The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other Stories Page 7

  Huang Tsung stroked her hair. But he was watching Nayland Smith.

  “Beyond doubt, Sir Denis, those distinguished men now held at headquarters will be detained until these cellars have been pumped out. I fear, if your body should be found here, our five friends would proceed from prison to the execution shed.”

  “I agree,” Smith rapped.

  “But, failing such a discovery, it is not clear to me what charge can be preferred against them. You can do us no more harm than you have done already. Even if these men could be identified as members of our Order, they have committed no breach of the penal code with which I am familiar.”

  Nayland Smith remained silent. He knew exactly what the master diplomat was going to say.

  “And I believe, Sir Denis, you yourself, an officer of the law, would hesitate to identify any one of them?”

  It was an evasion, but in the circumstances, an acceptable evasion.

  “Since I have not seen their faces, legally it would be improper for me to do so.”

  “A prudent decision. I fear they will be marked men. Yet, as no crime has been committed here tonight, I trust they will be released. But we are wasting time. The water already approaches my knees, which, as I am subject to rheumatism, is regrettable.” He turned Fah Lo Suee about so that she faced the stair. “My daughter tells me that she promised to be waiting for you. Members of my family always fulfil their promises. Here she is.”

  It was Mai Cha who stood holding the light.

  Fah Lo Suee twisted around, looked back.

  “You promised…”

  “Precede me, Lily Blossom, with Mai Cha. Sir Denis is safe.”

  “But…”

  “Precede me, child!”

  The suave diplomat had become submerged. It was the word of command, spoken by one used to obedience.

  Fah Lo Suee looked back once more, but Nayland Smith and old General Huan Tsung Chao were lost in shadows far behind.

  It was an incredible maze of passages through which Nayland Smith was led by his aged guide. Once they came out under the stars, in a narrow court, crossed it and entered a house beyond. Here, again, they descended to cellars, finally to climb up to an odorous Chinese grocery store.

  Huan Tsung leaned heavily on the counter, breathing hard.

  “When I unlock the door,” he said slowly, “you will be free. I must exact one promise. It should not be hard to give. In whatever you may see fit to report concerning your escape, omit any reference to myself and to these premises. This—for Fah Lo Suee’s sake.”

  “I promise, General.”

  “Good morning, Sir Denis.”

  Two minutes later, Nayland Smith stood in a silent, deserted street.

  Reflectively, he began to fill his pipe.

  THE EYES OF FU-MANCHU

  “Dr Gregory Allen?” Gregory looked up from the newspaper he was reading in the lobby of his hotel. He recognised that clipped English voice but hadn’t expected to hear it now in Paris.

  He saw a tall, lean-faced man, his crisp hair silvered at the temples, a man who looked like a retired Indian Army officer but whose smile was thirty years too young.

  “Nayland Smith!” Gregory jumped up, hand stretched out. “What a happy surprise! How did you trail me here?”

  “Got your address from the Sorbonne.” Sir Denis Nayland Smith dropped into a chair facing Gregory and began to fill his pipe. “I was one of your admiring audience in the lecture theatre. You speak French better than I do—in spite of your American accent.

  “I didn’t join the mob in the lecturer’s room; but I enjoyed the account of your remarkable researches. For a youngster in his early thirties you have gone far.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I have reached an age, Allen—” Nayland Smith gave the boyish grin—”when your theories of extending life far beyond its present span begin to interest me.”

  “You don’t look as though you need any of my new chemical discoveries to keep you young.”

  “The fact is,” Nayland Smith said seriously, “that I hoped to find a certain person in your audience, a person who illustrates in his own survival the truth of your theories; a man of fabulous age—beyond doubt scientifically prolonged.

  “I refer, of course, to Dr Fu-Manchu. He will have followed your career with interest. We know he’s in Paris. But we couldn’t spot him, although the place bristled with detectives.”

  Gregory stared at the older man. An ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard and now an agent of the British Secret Service, Nayland Smith couldn’t be romancing.

  “Does Fu-Manchu really exist?” Gregory asked incredulously.

  “Indeed he does. He is both the greatest scientist and the most dangerous man alive. You must have heard his name.”

  “His name, yes! But I thought—”

  “You thought Fu-Manchu was a myth. Others have made the same mistake.”

  “But a person of such unusual appearance in this country?”

  “He has a variety of unusual appearances, Allen. He doesn’t conform to the popular idea of a Chinese and can pose successfully as a European. He speaks several languages fluently. His green, oblique eyes and his hands betray the Asiatic; but in public he wears gloves and tinted glasses.”

  “To have escaped prison or the gallows for so long, he surely has a lot of helpers?”

  Nayland Smith smiled—but it was a grim smile.

  “He has an international organisation, men and women; scientists, politicians, watching eyes everywhere.”

  “But what kind of person would work for him?”

  “Every kind. He has his own methods of recruiting assistants and seeing that they work. Tell me, where do you go next?”

  “To London. I’m invited to repeat my lecture at King’s College. My grant from Columbia University doesn’t allow luxury, so I have reserved accommodation in a small hotel near the Strand.”

  “Give me the address. I’ll look you up.”

  “Bring our mutual friend, Dr Petrie, if he’s in town. I should love to see him again. I need hardly say how much I’d like to meet Dr Fu-Manchu as well.”

  “I hope you never do!” Nayland Smith replied…

  It was crowded next day on the cross-Channel steamer. As the ship cleared Calais, Gregory found a quiet spot at the port-side rail, well forward. There were many things he wanted to think about, but the shadowy Dr Fu-Manchu kept returning to his thoughts. He found himself inspecting the passengers in search of a man wearing tinted glasses and gloves.

  He hadn’t seen one. But he had seen a very pretty girl coming on board alone, carrying a large artist’s portfolio, and had imagined that she stared at him.

  As she was passing him the ship suddenly rolled to port. She stumbled against him, and dropped the portfolio in the scuppers.

  Gregory steadied himself against the rail, grabbed up the portfolio and turned. She was even prettier than he had thought in the first glimpse as she came on board.

  The ship rolled to starboard and he grasped a slim shoulder to support her.

  “I’m so sorry,” he spoke awkwardly. “Are you feeling unwell?”

  Her delicate colouring seemed to make the question absurd. “Oh, no,” she assured him. “It was the so sudden lurch that nearly upset me.” She had a delightful accent. “It made me feel a little—swimmy.” She laughed. “Thank you very much.”

  “There’s nothing to thank me for. Are you travelling alone?”

  “Yes. I go to meet friends in London.”

  Rather reluctantly, Gregory relaxed his grip bf her shoulder. She had remarkable blue eyes which possessed the strange quality, even when her lips smiled, of retaining a look of sadness that he found haunting.

  “I have a splendid prescription for that swimmy feeling,” he told her in French, tucking her portfolio under his arm. “As a fellow artist, of sorts, please take my advice.”

  She hesitated for a moment. The blue eyes considered him. Then she nodded and they went off
along the deck together. The swell was increasing. Presently they faced each other across a table in the nearly deserted dining room. Gregory ordered dry champagne.

  Her name, he learned, was just “Mignon”. She made her living by drawing caricatures for French weekly journals, and had already exhibited two paintings at the Salon.

  “Your card says you are a doctor. I never heard of a doctor of painting.”

  Gregory laughed, and told her how during his two years at the Sorbonne, where he had completed his studies, he had found time also to study art, which had been his first choice as a profession.

  “I, too, am a bred-in-the-bone Bohemian, Mignon.”

  “Oh, I know you are.” Across her face a shadow of compassion passed. “What a pity you changed your mind. Don’t you think science is going too far? Isn’t it upsetting the balance of nature? Science creates horrible things, and art creates beauty.”

  “You have something there.”

  She watched him wistfully. “You must often think of those Paris days, of the carefree life of the students at the atelier. You lived in two different worlds. Do you ever regret the one you gave up?”

  He refilled Mignon’s glass. Those compassionate blue eyes were oddly disturbing. “I sometimes wonder…”

  * * *

  Gregory couldn’t make out how he managed to miss Mignon at the customs shed, but, somehow, in the crowd at Dover he lost sight of her. He walked from one end of the boat train to the other, but couldn’t see her anywhere, until, looking farther afield, he caught a glimpse of a Jaguar gliding away from the dock. Mignon was in the passenger’s seat.

  He concluded that black and white art paid better than science research and said goodbye to a dream…

  It was raining by the time the train reached London. From his hotel suite, Gregory called King’s College, but could find nobody there from whom to get particulars about arrangements for his lecture. He ordered whisky to be sent up and wondered how he was going to kill time until the rain stopped.

  He wondered, too, if he would ever see Mignon again. Evidently the friends she had come to meet moved in a financial circle in which he would be a misfit. Mignon? She had given him no other name. But Mignon was exactly the right one for her.

  She seemed completely a part of the Bohemian Paris that he loved. Gregory took out a sketching block and a soft pencil. He began to draw a figure. His knowledge of anatomy had helped him in the life class, and he drew sweeping, confident lines, blocked in the features with bold touches of light and shade. At last, he held the drawing away for a critical look—and saw a rough but recognisable sketch of Mignon.

  One thing was wrong. He had captured her pose, the slim lines of her figure, the oval face and smiling lips. But her eyes had defeated his pencil.

  He had been subconsciously aware for some time of a sound which resembled muffled footsteps, but had ignored it. And at this moment he became aware of the footsteps again.

  They were soft but continuous. There was something furtive in this caseless padding, something eerie. At one moment he thought it came from a room above; at another from the passage outside his own room—a sort of phantom patrol. Once, when the footfalls seemed to be passing his door, he ran and opened it, and saw no one.

  Gregory took a look out of the window. He felt nervous and decided that a brisk walk would be good for him. The rain had stopped.

  His mood was an odd one, an unhappy one. He had succeeded in his chosen profession, had earned the respect of older scientists, whose accomplishments he revered. His researches had won him wide recognition. Yet tonight he wished he had chosen to be a painter; he longed to escape from his accepted self, to be his natural self. He was still young, and there was a world outside the world of science, a world in which there remained room for romance, for beauty.

  In the lobby he paused to light a cigarette. A wave of self-contempt swept over him. Had he, a trained scientist, fallen for that romantic myth, love at first sight? He left a message at the desk that he would be back in half an hour, swung the door open and stepped out into the street.

  He was greeted by a flash of lightning which changed the gloomy night into a sort of blue-white day. Then came a volley of thunder so awesome that it might have heralded the end of the world. It prefaced a fresh deluge.

  Gregory retired inside the porch. Left and right the street was deserted, until a figure came running through the downpour, a girl caught in the storm.

  She dashed into the shelter of the porch, and Gregory found himself looking down at the piquant face, wet with rain, into the blue eyes of Mignon.

  They stood for a moment watching the rain and then went to Gregory’s small suite.

  She sat in the only comfortable chair which the living room offered. The expression in her eyes was almost tragic, but she forced a smile.

  “It is the thunderstorm. They affect me very much.”

  Gregory sat on a hassock, looking at her. There came another electric flicker through the shaded window, a shattering crash of thunder. Mignon flinched; tried to control herself. Gregory took her hand reassuringly. “I don’t know what you were doing out on such a night, Mignon.”

  “I came to look for you. At Dover you disappear. I don’t know what has happened.”

  “Mignon!”

  And in the sudden silence which fell as the thunder died, Gregory heard the footsteps again.

  But their pattern had altered. At regular intervals the patrol was halted, and three deliberate beats came. Now, as he felt Mignon’s grip tighten, he glanced back at her, and before she could lower her lashes, he caught an expression of such frantic compassion that it frightened him.

  “Mignon, there’s no danger,” he said. “The storm is passing. It was very good of you to come.”

  But he knew that whatever she feared, it wasn’t the storm. She opened her eyes, still clasping his hand.

  “I am silly, Gregory. Try to forgive me. Why, oh why, didn’t you stay an artist?”

  Her manner, her disjointed phrases, told a story of nervous tension for which he could find no explanation.

  “Listen, Mignon. Take it easy. Let me give you a cigarette and a little drink, so we can talk quietly.”

  “No, no!” She held onto his hand, detaining him. “I don’t want a drink—yet. I want to talk to you—yes. But it is so hard.”

  “What do you want to tell me? That we’re not going to see one another again?”

  He knew that the words betrayed his secret dreams, but he didn’t care; for he knew, now, that Mignon wasn’t indifferent and he meant to hear the truth.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Three soft taps sounded distinctly.

  Gregory was on the point of asking Mignon if she had heard the queer sound when a third flicker of lightning came and another crack of thunder. She closed her eyes.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” Gregory proposed, “and have a drink in the lounge. This room is suffocating.”

  He pulled her up from the chair and they moved toward the door. The three muffled taps were repeated.

  It seemed to Gregory that Mignon stopped as suddenly as if unseen hands had grasped her.

  “Oh, Gregory, I feel so—swimmy! I think I will have a drink now, after all.”

  Her manner certainly suggested that she needed one, as she turned and dropped back into the chair. Gregory poured out two drinks, glanced at Mignon’s pale face, and hurried into the bathroom for water.

  When he returned he found Mignon had recovered herself a little, and was looking at the sketch he had roughed out. She drank from her glass and looked at the sketch again.

  “Is it very bad?” he asked.

  She didn’t look up. “No, it’s very good. It was sweet of you.”

  Mignon raised her eyes as she spoke, and he had only time to see that they were cloudy with fears when the phone buzzed. Puzzled and bewildered, he took up the receiver.

  “Gregory Allen?” a familiar voice demanded.

  “Here, Sir Deni
s.” The caller was Nayland Smith.

  “Good. Listen. I have just arrived. Followed you by plane. This is urgent: Don’t leave your apartment until I get there. On no account allow anyone in.”

  Gregory hung up, turned—and saw Mignon through a mist. He staggered to the couch, gulped the rest of the brandy. What was the word Mignon had used? Swimmy. Yes, that was what he felt, too.

  * * *

  He fell back. His mind began to wander. He tried to call Mignon, to explain to her—but his voice would not come. He tried to rise. He couldn’t move. But he could hear Mignon’s voice—as from a distance.

  With one arm she supported his head. Her fingers caressed his hair. Something wetted his cheek. He looked up, and into her eyes. Mignon was crying. He wanted to console her, to warn her. But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move a muscle.

  “You must try to forgive me,” she whispered. “Try to understand. One day, you will. How sorry I am…”

  She had gone. He didn’t see her go, for he couldn’t turn his head. All he could see was the ceiling above him and part of the wall. His brain now was clear enough; but his heart was sick—for at last he guessed the truth. She had doped his drink, and those uncanny footsteps were drawing nearer.

  A number of people came in. He recognised the voice of the hotel manager. “How lucky you were in the hotel, Dr Gottfeld.”

  Someone bent over Gregory: a tall man. He wore black silk gloves and tinted glasses, with a delicate thumb and forefinger he raised Gregory’s lids. Then he removed the glasses and stared down at him with brilliant green eyes. And Gregory knew he was face to face with Dr Fu-Manchu.

  “Very lucky.” The words were spoken with a guttural German accent. “I see from his baggage labels that he is recently in lower Egypt. There was a mild outbreak there of plague two weeks ago. Do not be alarmed. There is no danger—yet. But we must act quickly.”

  Conscious—seeing, hearing, but incapable of speech or movement—Gregory heard the man they called Dr Gottfeld volunteer to drive him in his own car to the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases—”Where they know me well,” he explained.

  Mentally alert, but helpless as a dead man, Gregory heard that German voice giving explicit directions concerning locking the apartment, destruction of its contents, and fumigation of the rooms. Knowing the symptoms of every variety of plague, he was well aware that the man was a liar.