Emperor Fu-Manchu Page 7

  “What I think we should do, Chi Foh, is to go on up this canal and away from the river. They are not likely to search in that direction. If we can find a place to hide until nightfall, then we could start for Lung Chang, which is only a few miles inland.”

  Tony considered this plan. He laughed and kissed Yueh Hua. This new happiness, with fear of a dreadful death hanging over them, astonished him.

  “What should I do without you, Yueh Hua?”

  They started without delay. It was very hot, and Tony welcomed his large sun hat, gift of the lama. He worked hard, and Yueh Hua insisted upon taking her turn at the oar. There was no sign of pursuit.

  In the late afternoon Yueh Hua found a perfect spot to tie up; a little willow-shadowed creek. There was evidence, though, that they were near a village, for through the trees they could see a road along which workers were trudging homeward from the fields.

  “It will do,” Tony agreed, “for we shall never be noticed here. But soon I’m going to explore a little way to try to find out just where we are!”

  When they had moored the sampan they shared a meal, and Tony went ashore to take a look around.

  He discovered that they were moored not more than a few hundred yards from the village, which only a screen of bamboos concealed from them. It was an insignificant little group of dwellings, but it boasted an inn of sorts which spanned the road along which they had seen the peasants walking homeward. He returned and reported this to Yueh Hua.

  “I think we should start for Lung Chang at once,” she advised. “The fields are deserted now, and soon dusk will come. I believe I can find the way if we go back a mile or so nearer to Niu-fo-tu.”

  Tony loved her more and more every hour they were together. Her keen intelligence made her a wonderful companion. Her beauty, which he had been slow to recognize, had completely conquered him.

  “Let’s wait a little while longer, Yueh Hua,” he said yearningly. “I want to tell you how much I love you.” He took her in his arms. “Kiss me while I try.”

  * * *

  His try was so successful that dusk was very near when Yueh Hua sighed, “My dear one, it is time we left here.”

  Tony reluctantly agreed. They pushed the boat out again to the canal and swung around to head back toward Niu-fo-tu.

  Tony had dipped the blade of the oar and was about to begin work when he hesitated, lifted the long sweep, and listened.

  Someone was running down to the canal, forcing a way through undergrowth, and at the same time uttering what sounded like breathless sobs. It was a man, clearly enough, and a man in a state of blind panic.

  “Chi Foh.” Yueh Hua spoke urgently. “Be quick. We must get away. Do you hear it?”

  “Yes. I hear it. But I don’t understand.”

  A gasping cry came. The man evidently had sighted the boat. “Save me! Help, boatman!”

  Then Tony heard him fall, heard his groans. He swung the boat into the bank. “Take the oar, Yueh Hua, while I see what’s wrong here.”

  Yueh Hua grasped him. “Chi Foh! You are mad. It may be a trap. We know we are being followed.”

  Gently, he broke away. “My dearest—give me my gun—you know where it is.”

  From the locker Yueh Hua brought the .38. She was trembling excitedly. Tony knew that it was for his safety, not for her own, that she was frightened. He kissed her, took the pistol, and jumped ashore.

  Groans and muffled hysterical words led him to the spot. He found a half-dressed figure writhing in a tangle of weeds two to three feet high; a short, thickset man of Slavonic type, and although not lacking in Mongolian characteristics, definitely not Chinese. He was clutching a bulging briefcase. He looked up.

  “A hundred dollars to take me to Huang-ko-shu!” he groaned. “Be quick.”

  Tony dragged the man to his feet. He discovered that his hands were feverishly hot. “Come on board. I can take you part of the way.”

  He half carried the sufferer, still clutching his leather case, onto the sampan.

  “Chi Foh, you are insane,” was Yueh Hua’s greeting. “What are we to do with him?”

  “Put him ashore somewhere near a town. He’s very ill.” He dragged the unwanted passenger under the mat roof and took to the oar.

  But again he hesitated, although only for a moment. There were cries, running footsteps, swiftly approaching from the direction of the hidden village.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tony drove the sampan at racing speed. He could only hope that they were out of sight before the party, evidently in pursuit of their passenger, had reached the canal.

  The banks were deserted. Moonlight transformed poppy fields into seas of silver. When, drawing near to Niu-fo-tu, grain succeeded poppy, the prospect became even more fairylike. It was a phantom journey, never to be forgotten, through phantom landscapes. Willows bordering the canal were white ghosts on one bank, black ghosts on the other.

  Yueh Hua crouched beside him. The man they had rescued had apparently gone mad. He struck out right and left in his delirium, slapping his face and hands as if tormented by a swarm of mosquitoes.

  “Chi Foh,” Yueh Hua whispered, “he is very ill. Could it be—” she hesitated—“that he has the plague?”

  “No, no, don’t think such things. He shows no signs of having the plague. Take the oar for a few minutes, my dearest. He must want water.”

  “Oh, Chi Foh.”

  Tony clasped her reassuringly and ducked in under the low roof. He was far from confident, himself, about what ailed the mysterious passenger, but human feeling demanded that he do his best for him.

  The man sipped water eagerly; he was forever trying to drive away imaginary flying things which persecuted him. His head rested on his bulky briefcase. His hectic mutterings were in a language which Tony didn’t know. To questions in Chinese he made no reply. Once only he muttered, “Huang-ko-shu.”

  Tony returned to Yueh Hua. “Tell me, where is Huang-ko-shu?”

  “It is on the Yangtze River many miles below Lung Chang.”

  “I told him I would take him part of the way,” Tony murmured. “We must put him ashore when we get across, Yueh Hua.”

  “I wish we had never found him,” she whispered, giving up the oar to Tony.

  They passed their old mooring place behind Niu-fo-tu and at last reached the river. Tony had insisted on doing most of the rowing and was coming close to exhaustion.

  The Lu Ho looked deserted.

  “Let me take the oar,” Yueh Hua said gently, but insistently. “There is very little current and I can cross quite easily. You must, Chi Foh.”

  He gave in. He watched Yueh Hua at the long sweep, swinging easily to its movement with the lithe grace of a ballerina. What a woman!

  Tony found it hard to keep awake. The man they had rescued had stopped raving, become quite silent. The gentle movement of the boat, the rhythmic swish of the long oar, did their hypnotic work. He fell asleep…

  “Chi Foh.” Yueh Hua’s voice. “Wake up. I am afraid.”

  Tony was wide awake before she stopped speaking. He drew her down to him. “Where are we? What’s happened?”

  He looked around in the darkness. The boat was tied up in a silent backwater. Through the motionless leaves of an overhanging tree which looked like a tree carved in ebony, he could see the stars.

  “We are on the left bank, Chi Foh. Lung Chang is not many miles away. But—the man is dead!”

  Tony got to his feet. He had a flashlight in the locker; he groped his way to it, found it, and shone its light on the man who lay there.

  Beyond doubt, Yueh Hua was right. Their passenger was dead. Yueh Hua knew that Tony had an automatic pistol, but he had hidden the flashlight. He wondered if she would say something about it, and tried to think of an explication. But she said nothing.

  Tony searched the man’s scanty clothing, but found no clue to his identity. In a body belt, which he unfastened, there was a considerable sum of money, but nothing else. The big portfolio wa
s locked, and there was no key. This far he had gone when Yueh Hua called out, “Throw him overboard, Chi Foh. He may have died of plague.”

  But Tony, who had a smattering of medical knowledge, knew that he had not died of the plague.

  “Don’t worry, Yueh Hua. I told you before, there’s no question of plague. I must try to find out who he was.”

  He went to work on the lock of the briefcase and ultimately succeeded in breaking it. He found it stuffed with correspondence in Russian, a language of which he knew nothing, much of it from the Kremlin and some from the Peiping Embassy, this fact clearly indicated by the embossed headings on the stationery. The man was a Soviet agent.

  There was also a bound book containing a number of manuscript papers in Chinese, which, although he knew written Chinese, Tony was unable to decipher.

  He put the book and the correspondence back in the broken briefcase and dropped the briefcase in the locker.

  The body of the dead Russian had to be disposed of. This was clear enough. When it was found, and eventually it would be found, the evidence must suggest that he had fallen into the hands of thieves who had taken whatever he had had in his possession. Therefore, the money belt must not be found on him.

  Tony removed the belt, then switched off the flashlight and rejoined Yueh Hua who was watching him, wide-eyed.

  “Can we reach Lung Chang by water from here, Yueh Hua?”

  “No, Chi Foh. We can go up this canal a little way further. Then, we must take to the road. But—”

  “Is it a straight road?”

  “There are no straight roads in China.”

  He forced a laugh and kissed her. “All the same, that’s what we must do. Somewhere, I am going to throw the dead man overboard.”

  “That is right,” Yueh Hua agreed. “We need not carry much. When we get to Lung Chang, my aunt will take care of us. But”—she drew back—“you will lose your boat.”

  Tony was baffled. “I must take a chance. I have some money left… or I might steal another sampan, as you meant to steal mine.”

  He pushed the boat out of the little backwater and headed upstream. Yueh Hua, he knew, was unusually high-strung. She watched him in a queer way he didn’t like. At a point on the deserted canal where there was a sort of waterway crossroads, he stopped rowing.

  “Take the oar, Yueh Hua. I’m going to dump him overboard.”

  Some hazy idea that prayers should be said at such a time flashed through his mind. He dismissed the idea. It was impractical, in the first place. Secondly, the dead man, as a Soviet Communist, was an atheist. He dragged the half-clad body out and dropped it in the canal.

  “May God have mercy on your soul,” he whispered.

  * * *

  They rowed on to a spot where a footbridge spanned the canal. Yueh Hua studied the situation carefully.

  “There is a path from this bridge, Chi Foh, which leads to a main road—the road to Lung Chang.”

  Tony forced a laugh. “So this is where we say goodbye to our boat. It’s too shallow to sink it here. We shall have to take a chance and just leave it.”

  “Oh, Chi Foh, my darling.” She threw her arms around him. “We have been so happy on this little boat.”

  Tony loved her for the words, but immediately became practical again.

  “We’ll drop whatever we don’t want overboard and pack up the rest. I can carry the big bundles on this bamboo rod and you can carry what’s left in the old basket…”

  Yueh Hua going ahead as arranged and Tony following, still adorned with his huge bamboo hat, they started on the last leg of their journey to Lung Chang.

  The road, when they came to it, didn’t look particularly dangerous, except to motorists. One thing was certain. At that hour, it carried little traffic.

  He had plenty of opportunity for thinking. Yueh Hua, he knew, had become an indispensable part of his life. He didn’t mean to lose her, whatever she was, wherever she came from.

  Even if this amounted to changing his career, he would marry her. He could live with Yueh Hua on a desert island and be happy. She could be happy, too. She had proved it.

  He heard an automobile coming swiftly from behind.

  Stepping to the side of the neglected road, he let it go by. He moved just in time. It passed at racing speed, a new Buick. He never got a glimpse of the driver. Such speed, on such a road, betrayed urgency.

  Yueh Hua was waiting for him by a bend ahead. He saw that she was frightened.

  “In that car. The man with green eyes. The big black was driving.”

  This was staggering news.

  It might mean, as he had feared, that Dr. Fu-Manchu had learned of his contact in Lung Chang!

  He longed to take Yueh Hua into his confidence. Her knowledge of the place, her acute intelligence, her intuition, would be invaluable now. But he was bound to silence.

  The road here passed through an area of unreclaimed land where nature had taken over. They were in a jungle. They found their way to a spot where the fallen branch of a tree offered a seat. Dropping their loads, they sat down. He looked at Yueh Hua. There was no gladness in her eyes.

  “Chi Foh, they know where we are going. He will be waiting for us in Lung Chang.”

  But, as Tony watched her, the mystery of Yueh Hua was uppermost in his mind. It was hard to believe that Fu-Manchu could have conceived such a burning passion for the grubby little girl Yueh Hua had then appeared to be, that he would be driven to this frantic chase.

  He dismissed the supposition. He himself was the quarry. Perhaps he had made some mistake. Perhaps those hypnotic eyes had read more than he suspected. Dr. Fu-Manchu had planned to interview him again. Nayland Smith had saved him. But the fact that news of the reward for his capture had been flashed to so many centers indicated that Fu-Manchu knew more than he had credited him with knowing.

  Tony put his arm around the dejected little figure beside him. “Tell me more about your friends in Lung Chang, Yueh Hua. If we can get to them, shall we be safe?”

  “As safe as we can hope to be, Chi Foh. My aunt is an old, retired servant of the Lao family.”

  “Does your aunt live right in the town?”

  “No. In a small house on the estate. It is a mile from Lung Chang.”

  “This side, or beyond?”

  “This side, Chi Foh.”

  “We have a chance, even if they have found the boat. They won’t be watching your aunt’s house. And we have to get there—fast.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It became a forced march. Twice they took cover; once, while a heavily loaded bullock cart went lumbering by, and again when they were nearly overtaken by an old jeep in which four soldiers were traveling toward Lung Chang.

  Dawn was not far off when they reached a point in a long, high wall which had bordered the road for over half a mile. Dimly, he saw Yueh Hua stand still and beckon to him. He hurried forward.

  She stood before a heavy, ornamental gate through which he could see a large, rambling building partly masked in ornamental gardens—a typical Chinese mansion—on a slope beyond. The high wall evidently surrounded the property.

  “My uncle was Lao Tse-Mung’s gardener,” Yueh Hua explained. “He and his wife always lived here, and my aunt is allowed to stay.”

  “Is that Lao Tse-Mung’s house over there?”

  “Yes, Chi Foh. Please wait outside for a little while where they can’t see you, until I explain”—she hesitated for a second—“who you are.”

  Yueh Hua had led him to the very door of the man he had to see! He saw her reach inside the gate. An interval, footsteps, then a woman’s cry—a cry of almost hysterical gladness.

  “My baby! My Yueh Hua!”

  The gate was unlocked. The voice died away into unintelligible babbling as they went in.

  This gave him something else to think about.

  Evidently Yueh Hua had told him her real name. But why had Yueh Hua asked him to wait, and gone in first herself?

  In any ca
se, he didn’t have to wait long. She came running back for him.

  “I haven’t told her, Chi Foh, about us. But she knows how wonderful you have been to me.”

  This clearly was true. Tears were streaming down her aunt’s face when Yueh Hua brought him into the little house, evidently a gate-lodge. She seemed to want to kneel at his feet. He wondered what the exact relationship could be between Yueh Hua and Mai Cha, her aunt. It would have been hard to find two people less similar in type than this broad-faced old peasant woman and Yueh Hua. But Mai Cha became Tony’s friend on sight, for it was plain that she adored Yueh Hua.

  She left them together while she went to prepare a meal. But Yueh Hua, who seemed to have become suddenly and unaccountably shy, went out to help her.

  He walked quietly under the flowered porch and looked across to the big house and its setting of arches, bridges, and formal gardens. He could be there in five minutes. A winding path, easy to follow in starlight, led up to the house.

  Yueh Hua had reached sanctuary, but Tony’s business was with Lao Tse-Mung. He couldn’t hope to avoid exposure of his real identity to Yueh Hua once he had reported to the friend of Nayland Smith. This he must face.

  But, the major problem remained. Where was Dr. Fu-Manchu?

  Had this man, who seemed to wield supreme power in the province, out-maneuvered Sir Denis? He could not expect the late gardener’s widow to know anything of what had happened tonight in the big house.

  He must watch his step.

  There were several little bridges to cross and many steps to climb before he reached a terrace which ran the whole length of the house. Flowering vines draped a pergola. Some night-scented variety gave out a strong perfume. He wondered where the main entrance was located, and if he should try to find it.

  He stood still for a moment, listening.

  A murmur of conversation reached him. There were people in some nearby room. Step by step, he crept closer, hugging shadowy patches where the vines grew thickly. Three paces more and he would be able to look in.

  But he didn’t take the three paces. He stopped dead.