The Drums of Fu Manchu f-9 Page 6

“I can only suppose,” I said, and the sound of my own voice muffled in the little room quite startled me, “that much learning has made you mad. What have you or your cause—if you have a cause—to gain by this indiscriminate murder? Let me draw your attention to the state of China, to which country I believe you belong. There is room there for your particular kind of activity.”

  This speech had enabled me somewhat to regain control of myself, but in the silence that followed I wondered how it would be accepted.

  “My particular activities, Mr. Kerrigan, are at the moment directed to the correction of certain undesirable menaces to China. You are thinking of the armies who clash and vainly stagger to and fro in my country. I assure you that the real danger to China lies not within her borders, but outside. The surgeon seeks below the surface. Muscles are useless without nerves and brain. My concern is with nerves and brain. However, these details cannot interest you, as I fear you will not be in a position to impart them to Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Had your talents been outstanding I might have employed you—but they are not; therefore I have no use for you.”

  Following those softly spoken words came a high, guttural order.

  A cloth was whipped over my mouth and secured before I fully realized what had happened. In less time than it takes to write of it I was lashed wrist and ankle by some invisible expert stationed behind me! The curved blade of the knife I could see out of the corner of my left eye.

  Dr Fu Manchu never stirred a muscle.

  I longed to cry out but could not. Another guttural order—and the blade disappeared. He who had held the knife stepped forward, and I saw a thick-set, yellow-faced man dressed in an ill-fitting blue suit. Immediately I recognized him for one of the pair who had attacked me on the night that I first saw and spoke to Ardatha. Although short of stature he was immensely powerful, and without ceremony he stooped, hoisted me upon his shoulder and carried me like a sack from the room!

  My last impression was one of that dreadful, motionless figure upon the settee . . .

  Down the stairs I was borne, helpless as a trussed chicken. Considering my weight it was an astonishing feat on the part of the man who performed it. Past the rush curtain of the bar we went and along the passage. Dread of my impending death was almost swamped by loathing of the blood-lustful creature who carried me. Another of Dr Fu Manchu’s evil-faced thugs held a door open, and a damp smell, the ringing sound of footsteps on stone paving, told me that I was being taken down into the cellars. Something like a scream arose to my lips—but I stifled it, for I knew, not for the first time since I had met the Chinese doctor, stark terror’s icy hand.

  From those cellars I should never come out alive.

  In The Wine Cellars

  The cellars of the Monks’ Arms were surprisingly equipped. They reminded me of those of a well-known speak-easy in New York which I had once explored. Beyond the cellar proper, the contents of which looked innocent enough, other cellars, altogether more extensive, lay concealed. By means of manipulating hidden locks seemingly solid walls could be opened.

  In the light of a hurricane lamp carried by one of the Thugs, I saw casks of brandy and bins of French wines which certainly were never intended for the clientele of the Monks’ Arms. As Sergeant Weldon had more than hinted, this ancient inn was a smugglers’ base. Its subterranean ramifications suggested that at some time the building above had been larger.

  At what I judged to be the end of the labyrinth, I was carried up several well-worn steps into a long, rectangular room. I noticed a stout door set in the thickness of the wall, and then I was dumped unceremoniously upon the paving stones. The place contained nothing but lumber: broken fishing tackle, nets, empty casks, old furniture and similar odds and ends. Among these was the dismantled frame of a heavy iron bedstead. Hauling out what had been the headpiece—it had cross bars strong enough for a prison window—the two yellow men laid it on the floor and stretched me upon it.

  From first to last they worked in silence.

  Deftly they lashed me to the rusty bars until even slight movement became almost impossible and the pain was all I could endure. At first their purpose remained mysterious, then with a new pang of terror I recognized it . . .

  Dr Fu Manchu was determined that a second body should not be found in the neighborhood of the Monks’ Arms. Secured to the heavy iron framework I was to be taken out and thrown into the river!

  When at last the two had completed their task and one, standing up, raised the lantern from the floor, the horror of the fate which I felt was upon me reached such a climax that again I stifled a desire to scream for help. A sound, faint but just discernible, which came through a grating up in one corner of the wall, told me that the stream beside which the inn was built passed directly outside the door.

  Perhaps I had little cause for it, but when the yellow men turned, and he carrying the lantern leading, went back by the way they had come, I experienced such a revulsion from despair to almost exultant optimism that I cannot hope to describe it.

  I was still alive! My absence could not fail to result in a search party being sent out. My chances might be poor but my position was no longer desperate!

  Why had I been left there?

  Dr Fu Manchu’s words allowed no room for doubt regarding his intention. Why then this delay? And—an even greater mystery—what had brought him to the Monks’ Arms and why did he linger? Overriding my own peril, topping everything, was the maddening knowledge that if I could only communicate what I knew to Nayland Smith, it might alter the immediate history of the world.

  Audacity is an outstanding characteristic of all great criminals, and that Dr Fu Manchu should calmly recline in that room upstairs while the district all about him was being combed for the murderer of Sergeant Hythe, illustrated the fact that he possessed it in full measure. The clue was perhaps to be found in his words that something had seriously disarranged his plans. I wondered feverishly if happy chance would lead Nayland Smith to the inn. Even so, and the thought made me groan, he would probably go away again never suspecting what the place contained!

  Now came an answer to one of my questions—an answer which sent a new chill through my veins.

  Dimly I heard the sound of oars. I knew that a boat was being pulled along the creek in the direction of the oak door close to which my head rested.

  Of course I was to be transported to some spot where the water was deep, and thrown in there!

  I listened eagerly, fearfully, to the creak of the nearing oars; and when I knew that the invisible boat had reached those steps which I divined to be beyond the door, I gave myself up for lost. But my calculations were at fault.

  The boat passed on.

  I could tell from the sound that an oar had been reversed and was being used as a punt pole. The swish of the rushes against the side of the craft was clearly discernible. I doubted if the little stream was navigable far above that point, but as those ominous sounds died away I knew at least that I had had a second reprieve.

  Breathing was difficult because of the bandage over my mouth, and my heart was beating madly. Through the grating a sound reached me—that bumping and scraping which tells of someone entering or leaving a boat. Then I knew that poling had recommenced, but never once did I hear a human voice.

  The boat was coming back. I heard the faint rattle of an oar set in a rowlock, the drip of water from the blade; but until the rower had crept past outside the oak door I doubt if I breathed again.

  What did it all mean?

  Someone, I reasoned, had been brought from the inn and was being rowed downstream to the larger river of which it was a tributary.

  Dr Fu Manchu!

  Yes, it must be. The monstrous Chinaman, having lain within the grasp of the law, almost under the very nose of Nayland Smith, was escaping!

  I tugged impotently at my lashings, but the pain I suffered soon checked my struggles. In fact this, with the damp silence of the cellar and the difficulty which I experienced in breathing, no
w threatened to overcome me. Clenching my teeth, I fought against the weakness and lay still.

  How long I lay it is impossible to say. Those moments of mental and physical agony seemed to stretch out each into an eternity, and then . . .

  I heard the boat returning.

  This time there could be no doubt. Dr Fu Manchu had been smuggled away—doubtless to some larger craft which awaited him—and they were returning to deal with me.

  Yes, I was right. I heard the boat grating against the stone steps, a stumbling movement and a key being inserted in the lock above and behind me. The door, which opened outward, was flung back. A draught of keen air swept into the cellar.

  Shadowy, looking like great apes, the yellow men entered. One at my head and one at my feet, they lifted the iron framework to which I was lashed. I have an idea that I muttered a sort of prayer, but of this I cannot be certain, for there came an interruption so unexpected, so overwhelming, that I must have given way to my mental and physical agony. I remember little more.

  A series of loud splashes, as though a number of swimmers had plunged into the water—the bumping and rolling of a boat—a rush of footsteps—a glare of light . . .

  Finally, a voice—the voice of Nayland Smith:

  “In you go, Gallaho! Don’t hesitate to shoot!”

  The Monks’Arms (Concluded)

  “All right, Kerrigan? Feeling better?”

  I stared around me. I was lying on a sofa in a stuffy little sitting room which a smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke told me to be somewhere at the back of the bar of the Monks’ Arms. I sat up and finished what remained of a glass of brandy which Smith was holding to my lips.

  “Gad!” I muttered, “every muscle in my body will be stiff for twenty-four hours. It was mostly the pain that did it. Smith.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he returned drily, and looking at his blanched face as he stood beside me, I could read a deep anger in his eyes. “We were only just in time.”

  “Doctor FuManchu?”

  He snapped his fingers irritably.

  “A motor launch had crept up in the mist and his yellow demons got him aboard, only a matter of minutes before our arrival. Take it easy, Kerrigan; you can tell us your story later. I found this in your pocket, so I gather that you had succeeded where we failed.” He held up the little notebook which I had found in the eel fisher’s hut. “It tells the story of poor Hythe’s last hours. It was traces of oil on the water that gave him the clue. He selected a hiding place which evidently you found, and watched from some point nearby. He saw the motor craft arrive. It was met by a boat which belongs to the inn. Someone was rowed ashore. He seems to have waded or swum out to the deserted motor launch, and apparently he made a curious discovery—”

  “He did.” I stood up gingerly, to test my leg muscles. “He found a mandarin’s cap.”

  “Good for you, Kerrigan. So he reports in his notes. He took this back to his hiding place as some evidence in case his quarry should escape him. His last entry says that the boat could only have been making for the Monks’ Arms. The rest we have to surmise, but I think it is fairly easy.”

  He dropped the notebook back into his pocket.

  “I assume that he crept up to the inn to learn the identity of the new arrival or arrivals. Having satisfied himself in some way, he then set out across country for the A.A. call box. Unfortunately he had been seen—and someone was following him. At a stone bridge which spans the stream the follower overtook him. Yes—I have found the bloodstains. As he received the fatal stroke he toppled over the parapet. A slow current carried his body down to the point at which it was found.”

  He ceased speaking and stood staring at me in a curious way. I was seated on the sofa, rubbing my aching leg muscles.

  “There’s one thing, Smith,” I said, “for which I owe thanks to heaven. Whatever brought you to my rescue in the nick of time?”

  “I was about to mention that,” he snapped. “Someone called up the police (I had just returned from my visit to the scene of the crime) begging us to set out without a moment’s delay—not for the inn itself, but for a stone boathouse which lies twenty yards further down the creek. We had come provided to break the door in, but as luck would have it, Constable Weldon, who was leading us, detected the sound made by those Thugs in the boat. You know the rest.”

  He continued to stare at me and I at him.

  “Was it a man’s voice?”

  “No: a woman—a young woman.”

  A medley of emotions had me silent for a moment, and then:

  “Did you find anyone here?”

  “My party, with Gallaho, found the pair of Thugs, as you know. Inspector Derbyshire, who entered from the front, discovered the man Pallant bathing a deep cut in his forehead. There’s a fellow who combines the duties of stable lad and bartender, but he’s off duty . . . There was no one else.”

  “I am glad—although perhaps I shouldn’t be.”

  After ten minutes’ rest I was fit to move again.

  Apart from the fact that the secret cellars were packed with contraband, nothing of value bearing upon the matter which had brought the police there was discovered in the Monks’ Arms. Both yellow men remained imperturbably dumb. The ex-pugilist, under a grueling examination by Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho, pleaded guilty to smuggling but denied all knowledge of the identity or activities of his Chinese guest. He said that from time to time this person whom he knew as Mr. Chang, stayed at the inn, usually accompanied by two colored servants, and sometimes by a lady. He flatly denied all knowledge of the tragedy, and finally:

  “Take him away,” Gallaho growled, “we’ll find enough evidence later. Book him in on a charge of smuggling.”

  The Si-Fan

  Many hours had elapsed, hours of bitter disappointment, before Nayland Smith and I found ourselves at his flat in Whitehall.

  Fey had nothing to report. Smith glanced significantly at the television set which in some unaccountable manner Dr Fu Manchu had converted to his private uses.

  “No sir.” Fey shook his head.

  When he had gone out:

  “It seems almost incredible,” said Smith, beginning to pace up and down the carpet, “that this man whom I held in the hollow of my hand has slipped away! Every point of egress was watched, every officer afloat and ashore notified for miles around.”

  “Perhaps he doubled back?”

  Nayland Smith began to tug at the lobe of his left ear.

  “Impossible to predict his movements. I am beginning to wonder if it is time I retired from the unequal contest. It is many years since Doctor Fu Manchu first crossed my path. It was in a swampy district of Burma and I was nearly counted out in the first round.” He suddenly pulled up his sleeve and rolled back his shirt cuff, revealing a wicked-looking wound upon the forearm. “A primitive weapon, but a deadly one. An arrow, steeped in snake’s venom.”

  He rolled his sleeve down again.

  “You should never be alone, Smith. You need a bodyguard.”

  “I assure you I rarely go about alone. Why do you suppose I drag six feet of newspaper correspondent about with me? You are my bodyguard, Kerrigan! But Fu Manchu’s methods are of a kind from which no bodyguard could protect me. I am saved by my utter futility. I believe he is laughing at me.”

  “He has small cause for laughter. Although you have failed to destroy him you have foiled him all along.”

  Nayland Smith’s grim face relaxed in a smile.

  “Then I can’t account for it. He must enjoy the sport, or I shouldn’t be alive!”

  “Do you think he was making for the open sea?”

  “I have a strong suspicion that he was. It has occurred to me that this mysterious radio plant which he controls may be on some vessel.”

  “Such a vessel would require a pretty tall mast.”

  “Not at all. Fu Manchu is probably half a century ahead of what we call modem radio. However, I can do no more. We can hang the Thugs, no doubt, but like
Fu Manchu, what we want to do is to strike at the ‘nerves and brain.’“

  He dropped into an armchair and began to load his pipe; then, looking up, he stared across at me.

  “Judging from what you told me in the train,” he said, “I gather that your feelings about this girl Ardatha remain the same. Am I right?”

  I felt acutely uncomfortable under that piercing scrutiny, but I replied:

  “Yes, I am afraid you are, Smith. You see, although a criminal, she doesn’t realize that she is a criminal. In any case she has certainly saved my life. No one else could have given the warning.”

  Nayland Smith nodded, proceeded with the filling of his pipe and lighted it carefully.

  “A cunning scheme,” he muttered, standing up and walking about again. “Dictatorships with their ruthless methods have brought in crowds of willing recruits. Don’t you see it, Kerrigan? There are thousands! perhaps hundreds of thousands, living today, embittered by injustice, willing, eager, to enter into a blood feud against those who have destroyed husbands, children, families, wrecked their homes. The Si-Fan, always powerful, working for a dimly seen end, an end never appreciated by the West, today has become a mighty instrument of vengeance - and that flaming sword, Kerrigan, is firmly held by Doctor Fu Manchu.”

  He stared from the window awhile, and I watched the grim outline of his features.

  “One thing, and it looks as though the clue had eluded me,” he said suddenly, “is this: What was Fu Manchu doing in Essex? Assuming, as the radio experts believe, that this mysterious interference came from somewhere in that area, even that it came from a vessel lying off the Essex shore—we still come back to the same point. What was Fu Manchu doing there?”

  He turned and stared at me fixedly.

  “That problem is worrying me badly,” he added.

  Frankly, it had not occurred to me before, but so stated I saw the significance of the thing. I was considering it while Nayland Smith resumed his restless promenade, when, preceded by a gentle rap, Fey opened the door and entered.

  “Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho.”