The Bride of Fu Manchu

“It is simple. You will find a copy of the code in your room. The call note used by Ericksen is highly individual, but inaudible a short distance away from the receiver. Companion Trenck will call you to-night for duty and give you further particulars.”

As he spoke, I started—suppressing an exclamation.

A queer whistling note had sounded, almost in my ear, and some vague grey shape streaked past me, alighted upon the big table with its litter of strange books and implements, and with a final spring settled upon the yellow-robed shoulder of Dr. Fu Manchu!

Out from a ball of grey fur, a tiny, wizened face peered at me. One of those taloned hands reached upward and caressed the little creature.

“Probably the oldest marmoset in the world.” said the guttural voice. “You would not believe me if I told you Peko’s age.”

And as the Chinaman spoke, the wizened little creature perched upon his shoulder looked down into that majestic, evil face, made a mocking, whistling sound, and clutched with tiny fingers at the little skullcap which Dr. Fu Manchu wore.

“I shall not detain you now. Urgent matters call me. You may possibly have noticed that Professor Ascheim and Dr. Hohlwag of Berlin have found hormone—the life principle—in coal deposits. It will prove to be female. The male I had already . found. It is expressed in a rare orchid which possesses the property of extracting this essence of life from certain Burmese swamps which have absorbed it during untold centuries....

“It flowers at regrettably long intervals. Companion Trenck is endeavouring to force some specimens forward under special conditions.”

He struck the little gong beside him upon the table.

Almost instantaneously, as though he had arisen from the floor like an Arab genie, one of the white-clad Chinese servants appeared, in the doorway to the right of, and behind, Dr. Fu Manchu’s chair.

A guttural order was spoken; the servant bowed to me and stood aside.

I bowed deeply to that strange figure in the padded chair, the tiny, wrinkled-face monkey crouched upon his shoulder— and went out.

I was conducted back to the long corridor with its rows of white-painted doors. That numbered eleven was opened by the Chinese servant, and I found myself in the small, comfortably appointed sitting room. My silent guide indicated an adjoining bedroom with a bathroom opening out of it; whereupon I dismissed him.

As the sliding door closed and I found myself alone, I examined more particularly these apartments which had been allotted to me. They were beautifully appointed. Silk pyjamas lay upon the temptingly turned-down bed; and though I had never felt in greater danger in the whole of my life, the lure was one I could not resist.

I recognized a weariness of brain and body which demanded sleep. I made a brief survey of the three rooms before turning in, but although I failed to find any means of entrance or exit other than that opening upon the corridor, that such another exit existed, I knew.

Nevertheless, nature triumphed....

I cannot remember undressing, but I vaguely recall tucking my head into the cool pillow. I was asleep instantly.

The sleep that came to me was not dreamless.

I stood again, a spectator unseen, in the opium-laden atmosphere of Dr. Fu Manchu’s study. Fleurette sat in a high-backed chair, her eyes staring straight before her. The long yellow hand ofFu Manchu was extended in her direction, and a large disc, which appeared to be composed of some kind of black meteoric stone, was suspended from the ceiling of the room and was slowly revolving.

As I watched, its movements became more and more rapid, until presently it resembled a globe throwing out ever changing sparks of light.

The room, Fleurette, the Chinese doctor disappeared. I found myself fascinatedly watching those sparks, their ever changing colour.

As I watched, a picture formed, mistily, and then very clearly, so that presently it resembled a miniature and very sharp cinematograph projection.

I saw the Templehof aerodrome at Berlin. I had been there several times and knew it well. I saw Nayland Smith descend from a plane and hurry across the ground to where a long, low, powerful police car awaited him.

The car drove off. And as in a moving picture, I followed it.

It skirted Berlin and then headed out into a suburb with which I was not acquainted. Before a large house set back beyond a thick shrubbery- the car pulled up, and Sir Denis, springing out, opened the gate and ran up a path overarched by trees.

A crown of people was assembled before the house. I saw fire engines and men uncoiling a hose. Through all these, angrily checking their protests, Nayland Smith forced his way, and began to run towards the house...

Something touched me coldly.

In an instant I was awake—in utter darkness—my heart thumping.

Where was I?

In the house of Dr. Fu Manchu!...and someone, or something, was close beside me.

chapter twenty-sixth

THE ORCHID

“Do not speak—nor turn on the light!”

Fah Lo Suee! Fah Lo Suee was somewhere in the room beside me....

“Listen—for there are some things you must know to-night. First, look upon yourself as in China. For although this is France——”

“France! I am still in France?”

“You are in Ste Claire de la Roche....It makes no difference; you are in China. No one can leave here day or night without my father’s consent—or mine. Very soon now he opens his war upon the world. He will almost certainly succeed; he has with him some of the finest brains in science, military strategy, and politics which Europe, Asia, and America have ever produced....”

I resigned myself to the magic of her voice.

But if I was indeed in Ste Claire, it remained to be seen if no one could leave....

This house, she told me, was a mere outpost, used chiefly as a base for certain experiments. Elsewhere she had allies of her own, but in Ste Claire, none....

“For you see I do not agree with all that my father plans— especially his plans concerning Fleurette.”

“Fleurette! What are these plans?”

“Ssh!” Cool fingers were laid upon my arm. “Not so loudly. It is about her I came to tell you. She was chosen—before her birth—for this purpose. She had Eastern and Western blood;

her pedigree on both sides is of the kind my father seeks. I am his only child. It will be Fleurette’s duty to give him a son.”

“What! Good God! You mean he loves her?”

Fah Lo Suee laughed softly.

“How little you know him! She is part of our experiment— the success of which is of political importance. But listen,” she lowered her voice. “J do not wish this experiment to take place....Soon, very soon, we shall be leaving France.

Fleurette—I think—has found love. She is of a race, on her mother’s side, to whom love comes swiftly...”

“Do you mean...”

“I mean that if you want Fleurette I will help you. Is that direct enough? It was for this reason I emptied the syringe and recharged it with a harmless fluid. I had seen...once, in the bay; again, in this room....”

She had seen me on the beach! Hoping—doubting—trying to think, to plan, I listened....

Fah Lo Suee had gone.

That voice which seemed to caress the spirit, in which there was a fluttering quality like the touch of butterfly wings, and sometimes a hard, inexorable purpose which made me think of the glittering beauty of a serpent, had ceased. The presence of the sorceress was withdrawn.

The room remained in utter darkness; yet I seemed to see her gliding towards the door, and I envisioned her as a slender ivory statue created by some long-dead Greek, and endowed with life, synthetic but potent, by a black magician whose power knew no bounds.

I waited, as I had promised to wait until I thought that fully a minute had elapsed; then I groped for the switch, found it, and flooded the room with light.

The door, visible from where I lay, I saw to be closed, nor had I heard it open. The location of the other door I did not know.

But I was the sole occupant of the place.

I had still half an hour before I should be summoned to the strange duties which awaited me—half an hour in which to think, to try to plan.

Going into the bathroom, I turned on the taps. Shaving materials and every other toilet necessity were provided in lavish form. I remembered that I had to memorize the Morse code, and leaving the taps running I returned to the little sitting room and took up a chart of Morse which lay there on the table.

A brief inspection satisfied me that I could learn it in a few hours. I have that kind of brain which can assimilate exact information very rapidly.

I returned to the bathroom and mechanically proceeded....

To what extent could I rely upon the dreams, or what had seemed to be a dream, which had preceded the visit ofFah Lo Suee? There was no evidence, so far as I could see, to indicate that one episode, was more real than the other.

Perhaps the woman’s visit had been part of the same dream—or perhaps I had dreamed neither! That almost miraculous experiments in radio and television were being carried out in these secret laboratories, I could not doubt. It might be that that queer scene, resembling one in the cave of some mediaeval astrologer, had actually taken place; that for some reason, accidentally or purposefully, I had become a witness of it.

“There is as much truth in fable as in fact,” Dr. Fu Manchu had said, when he had drawn my attention to the handbook of the modem alchemist.

Perhaps the lost Sybilline books upon which much of the policy of ancient Rome was based were not mere guesses but scientific prophecy. Perhaps Fu Manchu had discovered Fleurette to possess the fabulous powers once attributed to the Cumaen oracle....

I considered the strange things which Fah Lo Suee had told me, but greater significance lay, I thought, in the facts which she had withheld. Nevertheless, some glimmering of an enormity about to be loosed upon the world was penetrating even to my dull mind.

For good or evil, I must work in concert with this treacherous woman. Her purpose was revealed, and it was one which I understood. In her alone lay safety, not only for myself, but for Western civilisation.

I had just completed dressing when that tiny penetrating sound seemed to vibrate throughout my frame. It sustained one long note and then ceased; no attempt was made to send me a message other than the signal which told me that my six hours’ watch had commenced.

The door slid open, and one of the white-robed Chinamen ‘ appeared in the opening, inclining his head slightly and indicating that I should follow him. I slipped the code book into a pocket of my overall....

Exit without leave (which only Fu Manchu has power to give) was out of the question, Fah Lo Suee had assured me. Failing outside assistance, there was no means of leaving save by the main gate.

This was the problem exercising my mind as I followed my silent guide downstairs and along to the botanical research room.

I found the famous Dutch botanist in a state of great scientific excitement. Already I was partly reconciled to the indisputable fact that he had died some years earlier in Sumatra. He led me to a small house where artificial sunlight prevailed.

About the mummy-like roots of some kind of dwarf mangrove which grew there, a bank of muddy soil steamed malariously. The place stank like an Amazon forest in the rainy season.

“Look!” said Trenck, with emotion.

He pointed; and, creeping up from the steaming mud, I saw tender flesh-coloured tendrils clasping the swampy roots.

“The orchid of life!” Trenck cried. “The doctor so terms. But imagine! Watch this thermometer—watch it as though your life depended, Mr Sterling! Here is a culture of fourteen days! In its natural state in Burma, flowering occurs at intervals of rarely less than eighty years! Do you realise what this means?”

I shook my head rather blankly.

“Come, Companion! It means that if we can produce flowers, and I expect these buds to break within the next few hours, no one of us, no member of the Si-Fan, shall ever die except by violence!”

Probably my expression had grown even more blank, for:

“The doctor has not told you?” he went on excitedly. “Very well! The knowledge which we accumulate is common to us all, and it is my privilege to explain to you that from this orchid the doctor has obtained a certain oil. It is the missing ingredient for which the old alchemists sought. It is the Oil of Life!”

As he spoke, mentally I conjured up the face of Dr. Fu Manchu, recalling the image which had occurred to me—that of Seti the First, the Egyptian Pharaoh. Could it be possible that this Chinese wizard had solved a problem which had taunted the ages?

“He spoke of it,” I said, “but gave me no details. How old then is Dr. Fu Manchu?”

Trenck burst out laughing.

“Do you think,” he cried, his voice rising to a note almost hysterical, “that a man could know what he knows in one short span of life? How can I tell you? It is only necessary to prevent the veins from clogging as in vegetable life. The formula which first came into his possession demanded an ingredient no longer obtainable. For this, after nearly thirty years’ inquiry, he found a substitute in the oil expressed from this Burmese orchid. Ah! I must go. It is tantalizing to leave at such a moment, but regulations must be obeyed. But I forget; you are a novice. I will show you how to call be if a bud breaks.”

He hurried back to the laboratory and pointed to a dial set upon the wall. He illustrated its simple mechanism, and it was not unlike that of a dial telephone.

“You see,” he said, “my number is ninety-five.”

He twisted the mechanism until the number ninety-five appeared in a small, illuminated oval.

At which moment I heard again that strange vibrating note which had so intrigued me on the beach at Ste Claire.

Trenck pressed a button, and the number ninety-five disappeared from the illuminated space, and that incredibly high sound which was almost like the note of a bat ceased.

“At the moment that a bud begins to break,” he said, “you will call me? It would be tragic for a new world to open before us in all its perfection and Father Time to cut us off before we could enjoy it. Eh? I envy you your hours of duty; they may bring the honour of being the first man to witness a thing which shall revolutionise human life!”

chapter twenty-seven

IN THE GALLERIES

my course was already set.

That there would be some kind of night patrol—probably one of those immobile Chinamen—I could not doubt. But since I had no orders to the contrary, I was presumably entitled to proceed wherever I pleased, definitely within the botanical department, and by presumption elsewhere, always supposing that the communicating doors were not locked.

Complete silence descended upon the laboratory, which was not more than twenty feet square. I found it necessary to keep reminding myself of the fact that in the eyes of those surrounding me, including the formidable Dr. Fu Manchu himself, I had become a Companion of the Si-Fan, a devotee of the cause, a blind slave of the Chinese doctor.

The more I considered the situation, the more obvious it became that I had only one person to fear—Fah Lo Suee! Fah Lo Suee alone knew that I was still the captain of my soul.

She counted on my interest in Fleurette to ensure my complicity. She thought—and she was right—that I would hesitate at nothing to save the lovely Rose-petal from that unimaginable fate mapped out for her by the insane master of so many destinies.

And as I paced up and down that silent room I tried to work out where my duty lay.

Fah Lo Suee clearly took it for granted that I could not escape from the place: this remained to be seen! But assuming that I did escape, and my absence be noted, this would precipitate some catastrophe, at the nature of which I could little more than guess.

Fleurette would be lost to me forever! Sir Frank Narcomb and the rest—what would be their fate?

Moreover, recognising the imminence of his danger, Fu Manchu might open his war on the world!

Yet, now that I knew myself to be not in China, but in Ste Claire de la Roche, my determination to endeavour to get in touch with Nayland Smith was firmly established: the route alone remained doubtful.

And upon this point I formed a sudden resolution.

I had noted that in one of the houses—the first which I had entered with Dr. Fu Manchu, and the loftiest; that in which many fantastic species of palms grew—there was a spiral staircase leading to a series of gangways. By means of these presumably the upper foliage of the trees could be inspected.

From up there, I thought, I might obtain a view of whatsoever lay outside, and thus get my bearings. Otherwise, I was just as likely to penetrate farther and farther into this maze of laboratories and workshops, as to find a way out of it.

I had one chance, and I didn’t know what it was worth. But given anything like decent luck, I proposed to risk it.

For a minute or more I looked in through the observation window to the small house flooded with synthetic sunshine, where those queer, flesh-like orchids were clambering up from steaming mud around the contorted mango roots. They seemed to be moving slightly, as is the way with such plants, in a manner suggesting the breathing of a sleeping animal.

I moved on to the door which communicated with the first of the range of forcing houses, or the last in the order in which I had inspected them. It was the one containing the pitcher plants and other fly-catching varieties.

It was dimly lighted within, and the door slid open as I pressed the control button. I closed it, adjusted the gauge, then opened the inner door and went in.

The steamy heat of the place attacked me at once. It was like stepping out of a temperate clime into the heart of a jungle. The air was laden with perfumes—pleasant and otherwise; the predominant smell being that of an ineffable rottenness which characterises swampy vegetation.

I threaded my way along a narrow path. So far, I had met with success—probably all the doors were unfastened.

It proved to be so, nor did I meet a soul on the way.

And when at last I stood in the most imposing house of all, palms towering high above my head, I became conscious of an apprehension against which I must fight...that the note of recall would suddenly sound in my brain.

Yet to discard the metal ring would have been folly.

There was an odd whispering among the dim palm-tops, for the place was but half lighted. It felt and smelled like a tropical forest. Much of the glass comprising the walls was semi-opaque. What lay beyond, I had no means of finding out.

I moved cautiously along until I came to that spiral staircase I had noted. It was situated at no great distance from the doorway through which I had originally entered.

Cautiously I began to ascend, my rubber-soled shoes creating a vague thrumming sound upon the metal steps. I reached the top of the first staircase and saw before me a narrow gangway with a single handrail—not unlike those found in engine rooms.

Palm boles towered about me, and fronds of lower foliage extended across the platform. I advanced, sometimes ducking under them, to where vaguely I had seen a second stair leading higher. I mounted this until I found myself among the tops of wildly unfamiliar trees; narrow galleries branched off in several directions. I selected one which seemed to lead to the glass wall. I saw queer fruit glowing in the crowns of trees unknown. Normally I could not have resisted inspecting it more closely; but to-night my professional enthusiasms must be subdued: a task of intense urgency claimed me.

Then, I had almost come to where one gangway joined another running flat against the glass wall, up very near to the arching roof, when I pulled up, inhaled deeply, and clutched at the hand rail....

Uttering a shrill whistling sound, something swung from a golden crest on my right, perched for a moment on the rail, not a yard from where I stood, chattering up at me and sprang into bright green foliage of an overhanging palm!

My heart was beating rapidly—but I tried to laugh at myself.

It was Fu Manchu’s marmoset!

I had begun to move on again when once more I pulled up.

Surely it was not the doctor’s custom to allow his pet to roam at large in these houses? It had presumably escaped from its usual quarters, and sooner or later the doctor, or someone else, would see it.

I stood still, listening. I could hear nothing save the faint whispering of the leaves.

Moving on to the side gallery, I saw ahead of me through glass windows a rugged slope topped by a ruined wall, and beyond the wall an ancient building. Stepping slightly to the right, I could see more of the place—a narrow street descending in cobbled stops, and another more modem building, from the arched entrance of which light shone out upon the cobbles. Looking higher, I saw a cloudless sky gemmed with stars.

This, beyond doubt was the back of Ste Claire, and these huge forcing houses were built against the slope which ran down from it to the sea.

In other words, as I stood, the sea was behind me. I must seek an exit in that direction. I walked back along the gangways to the head of the spiral staircase, seeing nothing of Peko, the marmoset, on my way.

I descended; proceeded along the second gallery to the lower stair, and so reached the rubber covered floor again.

Instantly, I noticed something which pulled me up dead in my tracks...an unmistakable smell of opium!

I turned slowly, fists clenched, looking towards those doors which I knew to communicate with the study of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Good heavens! what did this mean?

Both doors, the inner and the outer, were open!

From where I stood I could see the farther wall of the room—I could see a silk lantern suspended from the ceiling;

some of the books in their barbaric bindings; the thick carpet;

and even that Chinese stool upon which I had sat.

Not a sound reached me.

Something, perhaps a natural cowardice, was urging me to go back—to go back, but I conquered it, and went forward— very cautiously.

I believe I had rarely done anything so truly praiseworthy as when I crossed the space between those two doors, and, craning forward inch by inch, peeped into the study.

chapter twenty-eighth

EVIL INCARNATE

I withdrew my head with hare-like rapidity and clenched my teeth so sharply, stifling an exclamation, that I heard the click as they came together.

Dr. Fu Manchu was seated in the big throne-like chair behind the writing table.

One glimpse only I had of him in profile, but it had wrecked my optimism—reduced me to a state of helpless despair.

I stood now on the threshold, not daring to move, scarce daring to breathe. He was seated, I had seen in that lightning glimpse, his head resting against the back of the padded chair, bolt upright, his yellow taloned hands clutching the arms. It was like a vision of a Pharoah dead upon his throne.

The open doors were explained: he had heard me approaching. He was waiting for me!...What explanation could I offer?

So much more than my own life was at stake, that I stood there, aware that a cold perspiration had broken out upon my skin, fighting for composure, demanding of my dull brain some answer to the inquisition to which at any moment I expected to be submitted.

Silence!

Not a sound came from that study out of which opium fumes floated to my nostrils.

It was possible, it was just possible, that he had not heard my approach. This being so, it was also possible that he did not know the identity of the intruder whom, presumably, he had heard mounting or dismounting the iron staircase....

I might creep back, and if questioned later, brazen the thing out. One objective I must keep in mind—my freedom!

Silence!

The sickly smell of opium mingling with a damp miasma from the palm house. So still it was that I could hear my heart beating, and hear—or thought I could hear—that faint rustling in the tree-tops, that curious communion among tropical leaves which never ceases, day or night.

I began to recover courage.

After all, my duties were of a character which rendered wakefulness difficult. What more natural as a botanist than that I should keep my mind alert by inspecting the unique products of those wonderful houses? Finding these doors open, what more natural than that I should investigate?

Very cautiously, very quietly, I bent forward again, and this time ventured to look long and steadily.

Like Seti the First, Dr. Fu Manchu sat in his throne chair. I knew that I had never seen so majestic an outline, nor so wonderful a brow, such tremendous power in any human lineaments. He was motionless, his hands resting upon the dragon chair-arms; he might have been carved from old ivory.

My rubber-soled shoes making no sound, I stepped into the room and stood watching him closely. His eyes were closed. He was asleep, or—

I glanced at the jade-bowled pipe which lay upon the table before him. I sniffed the fumes with which the room was laden.

Drugged!

Here was the explanation which I had been slow to grasp.

Dr. Fu Manchu was in an opium trance...possibly the only sleep which that restless, super-normal brain ever knew!

I glanced rapidly about the room, wondering if any other man, not enthralled by the Blessing of the Celestial Vision, had ever viewed its strange treasures and lived to tell the world of them.

And now, as I stood there in the presence of that insensible enemy of Western civilisation, I asked myself a question:

What should I do?

If I could find a way out of this maze I believed I had a fighting chance to escape from Ste Claire. I was in China only in the sense that this place was under the domination of the Chinese doctor. Actually, I was in France; my friends were within easy reach if I could get in touch with them.

Why should I not kill him?

He had killed Petrie—dear old Petrie, one of the best friends I had ever had in life: he had killed, for no conceivable reason, those other poor workers in vineyards and gardens.

And, according to Sir Denis, this was but the beginning of the sum of his assassinations!

I stood quite close to him; only the big table divided us. And I studied the majestic, evil mask which was the face of Dr. Fu Manchu.

He was helpless, and I was a young, vigorous man. Would it be a worthy or an unworthy deed? It is an ethical point which to this day I have never settled satisfactorily.

All I can say in defence of my inaction is that, confronting Dr. Fu Manchu, helpless and insensible, I knew, although my reason and my Celtic blood rose in revolt against me, that something deep down in my consciousness bade me not to touch him!

Supreme Evil sat enthroned before me, at my mercy—perhaps the nearest approach to Satan incarnate which this troubled world has ever known....And perhaps, for that strange reason, inviolable.

I dared not lay a finger upon him—and I knew it!

No! I must pursue my original plan—gain my freedom.

The mahogany-arched recess communicated, I knew, with a corridor at the end of which was a stair leading to the rooms with white doors. The door which faced the table opened into the big laboratory called the radio research room.

Which of these should I attempt?

I had decided upon that leading to the laboratory when something occurred to me which produced a chill at my heart.

The opened doors into the palm house!

Who had opened them, since, obviously, Dr. Fu Manchu had not done so?

I stood quite still for a moment; then turned slowly and looked out into that misty jungle beyond.

Someone had come out of this room during the time that I had been creeping about upon those gangways in the palmtops. A patrol? A patrol who, having heard me, would now be waiting for me....

I listened; but no sound came from that tropical jungle. And now dawned a second thought. One acquainted with the iron routine of that place would never have left both doors open!

What did it mean?

An urge to escape from this drug-laden room, from the awful still figure in the carven chair, seized me.

I stepped softly towards the archway—only to realise that the control was hidden. I could see no trace of one of those familiar glass buttons, resembling bell pushes, which took the place of door-knobs in this singular household. Perforce, then, I must try my luck in the radio research room.

Beside the door facing Dr. Fu Manchu I could see the control button which opened it. I turned, pressed that button...and the door slid silently open.

I stepped out into the violet-lighted laboratory.

Looking swiftly right and left I could see no one. The place was empty, as when I had first discovered myself in its vast-ness. Almost directly at my feet a black line was marked upon the rubber floor.

I inhaled deeply. Could I cross it?

Clenching my teeth, I stepped forward. Nothing happened. I was free of the radio research room!

But now my case was growing desperate. I could not believe myself to be the only person awake in that human ant-hill. Sooner or later I must be detected and challenged. My only chance was to find another way out of the radio research room. And now it occurred to me that there might be none!

Avoiding those black marks upon the dull grey floor which outlined the settings of certain pieces of mechanism and of tables laden with indefinable instruments, I walked in the direction of the further end of the dimly lighted place, until I came to the glass wall.

A great part of it was occupied by shelves containing stores of all kinds. I knew that the door—if a door existed—must be somewhere in the opening between the shelves.

Desperately I began to search for it.

chapter twenty-ninth

PURSUIT

I could see no indication of a control in the first recess which I explored. But the wall was divided into panels or sections, framed in narrow strips of some dull white metal, and experience had taught me that any one of these might be a hidden door.

I groped hopelessly, as I had groped along the wall of the apartment which had been allotted to me, seeking for the hidden exit by which Fleurette and, later, Fah Lo Suee, had gone out.

A slight sound in that vast, silent room brought me twisting about.

As I turned, my down-stretched hands pressed against the glass panel behind me. I could see nothing to account for the sound which I had heard, or imagined I had heard...but I felt the glossy surface upon which my hand rested sliding away to the right!

I turned again—and looked up an uncarpeted staircase to where, far above, a silk-shaded lantern hung upon a landing.

Doubting, hesitating, I looked alternately at the stairway and back along the laboratory. This way led upward, and my route was downward to the sea. But, what was more important—I must leam the secret of these doors! There might be others yet to be negotiated. I determined to experiment.

The door had slid open to the right. I remembered that my hand had rested at a point about three feet from the floor. I pressed now right of the door, but there was no response. I pressed to the left. The door remained open. Baffled, I stepped back—and the door closed, swiftly and silently!

The principle was obscure, but the method I had solved.

I opened it again and stepped in to the foot of the stairs.

How did I close it now?

The solution of this problem evaded me. I began to mount the stairs—and as my foot touched the first step, the door closed behind me!

I mounted, silent in my rubber-soled shoes, reached the landing and looked about me, wondering what I should do next.

A short, dark passage opened to the right, and another, longer one, to the left. At the end of the latter I saw a green light burning. I could hear no sound. I determined to explore the shorter passage first. I began to tiptoe along it; then I paused and stood stock still.

The door at the foot of the stairs had opened, and someone had come through...

I was being followed!

A momentary panic touched me. Had the opium sleep of Dr. Fu Manchu been an elaborate pretence? Could it be that he, after all, had been watching me throughout?—that it was this dreadful being himself who was upon my track?

I hurried to the end of that narrow passage; but there were doors neither right nor left, nor at its terminus.

It was wood-panelled, and I looked about desperately for one of the control buttons. Suddenly I saw one, pressed it, and the door slid open.

I filled my lungs with sharp night air, and I looked upon the stars. I stood on a paved terrace bordered by a low parapet. Below me lay a rocky gorge cloaked in vegetation. Beyond was the sea, and instinct told me, the beach of Ste Claire.

Steps descended on the left. I made no attempt to close the door, but began hurrying down.

Rock plants, ferns, cacti, grew upon the wall. Moonlight painted a sharp angle of shadow upon the steps. I came to a bend and turned. The steps below were completely in shadow. I began to grope my way down.

And at the third step I pulled up sharply and listened.

Someone had come out onto the terrace above: he was following me!

I had yet to find my way to the sea; but having won freedom from the house of Dr. Fu Manchu and gained the clean free air, it would be a dead man that this tracker carried back again. And unless he shot me down before coming to close quarters, there would be a classic struggle at some point between this and the beach....

The insidious atmosphere of that secret place, as I realised now, had taken its toll of my spirit. But under the stars— free—free from that ghastly thralldom, my cold hatred of the Chinese doctor and of all his works and his creatures surged back upon me chokingly.

Fleurette!

The dark schemes of Fah Lo Suee could never save her. One hope only I had, and I included Fleurette in it optimistically, for no word of love had ever passed between us.

I must find Nayland Smith—surround this scorpion’s nest—and put an end to the menace which threatened the peace of the world.

Courage came to me: I felt capable of facing even Dr. Fu Manchu himself.

And throughout this time I had been groping my way down dark steps; and now I came to yet another bend. Thus far I had made no sound. I stood still, listening: and clearly I heard it...footsteps following me.

It was eerie—uncanny.

Whomever it might be, the Chinese doctor or one of his creatures, why had he not challenged me—why this silent pursuit? I could only suppose that a trap awaited me.]

Someone was on guard at the foot of the stairs, and the one who followed was content to make sure that I did not double back.

Some impassable obstacle lay between me and the beach. It might be—and the thought turned my heart cold—such an obstacle as I had once met with in the radio research room!

In that event, I should be trapped.

I pulled up, groping upon the wall beside the steps. Some kind of creeping plant grew there in profusion, indeterminable in the darkness. I pulled it aside and craned over, looking down.

Below, as I dimly saw, was a sheer descent of a hundred feet or more. These steps were built around the face of the gorge. Lacking ropes, there was no other means of reaching the beach.

This discovery determined my course.

Unknown dangers were ahead, but a definite enemy was on my trail. Even now, as I stood there listening, I could hear him cautiously descending, step by step.

He exercised great precaution, but in the silence of the night, nevertheless, I could detect his movements. I must deal with him first. Moreover, as I recognized, I must deal with him speedily. This stealthy pursuit was taking toll of my nerves.

I pictured to myself Dr. Fu Manchu, some strange death in his hand, stalking me—the man who had presumed to trick him—cat-like, cruel, and awaiting his own moment to spring.

I looked about me: my eyes were becoming used to semi-darkness. I taxed my brain for some scheme of dealing with the tracker.

And as I began again to grope my way down the steps and came to another bend, a possible plan presented itself. The next flight, branching away at a sharp angle, was palely lighted by the moon. A sharp shadow-belt cut anglewise across the first three steps.

Making as little noise as possible, I hauled myself up on the parapet; not without injury, for a spiny kind of cactus grew there. But I finally reached the desired position, squatting in dense shadow.

With the advantage which this take-off gave me, I aimed to wait until my follower reached the bend, and then to spring upon his back and hurl him down the steps, trusting to break his neck and to save my own....

I had no more than poised myself for the spring when I heard him on the last step of the shadowy stairs.

He paused for a long time—I could hear him breathing. I clenched my fists and prepared to spring....He took a pace forward.

For one instant I saw his silhouette against the light.

“My God!” I cried. “You!”

It was Nayland Smith!

chapter thirtieth

NAYLAND SMITH

“thank God I found you. Sterling,” said Nayland Smith when the first shock of that meeting was over. “It’s a break-neck job in the dark, but I think we should be wise to put a greater distance between ourselves and the house. Do you know the way?”

“No.”

“I do, from here. I discovered it to-night. There are five more flights of stone steps and then a narrow path—a mere goat track on the edge of a precipice. It ultimately leads one down to the beach. There may be another way, but I don’t know it.”

“But,” said I, as we began to grope our way downward, “when we get to the beach?”

“I have a boat lying off, waiting for me. We have a lot to tell each other, but let’s make some headway before we talk.”

And so in silence we pursued our way, presently coming to the track of which Nayland Smith had spoken, truly perilous navigation in the darkness; a false step would have precipitated one into an apparently bottomless gorge.

Willy-nilly, I began listening again for that eerie recall note which I was always expecting to hear, wondering what would happen if it came and I did not obey—and what steps would be taken in the awful house of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Some parts of the path were touched my moonlight, and here we proceeded with greater confidence. But when it lay, as it often did, in impenetrable shadow overhung by great outjutting masses of rock, it was necessary to test every foot of the way before trusting one’s weight to it.

At a very easy gradient the path sloped downward until, at the end of twenty minutes’ stumbling and scrambling, it ended in a narrow cutting between two huge boulders. Far ahead, framed in their giant blackness, I saw the moon glittering on the sea, and white-fringed waves gently lapping the shore.

Clear of the cutting—which Nayland Smith appeared to distrust—he dropped down upon a pebbly slope.

“Phew!” he exclaimed. “One of the strangest experiences of a not uneventful life!”

I dropped down beside him; nervous excitement and physical exertion had temporarily exhausted me.

There’s definitely no time to waste,” he went on, speaking very rapidly. “It might be wiser to return to the boat. But a few minutes’ rest is acceptable, and I doubt if they could overtake us now. Bring me up to date. Sterling, from the time you left Quinto’s restaurant. I have interviewed the people there, and your movements as reported, prior to the moment when you drove away in Petrie’s car, struck me as curious. You crossed and spoke to a man who was standing on the opposite side of the street. Why?”

“I had seen one of the dacoits watching me, and I wanted to find out which way he had gone.”

“Ah! and did you find out?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Go ahead, Sterling, and be as concise as you can.”

Whereupon I told him, endeavouring to omit nothing, all that had taken place. Frankly, I did not expect to be believed, but Nayland Smith, who in the darkness was busily loading his pipe, never once interrupted me until I came to the incident where, escaping from the worm-man, I had turned to find Fleurette in the room.

“Who is this girl?” he rapped; “and were did you meet her?”

“Perhaps I should have mentioned the incident before, Sir Denis,” I replied, “but naturally I did not believe it to have any connection with this ghastly business. I met her on the beach, out there.”

And I told him as shortly as possible of my first meeting with Fleurette.

“Describe her very carefully,” he directed tersely.

I did so in loving detail.

“You say she had violet eyes?”

“They appear sometimes very dark violet; sometimes I have thought they were blue.”

“Good. Go on with the story.”

I went on; telling him ofFah Lo Suee’s intervention and of how she had tricked the Japanese surgeon; of my second interview with Dr. Fu Manchu, and even of the dream which I had had. Then, of Fah Lo Suee’s midnight visit, outlining what she had told me. Finally, I described my escape, and the opium sleep of Dr. Fu Manchu. Sir Denis had lighted his pipe and now was smoking furiously.

“Amazing, Sterling,” he commented. “You seem actually to have seen what took place in Berlin. You have correctly described my movements up to the time that I reached the house of Professor Krus. This can have been no ordinary dream. It is possible that his girl possesses a gift of clairvoyance which Dr. Fu Manchu uses. And it rather appears that, given suitable circumstances, her visions, or whatever we should term them, are communicated to your own brain. Have you ever dreamed of her before?”

“Yes,” I replied, my heart giving a sudden leap. “I fell asleep at the villa Jasmin shortly after our first meeting, and dreamed that I saw her and Dr. Fu Manchu—whom I had never met at the time—riding in a purple cloud which was swooping down upon a city...I thought, New York.”

“Ah!” rapped Nayland Smith. “My theory was right. There was once another woman. Sterling, who, under hypnotic direction from Dr. Fu Manchu, possessed somewhat similar gifts. The doctor is probably the most accomplished hypnotist in the world. Many of his discoveries are undoubtedly due to his employment of these powers. And it would seen that there is some mental affinity between this girl’s brain and your own.”

My heart beat faster as he spoke the words.

“But as to what happened in Berlin: I arrived to find the Professor’s laboratory in flames!”

“What!”

“The origin of the fire could not be traced. Incendiarism was suspected by the police. Briefly, the place was burned to a shell, in spite of the efforts of the fire brigade....It is feared that the Professor was trapped in the flames.”

“Dead?”

“At the time of my hurried departure, the heat remained too great for any examination of the ruins. But from the moment that Dr. Krus was seen to enter his laboratory, no one attached to his household ever saw him again.”

“Good heavens!”

I groaned, “the very gods seem to have been fighting against poor Petrie.”

“The gods?” Nayland Smith echoed grimly.

“The gods of China—Fu Manchu’s China....”

“Whatever do you mean, Sir Denis?”

“The burglary at Sir Manston Rorke’s,” he rapped, “Sir Manston’s sudden death—the fire at Professor Krus’s laboratory, and his disappearance: these things are no more coincidences than Fah Lo Suee’s visit to the hospital where Petrie lay. Then—something else, which I am going to tell you.”

He rested his hand upon my knee and went on rapidly:

“I dashed back to the aerodrome: there was nothing more I could do in Berlin. There came a series of unaccountable delays—none of which I could trace to its source. But they were deliberate, Sterling, they were deliberate. Someone was interested in hindering my return. However, ultimately I got away. It was late in the afternoon before I reached the hospital. I had had the news—about Petrie—when I landed, of course.

He stopped for a moment, and I could tell he was clenching his pipe very tightly between his teeth; then:

“As is the custom,” he went on, “in cases of pestilence in a hot climate, they had...buried him.”

I reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

“It hit me very hard, too,” I said.

“I know it did. There is a long bill against Dr. Fu Manchu, but you don’t know all yet. You see, the history of this brilliant Chinese horror is known to me in considerable detail. Although I didn’t doubt your word when you assured me that Fah Lo Suee had not touched Petrie in the hospital, you may recall that I questioned you very closely as to where she was sitting during the greater part of her visit?”

“I do.”

“Well!” He paused, taking his pipe from between his teeth and staring at me in the darkness. “She had brought something—probably hidden in a pocket inside her cloak—”

“You mean—”

“I mean that she succeeded in the purpose of her visit. Yes, Sterling! Oh, no blame attaches to you. That hell-cat is nearly as brilliant an illusionist as her illustrious father. Briefly, when Cartier and Brisson gave me a detailed account of the symptoms which had preceded the end—I was not satisfied,”

“Not satisfied of what?”

“You shall hear.”

He paused for a moment and grasped my arm.

“Listen!”

We sat there, both listening intently.

“What did you think you heard?” I whispered.

“I am not certain that I heard anything; but it may have been a vague movement on the path. Are you armed?”

“No.”

“I am. If I give the word—run for it. Ill bring up the rear. The boat is hidden just under the headland. They will pull in, and we can wade out to them.”

chapter thirty-first

FU MANCHU’S ARMY

“your disappearance on the road from Monte Carlo,” Nayland Smith went on, “puzzled me extraordinarily. The guiding hand behind this business had ceased to be a matter of speculation: I knew that we were dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu. But where you belonged in the scheme was not clear to me. I had urgent personal work to do, necessitating the bringing of pressure to bear on the French authorities. Therefore, I delegated to a local chief of police the task of tracing your movements step by step, on the night of your disappearance.

“This was undertaken with that admirable thoroughness which characterises police work here, and involves a house-to-house inquiry along many miles of the Comiche road. In the meantime, working unremittingly, I had secured the powers which I sought....Petrie’s grave—a very hurried one— was reopened....”

“What!”

“Yes; it was a pretty ghastly task. In order to perform it in secrecy we had to close the place and post police upon the roads approaching it. However, it was accomplished at last, and the common coffin in which the interment had taken place was hauled up and laid upon the earth.”

“My God!” I groaned.

“I have undertaken some unpleasant duties, Sterling, but the sound of the screws being extracted and the thought that presently——”

He broke off and sat silent for a while.

“It was done at last,” he went on, “and I think I came nearer to fainting than I have ever been in my life. Not from horror, not from sorrow; but because my theory—my eleventh-hour hope—had proven to have a substratum of fact.”

“What do you mean. Sir Denis?”

“I mean that Petrie was not in the coffin!”

“Not in the coffin!...It was empty?”

“Not at all.” He laughed grimly. “It contained a body right enough. The body of a Burman. The mark of Kali was on his brow—and he had died from a shot wound in the stomach.”

“Good heavens! The dacoit who——”

“Exactly, Sterling! Your late friend of the Villa Jasmin, beyond doubt. You will observe that Dr. Fu Manchu finds uses for his servants—dead, as well as living!”

“But this is astounding! What does it mean?”

Quite a long time elapsed before Sir Denis replied:

“I don’t dare to hope that it means what I wish it to mean,” he said; “but—Petrie was not buried.”

I was literally breathless with astonishment, but at last:

“Whenever can so amazing a substitution have taken place?” I asked.

“The very question to which I next applied myself,” Nayland Smith replied. “Half an hour’s inquiry established the facts. The little mortuary, which, I believe, you have visited, is not guarded. And his body, hastily encased, as I have indicated, lay there throughout the night. The mortuary is a lonely building, as you may remember. For Dr. Fu Manchu’s agents such a substitution was a simple matter.”

“What do you think?” I broke in.

“I don’t dare tell you what I think—or hope. But Dr. Fu Manchu is the greatest physician the world has ever known. Come on! Let’s establish contact with the police boat.”

He stood up and began to walk rapidly down to the beach. We had about reached the spot where first I had set eyes upon Fleurette, when a boat with two rowers and two men in the stem shot out from shadow into moonlight and was pulled in towards us.

Sir Denis suddenly raised his arm, signalling that they should go about.

I watched the boat swing round and saw it melt again into the shadows from which it had come. I met the glance of eyes steely in the moonlight.

“An idea has occurred to me,” said Sir Denis.

I thought that he watched me strangely.

“If it concerns myself,” I replied, “count on me for anything.”

“Good man!”

He clapped his hand on my shoulder.

“Before I mention it, I must bring you up to date. Move back into the shadow.”

We walked up the beach, and then:

“I checked up on the police reports,” he went on. “That dealing with Ste Claire was the only one which I regarded as unsatisfactory. Ste Claire, as you probably know, was formerly an extensive monastery; in fact, many of the vineyards in this neighbourhood formerly yielded their produce to the Father Abbot. When the community dispersed, it came into the possession of some noble family whose name I have forgotten. The point of interest and the point which attracted me was this:

The place is built on a steep hillside, opening into a deep cleft which we have just negotiated, rather less than a mile in length. The chief building, now known as a villa, but reconstruction of the former monastery, is surrounded by one or two other buildings—and there is a little straggling street. It has been the property for the last fifteen years of a certain wealthy Argentine gentleman, regarding whose history I have set inquiries on foot.

“More recently, the lease was taken over by one Mahdi Bey, of whom I have been able to learn very little—except that he practised as a physician in Alexandria at one time, and is evidently a man of great wealth. He it was who closed Ste Claire to the public. However, the police in the course of their inquiries paid a domiciliary visit some time during yesterday afternoon. They were received by a majordomo who apologised for the absence of his master, who is apparently in Paris.

“They were shown over the villa and the adjoining houses, occupied now, I gather, by dependents of the Bey. No information was obtained upon the subject of your disappearance.

“But, in glancing through the police report, bearing in mind that I was definitely looking for a place occupied by Dr. Fu Manchu, a process of elimination showed me that of all the establishments visited, Ste Claire alone remained suspect.

The Argentine owner had built a number of remarkable forcing houses. The police, under my directions and unaware of the reasons for them, were ostensibly searching for an escaped criminal, which enabled them tactfully to explore the various villas en route. I noted in their report that they had merely glanced into these houses, nor did I come upon any account of the enormous wine cellars, enlargements of natural caves, which, I was informed, lay below the former monastery.

The character and extent of Dr. Fu Manchu’s new campaign dawned upon me suddenly, Sterling. I wonder if it has dawned upon you?”

“I’m afraid it hasn’t,” I confessed. “I have alternated between the belief that I was dead and the belief that I was delirious almost throughout the time that I have been in that house. But knowing now that what I saw was not phantasy, I am still in doubt, I must confess, as to the nature of this ‘war’ which threatens.”

“It’s nature is painfully clear,” Nayland Smith rapped. “Somewhere in this place there are thousands—perhaps millions—of those damnable flies! The deaths of which we know were merely experimental. The cases were watched secretly, with great interest, by Dr. Fu Manchu or his immediate agents. It was the duty of one of his servants—probably a Burman—to release one of these flies in the neighbourhood of the selected victim. I have learned that they seek shadow during the daytime, and operate at dusk and in artificial light. Directly there was presumptive evidence that the fly had bitten the selected subject, it was the duty of Fu Manchu’s servant to place a spray of this fly-catching plant—the name of which I don’t know—where it would attract the fly.

To make assurance doubly sure, the seductive leaves were sprayed with human blood! Vegetable fly-papers, Sterling-nothing less!”

“My God! It’s plain enough to me now.”

“Such experiments have apparently been carried out all over the world.

That Dr. Fu Manchu—or the si-Fan, which is the same thing—has international agents, I know for a fact. This means that collections of these flies, which have been specially bred to carry the new plague and to spread it, exist at unknown centres in various parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia—also, doubtless, in the Continent of America.

“Of all those seeking it, Petrie alone discovered a treatment which promised to be successful! Dr. Fu Manchu’s allies would of course be inoculated against the plague. But do you see, Sterling, do you see what Petrie did, and why he stood in the Chinaman’s way?”

I hesitated. I was beginning to grasp the truth, but before I could reply:

The formula for ‘654’ would have been broadcast to the medical authorities of the world, in the event of a general outbreak. This would have shattered Fu Manchu’s army.”

“Fu Manchu’s army?”

“An army, Sterling, bred and trained to depopulate the white world! An army of flies—carrying the germ of a new plague; a plague for which medical science knows no remedy!”

I was awed, silenced.

“Police manned a boat in the neighbouring bay,” Nayland Smith went on; “I distrusted the sound of a motor. They told me that there was a little beach attached to Ste Claire. And in this again I recognized such a spot as Fu Manchu would have chosen.

“At dusk, I waded ashore, ordering the boat to lie off in the shadow of the cliff. I was acting unofficially; I was outside the law if I should be wrong; but I had left a sealed envelope with the Chief of Police, telling him upon what evidence I had acted—if I should not return.

“I walked up the strip of sand, reached the pebbles, and had just come to the big boulders, when I saw a speedboat heading in! I took cover behind one of the boulders and waited.

“It came right in. The police had orders not to show themselves unless they received a prearranged signal. A man waded ashore through the shallow water, and the boat immediately set out again, and soon had disappeared around the headland.

“I watched him come through the gap between the boulders. He was wearing gum boots and went very silently. But I was rubber-shod, and could go silently too. I followed him. It was a difficult business, because of the fact that part of the path, more then than now, wad bathed in moonlight. But it evidently never occurred to the man to look back.

“In this way, unconsciously he led me to the foot of the steps, and I followed him, flight by flight, to the top. I was craning over the parapet when he opened he door; but, nevertheless, it took me nearly ten minutes to find how it worked.”

“Do you mean to say that you broke into that house alone?”

“Yes. It was a one-man job; two would have bungled it.”

I could find no words with which to reply. It was a privilege merely to listen to a man at once so clear-headed and so fearless.

“I was first attracted,” he went on, “by the long corridor at the end of which a green light burned. There was not a sound in the place, and so I explored this corridor first. I discovered a sliding door operated by one of the button controls, and I opened it.”

He paused—laughing shortly.

“I asked you to describe Fleurette particularly,” he went on, “because my first investigation led me to Fleurette’s bedroom!

“Yes, Sterling, the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. I could see her in the reflected moonlight, one arm thrown over her head, and her face turned towards the window. Your description was that of an artist. I agree with you; she is beautiful. Yet it wasn’t her beauty which pulled me up, nor even the knowledge that I had made a mistake: it was something else.”

“What?” I asked eagerly

“I knew her, Sterling! Yes! I know who she is, this mystery girl who has taken such a hold upon you.”

“But, Sir Denis, do you mean...”

“I understand your eagerness, and you shall hear everything later. I was anxious to leam the colour of her eyes. You see, they were closed; she was asleep. I retired without disturbing her. I next descended the stairs...”

“Good God! I wish I had your nerve!”

“Really, I had very little to fear.”

“You may think so—but please go on, Sir Denis.”

“My guide, of course, had disappeared, but I found a square space with corridors opening right and left. The trail of wet rubber boots gave me the clue. The imprint of fingers on a panel three feet from the floor enabled me to open the door. I found myself in that insane laboratory—”

“Insane is the word,” I murmured.

“It was empty. It was permeated by a dim violet light. And as I entered—the door closed! I was particularly intrigued by a piece of mechanism resembling an ancient Egyptian harp.”

“I noticed it, also.”

“I determined to investigate more closely, but there was a black mark on the floor surrounding the table on which this piece of mechanism stood...”

“Say no more, Sir Denis! I have had the same experience.”

“Oh! Is that so? This rather checked me. I observed that such a mark ran entirely around the laboratory close to the wall: you may have failed to notice this? And I can only suppose that this system of checking intruders has been disconnected in relation to the doors because the unknown man who had unwittingly acted as my guide was expected.

“As the idea flashed across my mind, I had no more than time to duck when the man in question came out!

“A panel slid open on the left-hand wall, and a Chinaman, still wearing wet gum boots, closed the door behind him, crossed the laboratory, opened another door on the farther side, and disappeared.

“I waited for a while, listening to a sort of throbbing which alone disturbed the silence, and then I too ventured to open that door. Do you know what I found?”

“I can guess.”

“I found myself face to face with Dr. Fu Manchu....”

chapter thiry-second

RECALL

“for the last twenty years. Sterling, I have prayed for an opportunity to rid the world of this monster. My automatic was raised; I could have shot him where he sat. He hadn’t a chance in a million. You know the room? I saw you come out of it.

“He was seated in that throne-like chair behind the big table, and his marmoset, that wizened little creature which I haven’t seen for fifteen years, was asleep on his shoulder. The reek told me the story—Dr. Fu Manchu has always been addicted to opium. He was asleep.”

“I know!” I groaned.

“You evidently conquered the same temptation. But I am still wondering if we are right. When I decided that I couldn’t shoot him as he slept, I cursed my own ridiculous prejudices. A hundred, perhaps a thousand deaths lay at this man’s door—yet, it was impossible.

“I looked at him, seated there, and his crimes made a sort of bloody mountain behind him. I have never known so keen a temptation in my life, and I have never felt so deeply a self-contempt in resisting one.

“Suddenly I observed a door on the right of his chair, and I knew that Dr. Fu Manchu as an adversary might be disregarded for the moment. There was a button beside this door. I opened it and saw a second, a pace beyond. I opened this also.

“And I found myself looking into a tropical jungle! At which moment the marmoset awakened, uttered its shrill, whistling ‘ cry, and whirled past me, disappearing among the trees in that misty place....

“I turned, my automatic raised, watching Fu Manchu. He didn’t move. I ventured to take a step into that huge glasshouse. I looked all about me, at the banks of flowers, and up into the palm-tops. Further exploration would be madness, I thought. I had achieved my purpose.

“My next step was to get out, undetected, as I had got in. I had just turned, intent upon the idea of creeping back into the room ofFu Manchu, when I heard a sound of soft footsteps up among the palm-tops.

This hastened my action. Without attempting to close the communicating doors, I crept back across the carpet of the study and out into the big laboratory. I hesitated there for a moment; but finally I closed the door. I stood still, listening.

“But apart from the throbbing, which apparently never ceased, there was no movement to be perceived.

“Avoiding the black marks, I set out, moving rapidly to the right. As I neared the wall at the end of that huge place, which, as you have probably realised, is built entirely underground, an unpleasant fact dawned upon me.

“I could not remember at which point I had entered! And the blank spaces on the wall offered no clue.

“I was making tentative experiments when I heard someone come out from Dr. Fu Manchu’s study....I dived to cover.

“The black marks upon the floor I knew I must avoid, and I had just found a hiding place when someone began to walk along the laboratory towards me! Beyond the fact that he wore white overalls I had no means, from the position which I occupied, of identifying him.

“I saw this figure go up to a recess between two tall cases. The walls being divided into panels by a sort of metal beading, I was determined to make no mistake, and I crept forward in order to watch more closely.

“In my eagerness, I allowed one foot to intrude upon a black mark surrounding an instrument resembling a searchlight. The shock which ran up my leg brought me flatly to the floor. I cursed under my breath and lay there prone.

“When I ventured to look up, the man in the white overalls had disappeared.

“The wall displayed its former even surface. But I knew where the door was, and I knew that I could open it by pressing hard three feet from the floor.

“Evidently, I had not been detected. I allowed fifty of sixty seconds to elapse, and then, in turn, I opened the door. I saw a flight of stairs ahead of me, and recognized them for those which I had descended. As I crept cautiously onto the first step, the door closed behind me.

“I waited, listening.

“Very faintly, for these mechanisms are beautifully adjusted, I heard a door above being opened. I remembered it: it was the door by which I had come in.

“The rest. Sterling, you know. An unknown man, for I had never had a glimpse of your face, and your attire was unfamiliar, was moving somewhere between me and the shore which I desired to reach.”

He stopped, and:

“What’s that?” he whispered.

An elfin note, audible above the faint sound of the sea, had reached my ears, as it had reached his.

“Someone is calling me,” I said, “my absence has been noted.”

chapter thirty-third

I OBEY

I often remember the silence which fell between us at that moment. I thought I knew what Nayland Smith was thinking—perhaps because I was thinking the same myself.

“It’s asking a lot, Sterling,” he said at last. “I have a good old-fashioned police whistle in my pocket, and there’s a police boat standing by. But I told you a while ago that an idea had occurred to me.”

Remembering what Sir Denis had done that night, how, alone, he had penetrated to this secret stronghold of Dr. Fu Manchu, I set my course, and when next he spoke, I was glad I had done so. His idea was mine!

“What’s the mechanism?” he asked sharply. “You said, I think, it was a ring?”

I slipped the ring from my finger and handed it to him. Already I saw his plan, and my part in it. But I was full out for the r61e he had allotted to me, although I doubted seriously if I should live to see it through.

He stood up, and silhouetted against the skyline I saw him tugging at the lobe of his ear; then:

“I have no right to ask what I am going to ask, Sterling,” he began.

“I had thought of it already,” I interrupted. “I am game. This is a fight to a finish, and you are in charge, Sir Denis. Just give me my orders.”

He reached out and grasped my shoulder.

“Unless my calculations are wildly at fault, Sterling, Petrie is up there, in that house—dead or alive—I don’t know which. But I want to know, before I make my next move.”

Dimly I saw him slip the adjustable ring upon his finger, and then:

“I will come back to the door,” he said. “The whistle will be audible from that point to the men in the boat. Make straight for the dial—the one Herman Trenck explained to you. The curse is, you don’t know Morse.”

“I have the code in my pocket.”

“It isn’t easy to work from printed instructions,” he rapped back. “What I have in mind is this: If you are not suspected, just call your number. What is it?”

“103,” I replied. “It’s on the ring.”

“Good enough. Failing such a message within a period of ten minutes, I shall raid the house at once: I have it covered.”

“That’s quite clear, Sir Denis.”

“In the event of your giving me the O.K., I shall wait for the Morse message—but I shall wait only half an hour. The plain call again will tell me. Try to find out if Petrie is there—and if he is alive or dead. One sustained note to mean that he is there, but dead: two short ones, that he is there, but alive.”

And as he spoke he was urging me forward, up the path, grasping my arm and firing me with that vital enthusiasm of which he had such an abundant store.

“There may be difficulties about the missing ring,” I suggested.

“A point I had been considering,” he returned. “Have you any suggestions? You know the place better than I do. Where might you have lost it?—where would it be difficult to find?

“Among the aquatic plants,” I replied; “some of them grow in deep water.”

“Good!” he snapped. “Let it be the aquatic plants. Do your damnedest in the next half hour to find old Petrie; then run for it. I shall be waiting for you....”

We proceeded now in silence, groping our way along that perilous path. Once again I found myself listening for that high, strange call note; but it never came.

We mounted the many stone steps and reached the terrace. I saw a dim light shining out upon the pavement. The door was open.

“I left it open,” said Nayland Smith, in a low voice. “IT1 stay here. Send me the signal as soon as you are assured of your own safety.” He grasped my hand hard. “Good luck! In half an hour...”

As I reached the open door and realised that I was about tw enter again the house of Dr. Fu Manchu, a qualm touched me, for which I hope I may be forgiven.

It passed as swiftly as it came. It was succeeded by a feeling of shame, by a memory of what Sir Denis had done that night.

I stepped inside, looking swiftly right and left. The green lamp still burned at the end of the long corridor. And remembering who was sleeping there, I watched it lingeringly. Then I looked down the stairs, and I stood still, listening.

No one was in sight, and there was not a sound audible. I pressed my finger upon the control button twice; the door closed. Then I began to descend the stairs.

Reaching the foot, I groped with my hand upon the panel which I knew concealed the door. Presently it responded, and bathed in that dim violet light I saw the great laboratory ahead of me.

It was empty.

I stepped forward—and the door closed behind me. I began to cross the rubber-covered floor, heading for Dr. Fu Manchu’s study.

This was the supreme moment.

I was disposed to think that it was he, awakening, who had summoned me. I lost count of time as I stood before that blank wall, charging myself with cowardice, flogging my failing courage.

At last I took the plunge...and the door opened.

He sat there like the mummy of Seti the First, upright on his throne. Opium still held him in its grasp. A jungle smell was mingling now with the poppy fumes, for the doors leading into the great palm house remained open. The marmoset was crouching on that yellow shoulder, not did he stir as I went tiptoe across the carpet.

So far, I was safe.

I closed the first door, hurried to the second, and closed that also. I hadn’t the courage to pause to adjust the gauge. I ran through the place, ducking to avoid overhanging branches, many of them flower-laden. And coming to the next door I pulled up and listened.

There was no pursuit.

From thence onward, I adjusted all the gauges, until, opening the final door, I stepped into the botanical research room, from which I had set out upon that memorable pilgrimage....

Stock still I pulled up on the threshold.

Fleurette stood there watching me!

chapter thirty-fourth

DERCETO

“fleurette!” I exclaimed.

She wore a silk wrap over night attire; sandals on her slim brown feet. She watched me gravely.

“Fleurette! Who called me?”

“7 called you.”

“But”—I was astounded—how did you know—?”

“I know most of the things that go on here,” she returned calmly.

I moved nearer to her and looked at the dial close to which she was standing. My number—103—was registered upon it;

and:

“How often did you call me?” I asked.

“Twice.”

Her unmoving regard, in which there was an unpleasant question, began to disturb me.

My conception of her as a victim of the powerful and evil man who sought to destroy white civilisation was entirely self-created. I remembered that she had been reared in this atmosphere from birth; and conscious of an unpleasant chill I realised that she, whom I had regarded as a partner in misfortune, an ally, might prove to be the means of my unmasking. I decided to be diplomatic.

“Yes—of course you called me twice,” I replied.

The second call would have been taken by Nayland Smith! How would he have read it?

“Why didn’t you come?” she asked. “Where were you?”

Her beautiful eyes were fixed upon me with a regard which I found almost terrifying. An hour before, an instant before, I would have met her gaze gladly, happily; but now—I wondered.

After all, the romance between this girl and myself existed only in my own imagination. It was built upon nothing but a stairs of sand—her remarkable beauty. She was, as Dr. Fu Manchu had said, that most rare jewel—a perfect woman.

But I—I was far removed from a perfect man. Vanity had blinded me. She belonged body and soul to the group surrounding the Chinese doctor. And perhaps it was no more than poetic justice that she and none of the others should expose me.

“I was in the palm house. I had never seen such trees. And, as you know, I am a botanist.”

“But you were a long time coming” she insisted. “You are sure you were alone?”

As if a black cloud had lifted, I saw—or dared to hope that I saw—the truth in the regard of those sunset violet eyes. Or was it vanity, self-delusion, again? But, moving nearer to her:

“Alone!” I echoed. “Who could be with me at this hour of the night?”

And now at last, unfalteringly, I looked into her eyes.

“The Princess is very beautiful,” she said, in a low voice.

“The Princess?”

I had no idea at the moment to whom she referred; but chaotically, delightfully, it was as I had dared to hope!

My sudden wild passion for this exquisite, unattainable girl had not failed utterly of its objective. She was sufficiently interested to be jealous! And now, watching her, it dawned upon me to whom she referred.

“Do you mean Fah Lo Suee?”

She made a little grimace and turned aside.

“I wondered why you had joined us,” she murmured. “If she is Fah Lo Suee to you—I know. I was merely curious. Goodnight.”

“Fleurette!” I cried. “Fleurette!”

She turned and walked away.

She did not look back.

I sprang forward, threw my arms around her and held her. Even so, she did not look back; she merely stood still. But my doubts, my diffidence, were gone: my heart was singing....

She had given me that age-old sign which is woman’s prerogative. The next move was mine. Revelation was so sudden, so wholly unexpected, that it swept me out of myself. To my shame I confess that, although vast issues hung in the balance, establishment of an understanding with Fleurette was the only thing in life at which at that moment I aimed.

I had fallen irrevocably in love with her at first sight.

Recognition of the fact that she was interested produced a state of mind little short of delirium.

“Fleurette!” I said, holding her tightly and bending close to her averted head, “that woman you call the Princess I call Fah Lo Suee because I was told that that was her name: I know her by no other. She means nothing more to me than I thought I meant to you. I had seen her once only in my life before I came here....”

I checked my words: I had been on the point of saying too much. Fah Lo Suee had told me, “She has Eastern blood in her, and to Eastern women love comes suddenly.” Of all that Fu Manchu’s daughter had revealed, this alone I was disposed to believe.

Fleurette turned quickly and looked up at me.

Nothing, I think, short of sudden death could have checked me then.

Raising my left hand to her shoulder, I twisted her about, so that I had her clasped in my arms. And stooping to those delicious, tremulous lips, I kissed her until we both were breathless.

One instantaneous moment there was of rebellion, and then such exquisite surrender that when presently she buried her lovely little head in my shoulder, so that I could feel her heart beating, I think there was in the whole world no happier man than I.

There was an old tradition in my family of which my mother had told me—that we were slow to hate but quick to love. Fleurette and I were well met. I doubted if mutual love had ever been unmasked under circumstances more peculiar....

What she told me did not fully register at the time, nor, perhaps, were my questions those which Nayland Smith would have selected. Nevertheless, I learned much respecting this queer household of Dr. Fu Manchu.

I began to realise the greatness of the menace which he represented; because, through Fleurette, the knowledge came to me that many who served him loved him.

Perhaps, among the lower orders of his strange entourage, fear was his sceptre. But, as I gathered—and I dared not speak a word to shatter that ideal—Fleurette’s sentiments were those of profound respect.

Mahdi Bey, her guardian, had taught her to look upon the Chinese doctor as upon a man supreme among men. It was an honourable fate to be chosen by the Prince who one day would rule the world—be its Emperor....

Fleurette had received a remarkable education, embracing the icy peaks of sexless philosophy to which she had been taught to look up in a Buddhist monastery in the north of China to the material feminism of a famous English school. Yet she remained completely human; for she lay in my arms whispering those replies to my eager questions!

She had not been denied the companionship of men, but always, in whichever part of the world she had chanced to find herself, had been constantly accompanied and never left alone in the society of others for more than those few minutes which Western social custom demands. There were girls of good family and of her own age in some of the larger establishments. But as to how they came to be there I was unable to form any idea: apparently they had been selected purely as companions for Fleurette....

Fah Lo Suee, to whom she referred as “the Princess,” she distrusted, but evidently feared. Fah Lo Suee, it seemed, had partisans of her own among the many leaders of this mysterious movement which Fleurette called the Si-Fan. Regarding the political side of the organisation, she clearly knew next to nothing. That a great war was pending in which Dr. Fu Manchu expected to overthrow all opposition, she was aware:

the character of this war she did not seem even to suspect.

Without recourse to the Ericksen telephone. Dr. Fu Manchu was able to call her, she told me—and she was compelled to go to him.

He sometimes made her look into a disk in which strange images appeared....

There were times—of which to-night was an instance— when his influence dropped from her—unaccountably; when she questioned the meaning of her life—and followed her own impulses. Those times, beyond doubt, although I did not tell her so, corresponded to the doctor’s bouts of opium-smoking.

“Why did you tell me to think of you as Derceto?”

Fleurette laughed, but not happily.

“Because you found me on the shore—and to love me meant destruction....”

During the greater part of the telling of her strange story, she had lain in my arms—and there had been silent intervals. But at last I seemed to hear the crisp voice of Sir Denis demanding that I should put duty first....

chapter thirty-fifth

THE SECTION DOORS

“He is here,” said Fleurette. “Leave the door open, I will call if anyone comes.”

At that moment, as I crossed the threshold into a small white bedroom, even Fleurette was forgotten. Petrie, pale as I had never seen him, his hair blanched as by the brushes of ten years, lay there, watching me!

There was a dull flush on his forehead where the Purple Shadow had been.

“Petrie, old man!” I whispered—”Petrie!...Thank God!”

Had I not met other dead men in the house of Dr. Fu Manchu, this must have been a moment of stupefaction....

He nodded weakly and smiled—the same patient smile which I knew, even extending his hand, which I grasped between both my own.

“This,” I said, “is a miracle.”

“I agree.” His voice was very low. “I must have the constitution of a rattlesnake. Sterling. For I have not only survived the new plague—but an injection of the preparation known as ‘Fu Manchu katalepsis’ or briefly—’F. katalepsis.’“

“You know all this?”

“Yes; I even knew that you were here. But this is no time—”

He stopped, breathlessly, and I realised how weak he was.

“Don’t tire yourself,” I urged, grasping his shoulder. “Sir Denis is waiting for the news.”

“Nayland Smith!” His eyes lighted up. “He is here?”

“Yes—standing by, outside.”

Petrie clenched his teeth; closed his eyes. I recognized all this news had meant to him; then:

There is only one thing you must wait for,” he said. “Give me that scribbling block from the table. Sterling, and a pencil.”

I did as he directed—I could see that it would be useless to object.

“Lift me up,” he went on. “It’s going to be a struggle to write, but it has to be done—in case—of—accidents”

“What Petrie? Why is all this necessary?”

He shook his head and began very slowly to write. Bending over him, I saw that he was writing a prescription.

The truth dawned upon me!

“‘654’?”

He nodded, and went on writing. For a moment he paused, and:

“This must be circulated throughout the world,” he whispered weakly—”without delay.”

He glanced over what he had written, and nodded his wish to be laid back upon the pillows. This accomplished, I tore the sheet off the block, folded it, and slipped it into a pocket of my overall.

“Now, bolt!” he whispered. “Bolt for your life while there’s a chance. Everything depends upon your success.”

I had turned to go—when, unaided, he sat upright in bed, his eyes fixed upon the open door.

“Alan!” I heard softly

I turned in time to see Fleurette’s head hurriedly withdrawn. Someone was coming!

“Sterling! Sterling!” Petrie clutched my shoulder: his eyes were suddenly wild. “Who was that at the door?”

“A friend...you need not be afraid...Fleurette.”

“Fleurette? My God! Am I growing delirious?”

I assisted him back onto his pillows. His manner was alarmingly strange.

“Who is she?”

“She is a victim of Dr. Fu Manchu—but we are going to get her away.”

“Great heaven!” He closed his eyes. “Can it be true? Is it possible?...Don’t wait, Sterling—go...go!”

Indeed I knew that I had no alternative; and squeezing his hand hard I ran out of the room.

Fleurette was standing just beyond the door, which she closed instantly upon my appearance.

“Someone is coming!” she said, in a low voice. “I think it is Companion Yamamata. Quick!—this way!”

She led me along a short passage to the head of a descending stair.

“Don’t make a noise,” she warned.

We crept to the bottom, my arm about her waist.

“Who is Dr. Petrie?” she whispered. “He stared at me as though he knew me; yet I have never seen him in my life before.”

“He is one of my oldest friends,” I replied, “and unfortunately I hadn’t time to ask him. But I saw how he looked at you. Yes! he thinks he knows you.”

And now I wondered what knowledge was common to Dr. Petrie and Sir Denis but not shared by me....

Both had recognized Fleurette!

We turned a comer, and I saw that we stood directly under a little green lamp.

“There is your way,” said Fleurette—”straight ahead. It is the only door onto the terrace.”

At which moment I realised that we were standing directly outside her room!

“Darling, at last!” I exclaimed, and felt my heart leap. “Come on! Hurry! There isn’t a moment to waste!”

She slipped by me and opened the door of her room. I stared at her in blank amazement—and her expression baffled me. She took my hand, pulled me gently forward...and then closed the door.

“Someone might see or hear us in the corridor,” she said. “We are safe here. Please say good-bye to me.”

“What!”

She watched me, and in the dim light of that room which Nayland Smith had described as the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty her eyes looked like violets wet with dew.

“What did you think I meant to do?” she asked softly. “I have never cared for anyone before. I suppose I am to blame because I cared for you? But although you have not told me— I know what you think of Dr. Fu Manchu...of all of us. You belong to the poor ignorant world. You are not really one of us. You are a spy.”

I tried to take her in my arms, but she eluded me.

“Fleurette! This is madness!”

“The world is mad—Alan.” That moment of hesitation before my name was a rainbow. “But you belong to it, and you must go back. I should hate to believe that you could think me capable of deserting those who have never denied me any thing as long as I can remember. No, dear, I sink or swim with my friends! I am betraying them, now, by letting you go. But the moment you have reached safety—I shall warn them.”

“Fleurette!”

“If I could love you without wronging them, I would—but I can’t.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “Please say good-bye to me. You must hurry—you must hurry!”

Then she was in my arms, and as her lips met mine I knew that the greatest decision of my life was being asked of me.

The philosophy of a young girl, crazy though it may be, is intensely difficult to upset—and beyond doubt there was fatalism in Fleurette’s blood. Yet—how could I let her go?

My heart seemed to be beating like a steam hammer. I wanted to pick her up, to carry her from that accursed house. She began to plead.

“If you force me to go,” I said, “I shall get you back—follow you if necessary all around the world.”

“It would be useless. I can never belong to you—I belong to him.”

I wanted to curse the name of Fu Manchu and to curse all his works. Knowing, as I knew, that he was a devil incarnate, a monster, an evil superhuman, the monument which he stood for in the mind of this beautiful child—for she was little more— was a shrine I yearned to shatter.

Yet. for all the frenzy of passion which burned me up, enough of common sense remained to warn me that this was not the time; that such an attempt must be worse than futile.

I held her tightly, cruelly, kissing her eyes, her hair, her neck, her shoulders. I found myself on the verge of something resembling hysteria.

“I can’t leave you here!” I said hoarsely; “I won’t—I daren’t. »

A dim throbbing sound had become perceptible. This at first I had believed to be a product of excitement. But now Fleurette seemed to grow suddenly rigid in my arms....

“Oh. God!” she whispered. “Quick! quick! Someone has found out! Listen!”

A cold chill succeeded fever.

“They are closing the section doors! Quick, for your life...and for my sake!”

It was inevitable. For her sake?—yes! If I should be found there...

She sprang to the control button.

The door remained closed.

She twisted about, her back pressed against the door, her arms outstretched—such terror in her eyes as I had hoped never to see there.

‘ “All the doors have been locked as well,” she whispered. “It is impossible to get out!”

“But, Fleurette!” I began.

“It’s useless! It’s hopeless!”

“But if I am found here?”

“It’s unavoidable now.”

“I could hide.”

“No one can hide from him. He could force me to tell him.”

Her lips began to tremble, and I groaned impotently, knowing well that I could do nothing to comfort her—that I, and I alone, was the cause of this disaster about to fall.

And through those dreadful moments, the vibration of the descending doors might faintly be detected, together with that muted gong note which I had learned to dread.

“There must be something we can do!”

“There is nothing.”

Silence.

The section doors were closed.

And in that stillness I seemed to live again through years of life. I had in my pocket the means of saving the world. Useless, now! Within call, perhaps within sight from the terrace, eagerly awaiting me, were Sir Denis—freedom—sanity!

And here was I, helpless as a mouse in a trap, awaiting...what?

My heart, which had been beating so rapidly, seemed to check, to grow cold; my brain jibbed at the task.

What would be Fleurette’s fate if I were discovered there, in her room, by Dr Fu Manchu?

chapter thirty-sixth

THE UNSULLIED MIRROR

Many minutes elapsed, every one laden with menace. Then— came that eerie note which I knew.

Fleurette stood quite still. Used now to its significance and purpose, I could detect the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet, given at a speed which only an adept could have followed.

The sound ceased.

Fleurette dropped into an armchair, looking up at me, hopelessly.

“They are searching for you,” she said, in a dull tone. “He doesn’t know yet.”

I stood there dumb of tongue and numb of brain for long moments; then ideas began to come. Someone had called me—possibly Trenck—and I had not replied. Nayland Smith had received those messages.

What had they been, and how had he construed them?

This uncertainty only added to the madness of the situation. I had an idea born of experience.

“Fleurette,” I said, dropping upon my knees beside her, “why could I not have come in here as you came into my room when the alarm sounded?”

She looked at me; her face was like a beautiful mask:

immutable, expressionless.

“It would be useless,” she replied. “No one can lie to Dr. Fu Manchu.”

And I accepted the finality of those words, for I believed it. I sprang upright. I had become aware of a faint distant vibration.

“Can the doors be raised separately?”

“Yes; any one of them can be raised alone.”

I stepped across the room and pressed the control button. There was no response. I bent close to the metal, listening intently. I formed the impression, and it was a definitely horrible impression, that the control doors were being raised, one by one...that someone was approaching this room in which I was trapped with Fleurette.

Beyond doubt, that ominous sound was growing nearer— growing in volume. And finally the vibration grew so great that I could feel it upon the metal against which my head rested.

I stepped back—my fists automatically clenched. The door slid open—and Dr. Fu Manchu stood there watching me!

His majestic calm was terrible. Those long, brilliant eyes glanced aside, and I knew that he was studying Fleurette.

“Woman—the lever which a word can bend,” he said softly.

He made a signal with his long-nailed hand, and two of his Chinese servants sprang in.

I stepped back debating my course.

“Heroics are uncalled for,” he added, “and could profit no one.”

For an instant I glanced aside at Fleurette.

Her beautiful eyes were raised to Dr. Fu Manchu, and her expression was that of a saint who sees the Holy Vision!

He spoke rapidly in Chinese and entered the room, giving me not another glance. My arms were grasped and I found myself propelled forcibly out into the corridor. The strength of these little immobile men was amazing.

The section door at the corner where those stairs terminated which led down to the radio research room was not yet fully raised: two feet or more still protruded from the slot in the ceiling which accommodated it.

Our human brains possess very definite limitations: mine had reached the edge of endurance....

My memory registers a blank from the moment that I left Fleurette’s room to that when I found myself seated in a hard, high-backed chair in the memorable study of Dr. Fu Manchu. Beside me, Yamamata was seated, and at the moment at which I suppose my brain began to function again—suddenly that door which I knew led into the palm house opened—and Fah Lo Suee came in.

She wore a bright green pyjama suit and was smoking a cigarette in a jade holder. One glance I received from her unfathomable eyes—but if it conveyed a message, the message failed to reach me.

She closed the door by which she had entered and dropped onto a little settee close beside it.

I glanced at Yamamata. His yellow skin was clammy with perspiration. In doing so, I noticed that the door in the archway was open—and now through the opening came Dr. Fu Manchu; silent—with cat-like dignity.

The door closed behind him.

Yamamata stood up, and so did Fah Lo Suee. It was farcically like a court of law. I wrenched my head aside, clenching my teeth. My passion for Fleurette had thrown true perspective out of focus.

This man who assumed the airs of an emperor was, in fact, a common criminal: the hangman awaited him. And then I heard his guttural voice:

“Stand up!”

All that was me, all that I had proudly been wont to regard as my personality, fought against this command—for a command it was. Yet—the plain fact must be recorded: I stood up....

He took his seat in the dragon-carved chair behind the big table. I had kept my eyes deliberately averted, but now, in the silence which followed, I stole a glance at him. He was staring intently at Fah Lo Suee.

Suddenly he spoke:

“Companion Yamamata,” he said softly, “you may go.”

Yamamata sprang up; I saw his lips move, but no sound issued from them. He bowed, and opening the door which led into the big laboratory, went out, closing it behind him.

Dr. Fu Manchu began to speak rapidly in Chinese, and at the end of the first sentence Fah Lo Suee, dropping her jade cigarette holder into a bronze tray upon the floor, came down to her knees on the carpet and buried that evilly beautiful face in upraised hands—delicate ivory hands—patrician hands—shadows, etherialised, of those of her formidable father.

He continued to speak, and she shrank lower and lower, but spoke no word—uttered no sound. Then:

“Alan Sterling,” he said, suddenly expressing himself in English; “the ill-directed cunning of one woman and the frailty of another have taken your fate out of my control. There are men to whom women are dangerous—you, unhappily, would seem to be one of them.”

And as he spoke, the remarkable fact disclosed itself to me that, although Fah Lo Suee had spoken no word, already he knew her part in the conspiracy!

Good heavens! A suspicion sprang to my mind: Had Fah Lo Suee been watching? Was it she who had trapped me with Fleurette? Was this the end to which she had preserved my life: Fleurette’s swift ruin, my own speedy death?

In its classic simplicity the scheme was Chinese, I thought.

I looked at her where she crouched, abject.

The voice—the strange, haunting voice—spoke on:

“Millions of useless lives cumber the world to-day. Among them I must now include your own. The ideal state of the Greek philosopher took no count of these. There can be no human progress without selection; and already I have chosen the nucleus of my new state. The East has grown in spirit, while the West has been building machinery....

“My new state will embody the soul of the East.

“I am not ready yet for my warfare against the numerous but helpless army of the rejected. The Plagues of Egypt I hold in my hands, but I cannot control the course of the sun....

“It may be that you, a gnat on the flywheel, have checked the machinery of the gods. Alone, you could never have cast a shadow upon my path: one of my own blood is the culprit.”

He stuck a little gong which hung close to his hand upon the table, and the door facing me as I sat opened instantaneously and silently. One of those white-robed, image-like Chinamen entered, to whom Fu Manchu spoke briefly, rapidly.

The men bowed and went out. Fah Lo Suee’s slender body seemed to diminish. She sank down until her head touched the carpet.

Dr. Fu Manchu tapped with a long nail upon the table, glancing aside at her where she crouched.

“Your Western progress, Alan Sterling,” he said, “has resulted in the folly of women finding a place in the councils of state. That myth you call ‘chivalry’ has tied your hands and stricken you mute. In the China to which I belong—a China which is not dead but only sleeping—we use older simpler, methods....We have whips....”

The door suddenly opened again, and two powerfully built negresses entered. Their attire consisted of red-and-white striped skirts fastened by girdles about their waists.

Dr. Fu Manchu addressed them rapidly, but now, I knew, he was not speaking Chinese.

He ceased, and pointed.

One of the negresses stooped; but even as she did so, Fah Lo Suee sprang to her feet with an elastic movement, turned flaming eyes upon that dreadful figure in the high-backed chair, and then, a negress at either elbow, walked out into the palm house beyond.

I glanced at Dr. Fu Manchu, and he caught and held that glance. I realised that I was incapable of turning my eyes away.

“Alan Sterling,” he said, “it is my purpose to save the world from itself. And to this end there must be a great purging. Today or tomorrow, my dream will be fulfilled. One of those bunglers acting for what is sometimes termed Western civilisation may bring about my death by violence. There is none to succeed me....My daughter—trained for a great purpose, as few women have been trained and endowed with that physical perfections of a carefully selected mother, inherits the taint of some traitor ancestor....

“I desire that a son shall succeed to what I shall build. The mother of that son I have chosen. Sex determination is a problem which at last I have conquered. Neither love nor passion will enter into the union. But if you, Alan Sterling, have cast a shadow of either upon the unsullied mirror which I had patiently burnished to reflect my will...then the work of eighteen years is undone.”

His guttural voice sank lower and lower, and the last few words sounded like a sibilant whisper....

He struck the gong twice....

I found myself seized by my arms and lifted off the chair in which I had been seated! Two of his Chinamen—unheard, unsuspected—had entered behind me.

Brief guttural words, and I was swung around, as Dr. Fu Manchu stood up, tall, gaunt, satanic, and from a hook upon the wall took down a whip resembling a Russian knout.

As I was swept about to face the door which communicated with the radio research room, one horrifying glimpse I had in the palm house, dimly lighted, of an ivory body hanging by the wrists....

chapter thirty-seven

THE GLASS MASK

In a frame of mind which I must leave to the imagination, I paced up and down the little sitting room of the apartment numbered eleven.

I was alone, and the door was unopenable; some ten minutes before, I had heard the section doors being closed, also. Whichever way my thoughts led me, I found stark madness lurking there.

Fleurette! What would be the fate of Fleurette? For Dr. Fu Manchu was not human in the accepted sense of the word. He was a remorseless intelligence. Where he could not use, he destroyed. Perhaps he would spare Fleurette because of her remarkable beauty. But spare her—for what?

Petrie! He was helpless indeed, desperately ill. And as for myself, I suffered those hundred deaths which the coward is said to die, during the unaccountable period that I paced up and down that small room.

My mad passion for Fleurette had brought this down upon all of us! In those feverish moments while I had been pleading with her, I should have been clear of this ghastly house. My freedom meant the safety of the world. I had sacrificed this to my own selfish desires. Only by wrecking the elaborate organisation of the Si-Fan—the scope of which hitherto I had never suspected—could I hope to win Fleurette.

Fool—mad fool!—to have supposed that a newly awakened passion could upset traditions so carefully emplanted and nurtured.

What was happening?

I tried to work out what Nayland Smith would be likely to do—to estimate the chances of a raid taking place before it was too late. I could not forget the imperturbable figure in the yellow robe.

That Dr. Fu Manchu was prepared for such an emergency as this it was impossible to doubt. His manner had not been that of a criminal trapped.

I pressed my ear against the door and listened....

But I could detect no sound.

I crossed to the further wall, in which I knew there was another door, but one I had never been able to open. I listened there also, for I remembered that there was a corridor beyond.

Silence. I was shut into a narrow section of the house between barriers of steel.

I estimated that fully an hour elapsed. I knew from experience that these apartments were practically soundproof. My brain was a phantom circus, and I was rapidly approaching a state of nervous exhaustion.. My frame of mind had been all but unendurable when I had thought that I was dead, when I had thought that I was in a state of delirium. But now, knowing that the horrors accumulated about me, the monstrosities, parodies of nature, the living dead men, the incalculable machines were real and not figments of fevered imagination—now, when I should have been most sane, I was more likely to lose my mental poise than at any time during the past.

A dream which I had scarcely dared to entertain had come true—only to be shattered in the very hour of its realisation. That I should ever leave this place alive, I did not believe for a moment. But surely no man had ever held so much in his hands, ever needed life as I needed it at this moment, when I knew I faced death.

I dropped down into a little armchair—one in which I remembered miserably Fleurette had sat—and buried my face in my hands.

If only I could conjure up one spark of hope—find something to think about which did not lead to insanity!

Then I sprang to my feet. It had reached me unmistakably...that dim vibration which told of the section doors being raised!

What did it mean?

That my fate had been decided upon and that they were coming for me? I crossed and pressed the control button. There was no response.

Again, as in Fleurette’s room earlier that night, I felt like a mouse in a trap. It could profit no one, myself least of all, but a determination came to me at this moment which did much to steady me.

I would die fighting.

I tested the weight of the little armchair in which I had been seated. It was about heavy enough for my purpose. I would hurl it at whoever entered.

I pulled open the drawers of a large cabinet which occupied a great portion of one wall. It contained laboratory appliances, presumably belonging to a former occupant, and including a glass mask and rubber gloves. But I found no weapon there.

A pedestal lamp stood upon the table. I wrenched the flex from it, removed the lamp and the shade, and realised that it made a very good club. Armed with this I would rush out and see what account I could give of myself in the corridors.

This useless plan made, I stood there waiting. At least, there would be action to come.

The muted rumbling of the doors continued. Once again, setting the lamp stand upon the carpet beside me, I tested the control—but without result.

That rumbling and the queer throbbing gong note which accompanied it could be heard distinctly when I pressed my head against the framework. But now, abruptly, it ceased.

The section doors were raised....

Yet again I tried the control, but uselessly. I stood there waiting, dividing my attention between the wall with its hidden entrance and the door which I knew.

But silence prevailed; nothing happened.

For fully five minutes I waited, not knowing what to expect, but full of my plan for a fighting finish. At last I determined that I could bear this waiting no longer. Again I tested the control....

The door slid noiselessly open!

What I could see of the corridor outside seemed to be more dimly lighted than usual. There was another white door nearly opposite. A faint, putrid smell reached my nostrils.

Cautiously I crept forward, and peeped out, looking along the passage.

A strange humming sound seemed to be drawing nearer to the light shining out from the room behind me. And then...

I sprang back, stifling a scream that was truly hysterical. The passage was held by an army of flies, of ants, of other nameless things which flew and crawled and scurried....And, not three feet away, watching me with its hideously intelligent eyes, crouched that monstrous black spider I had seen in the glass case....

chapter thirty-eighth

THE GLASS MASK (Concluded)

frenziedly I closed the door, shutting out those flying and crawling horrors.

Then I began a grim fight—a fight to conquer shaken nerves. That long period of waiting had taken its toll; but the terrors of the corridor, crowned by the apparition of that giant spider “capable of primitive reasoning,” had taxed me beyond the limit.

What had happened?

Was this a plan, premeditated?—or had some action on the part ofNayland Smith resulted in a disturbance of this ghastly household?

I dismissed the idea that Dr. Fu Manchu had released this phantom army merely to compass my own death. I had intruded—unwittingly, as he had admitted—upon the delicate machinery of his purpose. But brief though my acquaintance had been with the Chinese doctor, I was not prepared to believe him capable of stooping from that purpose, even momentarily, in response to the promptings of jealousy or of any lower human impulse.

Therefore, if what I had seen conformed to some plan, this plan was not directed against myself, although I might be included in it. If it were the result of accident, of panic on the part of a household disturbed by unexpected events, it could only mean that the doctor had departed—fled before the menace of Nayland Smith!

And by virtue of the fact that I was exercising my brain in hard reasoning, I regained control of that courage which, frankly, had been slipping. And a memory came....

In my frantic search for some weapon with which to put up a fight for life, I had hauled out the drawers of a big cabinet which occupied nearly the whole of one wall of the sitting room in which I now stood.

Among the objects, useless at the time, which I had discovered had been a glass mask of the kind chemists wear.

I formed a desperate resolution. I ran to the drawer in which the mask lay, and slipped it over my head. I saw now that my white overalls, which were made of some unfamiliar material, were adapted to the wearing of this mask: the collar could be turned up and buttoned to the equipment. I fixed it in place, bending before the mirror in the bathroom and contemplating my hideous image.

The rubber gloves!

These, also, I discovered could be attached to my sleeves in a certain manner so that nothing could penetrate between glove and sleeve. My final discovery, that the trousers of the white overalls might be tucked inside the tops of the shoes which a strap was attached for the purpose, convinced me.

Courage returned. I was equipped to face the terrors of the corridor.

I would have given much for a gun, or even a handy club, but in the end I was reduced again to the lamp standard.

Clutching this in my hand, I reopened the door. There was some system of ventilation in the curious mask which I wore—but nevertheless breathing was difficult.

I stood looking along the passage.

The black horror, the giant spider—which, for some reason, although it may have been comparatively harmless, I feared more than anything else—had disappeared. The air was thick with flies; I could hear them vaguely. Some had settled upon the walls. I saw that they were of various kinds.

One of the huge wasps flew straight against my glass mask. I ducked wildly, striking at it—not confident yet in my immunity.

The thing flew by—I heard the fading buzz of its passing....

I came to the end of the corridor and looked down the stairs. My wits were far from clear. At all costs I must remember the route. I found as I stood there that I could remember only that by which Dr. Fu Manchu had first conducted me.

Another way there was, and I had gone by it. The route I remembered would lead me through the bacteriological research room. From thence onward I knew my course.

All the doors were open.

At the entrance to the room where I had seen Sir Frank Narcomb, I pulled up. My knowledge of bacteria was limited; but if the insects were free—so presumably were the germs....

I glanced down at my feet. Large ants, having glittering bodies, were swarming up over the lashings of my overalls!

Stamping madly, I stooped, brushing the things off with my rubber gloves. I saw a centipede wriggling away from my stamping feet. Panic touched me. I ran through the room and out into a short passage beyond.

In that dimly lighted place, surrounded by windows behind which the insects lived, I saw that the doors of the cases were open. Some of the things still hovered about their nests, but many of the cases were empty.

There was no one in the passage beyond—which was even more dimly lighted; but I stepped upon some wriggling thing and heard the crunch of its body beneath my rubber-shod foot.

The sound sickened me.

I pressed on to the botanical research room. A glance showed that it had been partly stripped. I stared through the observation window into that small house where the strange orchids had been under cultivation. They had disappeared.

Looking about at the shelves, I realised that much of the apparatus had been taken away. The doors leading into the first of the big forcing houses were open.

I passed through, and immediately grasped the explanation of something which had been puzzling me: namely, that the escaped insects were scarcely represented here, whereas the corridors beyond were thick with them, flying and crawling.

A sharp change in the atmosphere offered an explanation.

Windows, as well as doors, were open here, admitting a keen night air borne by a wind from the Alps.

Those things were seeking warmth in the interior of the place. And already, so delicate are such plants, I saw that many of the tropical flowers about me were drooping—would soon be dead.

What did this mean?

It was probably part of a plan to destroy such results of those unique experiments as could not be removed.

With every step I advanced the air grew colder and colder— and destruction among the unique products through which I passed was such that I could find time for a moment of regret in the midst of my own engrossing troubles. The palm house, in common with every other place I had visited, was deserted. The doors leading into Dr. Fu Manchu’s study were open...I could see light shining out.

Here was the crux of the situation. Here if anywhere I should meet with a check.

Despite the keenness of the air, I was bathed in perspiration, buckled up in my nearly airtight outfit.

I advance slowly, step by step, until I could look into the study. Then I stood still, staring through the glass mask— which had grown very misty—at a room stripped of its exotic trappings!

The furniture alone remained. This destruction, then, which I had witnessed, was the handiwork of Dr. Fu Manchu himself—or so I must suppose. For here was clear evidence that he had fled, taking his choicest possessions with him.

I paused there for only a few moments; then I ran out into the great radio research room.

Of the masses of unimaginable mechanisms which had cumbered the room, only the heaviest remained. The instruments had gone from the tables. Many shelves were bare. Three intricate pieces of machinery, including that which I had thought resembled a moving-picture camera, were there, but wretched—shattered—mere mounds of metallic fragments upon a grey floor!

There were no insects visible in the big room, which was as cold as a cavern, Indeed, as Nayland Smith had pointed out, a cavern, practically, it was. Doors I had not known to exist were open in the glass walls, but I ran the length of the place and sprang up the stairs beyond.

The door did not close behind me. The whole of that intricate mechanism had been locked in some way.

Gaining the top corridor I glanced swiftly to the right.

A cold grey light—the light of dawn—was touching the terrace.

chapter thirty-ninth

SEARCH IN STE CLAIRE

I ran forward.

“Hands up!” came swiftly.

And even as I obeyed that order, I groaned, filled with such bitterness of spirit as I had rarely known.

On the very threshold—freedom in sight—I was trapped again!

A group of semi-human figures surrounded me in the half light: creatures goggle-eyed, with shapeless heads, to which were attached trunk-like appendages! I raised my hands, staring helplessly about that ghoulish party closing in upon me.

“Search him!” came the same voice, staccato, but curiously muffled.

But now, hearing it, I grasped the truth!

The hideous headdresses of the men surrounding me were gas masks!

“Sir Denis!” I cried, and knew that my own voice was at least as muffled as his.

The leader of the party was Nayland Smith!

Something very like unconsciousness threatened me. I had not fully appreciated how wrought up I was until this moment. Sights and sounds merged into an indistinguishable blur. But presently, out of this haze, I began to apprehend that Nayland Smith was talking to me, his arm about my shoulders.

“Not a soul has left Ste Claire, Sterling; it’s covered from the land and from the sea. When your first message reached me——”

“I sent no message! But what was it?”

“You sent no message?”

“Not a thing! Nevertheless, I think I know who did. What did you take it to mean?”

“According to the system we had arranged, it meant that Petrie was there—but dead. There was a second, much later, which quite defeated me.”

“I don’t know who sent the second. But it’s true Petrie is there—and when I saw him last, alive.”

“Sterling, Sterling! you are sure?”

“I spoke to him. And—by heavens! I had almost forgotten——”

I plunged a rubber-clad hand into the pocket of my overall, and pulled out the creased and folded sheet of paper.

“The formula for ‘654.’“

“Thank God! Good old Petrie! Quick! give it to me.”

Nayland Smith had discarded his helmet temporarily, and I my glass mask. He dashed away down the steps, leaving me standing there, looking about me.

Six or eight men were by the open door, their heads hidden in gas equipment, and I realised now that they must be French police. I felt very much below par, but the keen night air was restoring me, and after an absence of no more than two or three minutes Sir Denis came running back.

“I don’t think, Sterling,” he said in his rapid way, “that the doctor’s campaign was ripe to open. It depended, I believe, upon climatic conditions. But in any event ‘654’ will be in possession of the medical authorities of the world to-night.

“Petrie’s wish is carried out!”

“I should have raided an hour ago. Sterling, if I had had the foresight to equip the party suitably. We were here before I realised the nature of the death trap into which I might be leading them. I once saw a party of detectives in a Limehouse cellar belonging to Dr. Fu Manchu die the most dreadful deaths....

“The Chief of Police was at the main gate, and I consulted with him. He quite naturally wanted to waive my objections;

but I persisted. The delay was caused by the quest for gas masks, of which there is not a large supply in the neighbourhood. When they were obtained, the men on duty here reported that the door had been opened from inside but that none had come out. I had rejoined them only a few minutes when you appeared.”

“Yet the place is deserted!”

“What?”

“Part of it is infested with plague flies and other horrors, but there is no trace of a human being anywhere.”

“Come on!” he snapped, and readjusting his helmet. “Are you fit, Sterling?”

“Yes.”

I buttoned myself up in my grim equipment. Followed by the police party, I found myself again in the house of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Unhesitatingly I began to run towards the green lamp at the end of the corridor which marked the position of Fleurette’s room—when all the lights went out!

“What’s this?” came a muffled exclamation.

The ray of a torch cut the darkness; then many others. Every member of the party was seemingly provided. Someone thrust a light into my hand and I went racing along to the door of Fleurette’s room.

One glance showed me that it was empty....

“I forgive you, Sterling,” came hoarsely, “but you are wasting time.”

The party tore down the stairs, Nayland Smith and I leading.

“Petrie’s room!” came huskily, “that first....”

We dashed across the dismantled radio research laboratory, eerie in torchlight, through the empty study where Dr. Fu Manchu, wrapped in a strange opium dream, had sat in his throne chair, and on through those great forcing houses where trees, shrubs, and plants to which Dame Nature had never given her benediction wilted in the keen air sweeping through open doors.

Hoarse exclamations told of the astonishment experienced by the police party following us as we dashed through those exotic mysteries. Then, mounting the stair and coming to the corridor with its white, numbered doors, I became aware of a crunching sound beneath my feet.

I paused, and shone the light downward.

The floor was littered with dead and comatose insects, swift victims of this change of temperature! The giant spider had succumbed somewhere, I did not doubt; yet even now I dreaded the horror, dreaded those reasoning eyes.

“We turn right here!” I shouted, my voice muffled by the mask.

I ran along the passage and in at the open door of that room in which I had seen Petrie.

The room was empty!

“They have taken him!” groaned Nayland Smith. “We’re too late. What’s that?”

A sound of excited voices reached me dimly. Then came a cry from the rear. The men under the local Chief of Police had joined us; they had come in by the main entrance.

Yet neither group had discovered a soul on the premises!

“Spread out!” cried Nayland Smith—”parties of two! There’s some Chinese rathole. A big household doesn’t disappear into thin air. Come on, Sterling! our route is downward, not up.”

We pressed our way through the throng of men behind us, Nayland Smith and the Chief of Police repeating the orders.

Sir Denis beside me, I raced back along the way we had come; and although every door appeared to be open, there was seemingly none in that range of rooms other then those I knew. We searched the big forcing houses, meeting only other muffled figures engaged upon a similar task.

But apparently the doors leading into Dr. Fu Manchu’s study and those which communicated with the botanical research room were the only means of entrance or exit!

Out into the big dismantled laboratory we ran. There were two open doors in the wall opposite our point of entrance.

“This one first!” came in a muffled voice.

Sir Denis and I ran across to an opening in the glass wall.

“The Chinaman who arrived in the speedboat went this way,” he shouted.

Shining our torches ahead, we entered—and found a descending stair. Our light failed to penetrate to the bottom of it.

“Stop, Sir Denis!” I cried.

Wrenching off the suffocating glass mask, I dropped it on the floor, for I saw that in the darkness he had already discarded his gas helmet.

“We must assemble a party—we may be walking into a trap.”

He pulled up and stared at me; his face was haggard.

“You are right,” he rapped. “Get three or four men, and notify Fumeaux—he’s in charge of the police—which way we have gone.”

I ran back across the great empty hall from which that curious violet light had gone, and shouted loudly. I soon assembled a party, one of whom I despatched in search of the Chief of Police, and, accompanied by the others, I rejoined Nayland Smith.

We left one man on duty at the door.

Nayland Smith leading, and I close behind him, we began to descend the stairs into the subterranean mystery of Ste Claire.

chapter fortieth

THE SECRET DOCK

“this is where the Chinaman went,” he said. “It speaks loudly for the iron rule of the doctor. Sterling, that although this man had presumably brought important news, not only did he avoid awakening Fu Manchu, but he even left the doors of the palm house open. However, where did he go? That’s what we have to find out.”

A long flight of rubber-covered stairs descended ahead of us. The walls and ceiling were covered with that same glassy material which prevailed in the radio research room. I counted sixty steps and then we came to a landing.

“Look out for traps,” rapped Nayland Smith, “and distrust every foot of the way.”

We tested for doors on the landing, but could find none. A further steep flight of steps branched away down to the right.

“Come on!”

The lower flight possessed the same characteristics as the higher, and terminated on another square landing. A long corridor showed beyond—so long that the light of our torches was lost in it.

“One man to stand by here,” came the crisp order—”and keep in contact with the man at the top.”

We pressed on. We were now reduced to a party of four. There were several bends in the passage, but its general direction, according to my calculations, was southerly.

“This is amazing,” muttered Nayland Smith. “If it goes on much farther, I shall being to suspect that it is a private entrance to the Casino at Monte Carlo!”

Even as he spoke, another bend unmasked the end of this remarkable passage. Branching sharply down to the right, I saw a further flight of steps—rough wooden steps; and the naked rock was all about us.

“What’s this?”

We must be down to sea level.”

“Fully, I should think.”

Sir Denis turned; and:

“Fall out another man,” he directed; “patrol between here and the end of the passage. Keep in contact with your opposite number, a shot to be the signal of any danger. Come on!”

A party of three, we pressed on down the wooden steps. There was a greater chilliness in the air, and a stale smell as of ancient rottenness. Another landing was reached, wooden planked: roughly hewn rock all about us. More wooden stairs, inclining left again.

These terminated in an arched, crudely octagonal place which bore every indication of being a natural cave. It was floored with planks, and a rugged passage, similarly timbered, led yet farther south—or so I estimated.

“Stay here,” Nayland Smith directed tersely. “Keep in touch with the man at the top.”

And the last of the police party was left behind.

Sir Denis and I hurried on. Fully a hundred yards we went—and came to a yawning gap, which our lights could not penetrate. Moving slowly now, we reached the end of the passage.

“Careful!” warned Sir Denis. “By heavens! what’s this?”

We stood on a narrow wharf!

Tackle lay about; crates, packing cases, coils of rope. And the sea—for I recognized that characteristic smell of the Mediterranean—lapped its edge!

But not a speck of light was visible anywhere. The water was uncannily still. One would not have suspected it to be there.

“Lights out!” snapped Sir Denis.

We extinguished our lamps. Utter darkness blanketed us:

we might have stood in a mine gallery.

“Don’t light up!” came his voice. “I should have foreseen this. But even so, I don’t see how I could have provided against it....My God! what’s that?”

A dull sustained note, resembling that of a muted gong, vibrated eerily through the stillness...In fact, now that he had drawn my attention to it, I believed that it had been perceptible for some time, although hitherto partly drowned by the clatter of our rubber soles upon wooden steps.

For one moment I listened—and knew...

“You were right, Sir Denis,” I said; “this place isn’t deserted. Someone is closing the section doors!”

“Quick! for your life! Back to the stairs!...”

We turned and ran into the wooden-floored tunnel; our feet made a drumming sound upon the planks. The man left on duty at the foot of the stairs was missing. Up we went helter-skelter, neither of us doubting the urgency. We met with no obstruction and, breathing hard, began to race up the higher flight.

Neither patrol was to be seen. I suspected that they had gone back along the corridor to establish contact with the man at the farther end.

In confirmation of my theory came the sound of a shot, curiously muffled and staccato, from some point far ahead.

We pulled up, panting and—staring....

A section door was descending, cutting us off from the corridor! It was no more than three feet from the ground, and falling—falling—inch by inch....

“We daren’t risk it!” groaned Nayland Smith. “If we did, and weren’t crushed, we should be shut in between this and the next.”

I heard shouting in the corridor beyond; a sound of racing feet. But even as I listened and watched, the dull grey metal door was but fifteen inches above floor level, and:

“We must try back again,” I said hoarsely.

“There must be some way out of that place, even if we have to swim for it.”

“There’s no way out,” Sir Denis rapped irritably. “The entrance is below sea level.”

“What!”

“You saw the patches of oil on the wharf?”

“I did. But—”

“Nevertheless, we’ll go back. There may be some gallery communicating with another exit.”

We began to descend again.

I was trying to think, trying to see into the future. An appalling possibility presented itself to my mind: that this might be the end of everything! So tenacious is the will to live in all healthy animals that predominant above every other consideration at the moment towered that of how to escape from this ghastly cavern.

Nayland Smith’s torch—he was leading by a pace—shone upon the oil-stained planking of the wharf.

“Lights out!”

In complete darkness we stood there. That warning note which indicated the closing of the section doors had ceased.

They were closed.

Failing our discovery of another way out, rescue depended upon the forcing of many such obstacles!

Considering what I knew of the equipment of Ste Claire, I realised that the whole of the party within its walls must be cut off one from another in the innumerable sections. Lacking intelligent work on the part of someone outside—and I believed the Chief of Police to be inside—it was a hopeless task to attempt to calculate how long we might have to wait for that rescue.

And now a voice—a voice once heard never to be forgotten—broke the silence: it echoed eerily from wall to wall of the cavern.

“Sir Denis Nayland Smith...”

It was Dr. Fu Manchu speaking!

My heart throbbed painfully, and I choked down an exclamation:

“You are not called upon to answer if it please you to remain silent, but I know that you are there. I may add that you will remain there for a considerable time. Apart from certain personal inconvenience, Sir Denis, do not congratulate yourself upon having altered my plans. Dr. Petrie’s experiments were a menace more serious than any intrusion of yours. The impossibility of adapting my flying army to certain Russian conditions was an obstacle which in any event I had not succeeded in surmounting. However, Dr. Petrie is with me now, and his proven genius in my own special province should be of some service in the future.”

I could hear Nayland Smith breathing hard close beside me, but he spoke no word.

“Mr. Alan Sterling,” the guttural, mocking voice continued, “I have reconstructed your brief romance with Fleurette. It is regrettable. I remain uncertain if I can efface your handiwork....”

I doubted if any man had ever participated in so fantastic a scene; and now, as if to crown its phantasy, Sir Denis spoke out of the darkness beside me.

“Who built your submarine?” he asked in an ordinary conversational tone.

And with that courtesy proper between lifelong enemies Dr. Fu Manchu replied:

“My submersible yacht was designed by Ernst von Ebber, whose ‘death’ some ten years ago you may recall. But it incorporates many new features of Ericksen. It was built at my yard on the Irrawaddy, in your beloved Burma.

“I must leave you. If I do so with a certain reluctance, this is due to the fact that I always pay my gambling debts. My life was at your mercy. Sir Denis—and you held your hand....”

chapter forty-first

“I SAW THE SUN”

SILENCE.

That guttural, imperious voice had ceased.

“No lights—yet!” came harshly from Nayland Smith. “He has paid the debt. He won’t pay twice!”

And in that clammy darkness I stood waiting—and listening.

Sir Denis began speaking again, close to my ear, in a low voice.

“Where did you place him?”

“Almost directly opposite to where we stand—”

“But higher up?”

“Yes.”

“I agree. There’s some gallery there. We must move warily. I gather that you are a powerful swimmer?”

My heart sank. Keyed up though I was to the supreme object—escape, contemplation of plunging into that still, cavernous water appalled me.

“Fairly good—but I’m rather below par at the moment!”

“That is understood, Sterling. Only vital issues at stake could demand such an effort. As a matter of fact, I believe this pool to be no more than fifty or sixty yards from side to side. My own powers as a swimmer being limited, I trust I am right. I might manage once across!”

“What’s your plan, Sir Denis?”

“This: If we show ourselves again we may be shot down; but this we can test: I suggest that we place a light on the edge of the wharf, as a beacon, and that you slip quietly into the water. There’s a ladder near to where we stand. Getting your direction from the light, swim across.”

“I’m game. What next?”

“Find out if there is any way of climbing up.”

“In this utter darkness?”

“Palpably impossible! But you have probably swum across a river before now, carrying your valuables under your hat?”

“I have seen it done.”

“My rubber tobacco pouch, which is unusually large, will comfortably accommodate the automatic which I am now slipping into it, and also one of the Hash lamps....Pass yours to me.”

Silently, I groped in the blackness, found Sir Denis’s outstretched hand, and transferred my lamp to him.

“I am tying up the pouch in a silk handkerchief,” he murmured....“here we are—come nearer....”

As I moved cautiously forward, I felt his grasp on my shoulder; some of the man’s amazing vitality was imparted to me:

I warmed to the ordeal.

“Tie the loose ends under your chin,” he directed.

And as I endeavoured to the best of my ability to carry out his directions, he went on, speaking in a low voice but urgently:

“If you can get ashore, use the light to find a way up. Keep the gun in your other hand. If you can make no landing, swim back. Is it clear—and can you do it?”

“It’s clear. Sir Denis; and failing interference I think I can do it.”

“Good man! Now, grab my arm, and when I move back move with me!”

I felt him stoop...then suddenly a light sprang up at my feet!

“Back,” he muttered.

He drew me back three paces, and, watching, I saw the light move—it moved slowly towards us...became stationary...moved again!

“I tied a piece of string to it,” he murmured in my ear.

The silence, save for those low-spoken words, remained unbroken, until:

“No snipers!” rapped Sir Denis. “Dr. Fu Manchu retains his one noble heritage. His word is his bond. Get busy, now Sterling! I’ll place the light....”

Of that swim across the cavern I prefer not to think; therefore I shall not attempt to describe it. The temperature of the water was much lower than in the open sea.

At a point which I estimated to be not more than fifty yards from the wharf, I touched a rock bottom. I experimented, cautiously; found a foothold; and began to grope forward.

Shelves of rock met my questing fingers. I managed to scramble out of the water. Then, half sitting on a ledge, I unfastened my curious headdress and, gripping the tobacco pouch between my teeth, extracted the lamp. I continued to hold it so, the automatic still inside, while I directed a ray of light upward.

It was no easy climb, but I saw that there was a shelf of rock ten or twelve feet up. It sloped at an easy gradient to what looked like a small cave in the wall of the cavern.

I turned, looking back.

The faint beam of light from the lamp, gleaming on that still pool, pointed almost directly towards me.

I began to climb.

There were fewer difficulties than I had looked for. Without very great exertion, I gained the shelf and started for the gap in the rock. When I reached it, I hesitated for a moment. It was much higher and wider than I had thought it to be from below.

Taking the tobacco pouch from between my teeth, I grasped Nayland Smith’s automatic—and went forward.

I found myself in a rock passage not unlike that which we had negotiated on the other side of the pool, except that it was not boarded and that it sloped steeply downward.

Shining my light ahead, I followed this passage.

Its temperature was bitingly low for a naked man: but a tang of the sea came to my nostrils which drew me on.

The passage wound and twisted intricately, growing ever lower and narrower. I pushed on.

There was nothing to show that it was used: it looked like untouched handiwork of Nature; untravelled, undiscovered. The gradient grew so steep as to resemble a crude stair. I stumbled to the foot of it....

And I saw the sun rising over the Mediterranean!

I shouted, exultantly! I was a sun worshipper!

I stood in a tiny pebbled bay, locked in by huge cliffs. The sea lay before me, but neither to right nor to left could I obtain a glimpse of any coastline.

There was some hint of a path leading steeply upward on one side. I examined it closely. Yes! at some time it had been traversed!

Five paces up, I found a burned match!

I turned back, running in my eagerness. And, in a fraction of the time taken by my outward journey, I found myself at the mouth of the passage, staring across the pool to where that feeble beacon beckoned.

“Sir Denis!” I cried, and waved my flashlight—”swim across! We’re out!”

chapter forty-second

THE RAID

I looked out across the sea, shimmering under a cloudless morning sky, then turned and stared at my companion. He was hatless, but his crisp grey hair in which were silver streaks was of that kind which defies rough usage and persistently remains well groomed.

His tanned skin, upon which in that keen light many little lines showed, and the fact that he was unshaven added to the gauntness of his features. He wore a grey flannel suit and rubber-soled shoes. The suit was terribly wrinkled, and his tie, which I had watched him knotting, was not strictly in place; but nevertheless I felt that Sir Denis Nayland Smith presented a better front to the world than I did at that moment.

In that keen profile I read something of the force which lies behind a successful career; and looking down at the dirty white overalls in which I was arrayed, a wave of admiration swept over me—admiration for the alert intelligence of my companion in this strange adventure. Who but Sir Denis would have thought of bundling our scanty possessions into a small packing case, and towing it behind him on that same piece of string which had served in his test to unmask a possible sniper?

He was examining the match upon the rock path which alone had given me a clue to the fact that escape from this secret spot was possible. Then I spoke:

“Sir Denis,” I said, it’s a great privilege to have helped you in any way. You are a very remarkable man.”

He turned and smiled; his smile was thirty years his junior.

“I suppose you must be right. Sterling,” he replied, “otherwise, I shouldn’t have survived. But——”

He stopped.

And blotting out the triumph of our escape from the cavern which Dr. Fu Manchu had thought to be a Bastille came reality—memories—sorrow.

Petrie had gone to join the ranks of those living dead men.

Fleurette!

Fleurette was lost to me forever! No doubt my change of mood was reflected on my face; for:

“I know what you’re thinking, Sterling,” Sir Denis added, “but don’t despair—yet. There’s still hope.”

“What!”

“That this path leads somewhere and does not just lose itself among the rocks, I have little doubt. My own impression is that it leads to the beach of Ste Claire. But this is not the chief point of interest.”

To me, it seems to be.”

“What do you regard as the most curious features of our recent experience?”

I considered for a moment, then:

“The mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu’s motive in remaining behind,” I replied, “and the greater mystery of how and when he joined his submersible yacht—whatever a submersible yacht may be.”

Nayland Smith nodded rapidly.

“You are getting near to it,” he rapped. “I am satisfied that the opening above the water cave at the top of the rocks was the place from which he spoke to us. And I think we are unanimous on the point that there is no other means of exit but his. Therefore, I have been asking myself for the last ten minutes: why did he come by this roundabout route when he could have boarded his craft at the wharf, as no doubt the other members of his household did. It’s rather a hazardous guess, but one I like to make.”

“What is it, Sir Denis?”

“I don’t think he joined the submarine at all.”

“What!”

“Whatever the construction of that craft may be, it would offer serious obstacles to the transporting of a sick man.”

“Good heavens! You think——”

“It is just possible that Petrie has been taken another way, under the personal care of the doctor.”

“But,” I protested, “that climb up the rocks?”

“Could easily be performed by native bearers carrying a stretcher or litter, and descent to this point is easy.”

“But—” I pointed along the faintly pencilled track.

Nayland Smith shook his head.

“Not that way, Sterling,” he admitted. “A motorboat has been lying here. Look—there are still traces of oil at the margin of the water, and the beach slopes away very sharply.”

“You think Dr. Fu Manchu has been taken to some landing • place farther along the coast, where a car awaited him?”

“That is the point we have to settle. Only one of two roads could serve—the Great Corniche or the Middle. All cars using them are being challenged and searched.”

“Then, by heaven! we may have him yet!”

“Knowing him better than you do, I look upon that as almost too much to hope for, Sterling. However, suppose we begin our climb.”

We set out.

A wild eleventh-hour hope was mine, that not only Petrie but Fleurette might be with Dr. Fu Manchu, and that this delay might prove to be his undoing. I did not know how far to take his words literally—but I remembered that he had said, “Dr. Petrie is with me.” Yes, there was still a ghost of a chance that all was not lost yet.

The path was one of those which would not have appalled a hardened climber, but mountaineering had never been my enthusiasm. One thing was certain: Dr. Fu Manchu and his party had never come this way.

It wound round and round great gnarled crags, creeping higher and ever higher. I was glad to be wearing rubber-soled shoes, although I am aware that experienced mountaineers reject them.

At one point it led us fully a mile inland, climbing very near to the rim of a deep gorge and at an eerie height above the sea. It was a mere tracing, much better suited to a goat than to a human being. Never once did it touch any practicable road, but now led seaward again, until we found ourselves high up on the side of a dizzy precipice, sheer above the blue Mediterranean.

“Heavens!” muttered Nayland Smith, clutching at the rocky wall at his right hand. “This is getting rather too exciting!”

“I agree, Sir Denis.”

At a point which was no more than eighteen inches wide, I was tempted to shut my eyes, but knew that I must keep them open and go on.

“Heaven knows who uses such a path as this,” he muttered.

We rounded the bluff and saw that our way lay inland again. The slope below was less steep, and there was dense vegetation upon its side. Nayland Smith pulled up, and under one upraised hand, stared hard.

“It is difficult to recognise from this point,” he said, “but here is the bay of Ste Claire, as I suspected.”

And now that crazy path began to descend, leading us lower and lower.

It was very still there, and the early morning air possessed champagne-like properties. And suddenly Sir Denis turned to me:

“Do you hear it. Sterling?” he snapped.

Distinctly, in the silence, although it seemed to come from a long way off, I had detected the sound to which he referred—a distant shouting, and an almost incessant booming sound.

“It seems incredible,” he continued, “but they are evidently still trying to force a way into the house! Come on, let’s hurry—there’s much to do, and very little time to do it.”

We ran down the remaining few yards of the path and found ourselves upon the beach—that beach of which I had dreamed so often—but always with the dainty, sun-browned figure of Fleurette seated upon it.

Sir Denis, whose powers of physical endurance were little short of phenomenal, ran across, making for that corresponding path upon the other side which led to the seven flights of steps communicating with the terrace of the villa....

We mounted at the double.

I saw that the main door had been forced and the shutters torn from an upper window against which a ladder rested.

The booming sound, which had grown louder as we approached, was caused by the efforts of a party of men under a bewildered police officer endeavouring to force the first of the section doors at the top of the steps which led down to the radio research room.

Sir Denis made himself known to the man—who had not been a member of the original party. And we learned the astounding fact that with the exception of four, the whole of that party, including the Chief of Police, remained locked inside the house—nor had any sound or message come from them!!

A man was at work with a blow-lamp, supported by others with crowbars.

Expert reinforcements were expected at any moment;

and—a curious feature of the situation—although there was a telephone in the villa, no message had come over it from within, nor had any reply been received when the number was called....

chapter forty-third

KARAMANEH’S DAUGHTER

in the course of the next few minutes I had my first sight of Ste Claire de la Roche.

A paved path circled the house. There were ladders against several windows; ways had been forced into the outer rooms, and the villa proper was in possession of the police. But I knew that the real establishment was far below, and that it was much more extensive than that more or less open to inspection.

Crashing and booming echoed hollowly from within.

The front of the villa, by which I mean that part which faced towards the distant road, was squat and unimpressive. An entrance had been forced from this point also, and there were a number of police hurrying about.

A little cobbled street, flanked by a house with an arched entrance, presented itself. Beside the house, in a cavern-like opening, a steep flight of steps disappeared into blackness. The top of a ladder projected above the parapet on my right, and, looking over, I saw that part of the glass roof of one of the forcing houses visible at this point had been smashed and a ladder lowered through the gap.

Dim voices reached me from far below. I wondered if any of the raiding party had been found in that section.

But Nayland Smith was hurrying on down the slope. And now we came to a long, sanded drive. There was a wall on the left, beyond which I thought lay a kitchen garden and a sheer drop on the right.

• Sweeping around in a northerly direction, the drive led to gates of ornate iron scrollwork, which were closed, and I saw that two police officers were on duty there.

The gates were opened in response to a brief order, and we hurried out into a narrow, sloping lane. I remembered this lane. It wandered down to the main road; for I had penetrated to it in my earliest attempt to explore Ste Claire de la Roche, and had been confronted with a “No thoroughfare” sign.

“There’s a police car at the comer,” said Nayland Smith;

“we must take that.”

No cars had been found in the stone garage attached to the villa, and I wondered what had become of that which had once belonged to Petrie, and which must have been hidden on the night of my encounter with the dacoit on the Comiche road.

A sergeant of police was standing by the car. He reported that a motorcyclist patrol had just passed. All cars using both roads had been challenged and searched throughout the night in accordance with Sir Denis’s instructions. But no one had been detained.

Nayland Smith stood there twitching at the lobe of his ear;

and my heart sank, for I thought that he was about to admit defeat.

“He may have gone by sea down to Italy,” he said; “it is a possibility which must not be overlooked. Or, by heavens!—”

He suddenly dashed his fist into the palm of his left hand.

“What, Sir Denis?”

“He may have had a yacht standing by! He got away from England in that manner on one occasion.”

“It is also just possible,” I began...

“I know,” Sir Denis groaned. “My theory lacks solid foundation—he may have joined the submarine?”

“Exactly.”

“His delay might be due merely to his sense of the dramatic—which is strong. Get in, Sterling.”

He turned to the sergeant in charge of the car.

“Officer of the Prefet,” he rapped and jumped in behind me.

To endeavour to reconstruct the ideas which passed through my mind during that early morning drive would be futile, since they consisted of a taunting panorama of living-dead men; the flowerlike face of Fleurette appearing again and again before that ghostly curtain, and set in an expression of adoration which formed my most evil memory. I could not banish the image of Petrie, could not accept the fact that he had joined the phantom army of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Nayland Smith sat grimly silent, until at last:

“Sir Denis,” I said, “this is not time to talk of my personal affairs, but—something which happened in Petrie’s room has been puzzling me.”

“What is that?” he snapped.

“Fleurette kept watch at the door—she had led me there— while I slipped in to see him. Just before I left, he caught a glimpse of her, and——”

“Yes?” said Sir Denis, with a sudden keen interest in his eyes. “What did he do?”

“He sat up in bed as though he had seen an apparition. He asked in a most extraordinary voice who it was that had looked into the room. I had to leave—it was impossible to stay. But there is no doubt whatever that he recognized her!— although, as she told me afterwards, she had never seen Petrie in her life.”

I paused, meeting his eager regard; and then:

“You also thought you recognized her, Sir Denis,” I went on, “and evidently you were not wrong. I can’t believe I shall ever see her again, but, if you know, tell me: Who is she?”

He drew a deep breath.

“You told me, I think that you had never met Karamaneh— Petrie’s wife?”

“Never.”

“She was formerly a member of the household of Dr. Fu Manchu.”

“It seems impossible!”

“It does, but it’s a fact, nevertheless. I seem to remember telling you that she was the most beautiful woman I have ever known.”

“You did.”

“On one side she’s of pure Arab blood, of the other I am uncertain.”

“Arab?”

“Surely. She was selected for certain qualities, of which her extraordinary beauty was not the least, by Dr. Fu Manchu. Petrie upset his plans in that direction. Now, it is necessary for you to realise, Sterling, that Petrie, also, is a man of very good family—of sane, clean, balanced stock.”

“I am aware of this, Sir Denis; my father knows him well.”

Sir Denis nodded and went on:

“Dr. Fu Manchu has always held Petrie in high esteem. Very few people are aware of what I am going to tell you—possibly even your father doesn’t know. But a year after Petrie’s marriage to Karamaneh, a child was born.”

“I had no idea of this.”

“It was so deep a grief to them, Sterling, that they never spoke of it.”

“A grief?”

“The child, a girl, was born in Cairo. She died when she was three weeks old.”

“Good heavens! Poor old Petrie! I have never heard him even mention it.”

“You never would. They agreed never to mention it. It was their way of forgetting. There were curious features about the case to which, in their sorrow they were blind at the time. But when, nearly a year later, the full facts came into my possession, a truly horrible idea presented itself to my mind.”

“What do you mean, Sir Denis?”

“Naturally, I whispered no word of it to Petrie. It would have been the most callous cruelty to do so. But privately, I made a number of enquiries; and while I obtained no evidence upon which it was possible to act, nevertheless, what I learned confirmed my suspicion....

“Dr. Fu Manchu is patient, as only a great scientist can be.”

He paused, watching me, a question in his eyes. But as I did not speak:

“When I entered that room, which I described to you as the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, I received one of the great shocks of my life. Do you know what I thought as I looked at Fleurette asleep?”

“I am trying to anticipate what you are going to tell me.”

“I thought that it was Karamaneh—Petrie’s wife!”

“You mean——”

“I mean that, even with her eyes closed, the likeness was uncanny, utterly beyond the possibility of coincidence. Then, when you described to me their unusual quality—and Karamaneh’s eyes are her crowning beauty—I knew that I could not be mistaken.”

Positively I was stricken dumb—I could only sit and stare at the speaker. No words occurred to me.

Therefore, poor Petrie’s recognition does not surprise me. It may seem amazing, Sterling, almost incredible, that a child less than three weeks old could be subjected to that treatment upon which much of Fu Manchu’s monumental knowledge rests: the production of artificial catalepsy; but a fact which by now must have dawned upon you. He is not only the greatest physician alive to-day, he is probably the greatest physician who has ever been.”

“Sir Denis——”

The car was just pulling up before the police headquarters.

“There’s no doubt whatever. Sterling!” He grasped my arm firmly. “Think of what the doctor has told you about her—think of what she has told you about herself—so much as she knows. There isn’t a shadow of doubt. Fleurette is Petrie’s daughter, and Karamaneh is her mother! Buck up, old chap, I know how you must feel about it—but we haven’t abandoned hope yet.”

He sprang out and ran in at the door, brushing past an officer who stood on duty there.

chapter forty-fourth

OFFICER OF THE PREFET

in the large but frigid office of M. Chamrousse, Prefet of the Department, that sedate, grey-bearded official spoke rapidly on the telephone and made a number of notes upon a writing block. Sir Denis snapping his fingers impatiently and pacing up and down the carpet.

I had no idea of his plan, of what he hoped for. My state of mental chaos was worse than before. Fleurette Petrie’s daughter! From tenderest infancy she had lived as those others lived whom he wanted for his several purposes: a dream-life!

And now—Petrie himself...

In upon my thoughts broke the magisterial voice of the man at the big table.

“Here is the complete list, Sir Denis Nayland Smith,” he said. “You will see that the only private vessel of any tonnage which has cleared a neighbouring port during the last twelve hours is this one.”

He rested the point of his pencil on the paper. Nayland Smith, bending eagerly over him, read the note aloud:

“M. Y. Lola, of Buenos Aires; four thousand tons; owned by Santos da Cunha.”

He suddenly stood upright, staring before him.

“Santos da Cunha?” he repeated. “Where have I heard that name?”

“Curiously enough,” said M. Chamrousse, “the villa at Ste Claire was formerly the property of this gentleman, from whom it was purchased by Mahdi Bey.”

Sir Denis dashed his fist into the palm of his hand.

“Sterling!” he cried—”there’s hope yet! there’s hope yet! But I have been blind. This is the Argentine for whose record I am waiting!” He turned to the Prefet. “How long has the Lola been lying in Monaco?”

“Nearly a week, I believe.”

“And she left?”

“Soon after dawn, Sir Denis—as I read in this report.”

“You see, Sterling! you see?” he cried.

He turned again to the Prefet, and:

“The Lola must be traced,” he said rapidly—”without delay. Please give instructions for messages to be sent to all ships in the neighbourhood, notifying position of this motor yacht when sighted.”

“I can do this,” said the other gravely, inclining his head.

“Next, is there a French or British warship in port anywhere along the coast?”

M. Chamrousse raised his eyebrows.

“There is a French destroyer in the harbour of Monaco,” he replied.

“Please notify her commander to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice—in fact, the instant I get on board.”

That peremptory manner, contempt for red tape and routine, which characterised Sir Denis in emergencies, had the effect of ruffling the French official.

“This, sir,” he replied taking off his spectacles and tapping them on the blotting pad, “I cannot do.”

“Cannot?”

The other shrugged.

“I have no such powers,” he declared. “It is in the province of the naval authority. I doubt if even the admiral commanding the Mediterranean Fleet could take it upon himself to do what you ask of me.”

“Perhaps,” rapped Nayland Smith, “in these circumstances, you will be good enough to put a call through to the Ministry of Marine in Paris.”

M. Chamrousse shrugged his shoulders and looked mildly surprised.

“Really——” he began.

“My authority from the British Foreign Office,” said Sir Denis, with a sort of repressed violence, “is such that any delay you may cause must react to your own discredit. The interests of France as well as those of England are involved in this matter. Damn it, M. Chamrousse! I am here in the interests of France! Must I go elsewhere, or will you do as I ask?”

The Prefet resignedly took up the telephone and gave instructions to the outer office that Paris should be called.

Nayland Smith began again to pace up and down the carpet.

“You know. Sir Denis Nayland Smith,” M. Chamrousse began in his dry, precise voice, “it is perhaps a little unfair to me that I am so badly informed regarding this matter. All the available police have been rushed to Ste Claire and, according to my latest reports, are locked up there. I am in the dark about this—I am tied hand and foot. Paris instructed me to place myself at your disposal, and I have done so, but the reputation of Mahdi Bey, whom I have met several times socially, is quite frankly above suspicion. To me the whole thing is incomprehensible; and now you demand——”

In this unemotional outburst I saw the reason of the Prefet’s coldness towards Sir Denis. He resented the action of Paris. Sir Denis realised this also; for checking his restless promenade he turned to face the little bearded man.

“Such issues are at stake, M. Chamrousse,” he said, “and my own blunders have so confounded me, that perhaps I have failed in proper courtesy. If so, forgive me. But try to believe that I have every reason for what I do. It is of vital importance that the yacht Lola should be detained.”

I accept your assurance upon these matters, Sir Denis,” said M. Chamrousse.

But I thought from the tone of his dusty voice that he was somewhat mollified.

Conversation ceased, and unavoidably I dropped back into that valley of sorrowful reflection from which this verbal duel between Sir Denis and the French official had temporarily dragged me.

Fleurette was Petrie’s daughter!

This was the amazing fact outstanding above the mist and discord which ruled my brain. It might be that they were together; but, once Petrie should have fully recovered from his dangerous illness, I did not doubt that he would be forced to accept that Blessing of the Celestial Vision from which I had so narrowly escaped; and then...

If my influence had “not tarnished the mirror,” in Dr. Fu Manchu’s words—a ghastly union of unknown age and budding youth would be consummated!

I could not face the idea. I found myself clenching my fists and grinding my teeth.

At which moment, the connection with Paris was made; M. Chamrousse stood up, bowed courteously, and handed the receiver to Sir Denis.

The latter—in voluble but very bad French—proceeded to tread heavily on the toes of the Paris official at the other end of the line. I had learned that he, in moments of stress, was prone to exhibit a truculence, an indifference to the feelings of others which underlay and may have been the driving power behind that brusque but never uncourteous manner which characterised him normally.

He was demanding to speak to the Minister in person and refusing to be put off.

“At home and asleep? Be so good as to put me through to his private number at once!”

M. Chamrousse had taken his stand on the carpet upon which Nayland Smith so recently had paced up and down; listening to the conversation, he merely shrugged, took out a cigarette, and lighted it with meticulous care.

However, it must be recorded to the credit of Sir Denis that his intolerant language—which was sometimes frankly rude—achieved its objective.

He was put through to the sleeping Minister....

No doubt there is much to be said for direct methods in sweeping aside ill-informed opposition. In the Middle West of America, my father’s home, I had learned to respect the direct attack as opposed to those circumlocutory manouevres so generally popular in European society.

To the unconcealed surprise ofM. Chamrousse, Sir Denis’s demands were instantly conceded!

I gathered that authoritative orders would be transmitted immediately to the commander of the destroyer lying in the harbour at Monaco; that every other available unit in the fleet would be despatched in quest of the submarine. In short, it became evident during this brief conversation that Sir Denis wielded an authority greater than even I had suspected.

When presently he replaced the receiver and sprang to his feet, the effect upon M. Chamrousse was notable.

“Sir Denis Nayland Smith,” he said, “I congratulate you— but you fully realise that in this matter I was indeed helpless!”

Sir Denis shook his hand.

“Please say no more! Of course I understand. But if you would accept my advice, it would be this: proceed personally to Ste Claire, and when you have realised the difficulties of the situation there, you will be in a position to deal with it.”

Some more conversation there was, the gist of which I have forgotten, and then we were out in the car again and speeding along those tortuous roads headed for Monaco.

“Much time has been wasted,” rapped Nayland Smith;

“only luck can help us now. Failing a message from some ship which has sighted the yacht Lola, it’s impossible to lay a course. Probably the Lola has a turn of speed which will tax the warship in any event. But lacking knowledge of her position, we can’t even start.

“I don’t doubt she will have been sighted. There’s a lot of shipping in those waters.”

“Yes, but the bulk of it is small craft, and many of them carry no radio. However, we are doing all that lies in our power to do.”

chapter forty-fifth

ON THE DESTROYER

from the bridge of the destroyer I looked over a blue and sail-less sea. The speed of the little warship was exhilarating, and I could see from the attitude other commander beside me that this break in peace-time routine was welcome rather than irksome.

I glanced towards the port wing of the bridge where Nayland Smith was staring ahead through raised glasses.

Somewhere astern of where I stood, somewhere in the slender hull, full out and quivering on this unexpected mission, I knew there were police officers armed with a warrant issued by the Boulevard du Palais for the arrest of Dr. Fu Manchu.

And as the wine of the morning began to stir my blood, hope awakened. The history of Fleurette lay open before me like a book. And all that had seemed incomprehensible in her character and her behaviour, lover-like, now I translated and understood. She had been cultivated as those plants in the forcing houses had been cultivated.

The imprint of Dr. Fu Manchu was upon her.

Yet through it all the real Fleurette had survived, defying the alchemy of the super-scientist: she was still Petrie’s daughter, beautiful, lovable, and mine, if I could find her....

I set doubt aside. Definitely, we should overtake the South American yacht. News had- come from a cruising liner ten minutes before we had reached Monaco Harbour: the Lola, laid on a southerly course, was less than twenty miles ahead.

But, since the Lola also must have picked up the message, we realised that the course of the motor yacht would in all probability have been changed. Nevertheless, ultimate escape was next to impossible.

Yet again that damnable thought intruded: the Lola might prove to be a will o’ the wisp; Fu Manchu, Fleurette, and Petrie not on board!

It appeared to me that the only thing supporting Nayland Smith’s theory and his amazing reaction to it was the fact that the Lola had not answered those messages sent out by the French authority.

At which moment Sir Denis dropped the glasses into their case and turned.

“Nothing!” he said grimly.

“It is true,” the commander replied; “but they have a good start.”

A man ran up to the bridge with a radio message. The commander scanned it.

“They are clever,” he reported. “But all the same they have been sighted again! They are still on their original course.”

“Who sends the report?” asked Nayland Smith.

“An American freighter.”

“The air arm is strangely silent.”

“We must be patient. Only two planes have been dispatched; they are looking also for a submarine—and there are many miles of sea to search.”

He took up the glasses. Nayland Smith, hands thrust in his pockets, stared straight ahead.

The destroyer leaped and quivered under the lash of her merciless engines, a living, feverish thing. And this reflection crossed my mind: that the Chinese doctor, wherever he might be at that moment, was indeed a superman; for he is no ordinary criminal against whom warships are sent out....

Another message was brought to the bridge; this one from a flying officer. The Lola was laid-to, less than five miles off and nearly dead on our course!

“What does this mean?” rapped Nayland Smith. “I don’t like it a bit.”

I was staring ahead, straining my eyes to pierce the distance....And now, a speck on the skyline, I saw an airplane flying towards me.

“Coming back to pilot us,” said the commander; “they know the game is up!”

A further message arrived. The Lola was putting a launch off at the time that the airman had headed back to find us. No submarine had been sighted.

“By heavens!” cried Nayland Smith, “I was right. His under-water craft is waiting for him in the event of just such an emergency as this! Instruct the plane to hurry back!”

The order was despatched....

I saw the pilot bank, go about, and set off again on a course slightly westward of our own.

The commander spoke a few more orders rapidly, and we crept into line behind the swiftly disappearing airman. We must have been making thirty-five knots or more, for it was only a matter of minutes before I saw the yacht—dead ahead.

“The launch is putting back!” said Nayland Smith. “Look!”

The little craft was just swinging around the stem of the yacht! And now we were so near that I could see the lines of the Lola, a beautiful white-and-silver ship, with a low. graceful hull and one squat yellow funnel with a silver band.

“By heavens!” I shouted, “we’re in time!”

The naval air pilot was circling now above the yacht. That submarine was somewhere in the neighbourhood it seemed reasonable to suppose, unless it had been the purpose of the launch’s crew to head back for shore: a possibility. But no indication of an under-water craft disturbed the blue mirror of the Mediterranean.

The commander of the destroyer rang off his engines.

chapter forty-sixth

WE

BOARD THE “LOLA”

we watched the launch return to the ladder of the yacht and saw her crew mount. The launch was already creeping up to her davits when the boat from the destroyer reached the ladder.

A lieutenant led with an armed party, Nayland Smith followed, then came the French police; and I brought up the rear.

A smart-looking officer—Portuguese, I thought—took the lieutenant’s salute as he stepped on deck. Never, I think, in the experiences which had come to me since I had found myself within the zone of the Chinese doctor, had I been conscious of quite that sense of pent-up, overpowering emotion which claimed me at this moment.

Fleurette! Petrie! Were they here?

The sea looked like a vast panel which some Titan craftsman had covered with blue enamel, and the French warship might have been a gaunt grey insect trapped inside the pigment.

“Sir Denis,” I said suddenly, in a low voice—”If the submarine is really in our neighbourhood—”

“I had thought of it,” he rapped. “It was impossible to identify the man in the stem of the launch. But unless it was Dr. Fu Manchu, in which event he’s on board here, our safety is questionable!”

“Take us to the captain,” said the lieutenant sharply.

The yacht’s officer saluted and led the way.

Armed men were left on duty at the ladder-head and at the foot of the stair leading up to the bridge. The bridge proved to be deserted. Two men were posted there, and we followed on into the chart house.

This was small but perfectly equipped, and it had only one occupant: a tall man wearing an astrakhan cap and a fur-trimmed overcoat. His arms folded, he stood there facing us as we entered...

Emotion almost choked me; triumph, with which even yet a dreadful doubt mingled. Nayland Smith’s jaw squared as he stood beside me staring across the room.

No greetings were exchanged.

“Who commands this yacht?” the lieutenant demanded.

And in that cold guttural voice, so rarely touched by any trace of human feeling:

“I do,” Dr. Fu Manchu replied.

“You failed to answer an official call sent out to all shipping in these waters.”

“I did.”

“You are accused of harbouring persons wanted by the police, and I have the authority to search this vessel.”

Dr. Fu Manchu stood quite still; his immobility was mummy-like.

Nayland Smith stepped aside to make way for the senior police officer from Nice. As the man entered, Sir Denis merely pointed to that tall, dignified figure. The detective stepped forward.

“Is your name Dr. Fu Manchu?”

“It is.”

“I hold a warrant for your arrest. You must consider yourself my prisoner.”

chapter forty-seventh

DR.PETRIE

“come in,” said a low voice.

Sir Denis stood stock still for one age-long moment, his hand resting on the door knob. Then he pulled open the white cabin door.

In a bed under an open porthole Petrie lay! His eyes, darkly shadowed, were fixed upon us. But his expression as Nayland Smith sprang forward was one I shall never forget.

“Petrie! Petrie, old man!...Thank God for this!”

Sir Denis’s face I could not see—for he stood with his back to me, grasping Petrie’s upstretched hand. But I could see Petrie; and knew that he was so overwhelmed by emotion as to be incapable of words. Sir Denis’s silence told the same story.

But when at last that long, silent handgrasp was relaxed:

“Sterling!” said the invalid, smiling—”you have done more than merely to save my life. You have brought back a happiness I thought I had lost forever. Smith, old man—” he looked up at Sir Denis—”get a radio off to Kara in Cairo at the earliest possible moment! But break the news gently. She will be mad with joy!”

He looked at me again.

“I understand, Sterling, that what you have found you want to keep?”

At that Nayland Smith turned.

“I trust your financial resources are adequate to the task, Sterling?” he rapped, but with a smile on his tired face—and it was a smile of happiness.

“Does she know?” I asked, and my voice was far from steady.

Petrie nodded.

“Go and find her,” he said. “She will be glad to see you.”

I went out, leaving those lifelong friends together. I returned to the deck.

What must there not be that Petrie had to tell Sir Denis and he to tell Petrie? It was, I suppose, one of the most remarkable reunions in history. For Petrie had died and had been buried, and was restored again to life. And Sir Denis had crowned his remarkable career with the greatest accomplishment in criminal records—the arrest of Dr. Fu Manchu....

The attitude of the members of the crew of the Lola strongly suggested that the vessel was used for none but legitimate purposes. One by one they were being submitted to a close interrogation by the French detective and his assistant in a forward cabin.

I had heard the evidence of the chief navigating officer and of the second officer. The vessel belonged to Santos da Cunha, an Argentine millionaire, but he frequently placed it at the disposal of his friends, of whom Dr. Fu Manchu (known to them as the Marquis Chuan) was one. It was the Marquis’s custom sometimes to take charge, and he, according to these witnesses was a qualified master mariner and a fine seaman!

His personal servants, of whom there were four, had come on board at Monaco; from this dehumanised quartette I anticipated that little would be learned. The ship’s officers and crew denied all knowledge of a submarine. When the engines had been stopped by Dr. Fu Manchu and the launch ordered away, they had obeyed without knowing for what purpose those orders had been given.

Personally, I had no doubt that the under-water craft lay somewhere near, but that the doctor had decided to sacrifice himself alone rather than to order the submarine to surface when the coming of the French airman had warned him that his movements were covered.

Why?

Doubtless because he had recognized his own escape to be impossible....

I reached the cabin in which I knew Fleurette to be, rapped, opened the door, and went in.

She was standing just inside—and I knew that she had been waiting for me....

I forgot what happened immediately afterwards; I lived in another world....

When, at last, and reluctantly, I came to earth again, the first idea which I properly grasped was that of Fleurette’s almost insupportable happiness because she had learned that she really possessed a father—and had met him!

Her eagerness to meet her mother resembled a physical hunger.

It was not easy to see these strange events through her eyes. But, listening to her, watching her fascinatedly, tears on her dark lashes as she sometimes clutched me, nervously, excitedly, it dawned upon me that there is probably a great void in the life of one who has never known father or mother.

Her happiness was clouded by the knowledge that she had gained it at the price of the downfall of Dr. Fu Manchu. I tried to divert the tide of her thoughts, but it was useless.

She, and she alone, was responsible....

It was clear to me that Petrie—sensing that exulted estimate which Fleurette had made of the character of the incalculable Chinaman—had done nothing to disturb her ideals.

How long we were there alone I don’t know; but at last:

“Really, darling,” said Fleurette, “you must go back. I am not going to move. I dare not face——”

I tore myself away; I returned to Petrie’s cabin.

Nayland Smith was there. The two were deep in conversation: they ceased speaking as I entered.

“I have solved a mystery for you,” Sir Denis began, looking up at me. “You recall, when Petrie lay in the grip of the purple plague and Fah Lo Suee was there, the voice which warned you to beware of her?”

“Yes.”

“I was the speaker. Sterling!” said Petrie.

Save for the queer blanching of his hair, he seemed to me now to be restored to something almost resembling his former self. Happiness is the medicine of the gods. He had met a beautiful girl, in whom, as in a mirror, he had seen his wife;

had known that this was the daughter snatched from them in babyhood. Then, within a few hours, he had been rescued from a living death to find Nayland Smith at his bedside.

“I suspected it; but at the time I found it hard to believe.”

“Naturally!” Sir Dennis was the speaker. “But I have just learned a remarkable and at the same time a ghastly thing, Sterling. Victims of the catalepsy induced by Dr. Fu Manchu remain conscious.”

“What!”

“It is difficult to make you understand,” Petrie broke in, “what I passed through. Evidently my preparation ‘654’ is fairly efficacious. If you had known what to do next, I should have survived all right. I was insensible, but the injection of Dr. Fu Manchu’s virus to induce catalepsy restored me to consciousness!

“How long after it had been administered, I don’t know. Incidentally, that hell-cat made the injection in my thigh, under the sheet, while she sat beside the bed. Oh! you’re not to blame, Sterling.”

“She inherits her father’s genius,” Sir Denis murmured. “As I saw her last,” I said savagely, “she was suffering for it.”

“What? I don’t know about this.” “He flogged her....” Sir Denis and Petrie exchanged glances. “Details can wait,” rapped the former. “Inhuman though the sentiment may be, I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry.”

“Can you imagine, Sterling,” Petrie went on, “that from the time I recovered consciousness and found Fah Lo Suee in the room, I was aware of everything that happened?” “You don’t mean——” Sir Denis nodded shortly.

“Yes...even that,” Petrie assured me. “Somehow, when I saw that she-cat coiling herself about you, I forced speech—I tried to warn you. It was the last evidence of which I was capable to show you that I still lived!

“I heard myself pronounced dead; I saw Carrier’s tears. I was hurried away—a plague case. The undertakers dealt with me, and I was put into a coffin.”

“My God!” I groaned, and wondered at the man’s fortitude. “Do you know what I thought, Sterling, as I lay there in the mortuary?—I prayed that nothing would interfere with the plans of Dr. Fu Manchu! For the purpose of it all was clear to me. And I knew—try to picture my frame of mind!—that if my friends should upset his plans, I should be——” “Buried alive!”

Nayland Smith’s voice sounded like a groan. “Exactly, old man. You have noticed my hair? That was when it happened. When I heard the screws being removed, and saw two evil-looking Burmans bending over me—or rather, I saw them at rare intervals, for it was impossible to move my eyes—I sent up a prayer of thankfulness!

“They lifted me out—my body, of course, was quite rigid, placed me in a hammock and hurried me out to a car in the lane beyond. Of the substitution of which you have told me, I saw nothing. I was taken by road to Ste Claire, carried to the room in which you found me, Sterling, and placed in the care of a Japanese doctor who informed me that his name was Yamamata.

“He gave me an injection which relaxed the rigidity, and then a draught of that preparation which looks like brandy but tastes like death.

“You and I, Smith—” he glanced aside at Sir Denis—”have met with it before!”

“Is Dr. Yamamata on board?” I asked.

“No. I was carried in a sort of litter down to that water cave which Smith tells me you have visited, across it in a collapsible boat which I assume is part of the equipment of the submarine; and from there up to a rock tunnel and down to the beach. A launch belonging to this yacht was waiting, in which I was brought on board. Dr. Fu Manchu in person superintending. Fleurette was with us. We joined the yacht in sight of Monaco. I resigned myself to becoming a subject of the new Chinese Emperor of the World.”

chapter forty-eighth

“IT

MEANS

EXTRADITION”

I had rarely, if ever seen a display of Gallic emotion to equal that of Dr. Cartier when he entered Petrie’s room in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.

He beheld before him a man whom he had certified to be dead; whom he had seen buried. Perhaps his behaviour was excusable. Brisson, who was with him, controlled himself better.

“Because I am the cause of this,” said Petrie, “I naturally feel most embarrassed. But you may take it, Cartier, that weakness now is the only trouble. It’s a question of getting me on my feet again.”

“I will arrange for a nurse.”

The door opened, and Fleurette came in.

As her accepted lover, the incense of worship which the Frenchmen silently offered should perhaps have been flattering. Oddly enough, I resented it.

“This is my daughter, gentlemen,” said Petrie—with so much pride and such happiness in his voice that all else was forgotten.

She crossed and seated herself at his side, clasping his outstretched hand.

“This, dear, is Dr. Cartier...Dr. Brisson, my friends and allies.”

Fleurette smiled at the French doctors. That intoxicating dimple appeared for a moment in her chin, and I knew that they were her slaves.

“I shall require no other nurse,” Petrie added.

It was hard to go; but a nod from Fleurette gave me my dismissal. With a few words of explanation I left the room.

Sir Denis was waiting for me in the lobby.

“I hate to drag you away, Sterling,” he said. “But if any sort of progress has been made at Ste Claire, you can probably help.”

We joined a car which was waiting. I could not fail to recall in the early stages of the journey, that night when, learning at Quinto’s that Petrie was dead, I had launched what was meant to be a vendetta.

I had set out to seek the life of any servant of Dr. Fu Manchu who might cross my path!

And even now, when the fact had become plain to me that the unscrupulous methods of the great Chinaman, his indifference to human life, were not dictated by any prospect of personal gain but belonged to an ideal utterly beyond my Western comprehension, I did not regret the death of that Burmese strangler with whom I had fought to a finish on the Comiche road.

“The big villa at Ste Claire,” said Nayland Smith, “has obviously been a European base of the group for many years past. It’s impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact, Sterling, that this Si-Fan movement, whatever it may embody, has gained momentum since the days when I first realised the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. You have told me that he claims to be responsible for that financial chaos which at that moment involves the whole world. That he had defeated age, I know. And I gather that he professes to have solved the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

We were clear of Monaco now, and mounting higher and higher.

“In all this, there is one thing which we must bear in mind:

it has taken me many years to leam as little as I know of the Mandarin Fu Manchu. But at last I have discovered his term of official office, and with many blanks I have built up something of his pedigree.

“Tell me,” I said eagerly.

“He administered the Province of Ho Nan, under the Empress. Judging by the evidence which I have accumulated, he appeared to be of the same age in those days as he appears now!

“What ever age is the man?”

“Heaven only knows. Sterling! This I doubt if we shall ever find out. He is affiliated to those who once ruled China. His place in the scheme of things, I take it, may be compared to that once held by the Pretender, in England. But he has a legitimate claim to the title of Prince.”

“Sir Denis, this is amazing!”

“Dr. Fu Manchu is the most amazing figure living in the world to-day. He holds degrees of four universities. He is a Doctor of Philosophy as well as a Doctor of Medicine. I have reason to believe that he speaks every civilised language with facility; and I know that he represents a movement which already had pushed Europe and America very near to the brink—and which, before long, may push both of them right over.”

“You have prevented that, Sir Denis. An army is helpless without its leader.”

I glanced aside at him as we sped along the Comiche road:

he was tugging at the lobe of his ear.

“How do we know that he is the leader?” he snapped. “Think of the living-dead whom we chance to have identified. How many more belong to the Si-Fan whose identities we don’t even suspect? His ‘submersible yacht,” the existence of which, even if I had doubted Dr. Fu Manchu’s word (and this I have never doubted), is established by the disappearance of every member of his household! The French authorities have never had so much as a suspicion that such a vessel was on their coasts!

“That pool may have been known to the monks in the old days; but you will search for it in vain in Baedeker. Do you grasp what I mean, Sterling? We in the West follow our well trodden paths; no one of us sees more than the others see. But, under the street along which we are walking, at the back of a house which we have passed a hundred times, lies something else—something unsuspected.

“These are the things that Dr. Fu Manchu has discovered— or rediscovered. This is the secret of his influence. He is behind us, under us, and over us.”

“At the moment,” I said savagely, “he is in a French prison!”

“Why?” murmured Nayland Smith.

“What do you mean?”

“His submersible yacht, for a sight of which I would give much, is almost certainly armed—probably with torpedoes, improved by Ericksen or some other specialist possessing a first-class brain stolen form the tomb to work for Dr. Fu Manchu. Therefore why did he submit to arrest?”

“I don’t follow.”

“I agree that the circumstances were peculiar, and possibly I am pessimistic. But I am not satisfied. I have been in touch with the Foreign Office. The Naval resources of Europe already will be combing the Mediterranean for the mysterious submarine. But—” he turned, and I met the glance of the steel-gray eyes—”do you think they will find it?”

“Why not?”

He snapped his teeth together and pulled out from his pocket a very large and dilapidated rubber pouch, and at the same time a big-bowled and much charred briar. I recognized the pouch, remembering when and where I had last seen it.

“I thought I had lost that for you, Sir Denis!” I said.

“So did I,” he rapped; “but I found it on my way down. It’s an old friend which I should have hated to lose. Hello! here we are.”

As he began to charge his pipe, the driver of the car had turned into that steeply sloping lane which led up to the iron gates of the Villa Ste Claire.

“I don’t expect to learn anything here. Sterling,” said Sir Denis, “which is worth while. But there’s no other line of investigation open at the moment. Dr. Fu Manchu’s arrest is a very delicate matter. He has already applied to his Consul, and demanded that the Chinese Legation in Paris shall be notified of the state of affairs! To put the thing in a nutshell:

unless there is some evidence here—and I don’t expect to find it—to connect him with the recent outrages in the neighbourhood or to establish his association with the epidemic, which is frankly hopeless, it means extradition.”

“Have you arranged for it?” I asked eagerly.

“Yes. But even if we get him back to England—and I know his dossier at Scotland Yard from A to Z——”

He paused and stuffed the big pouch into his pocket; some coarse-cut mixture which overhung the bowl of his briar lent it the appearance of a miniature rock garden.

“What!”

“The law of England has many loopholes.”

chapter forty-ninth

MAITREFOLI

the absence of reporters from Ste Claire, the gate of which was guarded by police, amazed me.

“There are some things which are too important for publicity,” said Sir Denis. “And in France, as well as in England, we have this advantage over America: we can silence the newspapers. The only witnesses of any use in a court of law which we have captured so far are the four Chinese bodyservants of the doctor’s who were on board the yacht. Some of these you can identify, I believe?”

“Three of them I have seen before.”

Sir Denis opened the door of the car. We had reached the end of that sanded drive which swept around the side of the villa and terminated near the southerly wing of the terrace.

“Have you ever tried to interrogate a Chinaman who didn’t want to commit himself?” he asked.

“Yes, I have employed Chinese servants, and I know what they can be like.”

Nayland Smith turned to me—he was standing on the drive.

“They are loyal, Sterling,” he snapped. “Bind them to a tradition, and no human power can tear them away from it....”

Many of the section doors had been forced, but more than half the party remained imprisoned. Under instructions from Sir Denis, I gathered, a party had been landed in that tiny bay which was the sea-bound terminus of the exit from the water cave. Suitably prepared, they had landed there, and were operating upon the first of the section doors in order to liberate members of the raiding party trapped in that long glass-lined corridor. The local Chief of Police was still among the missing.

“I think,” said Sir Denis, “we can afford to overlook infection from the hybrid flies, and even from other insects which you have described to me. Those used experimentally by Dr. Fu Manchu—for instance, the fly in Petrie’s laboratory— seem to have survived the evening chill. But you may have noticed that there has been a drop in the temperature during the last two days. I think it was these eccentricities of climate which baffled the doctor. His flying army couldn’t compete with them.”

We spent an hour at Ste Claire; but it was an hour wasted.

When, presently, we left for Nice, where Dr. Fu Manchu was temporarily confined, I reflected that if Ste Claire was a minor base of the Si-Fan, as Fleurette had given me to understand, then the organisation must be at least as vast as Sir Denis Nayland Smith believed.

Ste Claire was a scientific fortress; its destruction in one way and another represented a loss to human knowledge which could not be estimated. His section doors had checked pursuit of the doctor so effectively that, failing my adventurous swim across the pool and discovery of that other exit, the fugitive could conveniently have landed from the motor yacht Lola at any one of many ports before the radio had got busy with his description.