of the danger
knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England--
a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life
and left no clew behind.
"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft
light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl.
She who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu
now was to be the means whereby society should be rid of him.
She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through
the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light,
and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.
It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far as Western lore had power
to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny
power of the Chinese doctor.
"Be quick," she said; "be quick! Awaken him! I am afraid."
From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe
and a phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.
It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.
Of its constitution I knew nothing. Although I had had
the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared
to devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes.
The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled success
for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for
the fiendish Chinaman.
I raised the white coverlet. The boy, fully dressed,
lay with his arms crossed upon his breast. I discerned the mark
of previous injections as, charging the syringe from the phial,
I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him.
I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have
known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through
the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the grayed face with the olive
tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me,
was restoring the dead to life.
But such was not the purpose of my visit. I was come to remove from
the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to him.
The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be broken.
My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.
The peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of her--
which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.
In a few moments all will be well with him."
The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to open.
The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed inconceivable
that all about us was the discordant activity of the commercial East End.
Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive; it began positively
to appall me.
Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared
beside me. "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"
"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of Aziz.
I peered around the shadowy walls. Tall glass cases there were,
shelves and niches: where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes
and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore,
the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science--the visible
evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence. Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.
Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories,
wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein
he isolated the bacilli of unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound
volumes for a glimpse at which (had they known of their contents)
the great men of Harley Street would have given a fortune--no trace remained.
The silken cushions; the inlaid tables; all were gone.
The room was stripped, dismantled. Had Fu-Manchu fled?
The silence assumed a new significance. His dacoits and kindred
ministers of death all must have fled, too.
"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.
"You promised to aid us to capture him--to send us a message--
and you have delayed until--"
"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.
"Oh! is he not reviving slowly? Are you sure you have
made no mistake?"
Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.
I again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my
busy professional career.
As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--
which were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's
eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly
spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith.
I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
"My promise is fulfilled!" I said. "You are free!
Now for Fu-Manchu! But first let us admit the police to this house;
there is something uncanny in its stillness."
"No," she replied. "First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety.
Will you carry him?"
She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written
awe and wonder.
The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through
the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom.
Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly. He turned to Karamaneh.
"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly. "We have done our part;
it remains for you to do yours."
"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged. "HE is near us--
and, oh, God, I fear him so!"
"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--
but from the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that,
her brother safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.
Those glances sent my blood dancing; for Karamaneh was
an Eastern jewel which any man of flesh and blood must
have coveted had he known it to lie within his reach.
Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once,
I had known the desire to explore.
"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not enter.
Even as he is, I fear him."
Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary.
Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart. Though we were two, and help
was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who ever came
out of the East.
It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door,
to which Karamaneh had pointed. Then, upon looking into the dim place beyond,
all else save what it held was forgotten.
We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining
in a corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon
a low table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--
was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.
My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him. The lids
veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.
Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.
A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation
of the hushed silence, and the ease with which we had thus far
executed our plan, came to me. The cunning mind was torpid--
lost in a brutish world of dreams.
Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered
the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.
At last we had triumphed.
I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was about
to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium fumes,
when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
Her little hand grasped my arm. She drew Smith and myself back
from the door.
"There is danger there!" she whispered.
"Do not enter that room! The police must reach him in some way--
and drag him out! Do not enter that room!"
The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage flame.
The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her now;
but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet. Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs
and joined us.
"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.
"The divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive,
Dr. Petrie. All is ready now. The launch is just off
the wharf and every side of the place under observation.
Where's our man?"
He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised
his eyebrows interrogatively. The absence of sound--
of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom he was there
to arrest--puzzled him.
Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped
to the draped door. He was a man who drove straight at
his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure.
I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the place
(stripped as it was it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume)
had begun to get a hold upon him. He was anxious to shake it off;
to be up and doing.
He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.
Smith and I perforce followed him. Just within the door
the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which
had spread terror throughout the Eastern and Western world.
Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant
intellect was inert--stupefied.
In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter
a stifled scream. But it came too late.
As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions,
the inlaid table with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls,
the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon
its features--quivered, and shot upward!
So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered,
too late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's
private apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.
A trap had been released beneath our feet.
I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--
of the shock marking the drop. I only remember fighting for my
life against a stifling something which had me by the throat.
I knew that I was being suffocated, but my hands met only
the deathly emptiness.
Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank. I could not cry out.
I was helpless. Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--
could surmise nothing. Then. . .all consciousness ended.
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