The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other Stories Read online

  “There’s an inner office, and a main office beyond which opens right on to the street.”

  “Stand by for anything,” Nayland Smith directed. “If we’re lucky, Fu-Manchu will be in there. If the door is locked, we’ll break it down.”

  The door was not locked. As it swung open, they saw a lighted room.

  “Stay with Pat for a moment, Garfield,” Nayland Smith said tersely. “I want to make sure what’s ahead.”

  He stepped in, followed by Haredale and Elkin. There was no one in the room. But as Pat strained forward to peer in, she saw a long couch illuminated by a tall pedestal lamp which shed a peculiar green light. “This is the room I was in!” she cried out.

  She and Bruce joined Nayland Smith and, “Good God!” Bruce spoke almost in a whisper. “Can it be true?”

  On a table beside the couch a curious object lay gleaming in the rays of the lamp. It was composed of some silver-like metal moulded in the form of two saucers, one inverted above the other and upheld by four squat columns apparently of vulcanite.

  “My model!” Bruce shouted, and sprang forward.

  “One moment, sir!” Inspector Haredale grasped his arm. “It may be booby-trapped. Elkin, make sure there’s no wiring under the table.”

  As the detective dropped to his knees and began searching, Nayland Smith stepped to the door of the main office. It was locked.

  “No wires, sir,” Elkin reported. “All clear.”

  And almost before he had got to his feet Bruce had snatched up the model and was examining it.

  “Bruce!” Pat spoke breathless. “Has it been tampered with?”

  “I assure you, Miss Merton, it has not!” a sibilant, mocking voice replied.

  “Fu-Manchu!” Nayland Smith snapped. “He’s in the next room. Come on, Haredale. We have him!” He fired three revolver shots in quick order. It was the signal for the raid.

  There came a quiet laugh. “Ah, there you are Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Before you start the raiding party, I have a few words to say. I assume that you are there, Mr Garfield? I could not resist the temptation of telling you myself that you have far to go in the field of gravity. After inspecting your model, I saw no harm in sharing a few facts. So I laid a trail, with the assistance of your charming friend, Miss Merton, which I felt sure you could easily follow.”

  Bruce, feeling like a man in a dream, said, “Very good of you!”

  The wail of police whistles sounded, the roar of a racing engine, the screech as brakes were jammed on in the near-by street.

  “Your model, Mr Garfield, is elementary,” the strangely sinister voice went on. “But I was interested to examine it. You have advanced only a short way in the science of anti-gravity. But you are on the right route. Listen.” The sibilant voice droned on as Dr Fu-Manchu became more explicit. Bruce listened, fascinated and rapidly made notes. Finally the voice concluded with this astonishing revelation.

  “You may recall the sensation once created by the appearance of so-called flying saucers? Some of these—but not all—were test flights of my anti-gravity machine, which I have since perfected. The others, I assume, were from distant planets.”

  The door of the outer office was being battered down. A voice shouted, “Inspector Haredale! Are you there?”

  “You may call off your raiders,” the calm voice continued. “As I know you have already realised—I am not in the other office. I am fifty miles away. When you opened the door of the room in which you stand, you connected me with an amplifying device on a shortwave receiver, which, if you are patient, you may find in the main office. I installed it some time ago to enable me to give orders to subordinates assembled there.”

  A crash announced the collapse of the street door. Men could be heard running down the stairs from the entrance on the roof. Pat was trembling. There were tears in her voice when she turned to Bruce, who was holding the model. “Bruce, darling, is it true? Have you failed?”

  Bruce put the model down, hugged Pat—and laughed. “This is the first model I ever made, and I should have hated to lose it. I suppose I feel about it the way a sculptor feels about a rough clay study for a statue. But it doesn’t tell Fu-Manchu a thing. What’s more, his boastfulness has made him tell me more than I think he meant to. But no one—not even you Pat—knows how far I have gone since that first model. Dr Fu-Manchu isn’t the only man who has solved the riddle of gravity. The other saucers he mentioned don’t come from outer space. And so he’s in for a surprise. One of the greatest firms in the world has financed, and is now flight-testing, my own anti-gravity machine. That is the real secret of the flying saucers!”

  NIGHTMARE HOUSE

  “That’s Low Fennel, sir.”

  My guide clambered out of the ditch, the withdrawing of his boots from the soupy mire involving an effort marked by successive reports like muffled pistol shots. Old Ord, my expert in the topography and lore of this uninviting stretch of Cornish lowland, reached me a gnarled paw and assisted me to the top of the small weedy hummock which gave us something more solid underfoot than the mud-porridge through which we had been wading for the last hour.

  He pointed out an agglomeration of roofs, visible beyond the deep notch in the skyline made by the sides of the broad gully in which we were standing. I saw the heavy turrets of a Norman structure which seemed to constitute a left wing of a straggling house, and the more graceful corniced roof of a lower structure of later and more livable style (Jacobean, I judged) and this distant and restricted view of the House of the Drurocks was cut off here. There is a further wing of the place, modern brick enclosing plumbing and wiring of our century, but this part of the abode I came to know only later, when we got to the heart of that horror which hung in the air of those rooms, and most particularly the apartments of Margery, wife of Henry Drurock, major of the Cornish Guards, retired.

  I looked and waited for John Ord’s inevitable gloomy tale. The old fellow had some fearsome legend to fit every landmark, and his manner in pointing out the house in Low Fennel warned me that I was in for another number from my dour companion’s repertory of the grey and grisly local lore.

  “When the Drurocks die, their bodies don’t die like other men’s,” began old Ord, and waited for me to react to the staggering and fanciful statement, which I did with the proper grimace of interest and awe.

  “It’s true,” protested the old peasant. He lowered his voice. “Four generations of ‘em were dug up when they sold the slope south of the church and those that saw them while they were above ground tell that they were as whole as when they were buried.”

  “And how is the phenomenon explained?” I asked, keeping levity out of my tone.

  Old Ord looked at me sharply, but was either reassured by my blank expression or so well launched upon his tale that he could not stop.

  “The brimstone preserves ’em,” he said, hollowly. “Their house is built over a hole that goes straight down, forever and forever, and they breathe the fumes, sleeping and waking, all their lives.”

  “In short,” I commented, “they’re just devils without tails and they have their own private stairway down to Hades.”

  “Don’t laugh,” beseeched the credulous old gossip.

  I scolded him mildly.

  “After all, you live off the Drurocks one way or another, every blessed soul of you around here. It isn’t good form or good policy for you to be telling a stranger that your landlord is—what? A ghoul sitting on the mouth of a chimney of the inferno, I gather.”

  Ord shook his head. “Nevertheless, if you meet him sir, if you go into his house and eat at his table, let me tell you, don’t face him when you talk to him. Stay at his side and don’t let him breathe on you.”

  Idly, I plied the gaffer with further questions, but some flavour of irreverence about my response to his tale shut him up. He became obstinately dumb, and finally set me in my place by setting himself in his—a paid guide to a foolish scientific Londoner whose incredible hobby was the uncomfortable and
unhealthy one of exploring the ditches of the region, day after day, and assembling, in accumulating jars and vials, the ill-smelling fauna and flora of these stagnant pools.

  In the comatose village of Upper Fennel, the inn stood at the head of a single village street, customarily so devoid of any signs of life that it was a distinct shock to find the widow Crowley’s boy clattering toward us as we came out of the fields onto the road. My landlady’s son was running toward us for all he was worth, waving a bit of paper and piping my name. I recognised the fold of a telegraph blank before it was handed to me.

  “The telegram got here before the gentleman,” gasped the boy.

  “What gentleman?” I asked, pausing in the act of opening the message.

  “Him which sent the telegram,” panted the messenger. “He’s in your room now.”

  The explanation scarcely made sense, and I was about to identify what I gathered was a visitor down from London by the simple expedient of opening the telegram when I was saved the trouble by Aubrey Wales himself.

  Though I had not seen my schoolmate in five years, I recognised his voice at once as it called my name. I looked up to see him waving to me from the balcony of the inn. He had not changed much. Aubrey was still the fellow he had been at that period, the patrician among us studious clods, the Greek among us barbarians-—a darling of the gods who carried his gifts so graciously that he inspired no envy. I know of nobody who begrudged him his money; his beauty, his good temper and his luck with women. We were all under his sway as undergraduates and I promptly fell under it again now, as I joined him in the low-ceilinged inn room and opened a bottle of the harsh local ale by way of making him welcome.

  * * *

  I still held the unopened telegram, and I thought I detected a note of constraint or embarrassment in his manner as he referred me to the message.

  “You haven’t looked at my telegram? Then you don’t know what brings me down here,” he said, with a seriousness which marked the end of the interlude of hilarious back-slapping.

  “Anything grave and earnest?” I inquired. “My guess was that you were down here to set up your easel. I guessed wrong?”

  He nodded. I was surprised to find him flushed and tongue-tied.

  “If I had no better excuse for living than the bit of rotten painting I do from time to time, I might as well blow my brains out—if any,” he said, with a bad attempt at lightness. The concealed bitterness was something so novel in him that I probably looked up sharply. He became more embarrassed than ever, a fact which he betrayed by speaking with a sign of irritation.

  “Why don’t you read the telegram?” he demanded, brusquely, and got up to pace the room while I obeyed the hint. I gave the reading due seriousness.

  “Have you met the Drurocks?” read the extraordinary message. “What do you know about him? Is she seen about in public? Is there any gossip? Please learn what you can, but do not reply. Coming at once.—WALES.”

  I put down the sheet and looked up at him.

  “Sounds completely balmy, doesn’t it?” he challenged. “Well, I’m not off my nut. Never more earnest in my life.”

  “In that case—” I began.

  He leaped down my throat. “You have heard something!” he cried. “What? Is he mistreating her? What’s this about their being locked up in that house and all the servants leaving? What do you know? If he’s harmed her, Mac, I tell you I’ll finish him. I’ll cut his throat—with pleasure.”

  The outburst subsided. I think I must have worn the expression of my utter amazement, for he was brought up short.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about!” It was an indictment. He was incredulous. “You mean you haven’t heard about it? I had all London pitying me—and grinning when I wasn’t looking.” He shrugged. “Oh well, I suppose a disappointed lover is a comical object. I didn’t feel comical, though, I can tell you. Of course, if you don’t know what I’m talking about—” He had another one of his sudden changes of mood and subject. “You know, you’re an irritating sort, Mac. You never know or hear anything. Where do you keep yourself? Don’t you even read the papers? The tabloids got hold of it and smeared me with ink. You know the sort of thing. My picture and hers and one of those blurbs hinting scandal: ‘Engagement Mysteriously Broken.’ That sort of thing! I could have wrung her neck at the time, but now, if she’s in trouble—” He trailed off into silence and sent up a thick screen of cigarette smoke.

  I took my opportunity to be heard. “Who’s neck?” I demanded.

  * * *

  The answer was some more of his disconnected and excitable ramblings. But, out of his incoherence came eventually the coherent story, which I had complete before I got him off to bed far after midnight, bribed with a promise that we should look over the house at Low Fennel promptly after breakfast the following morning.

  As a matter of fact, I did have some vague knowledge of his misadventure with a London girl who had gone off to marry some country squire, leaving Wales in the rather awkward predicament of being left waiting at the church. He did not gloss over his own humiliation in telling me of the circumstances. In view of his unheralded arrival in this blighted and inaccessible corner of Cornwall, all in a chivalric ferment and ready on any pretext to slaughter the husband, he did not need to add that he had recovered badly from the love affair and was ready to pick it up again at any sign from the lady.

  She had been Margery Perth, daughter of Capt. Ronald Perth, VC, DSO, etc., etc.—more medals than shillings. Even before she got to be a newspaper darling by reason of her engagement to a London catch and the subsequent sudden marriage to an obscure Cornishman, one saw Margery’s face in the illustrateds. The press snap-shots hardly did her justice, I was soon to discover.

  * * *

  I offended Aubrey by failing to be properly impressed by the origins of his love affair with the girl. It seemed to be the usual sort of thing, a house-party, an afternoon on the river, a walk back to the hall by summer moonlight and there you have it, all tied and delivered, ready for the parson. At that, I suppose a love affair is as good as its best moment, and even Romeo and Juliet must have been a common pair of moonstruck nonentities before they rose to tragedy. Aubrey and Margery had their splendid interlude, as I am ready to testify, so let us gloss over the humdrum beginnings.

  They led up to an engagement in due form, with a public announcement. Then her father took her to the continent. A tour of the casinos was his regular annual custom and he saw no reason why his daughter’s engagement should interfere with his habits. He was that kind of selfish pensioned Britisher, a fellow with his half-pay and a few extra pounds from somewhere and a liking for his ease.

  “They left last June,” Aubrey told me. “I saw Margery down to the boat-train. I’ll swear she had no thought then, but to have the separation over with. It was to be an Autumn wedding. I never heard another word from her until early September, and then it was the news I read in my morning paper: ‘Married: Margery Perth, daughter of Capt. Ronald. Perth—and all the letters—to Maj. Henry Drurock. Maj. and Mrs Drurock will return to England within the month, and to Cornwall to open Low Fennel, where Maj. Drurock has mining interests.”

  He quoted every line of the announcement. You could tell the bit of print had burned into his memory.

  “She wasn’t that sort,” he protested, earnestly. “There must have been something wrong.” He went on in a more subdued manner, as if a bit ashamed of what he was saying. “There were lots of rumours. I don’t say they were anything but rumours, mind. But people came back from Biarritz with stories of cheating in the casino. Her father was an unconscionable gambler, you know, and on his half-pay. Anyway, they talked about his being headed for a French jail and this Drurock fellow buying off the authorities. Melodrama, isn’t it? I daresay untrue, every bit of it. It was just the sort of thing my fool friends might concoct to salve my wounded pride.” He questioned me. “What do you think?”

  “How can I think anything?” I retorte
d. “I only know what you’re telling me. Pretty daughters do marry bounders to keep their daddies in funds. It’s been done. I’ve heard of cases. Perhaps only in books, but it’s been heard of. What then? You say you never heard from her again and here you are in her village. This is Drurock’s land, you know—the village, and everything you see for miles around. Though I wouldn’t give a week’s pay for the whole of it. It’s hopeless terrain. It has no crop but leeches and toads, no climate but a poisonous fog.”

  “Poisonous?” His utterance of the word was a shout. “Did you say ‘poisonous fog’?”

  “Merely a figure of speech,” I hastened to assure him; betraying, I hoped, no sign of my startled recognition of this reiteration, by an apparently sane Londoner, of the notion which obsessed old Ord. “What’s the matter, Aubrey? What about a ‘poisonous fog’?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, hopelessly. “It’s something hellish, but I can’t say what it is.” On the last of his breath, he mumbled: “Poor Margery,” and then leapt to his feet. “We’ve got to do something, Mac. We’ve got to get her out of it. I didn’t know what her letter meant-—poor child. I thought the poison fumes were something she had imagined, some obsession of her unhappiness.”

  “Oh, then you have heard from the lady?” I put in.

  “Indirectly, yes.” He brought out his bill-fold and extracted a written sheet from it. “It’s a letter to her father. The old scoundrel popped off last week. They found him in his room at the club. He had been reading this. Maybe he had enough decency left in him to die of the shock of what’s in the letter, but I doubt it. It was the drinking finished him off. The club people turned over his few effects to his solicitor, who happens to be mine, too. The lawyer had enough sense to be a bit alarmed about Margery’s letter and he thought I might be the proper person to come to in the absence of any relative who would take the trouble to attend the funeral. In short, he turned the letter over to me and I’m asking you now. What do you think?”