The Hand of Fu-Manchu f-3 Page 6

  "And now perhaps you will explain to me the reason for your mysterious behavior?" said I.

  Smith, placing my glass before me, glanced about him to right and left, and having satisfied himself that his words could not be overheard—

  "Petrie," he whispered, "I believe we are spied upon at the New Louvre."

  "What!"

  "There are spies of the Si-Fan—of Fu-Manchu—amongst the hotel servants! We have good reason to believe that Dr. Fu-Manchu at one time was actually in the building, and we have been compelled to draw attention to the state of the electric fitting in our apartments, which enables any one in the corridor above to spy upon us."

  "Then why do you stay?"

  "For a very good reason, Petrie, and the same that prompts me to retain the Tûlun-Nûr box in my own possession rather than to deposit it in the strong-room of my bank."

  "I begin to understand."

  "I trust you do, Petrie; it is fairly obvious. Probably the plan is a perilous one, but I hope, by laying myself open to attack, to apprehend the enemy—perhaps to make an important capture."

  Setting down my glass, I stared in silence at Smith.

  "I will anticipate your remark," he said, smiling dryly. "I am aware that I am not entitled to expose you to these dangers. It is my duty and I must perform it as best I can; you, as a volunteer, are perfectly entitled to withdraw."

  As I continued silently to stare at him, his expression changed; the gray eyes grew less steely, and presently, clapping his hand upon my shoulder in his impulsive way—

  "Petrie!" he cried, "you know I had no intention of hurting your feelings, but in the circumstances it was impossible for me to say less."

  "You have said enough, Smith," I replied shortly. "I beg of you to say no more."

  He gripped my shoulder hard, then plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out the blackened pipe.

  "We see it through together, then, though God knows whither it will lead us."

  "In the first place," I interrupted, "since you have left the chest unguarded——"

  "I locked the door."

  "What is a mere lock where Fu-Manchu is concerned?"

  Nayland Smith laughed almost gaily.

  "Really, Petrie," he cried, "sometimes I cannot believe that you mean me to take you seriously. Inspector Weymouth has engaged the room immediately facing our door, and no one can enter or leave the suite unseen by him."

  "Inspector Weymouth?"

  "Oh! for once he has stooped to a disguise: spectacles, and a muffler which covers his face right up to the tip of his nose. Add to this a prodigious overcoat and an asthmatic cough, and you have a picture of Mr. Jonathan Martin, the occupant of room No. 239."

  I could not repress a smile upon hearing this description.

  "No. 239," continued Smith, "contains two beds, and Mr. Martin's friend will be joining him there this evening."

  Meeting my friend's questioning glance, I nodded comprehendingly.

  "Then what part do I play?"

  "Ostensibly we both leave town this evening," he explained; "but I have a scheme whereby you will be enabled to remain behind. We shall thus have one watcher inside and two out."

  "It seems almost absurd," I said incredulously, "to expect any member of the Yellow group to attempt anything in a huge hotel like the New Louvre, here in the heart of London!"

  Nayland Smith, having lighted his pipe, stretched his arms and stared me straight in the face.

  "Has Fu-Manchu never attempted outrage, murder, in the heart of London before?" he snapped.

  The words were sufficient. Remembering black episodes of the past (one at least of them had occurred not a thousand yards from the very spot upon which we now stood), I knew that I had spoken folly.

  Certain arrangements were made then, including a visit to Scotland Yard; and a plan—though it sounds anomalous—at once elaborate and simple, was put into execution in the dusk of the evening.

  London remained in the grip of fog, and when we passed along the corridor communicating with our apartments, faint streaks of yellow vapor showed in the light of the lamp suspended at the further end. I knew that Nayland Smith suspected the presence of some spying contrivance in our rooms, although I was unable to conjecture how this could have been managed without the connivance of the management. In pursuance of his idea, however, he extinguished the lights a moment before we actually quitted the suite. Just within the door he helped me to remove the somewhat conspicuous check traveling-coat which I wore. With this upon his arm he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

  As the door slammed upon his exit, I heard him cry: "Come along, Petrie! we have barely five minutes to catch our train."

  Detective Carter of New Scotland Yard had joined him at the threshold, and muffled up in the gray traveling-coat was now hurrying with Smith along the corridor and out of the hotel. Carter, in build and features, was not unlike me, and I did not doubt that any one who might be spying upon our movements would be deceived by this device.

  In the darkness of the apartment I stood listening to the retreating footsteps in the corridor. A sense of loneliness and danger assailed me. I knew that Inspector Weymouth was watching and listening from the room immediately opposite; that he held Smith's key; that I could summon him to my assistance, if necessary, in a matter of seconds.

  Yet, contemplating the vigil that lay before me in silence and darkness, I cannot pretend that my frame of mind was buoyant. I could not smoke; I must make no sound.

  As pre-arranged, I cautiously removed my boots, and as cautiously tiptoed across the carpet and seated myself in an arm-chair. I determined there to await the arrival of Mr. Jonathan Martin's friend, which I knew could not now be long delayed.

  The clocks were striking eleven when he arrived, and in the perfect stillness of that upper corridor. I heard the bustle which heralded his approach, heard the rap upon the door opposite, followed by a muffled "Come in" from Weymouth. Then, as the door was opened, I heard the sound of a wheezy cough.

  A strange cracked voice (which, nevertheless, I recognized for Smith's) cried, "Hullo, Martin!—cough no better?"

  Upon that the door was closed again, and as the retreating footsteps of the servant died away, complete silence—that peculiar silence which comes with fog—descended once more upon the upper part of the New Louvre Hotel.

  Chapter 12 THE VISITANT

  That first hour of watching, waiting, and listening in the lonely quietude passed drearily; and with the passage of every quarter— signalized by London's muffled clocks—my mood became increasingly morbid. I peopled the silent rooms opening out of that wherein I sat, with stealthy, murderous figures; my imagination painted hideous yellow faces upon the draperies, twitching yellow hands protruding from this crevice and that. A score of times I started nervously, thinking I heard the pad of bare feet upon the floor behind me, the suppressed breathing of some deathly approach.

  Since nothing occurred to justify these tremors, this apprehensive mood passed; I realized that I was growing cramped and stiff, that unconsciously I had been sitting with my muscles nervously tensed. The window was open a foot or so at the top and the blind was drawn; but so accustomed were my eyes now to peering through the darkness, that I could plainly discern the yellow oblong of the window, and though very vaguely, some of the appointments of the room—the Chesterfield against one wall, the lamp-shade above my head, the table with the Tûlun-Nûr box upon it.

  There was fog in the room, and it was growing damply chill, for we had extinguished the electric heater some hours before. Very few sounds penetrated from outside. Twice or perhaps thrice people passed along the corridor, going to their rooms; but, as I knew, the greater number of the rooms along that corridor were unoccupied.

  From the Embankment far below me, and from the river, faint noises came at long intervals it is true; the muffled hooting of motors, and yet fainter ringing of bells. Fog signals boomed distantly, and train whistles shrieked, remote and
unreal. I determined to enter my bedroom, and, risking any sound which I might make, to lie down upon the bed.

  I rose carefully and carried this plan into execution. I would have given much for a smoke, although my throat was parched; and almost any drink would have been nectar. But although my hopes (or my fears) of an intruder had left me, I determined to stick to the rules of the game as laid down. Therefore I neither smoked nor drank, but carefully extended my weary limbs upon the coverlet, and telling myself that I could guard our strange treasure as well from there as from elsewhere … slipped off into a profound sleep.

  Nothing approaching in acute and sustained horror to the moment when next I opened my eyes exists in all my memories of those days.

  In the first place I was aroused by the shaking of the bed. It was quivering beneath me as though an earthquake disturbed the very foundations of the building. I sprang upright and into full consciousness of my lapse… . My hands clutching the coverlet on either side of me, I sat staring, staring, staring … at that which peered at me over the foot of the bed.

  I knew that I had slept at my post; I was convinced that I was now widely awake; yet I dared not admit to myself that what I saw was other than a product of my imagination. I dared not admit the physical quivering of the bed, for I could not, with sanity, believe its cause to be anything human. But what I saw, yet could not credit seeing, was this:

  A ghostly white face, which seemed to glisten in some faint reflected light from the sitting-room beyond, peered over the bedrail; gibbered at me demoniacally. With quivering hands this night-mare horror, which had intruded where I believed human intrusion to be all but impossible, clutched the bed-posts so that the frame of the structure shook and faintly rattled… .

  My heart leapt wildly in my breast, then seemed to suspend its pulsations and to grow icily cold. My whole body became chilled horrifically. My scalp tingled: I felt that I must either cry out or become stark, raving mad!

  For this clammily white face, those staring eyes, that wordless gibbering, and the shaking, shaking, shaking of the bed in the clutch of the nameless visitant—prevailed, refused to disperse like the evil dream I had hoped it all to be; manifested itself, indubitably, as something tangible—objective… .

  Outraged reason deprived me of coherent speech. Past the clammy white face I could see the sitting-room illuminated by a faint light; I could even see the Tûlun-Nûr box upon the table immediately opposite the door.

  The thing which shook the bed was actual, existent—to be counted with!

  Further and further I drew myself away from it, until I crouched close up against the head of the bed. Then, as the thing reeled aside, and— merciful Heaven!—made as if to come around and approach me yet closer, I uttered a hoarse cry and hurled myself out upon the floor and on the side remote from that pallid horror which I thought was pursuing me.

  I heard a dull thud … and the thing disappeared from my view, yet— and remembering the supreme terror of that visitation I am not ashamed to confess it—I dared not move from the spot upon which I stood, I dared not make to pass that which lay between me and the door.

  "Smith!" I cried, but my voice was little more than a hoarse whisper— "Smith! Weymouth!"

  The words became clearer and louder as I proceeded, so that the last— "Weymouth!"—was uttered in a sort of falsetto scream.

  A door burst open upon the other side of the corridor. A key was inserted in the lock of the door. Into the dimly lighted arch which divided the bed-room from the sitting-room, sprang the figure of Nayland Smith!

  "Petrie! Petrie!" he called—and I saw him standing there looking from left to right.

  Then, ere I could reply, he turned, and his gaze fell upon whatever lay upon the floor at the foot of the bed.

  "My God!" he whispered—and sprang into the room.

  "Smith! Smith!" I cried, "what is it? what is it?"

  He turned in a flash, as Weymouth entered at his heels, saw me, and fell back a step; then looked again down at the floor.

  "God's mercy!" he whispered, "I thought it was you—I thought it was you!"

  Trembling violently, my mind a feverish chaos, I moved to the foot of the bed and looked down at what lay there.

  "Turn up the light!" snapped Smith.

  Weymouth reached for the switch, and the room became illuminated suddenly.

  Prone upon the carpet, hands outstretched and nails dug deeply into the pile of the fabric, lay a dark-haired man having his head twisted sideways so that the face showed a ghastly pallid profile against the rich colorings upon which it rested. He wore no coat, but a sort of dark gray shirt and black trousers. To add to the incongruity of his attire, his feet were clad in drab-colored shoes, rubber-soled.

  I stood, one hand raised to my head, looking down upon him, and gradually regaining control of myself. Weymouth, perceiving something of my condition, silently passed his flask to me; and I gladly availed myself of this.

  "How in Heaven's name did he get in?" I whispered.

  "How, indeed!" said Weymouth, staring about him with wondering eyes.

  Both he and Smith had discarded their disguises; and, a bewildered trio, we stood looking down upon the man at our feet. Suddenly Smith dropped to his knees and turned him flat upon his back. Composure was nearly restored to me, and I knelt upon the other side of the white-faced creature whose presence there seemed so utterly outside the realm of possibility, and examined him with a consuming and fearful interest; for it was palpable that, if not already dead, he was dying rapidly.

  He was a slightly built man, and the first discovery that I made was a curious one. What I had mistaken for dark hair was a wig! The short black mustache which he wore was also factitious.

  "Look at this!" I cried.

  "I am looking," snapped Smith.

  He suddenly stood up, and entering the room beyond, turned on the light there. I saw him staring at the Tûlun-Nûr box, and I knew what had been in his mind. But the box, undisturbed, stood upon the table as we had left it. I saw Smith tugging irritably at the lobe of his ear, and staring from the box towards the man beside whom I knelt.

  "For God's sake, what does it man?" said Inspector Weymouth in a voice hushed with wonder. "How did he get in? What did he come for?—and what has happened to him?"

  "As to what has happened to him," I replied, "unfortunately I cannot tell you. I only know that unless something can be done his end is not far off."

  "Shall we lay him on the bed?"

  I nodded, and together we raised the slight figure and placed it upon the bed where so recently I had lain.

  As we did so, the man suddenly opened his eyes, which were glazed with delirium. He tore himself from our grip, sat bolt upright, and holding his hands, fingers outstretched, before his face, stared at them frenziedly.

  "The golden pomegranates!" he shrieked, and a slight froth appeared on his blanched lips. "The golden pomegranates!"

  He laughed madly, and fell back inert.

  "He's dead!" whispered Weymouth; "he's dead!"

  Hard upon his words came a cry from Smith:

  "Quick! Petrie!—Weymouth!"

  Chapter 13 THE ROOM BELOW

  I ran into the sitting-room, to discover Nayland Smith craning out of the now widely opened window. The blind had been drawn up, I did not know by whom; and, leaning out beside my friend, I was in time to perceive some bright object moving down the gray stone wall. Almost instantly it disappeared from sight in the yellow banks below.

  Smith leapt around in a whirl of excitement.

  "Come in, Petrie!" he cried, seizing my arm. "You remain here, Weymouth; don't leave these rooms whatever happens!"

  We ran out into the corridor. For my own part I had not the vaguest idea what we were about. My mind was not yet fully recovered from the frightful shock which it had sustained; and the strange words of the dying man—"the golden pomegranates"—had increased my mental confusion. Smith apparently had not heard them, for he remained grimly silent, a
s side by side we raced down the marble stairs to the corridor immediately below our own.

  Although, amid the hideous turmoil to which I had awakened, I had noted nothing of the hour, evidently the night was far advanced. Not a soul was to be seen from end to end of the vast corridor in which we stood … until on the right-hand side and about half-way along, a door opened and a woman came out hurriedly, carrying a small hand-bag.

  She wore a veil, so that her features were but vaguely distinguished, but her every movement was agitated; and this agitation perceptibly increased when, turning, she perceived the two of us bearing down upon her.

  Nayland Smith, who had been audibly counting the doors along the corridor as we passed them, seized the woman's arm without ceremony, and pulled her into the apartment she had been on the point of quitting, closing the door behind us as we entered.

  "Smith!" I began, "for Heaven's sake what are you about?"

  "You shall see, Petrie!" he snapped.

  He released the woman's arm, and pointing to an arm-chair near by—

  "Be seated," he said sternly.

  Speechless with amazement, I stood, with my back to the door, watching this singular scene. Our captive, who wore a smart walking costume and whose appearance was indicative of elegance and culture, so far had uttered no word of protest, no cry.

  Now, whilst Smith stood rigidly pointing to the chair, she seated herself with something very like composure and placed the leather bag upon the floor beside her. The room in which I found myself was one of a suite almost identical with our own, but from what I had gathered in a hasty glance around, it bore no signs of recent tenancy. The window was widely opened, and upon the floor lay a strange-looking contrivance apparently made of aluminum. A large grip, open, stood beside it, and from this some portions of a black coat and other garments protruded.

  "Now, madame," said Nayland Smith, "will you be good enough to raise your veil?"