Works of Sax Rohmer Read online

  The Collected Works of

  SAX ROHMER

  (1883-1959))

  Contents

  The Dr. Fu-Manchu Series

  The Novels

  THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

  THE SINS OF SÉVERAC BABLON

  THE YELLOW CLAW

  THE DEVIL DOCTOR

  THE SI-FAN MYSTERIES

  BROOD OF THE WITCH-QUEEN

  THE ORCHARD OF TEARS

  THE QUEST OF THE SACRED SLIPPER

  DOPE: A STORY OF CHINATOWN AND THE DRUG TRAFFIC

  THE GOLDEN SCORPION

  THE GREEN EYES OF BST

  BAT-WING

  FIRE-TONGUE

  DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU

  THE MASK OF FU MANCHU

  FU MANCHU’S BRIDE

  THE TRAIL OF FU MANCHU

  PRESIDENT FU MANCHU

  THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU

  THE ISLAND OF FU MANCHU

  SEVEN SINS

  SHADOW OF FU MANCHU

  RE-ENTER FU MANCHU

  EMPEROR FU MANCHU

  The Short Story Collections

  TALES OF SECRET EGYPT

  THE DREAM DETECTIVE, BEING SOME ACCOUNT OF THE METHODS OF MORIS KLAW

  THE HAUNTING OF LOW FENNEL

  TALES OF CHINATOWN

  FU MANCHU STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Non-Fiction

  THE ROMANCE OF SORCERY

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2016

  Version 1

  The Collected Works of

  SAX ROHMER

  By Delphi Classics, 2016

  COPYRIGHT

  Collected Works of Sax Rohmer

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2016.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78656 041 4

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Dr. Fu-Manchu Series

  The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu; Or, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (1913)

  The Devil Doctor; Or, The Return of Dr Fu-Manchu (1916)

  The Si-Fan Mysteries; Or, The Hand of Fu Manchu (1917)

  Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931)

  The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

  The Bride of Fu Manchu; Or, Fu Manchu’s Bride (1933)

  The Trail of Fu Manchu (1934)

  President Fu Manchu (1936)

  The Drums of Fu Manchu (1939)

  The Island of Fu Manchu (1941)

  The Shadow of Fu Manchu (1948)

  Re-Enter: Dr. Fu Manchu (1957)

  Emperor Fu Manchu (1959)

  Fu Manchu Stories (1952-59) — four short stories published in various magazines

  The Novels

  View of the city of Birmingham from the Lickey Hills — Arthur Ward (known by the pen name of Sax Rohmer) was born to a Birmingham working-class family in 1881.

  Drawing of Birmingham from 1886 showing the Council House, Town Hall and Chamberlain Memorial

  THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

  OR, THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU MANCHU

  This book was first published in 1913 and it is the first of the very popular Fu Manchu tales, originally a collection of short stories first published the previous year. The title The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu was used when the book was published in America. It found success very quickly on both sides of the Atlantic and more stories followed in the next few years. We witness the adventures through the eyes of Dr Petrie, which allows Rohmer to write in his favoured way, in the first person.

  Dr Fu Manchu was part of a stable of enduring characters, some of whom continue through the whole series; they are all colourful and rather theatrical, as befitted an author that wrote sketches and gags for music hall artistes and also ghost wrote the autobiography (1911) of the famous variety comedian, Little Tich. Even the persona of Sax Rohmer was a creation – the real identity, Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, a working class man of Irish immigrant parentage, grew up in Birmingham and worked partly as a civil servant before assuming the “character” of Rohmer and taking up writing as a career. Fu Manchu has had a huge impact on popular culture. Created at a time when much of the outside world was a rather unsettling mystery to the average European (and that despite widespread Imperialism), the evil oriental both repelled and fascinated his audience. Fu Manchu was the model for many a copy-cat character and his “descendants” can be said to include Ming the Merciless (Flash Gordon), the Celestial Toymker from Dr Who, the Yellow Claw in the Marvel Comics stories, Dr No from James Bond and many others. If there is a parallel universe somewhere inhabited by literary characters, no doubt the “real” Fu Manchu would be quietly satisfied with his enduring and widespread influence and power to invoke fear.

  Fu Manchu is a criminal mastermind, (part of the “Yellow Peril” as it was known in less enlightened times at the beginning of the twentieth century) and operates in the Far East; however, he brings his gang of minders and thugs to England and it is here that this drama is played out. He is an expert at poisons, an interesting choice of weapon for him to be given as it was widely regarded as a “woman’s weapon”, requiring little physical strength and decidedly covert, which would enhance the opinion of the reader that Fu Manchu is a sneaking and underhand villain, lacking in a true British sense of fair play even in villainy. Nayland Smith, one of the heroes of this book, sums him up thus:

  “the most malign and formidable personality existing in the known world today. He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric. He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great university could teach him. He also is an adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach. He has the brains of any three men of genius.... he is a mental giant.”

  We are also given a detailed physical description of Fu Manchu, which must have been regarded as rich material to the movie makers that later filmed the stories for the big screen:

  “Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with... a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government.... Imagine t
hat awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”

  Note that there is no mention in this detailed word portrait of the iconic Fu Manchu long, string-like moustache; Rohmer never states that his character had any facial hair. This was added later by illustrators and in particular, costumiers in movie studios.

  Hot on Fu Manchu’s heels are Dr Petrie and Sir Denis Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard; it is the latter, having travelled from his work in Burma (one of Fu Manchu’s centres of operation) that alerts Petrie to the threat and asks for his friend’s confidential assistance. Shades of Holmes and Watson spring to mind with this handy combination of gifted detective and knowledgeable and loyal doctor.

  We are thrown straight into a brisk and breezy narrative from the beginning with this story, as Nayland Smith makes a late night visit to Petrie to tell him of his new secret “roving” mission, to tail and undermine the “fiend” who is Fu Manchu. In all seriousness, Nayland Smith tells Petrie the very survival of the “white race” depends on the success of his mission, not to mention certain assassination targets chosen by Fu Manchu. They are just too late to save Sir Crichton Davey, the first target they attempt to warn; alongside Petrie as narrator we accompany Nayland Smith as he conducts a lengthy forensic examination of the dead man’s premises and body, concluding to Petrie’s astonishment that the death was caused by an exotic and to him, unknown method, the vital clue being provided by a lovely but mysterious young Arab woman, who appears at the crime scene. This forensic detail would have appealed greatly to the readership of the day, accustomed as they were to the likes of Holmes and other literary detectives – it was the early twentieth-century equivalent of “police procedurals” published today.

  The sense of menace is intensified by the death of a brave and decent undercover police officer, whose body is dragged from the River Thames and Petrie and Naylor encounter the captivating young woman again at the police officer’s lodgings; it transpires that she is the property of Fu Manchu. The action now moves to the opium dens of London, which our two heroes enter in order to further their enquiries, disguised as paying customers. “Don’t inhale”, Naylor Smith sternly orders Petrie. Before too long Petrie has come face to face with the infamous Fu Manchu and then is fighting for his life in the Thames. He is saved, but by now is well and truly embroiled in the pursuit of organised crime.

  Following a dangerous encounter at a country house, Naylor Smith and Petrie are kidnapped by Fu Manchu’s thugs, but help comes from an unexpected source – the beautiful slave, Karamaneh, whom Petrie has met before and with whom he is a little in love. She escapes with them, but then disappears into the night, apparently unhappy with her enslavement to the master criminal, but too afraid to leave him. The two heroes can now resume their race against the clock to warn Fu Manchu’s potential victims and save Western society…

  Those who read the story on publication would have no doubt had a frisson of thrill and fear from the author’s use of words like triad, dacoits and thugees, basically exotic terms for career criminals and assassins, but at the time they would have represented to a less well informed public a faceless and hidden threat, increased all the more being from a different ethnic background. The pace of the story is almost breathless at times, and this gives the action scenes a great sense of immediacy. The usual word of caution must be added about representations of non-British accents and cultures, and the modern reader has to suspend indignation in order to get the most out of the stories. No wonder, however, that the book was an immediate success – it is a spirited adventure story that showed great promise for any sequels.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  ‘The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu’, the 1929 film starring Warner Oland as Dr. Fu Manchu, was the first Fu Manchu film of the talkie era.

  CHAPTER I

  “A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor.”

  From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.

  “Ten-thirty!” I said. “A late visitor. Show him up, if you please.”

  I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:

  “Good old Petrie! Didn’t expect me, I’ll swear!”

  It was Nayland Smith — whom I had thought to be in Burma!

  “Smith,” I said, and gripped his hands hard, “this is a delightful surprise! Whatever — however—”

  “Excuse me, Petrie!” he broke in. “Don’t put it down to the sun!” And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

  I was too surprised to speak.

  “No doubt you will think me mad,” he continued, and, dimly, I could see him at the window, peering out into the road, “but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah, nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time.” And, stepping back to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.

  “Mysterious enough for you?” he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS. “A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy — what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest.”

  I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions. His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I got out the whisky and siphon, saying:

  “You have taken your leave early?”

  “I am not on leave,” he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. “I am on duty.”

  “On duty!” I exclaimed. “What, are you moved to London or something?”

  “I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn’t rest with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow.”

  There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass, its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes. “Out with it!” I said. “What is it all about?”

  Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an inch or so around.

  “Ever seen one like it?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” I confessed. “It appears to have been deeply cauterized.”

  “Right! Very deeply!” he rapped. “A barb steeped in the venom of a hamadryad went in there!”

  A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.

  “There’s only one treatment,” he continued, rolling his sleeve down again, “and that’s with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge. I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated. Here’s the point. It was not an accident!”

  “What do you mean?”

  �
�I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon the tracks of the man who extracted that venom — patiently, drop by drop — from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused it to be shot at me.”

  “What fiend is this?”

  “A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe — though I pray I may be wrong — that its survival depends largely upon the success of my mission.”

  To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what to think, what to believe.

  “I am wasting precious time!” he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass, he stood up. “I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma. I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time — it’s imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?”

  I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties were not onerous.

  “Good man!” he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. “We start now.”

  “What, to-night?”

  “To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches. But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately. I must warn Sir Crichton Davey.”

  “Sir Crichton Davey — of the India—”