President Fu-Manchu
Read President Fu-Manchu Online
Authors: Sax Rohmer
Contents
Praise for President Fu-Manchu
Chapter One: The Abbot of Holy Thorn
Chapter Three: Above the Blizzard
Chapter Five: The Special Train
Chapter Seven: Sleepless Underworld
Chapter Nine: The Seven-Eyed Goddess
Chapter Thirteen: Tangled Clues
Chapter Fourteen: The Scarlet Brides
Chapter Fifteen: The Scarlet Brides (Concluded)
Chapter Seventeen: The Abbot’s Move
Chapter Eighteen: Mrs. Adair Reappears
Chapter Nineteen: The Chinese Catacombs
Chapter Twenty: The Chinese Catacombs (Concluded)
Chapter Twenty-One: Carnegie Hall
Chapter Twenty-Two: Moya Adair’s Secret
Chapter Twenty-Three: Fu-Manchu’s Water-Gate
Chapter Twenty-Four: Siege of Chinatown
Chapter Twenty-Five: Siege of Chinatown (Concluded)
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Silver Box
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Stratton Building
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Paul Salvaletti
Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Green Mirage
Chapter Thirty: Plan of Attack
Chapter Thirty-One: Professor Morgenstahl
Chapter Thirty-Two: Below Wu King’s
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Balcony
Chapter Thirty-Four: “The Seven”
Chapter Thirty-Five: The League of Good Americans
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Human Equation
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Great Physician
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Westward
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Voice from the Tower
Chapter Forty: “Thunder of Waters”
Appreciating Dr. Fu-Manchu by Leslie S. Klinger
Introduction to “The Blue Monkey” by William Patrick Maynard
Free Sample of The Blue Monkey by Sax Rohmer
“Insidious fun from out of the past. Evil as always, Fu-Manchu reviles as well as thrills us.”
Joe R. Lansdale, recipient of the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award
“Without Fu-Manchu we wouldn’t have Dr. No, Doctor Doom or Dr. Evil. Sax Rohmer created the first truly great evil mastermind. Devious, inventive, complex, and fascinating. These novels inspired a century of great thrillers!”
Jonathan Maberry,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Assassin’s Code
and
Patient Zero
“The true king of the pulp mystery is Sax Rohmer—and the shining ruby in his crown is without a doubt his Fu-Manchu stories.”
James Rollins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Devil Colony
“Fu-Manchu remains the definitive diabolical mastermind of the 20th century. Though the arch-villain is ‘the Yellow Peril incarnate,’ Rohmer shows an interest in other cultures and allows his protagonist a complex set of motivations and a code of honor which often make him seem a better man than his Western antagonists. At their best, these books are very superior pulp fiction… at their worst, they’re still gruesomely readable.”
Kim Newman, award-winning author of
Anno Dracula
“Sax Rohmer is one of the great thriller writers of all time! Rohmer created in Fu-Manchu the model for the super-villains of James Bond, and his hero Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are worthy stand-ins for Holmes and Watson… though Fu-Manchu makes Professor Moriarty seem an under-achiever.”
Max Allan Collins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Road to Perdition
“I grew up reading Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu novels, in cheap paperback editions with appropriately lurid covers. They completely entranced me with their vision of a world constantly simmering with intrigue and wildly overheated ambitions. Even without all the exotic detail supplied by Rohmer’s imagination, I knew full well that world wasn’t the same as the one I lived in… For that alone, I’m grateful for all the hours I spent chasing around with Nayland Smith and his stalwart associates, though really my heart was always on their intimidating opponent’s side.”
K. W. Jeter, acclaimed author of
Infernal Devices
“A sterling example of the classic adventure story, full of excitement and intrigue. Fu-Manchu is up there with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Zorro—or more precisely with Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Darth Vader, and Lex Luthor—in the imaginations of generations of readers and moviegoers.”
Charles Ardai, award-winning novelist and founder of Hard Case Crime
“I love Fu-Manchu, the way you can only love the really GREAT villains. Though I read these books years ago he is still with me, living somewhere deep down in my guts, between Professor Moriarty and Dracula, plotting some wonderfully hideous revenge against an unsuspecting mankind.”
Mike Mignola, creator of
Hellboy
“Fu-Manchu is one of the great villains in pop culture history, insidious and brilliant. Discover him if you dare!”
Christopher Golden,
New York Times
bestselling co-author of
Baltimore: The Plague Ships
“Exquisitely detailed… [Sax Rohmer] is a colorful storyteller. It was quite easy to be reading away and suddenly realize that I’d been reading for an hour or more without even noticing. It’s like being taken back to the cold and fog of London streets.”
Entertainment Affairs
“Acknowledged classics of pulp fiction… the bottom line is Fu-Manchu, despite all the huffing and puffing about sinister Oriental wiles and so on, always comes off as the coolest, baddest dude on the block.”
Comic Book Resources
“Undeniably entertaining and fun to read… It’s pure pulp entertainment—awesome, and hilarious and wrong. Read it.”
Shadowlocked
“The perfect read to get your adrenalin going and root for the good guys to conquer a menace that is almost supremely evil. This is a wild ride read and I recommend it highly.”
Vic’s Media Room
BY SAX ROHMER
Available now from Titan Books:
THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU
THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU
THE HAND OF FU-MANCHU
DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU
THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU
THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU
THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU
:
THE DRUMS OF FU-MANCHU
THE ISLAND OF FU-MANCHU
THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU
RE-ENTER FU-MANCHU
EMPEROR FU-MANCHU
THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU
PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU
Print edition ISBN: 9780857686107
E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686763
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First published as a novel in the UK by William Collins & Co. Ltd, 1936
First published as a novel in the US by Doubleday, Doran, 1936
First Titan Books edition: March 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright © 2014 The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors
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Frontispiece illustration by C. C. Beall, first appearing in
Collier
’
s Weekly
, March 7 1936. Special thanks to Dr. Lawrence Knapp for the illustrations as they appeared on “The Page of Fu-Manchu,”
http://www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
The Invisible President
T
hree cars drew up, the leading car abreast of a great bronze door bearing a design representing the beautiful agonized face of the Savior, a crown of thorns crushed down upon His brow. A man jumped out and ran to this door. Ten men alighted behind him. The wind howled around the tall tower and a carpet of snow was beginning to form upon the ground. Four guards, appearing as if by magic out of white shadows, lined up before the door.
“Stayton!” came sharply. “Stand aside.”
One of the guards stepped forward—peered. A tall, slightly built man who had been in the leading car was the speaker. He had a mass of black, untidy hair, and his face, though that of one not yet west of thirty, was grim and square-jawed. He was immediately recognized.
“All right, Captain.”
The man addressed as captain turned to the party and issued rapid orders in a low tone. The leader, muffled up in a leather, fur-collared topcoat, his face indistinguishable beneath the brim of a soft felt hat already dusted with snow, rang a bell beside the bronze door.