The Trail of Fu-Manchu Read online

  “Temperature...?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Now that you mention it, it was certainly very hot.”

  “Undoubtedly it was, and twice as hot at the bar end as at the other.”

  “Maybe it’s central heated,” said Gallaho. “I’ll ask Murphy about it.”

  “Nothing of the kind,” snapped Nayland Smith. He was still staring up at that spot above the roof of Sam Pak’s where the queer, spirituous flame had appeared. “Certain sects in India burn their dead on burning ghats. Were you ever in India, Gallaho?”

  “No sir. But whatever do you mean?”

  “You would know what I meant if you had ever seen a burning ghat at night...”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE GAME FLIES WEST

  “Whichever way the dame comes out,” said Gallaho, “she’s got to pass this corner to get on to the main road. It’s a pound to a penny there’s another way out into the yard which adjoins the restaurant, and I’m told that a car is sometimes garaged there. It may be there tonight.”

  “Evidently it is,” said Nayland Smith. “Listen.”

  Gallaho ceased speaking and he and Sterling listened intently. Someone had started a car at no great distance away.

  “Quick!” snapped Nayland Smith. “Your man’s standing by?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll wait here. I want to see who is in the car. Directly it has passed, pick me up...”

  Gallaho and Sterling set off down a side-turning. In a narrow opening between a deserted warehouse and the adjoining building, the Flying Squad car was hidden, all lights out. They had no more than reached it, when the car from the yard beside Sam Pak’s passed the head of the street.

  The Scotland Yard driver pulled out smartly. On the corner he checked and Nayland Smith jumped in.

  “Fah Lo Suee!” he said simply.

  Sam Pak’s remained under cover. Anyone leaving would be shadowed to his destination, but Smith’s instructions were urgent upon the point that the suspicions of the old Chinaman must not be aroused...

  Deserted Commercial Road East reached, the police car drew up closer to the quarry—for at one point a curtain of fog threatened to descend again. Beyond, however, it became clearer.

  “What car is it, Gallaho?” Nayland Smith asked. “I can’t quite make out.”

  “It’s a Morris, sir, and they’re making it shift a bit.”

  Nayland Smith laughed shortly.

  “Once, it would have been at least a Delage,” he murmured.

  Silence fell again as they proceeded along one of the most depressing thoroughfares in Europe. Occasional lorries bound dockward constituted practically the only traffic: pedestrians were very few indeed. The occasional figure of a policeman wearing his waterproof cape brought the reflection to Sterling’s mind that the duties of the Metropolitan Police would not appeal to every man.

  Entering the City boundaries, the driver pulled up much closer to the pursued car. By the Mansion House the fog had disappeared altogether. Sterling glanced aside at Sir Denis. The bright light of a street lamp was shining in. He started, then laughed aloud. Shadow came again.

  “What is it?” snapped Sir Denis.

  “I had forgotten what you looked like,” Sterling explained, “and your appearance was rather a shock.”

  “Anyone seeing us,” growled Gallaho, “would take it for granted that I had one of you chained to each wrist.” He turned to Sir Denis. “I don’t quite understand, sir, why you have handed the Limehouse end of the inquiry over to Forester. You have got definite evidence that it’s the base of this Fu-Manchu. Why not raid it? There’s every excuse, if ever we want to do it. It’s only necessary to find a single opium pipe on the premises!”

  “I know,” Nayland Smith replied, speaking unusually slowly. “But in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu, I have found it necessary to follow certain instincts. These may be the result of an intimate knowledge of the Doctor’s methods. But having been inside Sam Pak’s tonight, I am prepared to assert with complete confidence that Dr. Fu-Manchu is not there. I think it highly probable that his beautiful and talented daughter is leading us to him now, however.”

  “Oh, I see,” Gallaho growled. “You don’t think by any chance that this fly dame spotted you through your disguise, and is making a getaway?”

  “I don’t think so. But it is a possibility, nevertheless.”

  “I mean,” the detective went on doggedly, “it isn’t clear to me what she was doing down there, unless her job was that of a lookout. You tell me she’s very much the lady, so that her idea of fun wouldn’t be serving beer to drunken sailormen?”

  “Quite,” murmured Nayland Smith.

  After which staccato remark he fell into a reverie which he did not break until the great bell of St. Paul’s boomed out from high above their heads.

  “Two o’clock,” he murmured, and peered ahead. “Hello! Fleet Street. The game flies West, Gallaho.”

  The Street of Ink was filled with nocturnal activity, in contrast to the deserted City thoroughfares along which, hitherto, their route had lain. Into the Strand, across Trafalgar Square and on to Piccadilly, the hunt led; then the Morris turned into Bond Street, and Gallaho broke a long silence.

  “I’ve just remembered,” he remarked, “that they’ve got an extension at the Ambassadors’ Club tonight. Funny if that’s where she’s going.”

  “H’m!” said Nayland Smith, glancing aside at Sterling, as the light from the window of a picture dealer’s shone into the car. “We shan’t be able to obtain admittance!”

  “Just what I was thinking,” growled Gallaho. “Yes—look, sir! That is where she’s going!”

  The Morris pulled up before the door of the club, and a commissionaire assisted a slender, fur-wrapped figure to alight. Fah Lo Suee, her jade colored shoes queerly reflected upon the wet pavement, her gossamer frock concealed beneath a white wrap, went in at the lighted doorway.

  “I can soon find out who she’s with and what she’s up to,” growled Gallaho. “You two gentlemen had better stay out of sight.”

  He stepped out and proceeded in the direction of the club.

  By the entrance he paused for a moment as another car pulled up and the be-medaled commissionaire sprang forward to the door. A distinguished looking gentleman who might have been a diplomat, who affected a gray, pointed beard and who wore a monocle, stepped out hurriedly, discarded a French cape and, tossing it back into the car, nodded to the commissionaire and went in. He vibrated nervous energy.

  “H’m!” muttered Gallaho, watching the long, fawn and silver car disappearing in the direction of Bruton Street. “Sir Bertram Morgan!”

  The last arrival was the newly appointed governor of the Bank of England.

  Gallaho was about to turn to the commissionaire, with whom he was acquainted, when, following from the tail of his eye the slim, debonair figure of the banker, he saw a slender woman dressed in jade green rise from a settee in the lobby and advance with extended hand to meet Sir Bertram.

  In the brief glimpse which he had of her, Gallaho recognized the fact that she was the woman they had followed from Limehouse— according to Sir Denis Nayland Smith, the daughter of Dr. Fu-Manchu. She was not pure Chinese. She was exotically beautiful. The strange pair disappeared.

  Gallaho changed his mind.

  “Good evening, sir,” said the commissionaire, and was about to salute; then grinned broadly and nodded instead.

  “Good,” said Gallaho. “I am glad you remembered. Never salute a plain clothes officer.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Gallaho walked on as though his presence there had been merely accidental. Within his limitations he was an artist. It was no uncommon thing for the tracker to be tracked; keen eyes might be watching his every movement.

  He crossed to Grafton Street, stood on the corner for a while, and looked back. Accustomed to the ways of spies, he was
satisfied that no one was on his trail. He retraced his steps—but on the other side of Bond Street.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I BELONG TO CHINA”

  Sir Bertram Morgan was deeply intrigued with Madame Ingomar. He had met her three years before at the villa of a mutual friend in Cairo. Anglo-Egyptian society is not exactly Bohemian, and Sir Bertram, at first, had been surprised to find an obvious, if beautiful, half-caste a guest at this somewhat exclusive establishment.

  She was, it appeared, the widow of a physician. But this alone was not enough. And noting the patrician elegance, almost disdain, which characterized the beautiful widow, Sir Bertram had not been surprised to learn, later, that on her father’s side there was royal Manchu blood.

  An experienced man of the world is the adventuress’s easiest quarry. Sir Bertram, a widower of almost illimitable means, naturally knew much of women; he thought there was no design whose pattern he had not met with at some time. He distrusted Madame Ingomar. But she attracted him in a way that was almost frightening.

  They met again on the Riviera a year later.

  Discreetly, and as if telling an Oriental fairy tale, she had spoken of the existence of an hereditary secret in her family, smilingly pointing out that the widow of a brilliant, but penniless physician, could not otherwise dress as she dressed.

  Other explanations occurred to Sir Bertram at the time, but just when he had been sharpening his wits to deal with this dazzling cocotte, she had disappeared.

  It seemed to be a habit of hers.

  Now, she was in London. They had met accidentally, or apparently accidentally, and he, anxious to test her, because she was so desirable, had challenged the claims which she had made in France. The challenge, lightly, had been accepted.

  The life of Madame Ingomar was a fascinating mystery. Her appointment at a fashionable dance club, made for two o’clock in the morning, was odd. Sir Bertram was in the toils—he knew it; he was prepared to believe that royal blood of China ran in this woman’s veins; prepared to believe that she was really the widow of a distinguished physician; but he had no means of testing these claims. One, however—the hereditary secret—he could test: it came within his special province. And tonight she had offered him an opportunity.

  “My dear Madame Ingomar,” he said, and kissed her hand, for his courtly manners were famous throughout Europe. “This is indeed a very great privilege.”

  The maître d’hôtel led the way to that table which was always reserved for Sir Bertram whenever he required it. Madame Ingomar declined supper, but drank a glass of wine.

  Sir Bertram having draped her white fur wrap across the back of her chair, ivory shoulders and perfectly modeled arms were revealed by a gossamer green frock. She smoked almost continuously, not as other women of his acquaintance smoked, but and it seemed almost a custom of a bygone generation, using a long jade holder.

  Her hands were exquisite, her exotic indolence conjured up visions of vanished empires. She talked brilliantly, and Sir Bertram, watching her, decided she was quite the most attractive woman he had ever known. He sighed. He was uncertain of her; and he had reached an age, and a position in the world, when the worst thing that could befall him would be to become laughable.

  Madame Ingomar caught his glance, smiled, and held it. Her long, narrow eyes, were brilliantly green. He had never seen such eyes. This was their second meeting since her appearance in London and he had noticed as a man who took an interest in women, that whereas most of those upon the dance floor wore dresses which exposed their backs, in some cases to the waist, Madame Ingomar’s frock was of a different pattern.

  She had an uncanny trick—it disturbed him—of answering one’s unspoken thoughts; and:

  “My frock is not quite in the mode,” she murmured smilingly— her voice had the most soothing quality of any voice to which he had ever listened—“you wonder why?”

  “Really, my dear Madame Ingomar, you embarrass me. Your dress is completely charming—everything about you is perfect.”

  She placed her cigarette-holder in an ash-tray, glancing swiftly about the room.

  “I do not live the sheltered life of other women,” she said tensely; “perhaps you would understand me better if you knew something of the things I have suffered.”

  “What ever do you mean?”

  She smiled again, and taking a cigarette from Sir Bertram’s open case, fitted it to the jade holder.

  “I belong to China,” she murmured, lowering her dark lashes, “and in China, women are treated as... women.”

  This was the kind of conversation which at once intrigued and irritated Sir Bertram. It was her hints at some strange, Oriental background into which from time to time she was absorbed, which first had thrown a noose about his interest. But always... he doubted.

  That she had Chinese blood in her, none could deny. But that she belonged in any other sense to the Far East he was not prepared to admit. These odd references to a mode of life divorced from all ideals of Western culture, were part and parcel with that fabulous story of the hereditary secret.

  As Sir Bertram lighted her cigarette, Madame Ingomar glanced up.

  Those wonderful eyes held him.

  “You have always mistaken me for an adventuress,” she said. And the music of her voice, because it was pitched in so curious a key, reached him over the strains of the dance band. “In one way you are right, in another you are very, very wrong. Tonight, I hope to convert you.”

  “Believe me, I require no conversion; I am your most devoted friend.”

  She touched his hand lightly; her long, slender fingers, with extravagantly varnished nails, communicated to Sir Bertram a current of secret understanding which seemed to pulse through his veins, his nerves, and to reach his brain.

  He was in love with this Eurasian witch. Every line and curve of her body, every wave of her dark hair, her voice, the perfume of her personality, intoxicated him.

  Silently, he mocked himself—There is no fool like an old fool.

  “You are neither old nor a fool,” she said, and slipped slender fingers into his grasp. “You are a clever man whom I admire, very, very much.”

  He squeezed those patrician fingers almost cruelly, carried away by the magnetism of this woman’s intense femininity; so that for fully half a minute the uncanny character of those words did not dawn upon him.

  Then, it came crashingly. He drew his hand away—and stared at her.

  “Why did you say that?” he asked. He was more than startled; he was frightened. “I did not speak.”

  “You spoke to me,” she said, softly. “You understand me a little bit, and so I can hear you—sometimes.”

  “Good God!”

  Madame Ingomar laughed. Her laughter, Sir Bertram thought, was the most deliciously musical which had ever fallen upon his ears.

  “In the East,” she said, “when we are interested, we know how to get in touch.”

  He watched her in silence. She had turned her glance away, lolling back in her chair, so that she seemed to emerge like an ivory goddess from the mass of white fur, for she had drawn her wrap about her shoulders. She was watching the dancers, and Sir Bertram saw her as an Oriental empress, watching, almost superciliously, a performance organized for her personal entertainment.

  Suddenly, she glanced aside at him.

  “I promised that tonight I would prove my words,” she said, slowly. “If you wish it, we will go.”

  Sir Bertram started. She had called him back from a reverie in which he had been a guest at a strange Eastern banquet.

  “I am very happy, here, with you,” he replied. “But what you wish is what I desire to do.”

  “Let us go, then. My father has consented to see you.”

  For anyone to “consent” to see the great Sir Bertram Morgan was a novelty in that gentleman’s life. Yet, oddly enough, the phrase did not strike him as insolent, or even curious. One of the greatest powers in the world of finance, he accepted this myster
ious summons.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ROWAN HOUSE

  Sir Bertram’s fawn and silver Rolls, familiar in many of the capitals of Europe, was brought up to the door of the club, and the courtly financier handed his beautiful companion to her seat.

  “I warn you, Sir Bertram, we have some distance to go.”

  “How far?”

  “Fourteen or fifteen miles into Surrey.”

  “The journey will pass very quickly with you.”

  “If you will tell your man to go to Sutton Bypass, I will direct him when we get there how to find Rowan House.”

  “Rowan House? Is that where you are going?”

  “It’s a very old house—a sort of survival. It came on the market some years ago. It was once the property of Sir Lionel Barton, the famous explorer.”

  “Barton?” Sir Bertram got in beside Madame Ingomar, having given rapid instructions to the chauffeur. “I have met Barton—a madman, but brilliant. He nearly brought about a rising a year or two ago, in Afghanistan, or somewhere, by stealing the ornaments from a prophet’s tomb. Is that the man you mean?”

  The car started smoothly on its way.

  “Yes,” said Madame Ingomar, leaning back upon the cushions and glancing in the speaker’s direction. “It is the same man. The house was very cheap, but in many ways suitable.”

  Madame Ingomar turned her head again, staring straight before her, and Sir Bertram, studying that cameo-like profile, groped for some dim memory which it conjured up. Bending forward he pulled down the front blind.

  “The lights of approaching cars are so dazzling,” he said. “That is more restful.”

  “Thank you, yes,” she murmured...

  The big Rolls, all but silently, quite effortlessly, was devouring mile after mile of London highway. The Flying Squad car, close behind, at times was fully extended by the driver to keep track of the quarry. Chief Detective-inspector Gallaho had twice removed his hat since they had left Bond Street, on each occasion replacing it at a slightly different angle, which betokened intense excitement. Sterling was silent, as was Nayland Smith...