The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (10 page)

"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he
fell. He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.
Hallo!"

He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine, and out
of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."

"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he
said. "Ugh! it has a disgusting smell."

I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a
loud voice sounded outside in the hall. The door was thrown open,
and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore a
fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.

"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly. "I warned you! And see, you
have had a very narrow escape."

Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor, then from
Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth. He dropped into
one of the few chairs unstacked with books.

"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean? Tell
me-quickly."

In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night-or so
much as he knew of them. Sir Lionel Barton listened, sitting quite
still the while-an unusual repose in a man of such evidently
tremendous nervous activity.

"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was
finished; and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian. "I
was wrong to submit him to the temptation. God knows what Kwee was
doing in hiding. Perhaps he had come to murder me, as you surmise,
Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe. But-I don't think this
is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor." He fixed his gaze upon
the sarcophagus.

Smith stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean, Sir
Lionel?"

The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.

"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he
continued. "You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza
knew of my absence. I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week
upon"-again he looked toward the mummy case-"the tomb of Mekara;
and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to
England. He begged me not to open it."

Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.

"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he
asked.

Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.

"One," he replied at last, "which amused me-at the time. I must
inform you that Mekara-whose tomb my agent had discovered during my
absence in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to
Alexandria-was a high priest and first prophet of Amen-under the
Pharaoh of the Exodus; in short, one of the magicians who contested
in magic arts with Moses. I thought the discovery unique, until
Professor Rembold furnished me with some curious particulars
respecting the death of M. Page le Roi, the French
Egyptologist-particulars new to me."

We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this
tended.

"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret, the
tomb of Amenti-another of this particular brotherhood. It appears
that he opened the mummy case on the spot-these priests were of
royal line, and are buried in the valley of Biban-le-Moluk. His
Fellah and Arab servants deserted him for some reason-on seeing the
mummy case-and he was found dead, apparently strangled, beside it.
The matter was hushed up by the Egyptian Government. Rembold could
not explain why. But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of
Mekara."

A silence fell.

The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me
unpleasantly, coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience
and reputation.

"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.

"For two days, I believe. I am not a superstitious man, Mr.
Smith, but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the
facts respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank
God that I did not see… whatever came out of that sarcophagus."

Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face. "I am glad you did
not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara has to
do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus, Dr. Fu-Manchu has
made his first attempt upon your life. He has failed, but I hope
you will accompany me from here to a hotel. He will not fail
twice."

It was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan
House. Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some
mysterious inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to
resume my strange chronicle. And-why should I not confess it?-my
memories had frightened me.

I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel
Barton. They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted
down the following queries:-(1) Did any true parallel exist between
the death of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman,
and of Strozza? (2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How
had the murderer escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the
purpose of the rubber stopper? (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the
conservatory? (6) Was the green mist a mere subjective
hallucination-a figment of Croxted's imagination-or had he actually
seen it?

Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further
progress was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was
out of his depth. "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case
for the Psychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant,
lately of Mandalay," he had said only that morning.

"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies
were brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's
coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still
maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But
reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common
center. Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but
keep to the FACTS which are established."

I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
pipe in hand. The house was quite still, for my landlady and all
the small household were out.

Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the
hall door open. In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.

Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took
out my revolver, and stood up.

There WAS a sound. Someone or something was creeping upstairs in
the dark!

Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was
seized with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it. But
the rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my
partially opened door. I had not the time to close it; knowing
somewhat of the horrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the
courage to open it. My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that
bar of darkness with its gruesome potentialities, I waited-waited
for whatever was to come. Perhaps twelve seconds passed in
silence.

"Who's there?" I cried. "Answer, or I fire!"

"Ah! no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical. "Put it
down-that pistol. Quick! I must speak to you."

The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure
wrapped in a hooded cloak. My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to
silence, looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's
messenger-if her own statement could be credited, slave. On two
occasions this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of
the most profound mysteries of the case, had risked-I cannot say
what; unnameable punishment, perhaps-to save me from death; in both
cases from a terrible death. For what was she come now?

Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about
her, and watching me with great passionate eyes.

"How-" I began.

But she shook her head impatiently.

"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing
statement. "I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but
you must arrange to replace the lock."

She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my
shoulders. "I have come again to ask you to take me away from him,"
she said simply.

And she lifted her face to me.

Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange
music, with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it
harmony. Have I said that she was beautiful? It can convey no faint
conception of her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she
was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon. In
that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who
had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.

"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I said
firmly, but my voice was not quite my own. "It is quite absurd to
talk of slavery here in England. You are a free agent, or you could
not be here now. Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."

"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing
a cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled
head-dress. "No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been
a slave? Here, in your free England, do you know what it means-the
razzia, the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of
the dealer, the shame. Bah!"

How beautiful she was in her indignation!

"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe
that to-day-TO-DAY-twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla
girl, who is brown, and"-whisper-"two hundred and fifty a
Circassian, who is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am
I?"

She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed
my eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was
arrayed in gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect
lines of her slim shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric
ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled gardens of Stamboul-a
figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic setting of my
rooms.

"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she
said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her. "You see me as I am."
Her garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another
meeting I had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.

"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the
secrets of that man, when they mean death to so many?"

"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the
desert-seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have
seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon. I have
known the lash myself. Death! What does it matter?"

She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and
with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear
such words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty,
might have been a cultured European.

"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.
Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"-she clutched
me nervously-"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot
escape, beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While
he is my master I will never betray him. Tear me from him-by force,
do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.
Ah! but you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'-your
police. Police! Ah, I have said enough."

A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and
laid her hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering
among the curved black lashes.

"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never
understand and release me from him! I must go. Already I have
remained too long. Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out-at a
hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."

"And Nayland Smith?"

"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not
unseal my lips? You are in danger-you hear me, in danger! Go away
from here to-night."

She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway
she turned, stamping her foot passionately.

"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Be
warned, then; fly from here-" She broke off with something that
sounded like a sob.

I made no move to stay her-this beautiful accomplice of the
arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering
down the stairs, I heard her open and close the door-the door of
which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had
parted from me, and was so standing when a key grated in the lock
and Nayland Smith came running up.

"Did you see her?" I began.

But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told
him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.

"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I
cried in bewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut
mixture into the familiar cracked briar.

"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and
undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You
should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had
that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go
free."

"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will
to give me a warning. She disarms me."

"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and
burst into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my
cheek. "She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't
know the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's
position. She fears the English authorities, but would submit to
capture by you! If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her
to some cellar, hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she
would tell you everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern
conscience with the reflection that speech was forced from her. I
am not joking; it is so, I assure you. And she would adore you for
your savagery, deeming you forceful and strong!"

"Smith," I said, "be serious. You know what her warning meant
before."

"I can guess what it means now," he rapped. "Hallo!"

Someone was furiously ringing the bell.

"No one at home?" said my friend. "I will go. I think I know
what it is."

A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square
package.

"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger. I left
him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence
which subsequently he found. This will be fragments of the
mummy."

"What! You think the mummy was abstracted?"

"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else was in
the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House. A sarcophagus, I find,
is practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper
becomes evident-ventilation. How this person killed Strozza I have
yet to learn."

"Also, how he escaped from a locked room. And what about the
green mist?"

Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.

"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.
Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed. It is at
best a confusing datum to which we must not attach a factitious
importance."

He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop
in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.
Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as
is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one
side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid at once
raised and tilted it.

Then happened a singular thing.

Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud-an
oily vapor-and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a
memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.

"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life!
Fu-Manchu sent that box!" I threw my arms round him. As he bent
forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils. I dragged him
back and all but pitched him out on to the landing. We entered my
bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's
tanned face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.

"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects
identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove
it to be something else-God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what! It is
the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder
works. We have been blind-I particularly. Don't you see? There was
no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that
fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"

Smith clenched his fists convulsively.

"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of
such a scheme? I see the whole plan. He did not reckon on the mummy
case being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with
the aid of the string-after Sir Lionel had been suffocated. The
gas, I take it, is heavier than air."

"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and
a half times heavier than air. You can pour it from jar to jar like
a liquid-if you are wearing a chemist's mask. In these respects
this stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would
not interest you. The sarcophagus would have emptied through the
vent, and the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining-except the
smell."

"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was
unfamiliar with it. You may remember that you were prevented from
doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel? The scent of those infernal
flowers must partially have drowned it, too. Poor, misguided
Strozza inhaled the stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all
the gas-"

"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps,
where Kwee was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created
sufficient draught to disperse what little remained. It will have
settled on the floor now. I will go and open both windows."

Nayland raised his haggard face.

"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir
Lionel Barton," he said; "and contemptuously-you note the attitude,
Petrie?-contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is
justified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is
by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."