The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (5 page)

A seemingly drunken voice was droning from a neighboring
alleyway as Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a
little shop above which, crudely painted, were the words:

SHEN-YAN, Barber

I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of
studs, German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily
in the window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three
wooden steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for
support.

We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim
kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy
towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair. A Yiddish
theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the
walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese, completed
the decorations. From behind a curtain heavily brocaded with filth
a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock, black
trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing, shook his head
vigorously.

"No shavee-no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting
from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late!
Shuttee shop!"

"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of
amazing gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the
Chinaman's nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o'
pipes. Smokee pipe, you yellow scum-savvy?"

My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a
vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form
of gentle persuasion.

"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the
Chinaman's yellow paw. "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop
down, Charlie. You can lay to it."

"No hab got pipee-" began the other.

Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.

"Allee lightee," he said. "Full up-no loom. You come see."

He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and
ran up a dark stair. The next moment I found myself in an
atmosphere which was literally poisonous. It was all but
unbreathable, being loaded with opium fumes. Never before had I
experienced anything like it. Every breath was an effort. A tin
oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the floor dimly illuminated the
horrible place, about the walls of which ten or twelve bunks were
ranged and all of them occupied. Most of the occupants were lying
motionless, but one or two were squatting in their bunks noisily
sucking at the little metal pipes. These had not yet attained to
the opium-smoker's Nirvana.

"No loom-samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing
Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.

Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
pulling me down with him.

"Two pipe quick," he said. "Plenty room. Two piecee pipe-or
plenty heap trouble."

A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:

"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer! an' stop 'is palaver."

Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of
the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.
Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an
old cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the
end. Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the
bowl of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a
spirituous blue flame.

"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with
the assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.

Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and
prepared another for me.

"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered
injunction.

It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned
by the disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and
pretended to smoke. Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head
gradually to sink lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I
sprawled sideways on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.

"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.
"Look at the rats."

Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense
of isolation from my fellows-from the whole of the Western world.
My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached. The vicious
atmosphere seemed contaminating. I was as one dropped-

Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And
there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.

Smith began to whisper softly.

"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said. "I
don't know if you have observed it, but there is a stair just
behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain. We are near that,
and well in the dark. I have seen nothing suspicious so far-or
nothing much. But if there was anything going forward it would no
doubt be delayed until we new arrivals were well doped. S-SH!"

He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning. Through my
half-closed eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to
which he had referred. I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed
nervously.

The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the
room with a curiously lithe movement.

The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant
illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes-here an
extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy, corpse-like face;
whilst from all about rose obscene sighings and murmurings in
far-away voices-an uncanny, animal chorus. It was like a glimpse of
the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood
the newcomer that I was able to make out a ghastly parchment face,
with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a
coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was
something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and
something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands
clasped one upon the other.

Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this
crouching apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe
movements; but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the
right scent-that this was one of the doctor's servants. How I came
to that conclusion, I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind
that this was a member of the formidable murder group, I saw the
yellow man creep nearer, nearer, silently, bent and peering.

He was watching us.

Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting
circumstance. There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the
surrounding bunks. The presence of the crouching figure had created
a sudden semi-silence in the den, which could only mean that some
of the supposed opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the
approach of coma.

Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness,
I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending
lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own. I
completely closed my eyes.

Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid. Divining what was
coming, I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and
lowered again. The man moved away.

I had saved the situation! And noting anew the hush about me-a
hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened-I was glad. For
just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and
front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to
some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably
mysterious race, the Chinese.

"Good," whispered Smith at my side. "I don't think I could have
done it. He took me on trust after that. My God! what an awful
face. Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes. Ah, I thought
so. Do you see that?"

I turned my eyes round as far as was possible. A man had
scrambled down from one of the bunks and was following the bent
figure across the room.

They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading,
with his curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman,
following. The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding
on the stairs.

"Don't stir," whispered Smith.

An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated
it to me. Who was the occupant of the room above?

Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed
the floor, and went out. The little, bent man went over to another
bunk, this time leading up the stair one who looked like a
lascar.

"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith. "A dacoit! They
come here to report and to take orders. Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu is up
there."

"What shall we do?"-softly.

"Wait. Then we must try to rush the stairs. It would be futile
to bring in the police first. He is sure to have some other exit. I
will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here. You
are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows,
I can then deal with him."

Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the
dacoit, who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and
immediately took his departure. A third man, whom Smith identified
as a Malay, ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went
out; and a fourth, whose nationality it was impossible to
determine, followed. Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a
bunk on the right of the outer door-

"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was
dangerous and further dissimulation useless.

I leaped to my feet. Snatching my revolver from the pocket of
the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went blundering
up in complete darkness. A chorus of brutish cries clamored from
behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all. But Nayland
Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway, in a
purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at the end
and almost fell into the room beyond.

What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends
upon it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung
by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table. But
from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I
think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have had
no eyes for any of its wonders.

He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that
of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and
bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin
upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, crowned with
sparse, neutral-colored hair.

Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I
despair of writing convincingly. It was that of an archangel of
evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that
ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow and long, very
slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green. But their unique horror
lay in a certain filminess (it made me think of the membrana
nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring them as I threw wide the
door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the threshold, revealing
the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.

I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the
malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.
He was surprised by this sudden intrusion-yes, but no trace of fear
showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.
And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his
gaze from mine.

"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that
was almost a scream. "IT'S FU-MANCHU! Cover him! Shoot him dead
if-"

The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.

Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor
slipped from under me.

One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a
scream I was unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and
plunged into icy water, which closed over my head.

Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry
following my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a
police whistle. But when I rose to the surface impenetrable
darkness enveloped me; I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my
mouth, and fighting down the black terror that had me by the
throat-terror of the darkness about me, of the unknown depths
beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast amid stifling stenches
and the lapping of tidal water.

"Smith!" I cried… . "Help! Help!"

My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out
again, when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing
courage, I recognized that I had better employment of my energies,
and began to swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face
all the horrors of this place-to die hard if die I must.

A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into
the water beside me!

I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.

Another fiery drop-and another!

I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached
one bound of my watery prison. More fire fell from above, and the
scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.

Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy
garments, I threw my head back and raised my eyes.

No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was
merely a question of time for the floor to collapse. For it was
beginning to emit a dull, red glow.

The room above me was in flames!

It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage
through the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about
me-for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.

My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could
hear the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness
overhead. Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The
glow of the flames grew brighter… and showed me the half-rotten
piles upholding the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the
slime-coated walls-showed me that there was no escape!