The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

name I did not! I did not! I watched him, spied upon him--yes! But,

listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death. I

could not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you. I

have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.

Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away. I came twice

and could not find it. There, will you let me go?"

"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."

Her hands dropped and she took a backward step. A new terror was to be

read in her face.

"I dare not! I dare not!"

"Then you would--if you dared?"

She was watching me intently.

"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.

And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice

that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at

all which the words implied. She grasped my arm.

"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"

"The authorities--"

"Ah!" Her expression changed. "They can put me on the rack if they

choose, but never one word would I speak--never one little word."

She threw up her head scornfully. Then the proud glance softened again.

"But I will speak for you."

Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.

"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no

longer be his slave."

My heart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this

warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt

of. For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her

personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my

judgment seat--had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to

justice. Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary. What should I do?

What COULD I do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in

which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.

Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I

stepped across the room until I glanced back. But she had gone!

As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.

"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you--yet.

Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I

wished it. Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and

hide me."

Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled cry from

Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her. The front door

opened and closed.

CHAPTER V

"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff

Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.

"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the

Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.

There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't

understand this."

We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of

foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor

Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that

combustion had not been complete.

"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar

went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'

(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out . . . booming

sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . . not for days,

or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make . . . snatch

. . . pigtail . . .'"

"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.

"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued

Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of

retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a

hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several

other persons) went up somewhere--presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's,

and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a

booming sound. Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary. We

have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I

feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered

by Fu-Manchu! It is sheer supposition, however. But that Cadby meant

to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise,

is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a

reasonable deduction. The reference to a pigtail is principally

interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body."

Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.

"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said. "I will trouble you, Inspector,

for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe. There is time to spend an hour

in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."

Weymouth raised his eyebrows.

"It might be risky. What about an official visit?"

Nayland Smith laughed.

"Worse than useless! By your own showing, the place is open to

inspection. No; guile against guile! We are dealing with a Chinaman,

with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most

stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced."

"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain

truculence. "It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to

failure. Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.

Foster will make your face up. What disguise do you propose to adopt?"

"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby. I can rely

on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise."

"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.

He turned to me quickly.

"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no

sort of hobby."

"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?" I said angrily.

Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of

real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.

"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind. You know

that I meant something totally different."

"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and

wrung his hand heartily. "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as

another. I shall be going, too, Inspector."

As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later

two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,

accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the

wilderness of London's night. In this theatrical business there was,

to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--and I could have

laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to

farce.

The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu

awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who, with

all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued

his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very

area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom I had never

seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable! Perhaps I was

destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.

I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid

depths, and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.

"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place

is close to the riverside. Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.

Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your

fellows will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the

whistle."

"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that. If you are

suspected, you shall give the alarm?"

"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully. "Even in that event I might

wait awhile."

"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector. "We shouldn't be much

wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel, somewhere

down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."

The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I

entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been seated

in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.

"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner

which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.

You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep on

the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home. Don't

move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders, and note

everybody that goes in and comes out. You other two belong to this

division?"

The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.

"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt, but don't

stick your chests out so much. Do you know of a back way to

Shen-Yan's?"

The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.

"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them. "I

know a broken window at the back where we could climb in. Then we

could get through to the front and watch from there."

"Good!" cried the Inspector. "See you are not spotted, though; and if

you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside

Shen-Yan's like lightning. Otherwise, wait for orders."

Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.

"Launch is waiting," he said.

"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully. "I am half afraid, though, that

the recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then

Cadby. Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know,

there has been no clew pointing to this opium den. Remember, he thinks

Cadby's notes are destroyed."

"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman. "I'm

told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in

London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he

uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there

to-night?"

"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing

to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu

is concerned."

"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"

"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary

criminal. He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put

on earth for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose

wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do

you follow me? He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making

that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has

ever dreamed of it."

Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the

breakwater and boarding the waiting launch. With her crew of three,

the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing

the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.

The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding

rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again

and show the muddy swirls about us. The view was not extensive from

the launch. Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a

moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large

vessel. In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the

ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the

foreground of the night-piece.

The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights

about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity. The bank we were

following offered a prospect even more gloomy--a dense, dark mass, amid

which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden

high lights leapt flaring to the eye.

Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon

us. A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little

craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We

were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk

had fallen again.

Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of

our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of

Brobdingnagian toilers. The chill of the near water communicated

itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments

inadequate against it.

Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous,

mysterious--flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.

It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing

from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.

"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had

been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a

Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."

The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the

severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.

"On your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp is--beyond

that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."

It was Inspector Ryman speaking.

"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with

your ears wide open. We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."

From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames

had claimed at least one other victim.

"Dead slow," came Ryman's order. "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."

CHAPTER VI

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!

By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By

that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of

Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!

Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a

trap--but the bottom three were missing!

Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should

be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to

the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed

me . . . a projecting beam a few feet above the water . . . and directly

below the iron ladder!

"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed. "Have I the strength?"

A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible