Works of Sax Rohmer Page 9

  “The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt down the scorpion dealer at any cost.”

  Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a Fu-Manchu? I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that, if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.

  A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The Star also furnished work for my scissors. Here were evidences of the deep-seated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested itself so far from its center as peaceful England in the person of the sinister Doctor.

  “HONG KONG, Friday.

  “Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday, was charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder. The prisoner, who was not defended, pleaded guilty. The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand until Monday, which was granted.

  “Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver. It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence.”

  Later.

  “Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung’s accomplice has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary. In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt had failed.” — Reuter.

  “It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi, near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.

  “They fired at the house and set it in flames. There were in the house about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.

  “The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make the most vigorous representations on the subject.” — Reuter.

  Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following: —

  “HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit. — ELTHAM.”

  I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table. I showed him the cutting.

  “I am glad, for Eltham’s sake — and for the girl’s,” was his comment. “But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu! Just Heaven! Why is retribution delayed!”

  Smith’s darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.

  “I have seen Sir Lionel Barton,” he said abruptly; “and, to put the whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me! During the months that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt. He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!”

  Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end. Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca, he now had turned his attention again to Tibet — thereby signing his own death-warrant.

  “That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?” I suggested.

  Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.

  “England at present is the web,” he replied. “The spider will be waiting. Petrie, I sometimes despair. Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd. You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle. Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby’s auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus. He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!”

  “Chinese!”

  “Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee. I don’t like him. Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face. He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish notes for Barton’s forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples. By the way, all Sir Lionel’s baggage disappeared from the landing-stage — including his Tibetan notes.”

  “Significant!”

  “Of course. But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London. I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute.”

  “He is wasting no time.”

  “Wasting time! In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet, he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has unearthed in Egypt. As I came away, a van drove up from the docks and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat. It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum after he has examined it. The man crams six months’ work into six weeks; then he is off again.”

  “What do you propose to do?”

  “What CAN I do? I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him. I cannot doubt it. Ugh! that house gave me the shudders. No sunlight, I’ll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue. There’s a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other. It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture. I tell you, the place was made for murder.”

  “Have you taken any precautions?”

  “I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but—”

  He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  “What is Sir Lionel like?”

  “A madman, Petrie. A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely shaves — I don’t know which. I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears, pottery and what not — sometimes kicking a book from his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask — alternately dictating and conversing. Phew!”

  For some time we were silent.

  “Smith” I said, “we are making no headway in this business. With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us, still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way.”

  Nayland Smith nodded.

  “And we don’t know all,” he said. “We mark such and such a man as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him — if we have time. Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not. But what do we know, Petrie, of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency? We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China. I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering. I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything. I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life. The fact that WE are alive is a miracle.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “Nearly eleven,” he said. “But sleep seems a waste of time — apart from its dangers.”

  We heard a bell ring. A few moments later followed a knock at the room door.

  “Come in!” I cried.

  A girl entered with a telegram add
ressed to Smith. His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope. He glanced at the form, stood up and passed it to me, reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.

  “God help us, Petrie!” he said.

  This was the message:

  “Sir Lionel Barton murdered. Meet me at his house at once. — WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR.”

  CHAPTER XI

  ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue, at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight glittered upon the windows of Rowan House, Sir Lionel Barton’s home.

  Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs. The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume of the little nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly upon the creeper.

  The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats, the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated. The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath the trees.

  To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents upon the floor, the detective conducted us.

  “Good heavens!” I cried, “what’s that?”

  Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a golden streak. I stood looking after it with startled eyes. Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.

  “It’s a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor,” he said. “This house is full of surprises — and mysteries.”

  His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed the door ere proceeding further.

  “Where is he?” asked Nayland Smith harshly. “How was it done?”

  Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.

  “I thought you would like to hear what led up to it — so far as we know — before seeing him?”

  Smith nodded.

  “Well,” continued the Inspector, “the man you arranged to send down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates. He saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten, when a young lady turned up and went in.”

  “A young lady?”

  “Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel’s shorthand typist. She had found, after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in, was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here. She gave the alarm. My man heard the row from the road and came in. Then he ran out and rang us up. I immediately wired for you.”

  “He heard the row, you say. What row?”

  “Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!”

  Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.

  “Describe what he saw when he came in.”

  “He saw a negro footman — there isn’t an Englishman in the house — trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling. There was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started to investigate for himself. He had taken the bearings of the place earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the door. When he found it, it was locked from the inside.”

  “Well?”

  “He went out and round to the window. There’s no blind, and from the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study. He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him. What he saw accounted for her hysterics.”

  Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.

  “All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it, lay Sir Lionel Barton.”

  “My God! Yes. Go on.”

  “There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair, shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor, you understand.” The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands. “Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open, and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says.”

  He paused.

  “What did he see?” demanded Smith shortly.

  “A sort of GREEN MIST, sir. He says it seemed to be alive. It moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study.”

  Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.

  “Where did he first see this green mist?”

  “He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case.”

  “Yes; go on.”

  “It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing a thing like that. He did. He turned the body over, and Sir Lionel looked horrible. He was quite dead. Then Croxted — that’s the man’s name — went over to this curtain. There was a glass door — shut. He opened it, and it gave on a conservatory — a place stacked from the tiled floor to the glass roof with more rubbish. It was dark inside, but enough light came from the study — it’s really a drawing-room, by the way — as he’d turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse of this green, crawling mist. There are three steps to go down. On the steps lay a dead Chinaman.”

  “A dead Chinaman!”

  “A dead CHINAMAN.”

  “Doctor seen them?” rapped Smith.

  “Yes; a local man. He was out of his depth, I could see. Contradicted himself three times. But there’s no need for another opinion — until we get the coroner’s.”

  “And Croxted?”

  “Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab.”

  “What ails him?”

  Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully knocked the ash from his cigar.

  “He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away. He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by the throat.”

  “Did he mean that literally?”

  “I couldn’t say. We had to send the girl home, too, of course.”

  Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.

  “Got any theory?” he jerked.

  Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.

  “Not one that includes the green mist,” he said. “Shall we go in now?”

  We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange household were gathered in a panic-stricken group. They numbered four. Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind. I missed the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary; and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence. We entered Sir Lionel’s study — an apartment which I despair of describing.

  Nayland Smith’s words, “an earthquake at Sotheby’s auction-rooms,” leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked with curious litter — loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia. In a clearing by the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case, and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery. The odor of rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent perfume of the strange night-blooming flowers, was borne in through the open window.

  In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus, lay a figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards, and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient Egyptian mummy case.

  My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.

  “Good God!”

  Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression to Inspector Weymouth.

  “You do n
ot know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?” he rapped.

  “No,” began Weymouth, “but—”

  “This is not Sir Lionel. This is Strozza, the secretary.”

  “What!” shouted Weymouth.

  “Where is the other — the Chinaman — quick!” cried Smith.

  “I have had him left where he was found — on the conservatory steps,” said the Inspector.

  Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door, a glimpse might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities. Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate, he bent forward over a crumpled-up figure which lay upon the steps below.

  “It is!” he cried aloud. “It is Sir Lionel’s servant, Kwee.”

  Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian; then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood over the dead Chinaman. A breeze whispered through the leaves; a great wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards the curtained doorway.

  It was a breath of the East — that stretched out a yellow hand to the West. It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith — lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.

  “One thing is evident,” said Smith: “no one in the house, Strozza excepted, knew that Sir Lionel was absent.”

  “How do you arrive at that?” asked Weymouth.

  “The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead. If they had seen him go out they would know that it must be someone else who lies here.”

  “What about the Chinaman?”

  “Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time when his master was absent from the room.”

  “Croxted found the communicating door closed. What killed the Chinaman?”

  “Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside. What killed Strozza?” retorted Smith.