The Drums of Fu Manchu

The Drums of Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

Mystery Comes To Bayswater

“Damn it! There is someone there!”

I sprang up irritably, jerked the curtains aside and stared down into Bayswater Road. My bell, “Bart Kerrigan” inscribed above it on a plate outside in the street, was sometimes rung wantonly by late revelers. The bell was out of order and I had tried to ignore its faint tinkling. But now, staring down, I saw someone looking up at me as I stood in the lighted room: a man wearing a Burberry and a soft hat, a man who signaled urgently with his arms, indicating: “Come down!”

Shooting the bolt open so that I should not be locked out, I ran downstairs. A light in the glazed arcade which led to the front doer refused to function. Groping my way I threw the door open.

The man in the Burberry almost upset me as he leapt in.

“Who the devil are you?”

The door was closed quietly and the intruder spoke, his back to it as he faced me.

“It’s not a holdup,” came in coldly incisive tones. “I just had to get in. Thanks, Kerrigan, but you were a long time coming down.”

“Good heavens!” I stepped forward in the darkness and extended my hand. “Nayland Smith! Can I believe it?”

“Absolutely! I was desperate. Is your bell out of order?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. Don’t turn the light up.”

“I can’t; the fuse is blown.”

“Good. I gather that I interrupted you, but I had an excellent reason. Come on.”

As we hurried up the semi-dark staircase, I found my brain in some confusion. And when we entered my flat:

“Leave your dining room in darkness,” snapped Nayland Smith. “I want to look out of the window.”

Breathless, between astonishment and the race up the stairs, I stood behind him as he stared out of the dining room window. Two men were loitering near the front door—and glancing up toward my lighted study.

“Only just in time!” said Nayland Smith. “I tricked them—but you see how wonderfully they are informed. Evidently they know every possible spot in which I might take cover. Unpleasantly near thing, Kerrigan.”

In the lighted study I gazed at my visitor. Hat removed, Nayland Smith revealed a head of virile curling hair, more grey than black. Stripping off his Burberry, he faced me. His clean-cut features, burned by a recent visit to the tropics, looked almost haggardly thin, but the fire in his eyes, the tense nervous vitality of the man must have struck a spark of animosity or of friendship in any but a soul dead.

He stared at me analytically.

“You look well, Kerrigan. You have passed twenty-seven, but you are lean as a hare, clean-cut and obviously fit as a flea. The last time I saw you was in Addis-Ababa. You were sending articles to the Orbit and I was sending reports to the Foreign Office. Well, what is it now?”

He stared down at the littered writing desk. I moved towards the dining room.

“Drinks? Good!” he snapped. “But you must find them in the dark.”

“I understand.”

When presently I returned with a decanter and syphon:

“Look here,” I said, “I was never happier to see a man in my life. But bring me up to date: what’s the meaning of all this?’

Nayland Smith dropped a page which he had been reading and began reflectively to stuff coarse-cut mixture into his briar.

“You are writing a book about Abyssinia, I see.”

“Yes.”

“You are not on the staff of the Orbit, are you?”

“No. I am in the fortunate position of picking and choosing my jobs. I did the series on Abyssinia for them because I know that part of Africa pretty well. Now, I am doing a book on present conditions.”

As I poured out drinks: “Excuse me,” said Nayland Smith, “I just want to make sure.”

He walked into the darkened dining room, carefully closing the door behind him. When he returned:

“May I use your phone?”

“Certainly”

I handed him a drink of which he took a sip, then, raising the telephone receiver, he dialed a number rapidly, and:

“Yes!” His speech was curiously staccato. “Put me through to Chief Inspector Wessex’ office. Sir Denis Nayland Smith speaking. Hurry!”

There was an interval. I watched my visitor fascinatedly. In my considerable experience of men, I had never known one who lived at such high pressure.

“Is that Inspector Wessex? . . . Good. I have a job for you, Inspector. Instruct Paddington Police Station to send a party in a fast car. They will find two men—dark skinned foreigners—hanging about near the corner of Porchester Terrace. They are to arrest them—never mind the charge—and lock them up. I will deal with them later. Can I leave this to you?”

Presumably the invisible chief inspector agreed to take charge of the matter, for Nayland Smith hung up the receiver.

“I have brought you your biggest story, Kerrigan. I know you can afford to await my word before publishing. I may add”—tapping the loose manuscript on the desk—”that you have missed the real truth about Abyssinia, but I can rectify that.” He began in his restless way to pace up and down the carpet. “Without mentioning any names, a prominent cabinet minister resigned quite recently. Do you recall it?”

“Certainly”

“He was a wise man. Do you know why he retired?”

“There are several versions of the story.”

“He has a fine brain—and he retired because he recognized that there was in the world one first-class brain. He retired to review his ideas on the immediate destiny of civilization.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thing most desired, Kerrigan, by all women, by all sensible men, in this life, is peace. Wars are made by few but fought by many. The greatest intellect in the world today has decided that there must be peace! It has become my business to try to save the lives of certain prominent persons who are blind enough to believe that they can make war. I was en route for Sir Malcolm Locke’s house, which is not five minutes’ drive away, when I realized that a small Daimler was following me. I remembered, fortunately, that your flat was here, and trusted to luck that you would be at home. I worked an old trick. Fey, my man, slowed up around a corner just before the following car had turned it. I stepped out and cut through a mews. Fey drove on. But my two followers evidently detected the trick. I saw them coming back just before you opened the door! They know I am in one of two buildings. What I don’t want them to know is where I am going. Hello—!”

The sound of a speeding automobile suddenly braked came up from Bayswater Road.

“Into the dining room!”

I dashed in behind Nayland Smith. We stared down. A police car stood outside. There were few pedestrians and there was comparatively little traffic. It was the lull before eleven o’clock, the lull which precedes the storm of returning theatre and picture goers. A queer scene was being enacted on the pavement almost directly below my windows.

Two men (except that they were dark fellows I could discern no more from my viewpoint) were struggling and protesting volubly amid a group of uniformed constables. Beyond, on the park side, I saw now a small car standing—it looked like a Daimler. A constable on patrol joined the party, and the police driver pointed in the direction of the Daimler. The expostulating prisoners were hustled in, the police car was driven off and the constable in the determined but leisurely way of his kind paced stolidly across the road.

“All clear!” said Nayland Smith. “Come along! I want you with me!”

“But, Sir Malcolm Locke? In what way can he be―”

“He’s the cousin of the home secretary. As a matter of fact, he’s abroad. It isn’t Locke I want to see, but a guest who is staying at his house. I must get to him, Kerrigan, without a moment’s delay!”

“A guest?”

“Say, rather, someone who is hiding there.”

“Hiding?”

“I can’t mention his name—yet. But he returned secretly from Africa. He is the driving power behind one of Europe’s dictators. By consent of the British Foreign Office, he came, also secretly, to London. Can you imagine why?”

“No.”

“To see me!”

Sir Malcom’s Guest

Fey, that expressionless, leather-faced valet-chauffeur of Nayland Smith’s, was standing at the door beside the Rolls, rug over arm, as though nothing unusual had occurred; and as we proceeded towards Sir Malcolm’s house, Smith, smoking furiously, fell into a silence which I did not care to interrupt.

I count myself psychic, for this is a Celtic heritage, yet on this short journey nothing told me that, although as correspondent for the Orbit I had had a not uneventful life, I was about to become mixed up in a drama the outcome of which meant nothing less than the destruction of what we are pleased to call Civilization. And in averting Armageddon, by the oddest paradox I was to find myself opposed to the one man who, alone, could save Europe from destruction.

Sir Malcolm Locke’s house presented an unexpectedly festive appearance as we approached. Nearly every window in the large building was illuminated, a number of cars were drawn up and a considerable group of people had congregated outside the front door.

“Hello!” muttered Nayland Smith. He knocked out his pipe in the ash tray and dropped the briar into a pocket of his Burberry. “This is very odd.”

Before Fey had pulled in Smith was out and dashing up the steps. I followed and reached him just as the door was opened by a butler. The man’s face wore a horrified expression: a constable was hurrying up behind us.

“Sir Malcolm is not at home, sir.”

“I am not here to see Sir Malcolm, but his guest. My name is Nayland Smith. My business is official.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the butler, with a swift change of manner. “I didn’t recognize you.”

The door opened straight into a lofty hallway, from the further end of which a crescent staircase led to upper floors. As the butler closed the door I immediately became conscious of a curiously vibrant atmosphere. I had experienced it before, in places taken by assault or bombed. It is caused, I think, by the vibrations of frightened minds. Several servants were peering down from a dark landing above but the hallway itself was brightly lighted. At this moment, a door on the right opened and a clean- shaven, heavily built man with jet-black, close-cropped hair came out. He glanced in our direction.

“Good evening, Inspector,” said Nayland Smith. “What’s this? What are you doing here?”

“Thank God you’ve arrived, sir!” The inspector stopped dead in his stride. “I was beginning to fear something was wrong.”

“This is Mr. Bart Kerrigan—Chief Inspector Leighton of the Special Branch.”

Nayland Smith’s loud, rather harsh tones evidently having penetrated to the room beyond, again the door opened, and I saw with astonishment Sir James Clare, the home secretary, come out.

“Here at last, Smith,” was his greeting. “I heard your voice.” Sir James spoke in a clear but nearly toneless manner which betrayed his legal training. “I don’t know your friend”—staring at me through the thick pebbles of his spectacles. “This unhappy business, of course, is tremendously confidential.”

Nayland Smith made a rapid introduction.

“Mr. Kerrigan is acting for no newspaper or agency. You may take his discretion for granted. You say this unhappy business, Sir James? May I ask “

Sir James Clare raised his hand to check the speaker. He turned to Inspector Leighton.

“See if there is any news about the telephone call, Inspector,” he directed, and as the inspector hurried away: “Suppose, gentlemen, you come in here for a moment.”

We followed him back into the apartment from which he had come. It was a large library, a lofty room, every available foot of the wall occupied by bookcases. Beside a mahogany table upon which, also, were many books and a number of documents, he sat down in an armchair, indicating that we should sit in two others. Smith was far too restless for inaction, but grunting irritably he threw himself down into one of the padded chairs.

“Chief Inspector Leighton of the Special Branch,” said Sir James, “is naturally acquainted with the identity of Sir Malcolm’s guest. But no one else in the house has been informed, with the exception of Mr. Bascombe, Sir Malcolm’s private secretary. In the circumstances I think perhaps we had better talk in here. Am I to take it that you are unaware of what occurred tonight?”

“On your instructions,” said Smith, speaking with a sort of smothered irritability, “I flew from Berlin this evening. I was on my way here, and I can only suppose that the purpose of my return was known. A deliberate attempt was made tonight to wreck my car as I crossed Bond Street, by the driver of a lorry. Only Fey’s skill and the fact that at so late an hour there were no pedestrians averted disaster. He drove right on to the pavement and along it for some little distance.”

“Did you apprehend the driver of this lorry?”

“I did not stop to do so, although I recognized the fact that it was a planned attack. Then, when we reached Marble Arch, I realized that two men were following in a Daimler. I managed to throw them off the track, with Mr. Kerrigan’s assistance—and here I am. What has happened?”

“General Quinto is dead!”

The Green Death

This news, coupled with the identity of the hidden guest, shocked me inexpressibly. General Quinto! Chief of Staff to Signer Monaghani; one of the most formidable figures in political Europe! The man who would command Monaghani’s forces in the event of war; the first soldier in his country, almost certain successor to the dictator! But if I was shocked, the effect upon Nayland Smith was electrical.

He sprang up with clenched fists and glared at Sir James Clare.

“Good God, Sir James! You are not telling me that he has been—”

The home secretary shook his head. His legal calm remained unruffled.

“That question. Smith, I am not yet in a position to answer. But you know now why I am here; why Inspector Leighton is here.” He stood up. “I shall be glad, gentlemen, if you will follow me to the study which had been placed at the disposal of the general, and in which he died.”

A door at the further end of the library was thrown open and I entered a small study, intimately furnished. There was a writing desk near a curtained window, which showed evidence of someone’s recent activities. But my attention was immediately focused upon a settee in an arched recess upon which lay the body of a man. One glance was sufficient—for I had seen him many times in Africa.

It was General Quinto. But his normally sallow aquiline features displayed an agonized surprise and had acquired a sort of ghastly greenish hue. I cannot better describe what I mean than by likening the effect to that produced by green limelight.

A man whose features I could not distinguish was kneeling beside the body, which he appeared to be closely examining. A second man looked down at him, and as we entered the first stood up and turned.

It was Lord Moreton, the king’s physician.

Introductions revealed that the other was Dr Sims, the divisional police surgeon.

“This is a very strange business,” said the famous consultant, removing his spectacles and placing them in a pocket of his dress waistcoat. “Do you know”—he looked from face to face, with a sort of naive astonishment—“I have no idea what killed this man!”

“This is really terrible,” declared Sir James Clare. “Personal considerations apart, his death here in London under such circumstances cannot fail to set ugly rumors afloat. I take it that you mean, Lord Moreton, that you are not prepared to give a certificate of death from natural causes?”

“Honestly,” the physician replied, staring intently at him, “I am not. I am by no means satisfied that he did die from natural causes.”

“I am perfectly sure that he didn’t,” the police surgeon declared.

Nayland Smith, who had been staring down at the body of the dead soldier, now began sniffing the air suspiciously.

“I observe, Sir Denis,” said Lord Moreton, “that you have detected a faint but peculiar odor in the atmosphere?”

“I have. Had you noticed it?”

“At the very moment that I entered the room. I cannot identify it; it is something outside my experience. It grows less perceptible—or I am becoming used to it.”

I, too, had detected this strange but not unpleasant odor. Now, apparently guided by his sense of smell, Nayland Smith began to approach the writing desk. Here he paused, sniffing vigorously. At this moment the door opened and Inspector Leighton came in.

“I see you are trying to trace the smell, sir. I thought it was stronger by the writing desk than elsewhere, but I could find nothing to account for it.”

“You have searched thoroughly?” Smith snapped.

“Absolutely, sir. I think I may say I have searched every inch of the room.”

Nayland Smith stood by the desk tugging at the lobe of his ear, a mannerism which indicated perplexity, as I knew; then:

“Do these gentlemen know the identity of the victim?” he asked the minister.

“Yes.”

“In that case, who actually saw General Quinto last alive?”

“Mr. Bascombe, Sir Malcolm’s private secretary.”

“Very well. I have reasons for wishing that Mr. Kerrigan should be in a position to confirm anything that I may discover in this matter. Where was the body found?”

“Where it lies now.”

“By whom?”

“By Mr. Bascombe. He phoned the news to me.”

Smith glanced at Inspector Leighton.

“The body has been disturbed in no way, Inspector?”

“In no way.”

“In that case I should like a private interview with Mr. Bascombe. I wish Mr. Kerrigan to remain. Perhaps, Lord Moreton and Doctor Sims, you would be good enough to wait in the library with Sir James and the Inspector . . .”

* * *

Mr. Bascombe was a tall fair man, approaching middle age. He carried himself with a slight stoop, although I learned that he was a Cambridge rowing Blue. His manner was gentle to the point of diffidence. As he entered the study he glanced in a horrified way at the body on the settee.

“Good evening, Mr. Bascombe,” said Nayland Smith, who was standing before the writing table,”I thought it better that I should see you privately. I gather from Inspector Leighton that General Quinto, who arrived here yesterday morning at eleven o’clock, was to all intents and purposes hiding in these rooms.”

“That is so, Sir Denis. The door behind you, there, opens into a bedroom, and a bathroom adjoins it. Sir Malcolm, who is a very late worker, sometimes slept there in order to avoid disturbing Lady Locke.”

“And since his arrival, the general has never left those apartments?”

“No.”

“He was a very old friend of Sir Malcolm’s?”

“Yes, a lifelong friend, I understand. He and Lady Locke are in the south of France, but are expected back tomorrow morning.”

“No member of the staff is aware of the identity of the visitor?”

“No. He had never stayed here during the time of Greaves, the butler—that is, during the last three years—and he was a stranger to all the other servants,”

“By what name was he known here?”

“Mr. Victor.”

“Who looked after him?”

“Greaves.”

“No one else?”

“No one, except myself and Greaves, entered these rooms.”

“The general expected me tonight, of course?”

“Yes. He was very excited when you did not appear.”

“How has he occupied himself since his arrival?”

“Writing almost continuously, when he was not pacing up and down the library, or glancing out of the windows into the square.”

“What was he writing?”

“I don’t know. He tore up every shred of it. Late this evening he had a fire lighted in the library and burnt up everything.”

“Extraordinary! Did he seem very apprehensive?”

“Very. Had I not known his reputation, I should have said, in fact, that he was panic-stricken. This frame of mind seemed to date from his receipt of a letter delivered by a district messenger at noon yesterday.”

“Where is this letter?”

“I have reason to believe that the general locked it in a dispatch box which he brought with him.”

“Did he comment upon the letter?”

“No.”

“In what name was it addressed?”

“Mr. Victor.”

Nayland Smith began to pace the carpet, and every time he passed the settee where that grim body lay, the right arm hanging down so that half-closed fingers touched the floor, his shadow, moving across the ghastly, greenish face, created an impression that the features worked and twitched and became still again.

“Did he make many telephone calls?”

“Quite a number.”

“From the instrument on the desk there?”

“Yes—it is an extension from the hallway.”

“Have you a record of those whom he called?”

“Of some. Inspector Leighton has already made that inquiry. There were two long conversations with Rome, several calls to Sir James Clare and some talks with his own embassy.”

“But others you have been unable to check?”

“The inspector is at work on that now, I understand, Sir Denis. There was—er—a lady.”

“Indeed? Any incoming calls?”

“Very few.”

“I remember—the inspector told me he was trying to trace them. Any visitors?”

“Sir James Clare yesterday morning, Count Bruzzi at noon today—and, oh yes, a lady last night.”

“What! A lady?”

“Yes.”

“What was her name?”

“I have no idea, Sir Denis. She came just after dusk in a car which waited outside, and sent a sealed note in by Greaves. I may say that at the request of the general I was almost continuously at work in the library, so that no one could gain access without my permission. This note was handed to me.”

“Was anything written on the envelope?”

“Yes: ‘Personal—for Mr. Victor.’ I took it to him. He was then seated at the desk writing. He seemed delighted. He evidently recognized the handwriting. Having read the message, he instructed me to admit the visitor.”

“Describe her,” said Nayland Smith.

“Tall and slender, with fine eyes, very long and narrow—definitely not an Englishwoman. She had graceful and languid manners, and remarkable composure. Her hair was jet black and closely waved to her head. She wore jade earrings and was wrapped up in what I assumed to be a very expensive fur coat.”

“H’m!” murmured Nayland Smith, “can’t place her, unless” -and a startled expression momentarily crossed his brown features -”the dead are living again!”

“She remained in the study with the general for close upon an hour. Their voices sounded animated, but of course I actually overheard nothing of their words. Then the door was opened and they both came out. I rang for Greaves, the general conducted his visitor as far as the end of the library and Greaves saw her down to her car.”

“What occurred then? Did the general seem to be disturbed in any way? Unusually happy or unusually sad?”

“He was smiling when he returned to the study, which he did immediately, going in and closing the door.”

“And today Count Bruzzi?”

“Count Bruzzi lunched with him. There have been no other visitors.”

“Phone calls?”

“One at half past seven. It was immediately after this that General Quinto came out and told me that you were expected. Sir Denis, between ten and eleven, and were to be shown immediately into the study.”

“Yes. I was recalled from Berlin for this interview which now cannot take place. This brings us, Mr. Bascombe, to the ghastly business of tonight.”

“The general and I dined alone in the library. Greaves waiting.”

“Did you both eat the same dishes and drink the same wine?”

“We did. Your suspicions are natural. Sir Denis, but such a solution of the mystery is impossible. It was a plain and typically English dinner—a shoulder of lamb with mint sauce, peas and new potatoes. Greaves carved and served. Followed by apple tart and cream of which we both partook, then cheese and young radishes. We shared a bottle of claret. That was our simple meal.”

Nayland Smith had begun to walk up and down again. Mr. Bascombe continued:

“I went out for an hour after dinner. During my absence General Quinto received a telephone call and afterwards complained to Greaves that there was something wrong with the extension to the study—that he had found difficulty in making himself audible. Greaves informed him that the post office was aware of this defect and that an engineer was actually coming along at the moment to endeavor to rectify it. As a matter of fact the man was here when I returned.”

“Where was the general?”

“Reading in the library, outside. The man assured me that the instrument was now in order, made a test call and General Quinto returned to the study and closed the door. I remained in the library.”

“What time was this?”

“As nearly as I can remember, a quarter to ten.”

“Yes, go on.”

“I sat at the library table writing personal letters, when I heard Greaves in the hall outside putting a call through to the general in the study. I heard General Quinto answer it, dimly at first, then more clearly. He seemed to be shouting into the receiver. Presently he came out in a state of some excitement—he was, I may add, a very irascible man. He said: That fool has made the instrument worse. The lady to whom I was speaking could not hear a word.’

“Realizing that it was too late to expect the post office to send anyone again tonight, I went into the study and tested the instrument myself.”

“But,” snapped Nayland Smith, “did you observe anything unusual in the atmosphere of the room?”

“Yes—a curious odor, which still lingers here as a matter of fact.”

“Good! Go on.”

“I put a call through to a friend in Chelsea and was unable to detect anything the matter with the line.”

“It was perfectly clear?”

“Perfectly. I suggested to the general that possibly the fault was with his friend’s instrument and not with ours. I then returned to the library. He was in an extraordinarily excited condition—kept glancing at his watch and inquiring why you had not arrived. Some ten minutes later he threw the door open and came out again. He said:

‘Listen!’

“I stood up and we both remained quite silent for a moment.

“‘Did you hear it?’ he asked.

“‘Hear what. General?’ I replied.

“‘Someone beating a drum!’“

“Stop!” snapped Smith. “Those were his exact words?”

“His exact words . . . ‘Surely you can hear it?’ he said. ‘An Arab drum—what they call a darabukkeh. Listen again.’

“I listened, but on my word of honor could hear nothing whatever. I assured the general of this. His face was inflamed and he remained very excited. He went in and slammed the door—but I had scarcely seated myself before he was out again.”

‘“Mr. Bascombe’ he shouted (as you probably know he spoke perfect English),”someone is trying to frighten me! But by heavens they won’t! Come into the study. Perhaps you will hear it there!’

“I went into the study with him, now seriously concerned. He grasped my arm—his hand was trembling. ‘Listen!’ he said, ‘it’s coming nearer—the beating of a drum—’

“Again I listened for some time. Finally: ‘I’m sorry, General, I had to say, “but I can hear nothing whatever beyond the usual sounds of distant traffic.’

“The incident had greatly disturbed me. I didn’t like the look of the general. This talk of drums was unpleasant and uncanny. He asked again what on earth had happened to you. Sir Denis, but declined my suggestion of a game of cards, so that again I left him and returned to the library. I heard him walking about for a time and then his footsteps ceased. Once I heard him cry out: ‘Stop those drums!’ Then I heard no more.”

“Had he referred to the curious odor?”

“He said: ‘Someone wearing a filthy perfume has been in this room.’ At about twenty to eleven, as he had become quite silent, I rapped on the door, opened it and went in.” He turned shudderingly in the direction of the settee: “I found him as you see him.”

“Was he dead?”

“So far as I was able to judge, he was.”

The Girl Outside

To that expression of agonized surprise upon the dead man’s face was now added, almost momentarily, a deepening of the greenish tinge. A fingerprint expert and a photographer from Scotland Yard had come and gone. After a longish interview, Nayland Smith had released Lord Moreton and Dr Sims. He put a call through on the desk telephone which General Quinto had found defective. Smith found it in perfect order. He examined the adjoining bedroom and the bathroom beyond and pointed out that it was just possible, although there was no evidence to confirm the theory, that someone might have entered through the bathroom window during the time that the general was alone in the study.

“I don’t think that’s how it was done,” he said, “but it is a possibility. This dispatch box must be opened, and if Mr. Bascombe can’t find the key we must force it. In the meantime, Kerrigan, you have a nose for news. I have observed that quite a number of people remain outside the house. Slip out the back way, go around and join the crowd. Ask stupid questions and study every one of them. It would not surprise me to learn that there is someone there waiting to hear of the success or failure of tonight’s plot.”

‘Then you are satisfied that General Quinto was—murdered?”

“Entirely satisfied, Kerrigan.”

When presently I came out into the square I found that Lord Moreton’s car had gone. Smith’s, that of the home secretary and a Yard car were still standing there. Ten or twelve people were hanging about, attracted by that almost psychic awareness of tragedy which ahead of radio or newspaper in some mysterious way creeps through.

I examined them all carefully and selected several for conversation. Apart from the fact that they had heard that “something had happened,” I gathered little news of value.

Then standing apart from the main group, I saw a girl.

This was a dark night but suddenly the house door was opened to admit someone who had driven up in a taxi. In the light from the doorway, I had a glimpse of her face. She was dressed like a working girl, wearing a light raincoat which, however, did not disguise the lines of her slim, trim figure. She wore a brown beret. But her face, as the light shone fully upon it, was so really lovely—a word which rarely can be applied—that I was astonished. In the shadows she looked like a brunette; in the swift light I saw red glints in her tightly waved hair beneath the beret, exquisitely modeled features, lips parted in what I can only describe as an expectant smile. She fumed and stared at the departing taxi as I strolled in her direction.

“Any idea what’s going on here?” I asked casually.

She raised her eyes in a startled way (they were wonderful eyes of a most unusual color; they set me thinking of amethysts) keeping her hands tucked in the pockets of her coat.

“Someone told me”—she spoke broken English—”that something terrible had happened in this house.”

“Really! I couldn’t make out what the crowd was about. So that’s it! Who’s the owner of the house? Do you know?”

“Someone told me Sir Malcolm Locke.”

“Oh yes—he writes books, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know. They told me Sir Malcolm Locke.”

She glanced up again and smiled. She had a most adorable, provocative smile. I could not place her, but I thought that with that face and figure she might be a mannequin or perhaps a show girl in a cabaret.

“Do you know Sir Malcolm Locke?” she asked, suddenly growing serious.

“No”—her change of manner had quite startled me—”except by name.”

“May I speak truly to you? You look”—she hesitated—“sensible.” There was a caressing note in her voice. “I know someone who is in that house. Do you understand?”

Nayland Smith had made the right move. Here was a spy of the enemy. Whatever my personal predilection, this charming young lady should be in the hands of Detective Inspector Leighton without delay.

“That’s very interesting. Who is it?”

“Just someone I know. You see”—she laid her hand on my arm, and inclined ever so slightly towards me—“I saw you come out of the side entrance! You know—and so, if you please, tell me. What has happened in that house?”

Satisfied that I should not let her out of my sight:

“A gentleman known as Mr. Victor has died.”

“He is dead?”

“Yes.”

Her slim fingers closed on my arm with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Thank you.” Dark lashes were raised; she flashed up at me an enigmatical glance. “Good night!”

“Just a moment!” I grasped her wrist. “Please don’t run away so quickly.”

At which she lifted her voice:

“Let me go! How dare you! Let me go!”

Two men detached themselves from the group of loiterers and dashed in our direction. But the behavior of my beautiful captive, who was struggling violently, was certainly remarkable. Pressing her lips very close to my ear:

“Please let me go!” she whispered. “They will kill you. Let me go! It’s no use!”

I released her and turned to meet the attack of two of the most ferocious-looking ruffians I had ever encountered. They were of Mongolian type with an incredible shoulder span in proportion to their height. I had noticed them in the group about the door but had not seen their faces. Viewed from the rear with their glossy black hair they might have been a pair of waiters from some neighboring hotel. Seen face to face they were altogether more formidable.

The first on the scene feinted and then by a trick, which fortunately I knew, tried to kick me off my feet. I stepped back. The second was upon me. Other loiterers were surrounding us now and I knew that I was on the unpopular side. But I threw discretion to the winds. Until I could turn my face from these two enemies I had no means of knowing what had become of the girl. I led off with a straight left against my second opponent,

He ducked it perfectly. The first sprang behind me and seized my ankles. The house door was thrown open and Inspector Leighton raced down the steps. Fey came up at the double, so did the driver of the police car. The attack ceased. I spun around, and saw the black-haired men sprinting for the corner.

“After that pair,” cried Leighton gruffly. “Don’t lose ’em!”

The police driver and Fey set out.

“’E was maulin’ ’er about!” growled one of the loiterers. “They was in the right. I ’eard ’er cry out.”

But the girl with the amethyst eyes had vanished . . .

Three Notices

“She has got clear away,” said Nayland Smith, “thanks to her bodyguard.”

We stood in the library, Smith, myself, Mr. Bascombe and Inspector Leighton. Sir James Clare was seated in an armchair watching us. Now he spoke:

“I understand, Smith, why General Quinto came from Africa to the house of his old friend, secretly and asked me to recall you for a conference. This is a very deep-laid scheme. You are the only man who might have saved him—”

“But I failed.”

Nayland Smith spoke bitterly. He turned and stared at me.

“It appears, Kerrigan, that your charming acquaintance who so unfortunately has escaped—I am not blaming you—differs in certain details from Mr. Bascombe’s recollections of the general’s visitor. However, it remains to be seen if they are one and the same.”

“You see,” the judicial voice of the home secretary broke in, “it is obviously impossible to hush this thing up. A postmortem examination is unavoidable. We don’t know what it will reveal. The fact that a very distinguished man, of totally different political ideas from our own, dies here in London under such circumstances is calculated to produce international results. It’s deplorable—it’s horrible. I cannot see my course clearly.”

“Your course, Sir James,” snapped Nayland Smith, “is to go home. I will call you early in the morning.” He turned. “Mr. Bascombe, decline all information to the press.”

“What about the dead man, sir?” Inspector Leighton interpolated.

“Remove the body when the loiterers have dispersed. Report to me in the morning, Inspector.”

It was long past midnight when I found myself in Sir Denis’ rooms in Whitehall. I had not been there for some time, and from my chair I stared across at an unusually elaborate radio set with a television equipment.

“Haven’t much leisure for amusement, myself,” said Smith, noting the direction of my glance. “Television I had installed purely to amuse Fey! He is a pearl above price, and owing to my mode of life is often alone here for days and nights.”

Standing up, I began to examine the instrument. At which moment Fey came in.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “electrician from firm requests no one touch until calls again, sir.”

Fey’s telegraphic speech had always amused me. I nodded and sat down, watching him prepare drinks. When he went out:

“Our return journey was quite uneventful,” I remarked. “Why?”

“Perfectly simple,” Smith replied, sipping his whisky and soda and beginning to load his pipe. “My presence tonight threatened to interfere with the plot, Kerrigan. The plot succeeded. I am no longer of immediate interest.”

“I don’t understand in the least, Smith. Have you any theory as to what caused General Quinto’s death?”

“At the moment, quite frankly, not the slightest. That indefinable perfume is of course a clue, but at present a useless clue. The autopsy may reveal something more. I await the result with interest.”

“Assuming it to be murder, what baffles me is the purpose of the thing. The general’s idea that he could hear drums rather suggests a guilty conscience in connection with some action of his in Africa—a private feud of some kind.”

“Reasonable,” snapped Smith, lighting his pipe and smiling grimly. “Nevertheless, wrong.”

“You mean”—I stared at him—”that although you don’t know how—you do know why General Quinto was murdered?”

He nodded, dropping the match in an ash tray.

“You know of course, Kerrigan, that Quinto was the right-hand man of Pietro Monaghani. His counsels might have meant an international war.”

“It hangs on a hair I agree, and I suppose that Quinto, as Monaghani’s chief adviser, might have precipitated a war—”

“Yes—undoubtedly. But what you don’t know (nor did I until tonight) is this: General Quinto had left Africa on a mission to Spain. If he had gone I doubt if any power on earth could have preserved international peace! One man intervened.”

“What man?”

“If you can imagine Satan incarnate—a deathless spirit of evil dwelling in an ageless body—a cold intelligence armed with knowledge so far undreamed of by science—you have a slight picture of Doctor Fu Manchu.”

In my ignorance I think I laughed.

“A name to me—a bogey to scare children. I had never supposed such a person to exist.”

“Scotland Yard held the same opinion at one time, Kerrigan. But you will remember the recent suicide of a distinguished Japanese diplomat. The sudden death of Germany’s foremost chemist, Erich Schaffer, was front-page news a week ago. Now—General Quinto.”

“Surely you don’t mean—”

“Yes, Kerrigan, the work of one man! Others thought him dead, but I have evidence to show that he is still alive. If I had lacked such evidence—I should have it now. I forced the general’s dispatch box, we failed to find the key. It contained three sheets of note paper—nothing else. Here they are.” He handed them to me. “Read them in the order in which I have given them to you.”

I looked at the top sheet. It was embossed with a hieroglyphic which I took to be Chinese. The letter, which was undated, was not typed, but written in a squat, square hand. This was the letter:

First notice

The Council of Seven of the Si-Fan has decided that at all costs another international war must be averted. There are only fifteen men in the world who could bring it about. You are one of them. Therefore, these are the Council’s instructions: You will not enter Spain but will resign your commission immediately, and retire to your villa in Capri.

PRESIDENT OF THE SEVEN

I looked up.

“What ever does this mean?”

“I take it to mean,” Smith replied, “that the first notice which you have read was received by General Quinto in Africa. I knew him, and he knew—as every man called upon to administer African or Asiatic people knows—that the Si-Fan cannot be ignored. The Chinese Tongs are powerful, and there is a widespread belief in the influence of the Jesuits; but the Si-Fan is the most formidable secret society in the world: fully twenty-five per cent of the colored races belong to it. However, he did not resign his commission. He secured leave of absence and proceeded to London to consult me. Somewhere on the way he received the second notice. Read it, Kerrigan.”

I turned to the second page which bore the same hieroglyphic and a message in that heavy, definite handwriting. This was the message:

Second notice

The Council of Seven of the Si-Fan would draw your attention to the fact that you have not resigned your commission. Failing your doing so, a third and final notice will be sent to you.

PRESIDENT OF THE SEVEN

I turned to the last page; it was headed Third Notice and read as follows:

You have twenty-four hours.

PRESIDENT OF THE SEVEN

“You see, Kerrigan,” said Nayland Smith, “it was this third notice”—which must have reached him by district messenger at Sir Malcolm’s house—”which produced that state of panic to which Bascombe referred. The Council of Seven have determined to avert war. Their aim must enlist the sympathy of any sane man. But there are fourteen other men now living, perhaps misguided, whose lives are in danger. I have made a list of some of those whose removal in my opinion would bring at least temporary peace to the world. But it’s my job at the moment to protect them!”

“Have you any idea of the identity of this Council of Seven?”

“The members are changed from time to time.”

“But the president?”

“The president is Doctor Fu Manchu! I would give much to know where Doctor Fu Manchu is tonight—”

And almost before the last syllable was spoken a voice replied:

“No doubt you would like a word with me. Sir Denis . . .”

For once in all the years that I knew him. Smith’s iron self-possession broke down. It was then he came to his feet as though a pistol shot and not a human voice had sounded. A touch of pallor showed under the prominent cheekbones. Fists clenched, a man amazed beyond reason, he stared around.

I, too, was staring—at the television screen.

It had become illuminated. It was occupied by an immobile face—a wonderful face—a face that might have served as model for that of the fallen angel. Long, narrow eyes seemed to be watching me. They held my gaze hypnotically.

A murmur, wholly unlike Smith’s normal tones, reached my ears . . . it seemed to come from a great distance.

“Good God! Fu Manchu!”

Satan Incarnate

I can never forget those moments of silence which followed the appearance of that wonderful evil face upon the screen.

The utterly mysterious nature of the happening had me by the throat, transcending as it did anything which I could have imagined. I was prepared to believe Dr Fu Manchu a wizard—a reincarnation of some ancient sorcerer; Apollonius of Tyana reborn with the fires of hell in his eyes.

“If you will be so good, Sir Denis”—the voice was sibilant, unemotional, the thin lips barely moved—”as to switch your lights off, you will find it easier to follow me. Just touch the red button on the right of the screen and I shall know that you have complied.”

That Nayland Smith did so was a fact merely divined from an added clarity in that image of the Chinese doctor, for I was unaware of any movement, indeed, of any presence other than that of Fu Manchu.

The image moved back, and I saw now that the speaker was seated in a carved chair.

“This interesting device,” the precise, slightly hissing voice continued, “is yet in its infancy. If I intruded at a fortunate moment, this was an accident—for I am unable to hear you. Credit for this small contribution belongs to one of the few first-class mechanical brains which the West has produced in recent years.”

I felt a grip upon my shoulders. Nayland Smith stood beside me.

“He was at work upon the principle at the time of his reported death! . . . He has since improved upon it in my laboratories.”

Only by a tightening of Smith’s grip did I realize the fact that this, to me, incomprehensible statement held a hidden meaning.

“I find it useful as a means of communication with my associates, Sir Denis. I hope to perfect it. Do not waste your time trying to trace the mechanic who installed it. My purpose in speaking to you was this: You have recently learned the distressing details concerning the death of General Quinto. Probably you know that he complained of a sound of drums just before the end—a characteristic symptom . . .”

The uncanny speaker paused—bent forward—I lost consciousness of everything save of his eyes and of his voice.

“My drums, Sir Denis, will call to others before I shall have satisfied the fools in power today that I, Fu Manchu and I alone, hold the scales in my hand. I ask you to join me now—for my enemies are your enemies. Consider my words—consider them deeply.”

Smith did not stir, but I could hear his rapid breathing.

“You would not wish to see the purposeless slaughter in Spain, in China, carried into England? Think of that bloody farce called the Great War!” A vibrating guttural note had entered into the unforgettable voice. “I, who have had some opportunities of seeing you in action, Sir Denis, know that you understand the rules of boxing. Your objectives are the heart and the point of the jaw: you strike to paralyze brain and blood supply. That is how I fight. I strike at those who cause, at those who direct, at those who aid war—at the brain and at the heart, not at the arms, the shoulders—the deluded masses who suffer and die in order that arrogant fools may be gratified, that profiteers may grow fat. Consider my words . . .”

Dr Fu Manchu’s eyes now were opened widely. They beckoned, they called to me . . .

“Steady, Kerrigan.”

Darkness. The screen was blank.

A long time seemed to elapse before Nayland Smith spoke, before he stirred, then:

“I have seen that man being swept to the verge of Niagara Falls!” he said, speaking hoarsely out of the darkness. “I prayed that he had met a just fate. The body of his companion—a maddened slave of his will—was found.”

“But not Fu Manchu! How could he have escaped?”

Smith moved—switched up the light. I saw how the incident had affected him, and it gave me courage; for the magnetism of those eyes, of that voice, had made me feel a weakling.

“One day, Kerrigan, perhaps I shall know.”

He pressed a bell. Fey came in.

“This television apparatus is not to be used, not to be touched by anyone. Fey.”

Fey went out.

I took up my glass, which remained half filled.

“This has staggered me,” I confessed. “The man is more than human. But one thing I must know: what did he mean when he spoke of someone—I can guess to whom he referred—who died recently but who, since his death, has been at work in Fu Manchu’s laboratories?”

Smith turned on his way to the buffet; his eyes glittered like steel.

“Were you ever in Haiti?”

“No.”

“Then possibly you have never come across the ghastly tradition of the zombie?”

“Never.”

“A human corpse, Kerrigan, taken from the grave and by means of sorcery set to work in the cane fields. Perhaps a Negro superstition, but Doctor Fu Manchu has put it into practice.”

“What!”

“I have seen men long dead and buried laboring in his workshops!”

He squirted soda water into a tumbler.

“You were moved, naturally, by the words and by the manner of, intellectually, the greatest man alive. But forget his sophistry, forget his voice—above all, forget his eyes. Doctor Fu Manchu is Satan incarnate.”

* * *

“Inspector Gallaho Reports In the days that followed I thought many times about those words, and one night I dreamed of beating drums and woke in a nameless panic. The morning that followed was lowering and gloomy. A fine drizzling rain made London wretched.

When I stood up and looked out of the window across Hyde Park I found the prospect in keeping with my reflections. I had been working on the extraordinary facts in connection with the death of General Quinto and trying to make credible reading of the occurrence in Nayland Smith’s apartment later the same night. All that I had ever heard or imagined about Dr Fu Manchu had been brought into sharp focus. I had sometimes laughed at the Germanic idea of a superman, now I knew that such a demigod, and a demigod of evil, actually lived.

I read over what I had written. It appeared to me as a critic that I had laid undue stress upon the haunting figure of the girl with the amethyst eyes. But whenever my thoughts turned, and they turned often enough, to the episodes of that night those wonderful eyes somehow came to the front of the picture.

London and the Home Counties were being combed by the police for the mysterious broadcasting station controlled by Dr Fu Manchu. A post-mortem examination of the general’s body had added little to our knowledge of the cause of death. Inquiries had failed also to establish the identity of the general’s woman friend who had called upon him on the preceding day.

The figure of this unknown woman tortured my imagination. Could it be, could it possibly be the girl to whom I had spoken out in the square?

I ordered coffee, and when it came I was too restless to sit down. I walked about the room carrying the cup in my hand. Then I heard the doorbell and heard Mrs. Merton, my daily help, going down. Two minutes later Nayland Smith came in, his lean features wearing that expression of eagerness which characterized him when he was hot on a trail, his grey eyes very bright. He nodded, and before I could speak:

“Thanks! A cup of coffee would be just the thing,” he said.

Peeling off his damp raincoat and dropping it on the floor, he threw his hat on top of it, stepped to my desk and began to read through my manuscript. Mrs. Merton bringing another cup, I poured his coffee out and set it on the desk. He looked up.

“Perhaps a little undue emphasis on amethyst eyes,” he said slyly.

I felt myself flushing.

“You may be right, Smith,” I admitted. “In fact I thought the same myself. But you see, you haven’t met her—I have. I may as well be honest. Yes! She did make a deep impression upon me.”

“I am only joking, Kerrigan. I have even known the symptoms.” He spoke those words rather wistfully. “But this is very sudden!”

“I agree!” and I laughed. “I know what you think, but truly, there was some irresistible appeal about her.”

“If, as I suspect, she is a servant of Doctor Fu Manchu, there would be. He rarely makes mistakes.”

I crossed to the window.

“Somehow I can’t believe it.”

“You mean you don’t want to?” As I turned he dropped the manuscript on the desk. “Well, Kerrigan, one thing life has taught me—never to interfere in such matters. You must deal with it in your own way.”

“Is there any news?”

He snapped his fingers irritably.

“None. The man who came to Sir Malcolm Locke’s house to adjust the telephone did not come from the post office, but unfortunately he can’t be traced. The fellow who came to my flat to fix the television set did not come from the firm who supplied it—but he also cannot be traced! And so, you see—”

He paused suddenly as my phone bell began to ring. I took up the receiver.

“Hello—yes? . . . He is here.” I turned to Smith. “Inspector Gallaho wants you.”

He stepped eagerly forward.

“Hello! Gallaho? Yes—I told Fey to tell you I was coming on here.

What’s that!—What?” His voice rose on a high note of excitement. “Good God! What do you say? Yes—details when I see you. What time does the train leave? Good! Coming now.”

He replaced the receiver and turned. His face had grown very stem. Here was a sudden change of mood.

“What is it?”

“Fu Manchu has struck again. We have just twenty minutes to catch the train. Come on!”

“But where are we going?”

“To a remote corner of the Essex marshes.”

In The Essex Marshes

A depressing drizzle was still falling when amid semi-gloom I found myself stepping out of a train at a station on one of those branch lines which intersect the map of Essex. A densely wooded slope arose on the north. It seemed in some way to bear down oppressively on the little station, as though at any moment it might slip forward and crush it.

“Gallaho is a good man to have in charge,” said Nayland Smith. “A stoat on a scent and every whit as tenacious.”

The chief detective inspector was there awaiting us—a thickset, clean-shaven man of florid coloring and truculent expression, buttoned up in a blue overcoat and having a rather wide-brimmed bowler hat, very wet, jammed tightly upon his head. With him was a uniformed officer who was introduced as Inspector Derbyshire of the Essex Constabulary. Greetings over: “This is an ugly business,” said Gallaho, speaking through clenched teeth.

“So I gather,” said Nayland Smith rapidly. “We can talk on the way. I’m afraid you’ll have to ride in front with the driver, Kerrigan.”

Gallaho nodded and presently, in a police car which stood outside the station, we were on our way. It was a longish drive, mostly through narrow, muddy lanes. At last, on the outskirts of a village through which ran a little stream, we pulled up. A constable was standing outside a barnlike structure, separated by a small meadow, from the nearest cottage. He was a sinister-looking man who harmonized with his surroundings and whose jet-black eyebrows joined in the middle to form one continuous whole. He saluted as we stepped down, unlocked the barn door and led the way in. In spite of the disheartening weather a group of idlers hung about staring vacantly at the gloomy building.

“Not a pleasant sight, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire warned us as he removed a sheet from something which lay upon a trestle table.

It was the body of a man wearing a tweed jacket and open-neck shirt, flannel trousers and thick-soled shoes: the equipment, I thought, of a hiker. All his garments—from which water dripped—were horribly stained with blood, and his face was characterized by an unnatural pallor.

I checked an exclamation of horror when I realized that he had died of a wound which appeared nearly to have severed his head from his body!

“Right across the jugular,” Gallaho muttered, staring down savagely at the victim of this outrage.

He began to chew vigorously, although as I learned later he used no gum; it was merely an unusual ruminatory habit.

“Good God!” Nayland Smith whispered. “Good God! No doubt of the cause of death here! Thank you, Inspector. Cover the poor fellow up. The surgeon has seen him, of course?”

“Yes. He estimated that he had been dead for six or seven hours. But I left him just as we found him for you to see.”

“He was hauled out of the river, I’m told?”

“Yes—half a mile from here. The body was jammed in under the branches of an overhanging willow.”

“Who found it?”

“A gipsy called Barnett who was gathering rushes. He and his family are basket makers.”

“When was that?”

“Ten-thirty, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire replied. “I got straight through to Inspector Gallaho; he arrived an hour later. Doctor Bridges saw the body at eleven.”

“Why did you call Scotland Yard?”

“I recognized him at once. He had reported to me yesterday morning—”

“As I told you, sir,” Gallaho’s growling voice broke in, “he was a bit after your time at the Yard. But Detective Sergeant Hythe was one of my most promising juniors. He was working under me. He was down here looking for the secret radio station. B.B.C. engineers had noticed interference from time to time and they finally narrowed it down to this end of Essex.”

We came out of the barn and the constable locked the door behind us. Smith turned and stared at Gallaho.

“It looks,” Gallaho added, “as though poor Hythe had got too near to the heart of the mystery.”

“If you’ll just step across to the constable’s cottage, sir, I want you to see the few things that were found on the dead man,” said Inspector Derbyshire.

As we walked along the narrow village street to the modest police headquarters the group of locals detached themselves from the barn and followed us at a discreet distance. Nayland Smith glanced back over his shoulder.

“No one of interest there, Kerrigan!” he snapped.

Laid out upon a table in the sitting room I saw a Colt automatic, an electric flashlamp and a Yale key.

“There wasn’t another thing on him!” said Inspector Derbyshire. “Yet I know for a fact that he carried a knapsack and a stick. He was smoking a pipe, too; and he asked me for the name of a cottage where he could spend a night, quiet-like, in the neighborhood.”

Smith was staring at the exhibits.

“This key,” he remarked, “is the most significant item.”

“I spotted that,” growled Gallaho. “It’s the key of an A.A. call box—and the nearest is at the crossroads by Woldham Forges, a mile or so from here.”

“Smart work,” snapped Smith. “What did this important discovery suggest to you?”

“It’s plain enough. He had been watching during the night (if the doctor’s right, he was murdered between four and five) and he’d found out something so important that he was making for the nearest phone to get assistance.”

“Anything else?”

“That the phone nearest to whatever he’d discovered was at Woldham Forges—and that he was working from some base where he must have left his other belongings.”

“What did you do?”

“We’ve made a house-to-house search, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire replied. “It isn’t very difficult about here. But we can’t find where he spent the night.”

Nayland Smith gazed out of the window. Several loiterers were hanging about, but the arrival of the constable now released from his duty as keeper of the morgue dispersed them.

“I shall want a big-scale map of the district,” said Smith.

“At your service, sir!”

We all turned and stared. The sinister-looking constable was the speaker. But he was sinister no more. His remarkable eyebrows were raised in what I assumed to be an expression of enthusiasm. He was opening the drawer of a bureau.

“Constable Weldon,” explained Inspector Derbyshire, “is an authority on this area . . .”

The Hut By The Creek

Ten minutes later I set out along a road running south by east. Nayland Smith had split up the available searchers in such a way that, the police station as centre, our lines of inquiry formed a rough star.

Sergeant Hythe’s equipment certainly suggested that if he had come upon a clue and had decided to work from some point nearby while covering it, an uninhabited building, any old barn or hut, might prove to be the base selected.

Nayland Smith had some theory regarding the spot at which Hythe had been attacked and accordingly had set out for Woldham Forges.

My own instructions, based upon the encyclopedic knowledge of the neighborhood possessed by Constable Weldon, were simple enough. My first point was a timbered ruin, once the gatehouse of a considerable monastery long ago demolished. Half a mile beyond was an unoccupied cottage (“Haunted,” Constable Weldon had said) in some state of dilapidation, but entrance could be affected through one of the broken windows. Finally, crossing a wooden bridge and bearing straight on, there was an old barn.

We had lunched hastily upon bread and cheese and onions and uncommonly flat beer . . .

The drizzling rain had ceased, giving place to a sort of Dutch mist which was even more unpleasant. I could see no further than five paces. My orders were so explicit, however, that I anticipated no difficulty; furthermore, I was provided with a flashlamp.

In the reedy marshes about me, wild fowl gave their queer calls. I heard a variety of notes, some of them unfamiliar, which told me that this was a bird sanctuary undisturbed for generations. Once a mallard flew croaking and flapping across my path and made me jump. The strange quality of some of those cries sounded eerily through the mist.

From a long way off, borne on a faint southerly breeze, came the sound of a steamer’s whistle. I met never a soul, nor heard a sound of human presence up to the time that the ruined gatehouse loomed up in the gloom.

It was a relic of those days when great forests had stretched almost unbroken from the coast up to the portals of London, enshrined now in a perfect wilderness of shrubbery. I had no difficulty in obtaining entrance—the place was wide open. Decaying timbers supported a skeleton roof: here was poor shelter; and a brief but careful examination convinced me that no one had recently occupied it.

I stood for a moment in the gathering darkness listening to the notes of wild fowl. Once I caught myself listening for something else: the beating of a drum . . .

Then again I set out. I followed a narrow lane for the best part of half a mile. Ruts, but not recent ruts, combined to turn its surface into a series of muddy streamlets. At length, just ahead, I saw the cottage of ghostly reputation.

Mist was growing unpleasantly like certifiable fog, but I found the broken window and scrambled in. There was no evidence that anyone had entered the building for a year or more. It was a depressing place as I saw it by the light of the flashlamp. Some biblical texts were decaying upon one wall and in another room, among a lot of litter, I found a headless doll.

I was glad to get out of that cottage.

Greater darkness had come by the time I had regained the lane, and I paused in the porch to relight my pipe, mentally reviewing the map and the sergeant’s instructions. Satisfied that the way was clear in my mind, I moved on.

Very soon I found myself upon a muddy path following the banks of a stream. I was unable to tell how much water the stream held, for it was thick with rushes and weeds. But presently as I tramped along I could see that it widened out into a series of reedy pools—and right ahead of me, as though the path had led to it, I saw a wooden hut.

I paused. This was not in accordance with the plan. I had made a mistake and lost my way. However, the place in front of me was apparently an uninhabited building, and pushing on I examined it with curiosity.

It was a roughly constructed hut, and I saw that it possessed a sort of crude landing stage overhanging the stream. The only visible entrance from the bank was a door secured by a padlock. The padlock proved to be unfastened. Some recollection of this part of Essex provided by the garrulous sergeant flashed through my mind. At one time these shallow streams running out into the wider estuary had been celebrated for the quality of the eels which came there in certain seasons. As I opened the door I knew that this was a former eel fisher’s hut.

I shone a beam of light into the interior.

At first glance the place appeared to be empty, then I saw something . . . A recently opened sardine tin lay upon a ledge. Near it was a bottle bearing the label of a local brewer. And as I stepped forward and so obtained a better view I discovered in an alcove on the right of the ledge part of a loaf and a packet of butter.

My heart beat faster. By sheer accident I had found what I sought, for it seemed highly improbable from the appearance of the hut that this evidence had been left by anyone but Sergeant Hythe!

And now I made another discovery.

At one end of the place was what looked like a deep cupboard. Setting my lamp on the ledge I opened the cupboard—and what I saw clinched the matter.

There was a shelf about a foot up from the floor, and on it lay an open knapsack! I saw a clasp knife, a box of bar chocolate, a small tin of biscuits and a number of odds and ends which I was too excited to notice at the time—for, most extraordinary discovery of all, I saw a queer-looking hat surmounted by a coral bead.

At this I stared fascinatedly, and then taking it up, carried it nearer to the light. Its character was unmistakable.

It was a mandarin’s cap!

And as I stared all but incredulously at this thing which I had found in a deserted hut on an Essex marsh, a faint movement made me acutely, coldly alert.

Someone was walking very quietly along the path outside . . .

What sounded like the booming call of a bittern came from over the marshes. The footsteps drew nearer. I stood still in an agony of indecision. Like a revelation the truth had come to me: We were searching for the base used by the murdered man. Others were searching, too. And this astounding piece of evidence which I held in my hand—this was the object of their search!

I knew from the nearness of the footsteps that retreat was impossible. Already I had selected my hiding place. What to do with the mandarin’s cap was the only questionable point. I solved it quickly. I placed the cap upon the ledge littered with the remains of what had probably been poor Hythe’s last meal, extinguished my flash-lamp, crept into the cupboard and nearly closed the door . . .

The Mandarin’s Cap

Through the chink of the opening I stared out. I wondered if the fact that I had left the door open would warn whoever approached that someone was inside. However, he might not be aware that it was ordinarily fastened. Closer and closer drew the footsteps on the muddy path; then the sound gave place to the swishing of long, wet grass, and I knew that the intruder was actually at the door.

What had seemed at first to be impenetrable darkness proved now to allow of some limited vision. Framed in the grey oblong of the doorway I saw a motionless figure.

So still it was in that small building that I wondered if the sound of my breathing might be audible. The booming cry sounded again from near at hand, and I questioned it, listening intently, wondering if it might have been simulated—a signal from some watcher covering the motionless figure framed in the doorway.

During the few seconds that elapsed in this way I managed to make out certain details. The new arrival wore a long raincoat and what looked like a black cap; also I saw leggings or riding boots. So much I had discovered, peering cautiously out, when a beam from an electric torch shot through the darkness, directed straight into the hut. Its light fell upon the mandarin’s cap.

“Ah!” I heard.

That one exclamation revealed an astounding fact: the intruder was a girl!

She stepped in and crossed to the ledge. My heart began to beat irregularly. A queer mingling of fear and hope which had claimed me at the sound of her voice now became focused in one huge indescribable emotion as I saw that pure profile, the clinging curls under the black cap, the outline, I thought, of a Greek goddess.

As I quietly slipped across to the open door and stood with my back to it, the girl turned in a flash—and I found myself looking into those magnificent eyes which had so strangely and persistently haunted me from the hour of that first brief meeting.

Their expression now in the light reflected from the ray of the torch, which moved unsteadily in her grasp, was compounded of fear and defiance. She was breathing rapidly, and I saw the glitter of white teeth through slightly parted lips.

Quite suddenly, it seemed, she recognized me. As I wore a soft-brimmed hat, perhaps my features were partly indistinguishable.

“You!” she whispered, “you again!”

“Yes,” I said shortly. Now, although it had cost me an effort, I had fully mastered myself. “I again. May I ask what you are doing here?”

A hardness crept over her features; her lips set firmly. She put the torch down on the ledge beside her while I watched her intently, then:

“I might quite well ask you the same question,” she replied, and her enchanting accent gave the words the value of music, I laughed, standing squarely in the doorway and watching her.

Wisps of fog floated between us.

“I am here because a man was brutally murdered last night—and here, on the ledge beside you, is the clue to his murderer.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked quietly.

“Only about what I know.”

“Suppose what you say is true, what has it to do with you?”

“It is every man’s business to run down a murderer.”

Her wonderful eyes opened more widely; she stared at me like a bewildered child—a pose, I told myself, perfectly acted.

“But I mean—what brings you here, to this place? You are not of the police.”

“No, I am not ‘of the police.’ My name is Bart Kerrigan; I am a journalist by profession. Now I am going to ask you what brings you here to this place. What is your name?”

Her expression changed again; she lowered her lashes disdainfully

“You could never understand and it does not matter. My name—my name—would mean nothing to you. It is a name you have never heard before.”

“All the more reason why I should hear it now.”

Unwittingly I said the words softly, for as she stood there wrapped in that soiled raincoat, her little feet in muddy riding boots, I thought there could be no more desirable woman in the world.

“My name is Ardatha,” she replied in a low voice.

“Ardatha! A charming name, but as you say one I have never heard before. To what country does it belong?”

Suddenly she opened her eyes widely.

“Why do you keep me here talking to you?” she flashed, and clenched her hand. “I will tell you nothing. I have as much right to be here as you. Please stand away from that door and let me go.”

The demand was made imperiously, but unless my vanity invented a paradox her eyes were denying the urgency of her words.

“It is the duty of every decent Christian,” I said, reluctantly forcing myself to face facts, “to detain any man or any woman belonging to the black organization of which you are a member.”

“Every Christian!” she flashed back. “I am a Christian. I was educated in Cairo.”

“Coptic?”

“Yes, Coptic.”

“But you are not a Copt!”

“Did I say I was a Copt?”

“You belong to the Si-Fan.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about. Even if I did, what then?”

I was drifting again and I knew it. The words came almost against my will:

“Do you understand what this society stands for? Do you know that they employ stranglers, garroters, poisoners, cutthroats, that they trade in assassination?”

“Is that so?” She was watching me closely and now spoke in a quiet voice. “And your Christian rulers, your rulers of the West—yes? What do they do? If the Si-Fan kills a man, that man is an active enemy. But when your Western murderers kill they kill men, women and children—hundreds—thousands who never harmed them—who never sought to harm anybody. My whole family—do you hear me?—my whole family, was wiped from life in one bombing raid. I alone escaped. General Quinto ordered that raid. You have seen what became of General Quinto . . .”

I felt the platform of my argument slipping from beneath my feet. This was the sophistry of Fu Manchu! Yet I hadn’t the wit to answer her. The stern face of Nayland Smith seemed to rise up before me; I read reproach in the grey eyes.

“I think we’ve talked long enough,” I said. “If you will walk out in front of me, we will go and discuss the matter with those able to decide between us.”

She was silent for a moment, seeming to be studying my considerable bulk, firmly planted between herself and freedom.

“Very well.” I saw the gleam of little white teeth as she bit her lip. “I am not afraid. What I have done I am proud to have done. In any case I don’t matter. But bring the notebook it might help me if I am to be arrested.”

“The notebook?”

She pointed to the open cupboard out of which I had stepped. I turned and saw in the dim light among the other objects which I have mentioned what certainly looked like a small notebook. Three steps and I had it in my hand.

But those three steps were fatal.

From behind me came a sound which I can only describe as a rush. I turned and sprang to the doorway. She was through—she must have reached it in one bound! The door was slammed in my face, dealing me a staggering blow on the forehead. I took a step back to hurl myself against it and heard the click of the padlock.

Undeterred, I dashed my weight against the closed door; but although old it was solid. The padlock held.

“Don’t try to follow me!” I heard. “They will kill you if you try to follow me!”

I stood still, listening, but not the faintest sound reached my ears to inform me in which direction Ardatha had gone. Switching on my lamp I stared about the hut.

Yes, she had taken the mandarin’s cap! I had shown less resource than a schoolboy! I had been tricked, outwitted by a girl not yet out of her teens, I judged. I grew hot with humiliation. How could I ever tell such a story to Nayland Smith?

The mood passed. I became cool again and began to search for some means of getting out. Barely glancing at the notebook, I thrust it into my pocket. That the girl had deliberately drawn my attention to it I did not believe. She had had no more idea than I what it was, but its presence had served her purpose. I could find nothing else of importance.

And now I set to work on the small shuttered window at the back of the ledge upon which those fragments of food remained. I soon had the shutter open, and as I had hoped, the window was unglazed. I climbed through on to a rickety landing stage and from there made my way around to the path. Here I stood stock still, listening.

One mournful boom of that strange solitary bird disturbed the oppressive silence, this and the whispering of reeds in a faint breeze. I could not recall ever to have found myself in a more desolate spot.

Fog was rapidly growing impenetrable.

At The Monks’ Arms

I found myself mentally reviewing the ordnance map I had seen at the policeman’s cottage, listening to the discursive instructions of the sinister but well-informed Constable Weldon.

“After you leave the cottage where old Mother Abel hanged herself”—a stubby finger moved over the map—”there’s a path along beside a little stream. You don’t take that”—I had—”you go straight on. This other road, bearin’ left, would bring you to the Monks’ Arms, one of the oldest pubs in Essex. Since the by-pass was made I don’t know what trade is done there. It’s kept by an old prize fighter, a Jerseyman, or claims to be; Jim Pallant they call him—a mighty tough customer; Seaman Pallant was his fightin’ name. The revenue officers have been watchin’ him for years, but he’s too clever for ‘em. We’ve checked up on him, of course. He seems to have a clean slate in this business . . .”

Visualising the map, I decided that the route back via the Monks’ Arms was no longer than the other, and I determined to revive my drooping spirits before facing Nayland Smith. Licensed hours did not apply in my case for I was a “bonafide traveller” within the meaning of the act.

I set out on my return journey.

At one time I thought I had lost my way again, until presently through the gloom I saw a signboard projecting above a hedge, and found myself before one of those timbered hostelries of which once there were so many in their neighborhood, but of which few remain today! I saw that the Monks’ Arms stood on the bank of a stream.

I stepped into a stuffy bar. Low, age-blackened beams supported the ceiling; there were some prints of dogs and prize fighters; a full- rigged ship in a glass case. The place might have stood there when all but unbroken forest covered Essex. As a matter of fact though not so old as this, part of it actually dated back to the time of Henry VII.

There was no one in the barroom, dimly lighted by two paper-shaded lamps. In the bar I saw bottle-laden shelves, rows of mugs, beer engines. Beyond was an opening in which hung a curtain composed of strings of colored rushes. Since no one appeared I banged upon the counter. This produced a sound of footsteps; the rush curtain was parted, and Pallant, the landlord, came out.

* * *

He was as fine a specimen of a retired prize fighter as one could hope to find, with short thick nose, slightly out of true, deep-set eyes and several battle scars. His rolled-up shirt sleeves revealed muscular forearms and he had all the appearance of being, as Constable Weldon had said, “A tough customer.”

I called for a double scotch and soda.

“Traveller?”

“Yes. London.”

He stared at me with his curiously unblinking deep-set brown eyes, then turned, tipped out two measures from an inverted bottle, squirted soda into the glass and set it before me. I paid, and he banged down my change on the counter. A cigarette drooping from his thick underlip he stood, arms folded, just in front of the rush curtain, watching me with that unmoving stare. I sipped my drink, and:

“Weather bad for trade?” I suggested.

He nodded but did not speak.

“I found you almost by accident. Lost my way. How far is it to the station?”

“What station?”

This was rather a poser, but:

“The nearest, of course,” I replied.

“Mile and a half, straight along the lane from my door.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at my watch. “What time does the next train leave?”

“Where for?”

“London.”

“Six-eleven.”

I lingered over my drink and knocking out my pipe began to refill it. The unmoving stare of those wicked little eyes was vaguely disconcerting, and as I stood there stuffing tobacco into the hot bowl, a possible explanation occurred to me: Perhaps Pallant mistook me for a revenue officer!

“Is the fishing good about here?” I asked.

“No.”

“You don’t cater for fishermen then?”

“I don’t.”

Then with a final penetrating stare he turned, swept the rush curtain aside and went out. I heard his curiously light retreating footsteps.

As I had paid for my drink he evidently took it for granted that I should depart now, and clearly was not interested in the possibility that I might order another. However, I sat for a while on a stool, lighted my pipe and finished my whisky and soda at leisure. A moment later no doubt I should have left, but a slight, a very slight movement beyond the curtain drew my glance in that direction.

Through the strings of rushes, almost invisible, except that dim light from the bar shone upon her eyes, I saw a girl watching me. Nor was it humanly possible to mistake those eyes!

The formidable Jim Pallant was forgotten—everything was forgotten. Raising a flap in one end of the counter I stepped into the bar, crossed it and just as she turned to run along a narrow passage beyond, threw my arms around Ardatha!

“Let me go!” She struggled violently. “Let me go! I warned you, and you are mad—mad, to come here. For God’s sake if you value your life, or mine, let me go!”

But I pulled her through the curtain into the dingy bar and held her firmly.

“Ardatha!” I spoke in a guarded, low voice. “God knows why you can’t see what it means to be mixed up with these people, but I can, and I can’t bear it. Listen! You have nothing, nothing in the world to fear. Come away! My friend who is in charge of the case will absolutely guarantee your safety. But please, please, come away with me now!”

She wore a silk pullover, riding breeches and the muddy boots which I remembered. Her slender body writhed in my grasp with all the agility of a captured eel.

One swift upward glance she gave me, a glance I was to remember many, many times, waking and sleeping. Then with a sudden unexpected movement she buried her wicked little teeth in my hand!

Pained and startled I momentarily released her. The reed curtain crackled as she turned and ran. I heard her pattering footsteps on an uncarpeted stair.

Clenching my fist I stood there undetermined what to do—until, realizing that an uncommonly dangerous man for whom I might not prove to be a match was somewhere in the house, for once I chose discretion.

I was crossing to the barroom door when, heralded only by a crash of the curtain and a dull thud, Pallant vaulted over the counter behind me, twisted my right arm into the small of my back and locked the other in a hold which I knew myself powerless to break!

“I know your sort!” he growled in my ear. “Anyone that tries games with my guests goes the same way!”

“Don’t be a fool!” I cried angrily as he hustled me out of the building. “I have met her before—”

“Well—she don’t want to meet you again, and she ain’t likely to!”

Down the three worn steps he ran me, and across the misty courtyard to the gate. He was heavier and undoubtedly more powerful than I, and ignominiously I was rushed into the lane.

“I’ve broke a man’s neck for less,” Pallant remarked.

I said nothing. The tone was very menacing.

“For two pins,” he continued, “I’d chuck you in the river.”

However, the gateway reached, he suddenly released his hold. Seizing me from behind by both shoulders, he gave me a shove which sent me reeling for three or four yards.

“Get to hell out of here!” he roared.

At the end of that tottering run I pulled myself up. What prompted the lunacy I really cannot say, except perhaps that a Rugby Blue doesn’t enjoy being hustled out of the game in just that way.

I came about in one jump, ran in and tackled him low!

It was on any count a mad thing to do, but he wasn’t expecting it. He went down beautifully, I half on top of him—but I was first up. As I stood there breathing heavily I was weighing my chances. And looking at the bull neck and span of shoulders, an uncomfortable conviction came that if Seaman Pallant decided to fight it out I was probably booked for a first-class hiding.

However, he did not move.

I watched him second after second, standing poised with clenched fists; I thought it was a trick. Still he did not move. Very cautiously, for I knew the man to be old in ringcraft, I approached and bent over him. And then I saw why he lay there.

A pool of blood was forming under his head. He had pitched on to the jagged edge of the gatepost—and was quite insensible!

For a long minute I waited, trying to find out if accidentally I had killed him. But satisfied that he was merely stunned, those counsels of insanity which I count to be hereditary, which are responsible for some of the tightest comers in which I have ever found myself, now prevailed.

Ardatha’s dangerous bodyguard was out of the way. I might as well take advantage of the fact.

Turning, I ran back into the barroom, raised the flap, crossed the bar, and gently moving the rush curtain, stood again in the narrow passage. On my extreme right was a closed door; on the left, lighted by another of the paper-covered hanging lamps, I saw an uncarpeted staircase. I had heard Ardatha’s footsteps going up those stairs, and now, treading softly, I began to mount.

That reek of stale spirits and tobacco smoke which characterized the bar was equally perceptible here. Two doors opened on a landing. I judged that on my left to communicate with a room overlooking the front of the Monks’ Arms, and I recalled that as I returned from my encounter with Pallant I had seen no light in any of the windows on this side of the house. Therefore, creeping forward on tiptoe, I tried the handle of the other door.

It turned quite easily and a dim light shone out as I pushed the door open.

The room was scantily furnished: an ancient mahogany chest of drawers faced me as I entered and I saw some chairs of the same wood upholstered with horsehair. A lamp on an oval table afforded the only light, and at the far end of the room, which had a sloping ceiling, there was a couch or divan set under a curtained window.

Upon this a man was reclining, propped upon one elbow and watching me as I stood in the doorway . . .

He wore a long black overcoat having an astrakhan collar, and upon his head a Russian cap, also of astrakhan. One slender hand with extraordinarily long fingernails-rested upon an outstretched knee; his chin was cupped in the other. He did not stir a muscle as I entered, but simply lay there watching me.

A physical chill of a kind which sometimes precedes an attack of malaria rose from the base of my spine and stole upwards. I seemed to become incapable of movement. That majestic, evil face fascinated me in a way I cannot hope to make clear. Those long, narrow, emerald-green eyes commanded, claimed, absorbed me. I had never experienced a sensation in my life resembling that which held me nailed to the floor as I watched the man who reclined upon the divan.

For this was the substance of that dreadful shadow I had seen on the screen in Nayland Smith’s room . . . it was Dr Fu Manchu!

Dr Fu Manchu’s Bodyguard

Motionless I stood there staring at the most dangerous man in the world.

In that moment of realization it was a strange fact that no idea of attacking him, of attempting to arrest him, crossed my mind. The complete unexpectedness of his appearance, a danse macabre which even in that sordid little room seemed to move behind him like a diabolical ballet devised by an insane artist, stupefied me.

The windows were closed and there was no sound, for how many seconds I cannot say. I believe that during those seconds my sensations were akin to the visions of a drowning man; I must in some way have accepted this as death.

I seemed to see and to hear Nayland Smith seeking for me, urgently calling my name. The whole pageant of my history joined and intermingled with a phantom army, invisible but menacing, which was the aura of Dr Fu Manchu. Dominating all was the taunting face of Ardatha, an unspoken appeal upon her lips;

and the thought, like a stab of the spirit, that unquestionably Ardatha was the woman associated with the assassination of General Quinto, the willing accomplice of this Chinese monster, and a party to the murder of Sergeant Hythe.

Dr Fu Manchu did not move; the gaze of his unnatural green eyes never left my face. That bony hand with its long, highly polished nails lay so motionless upon the pile of the black coat that it might have been an ivory carving.

Then after those moments of stupefaction the spell broke. My duty was plain, my duty to Nayland Smith, to humanity at large. As quick resolve claimed my mind Dr Fu Manchu spoke:

“Useless, Mr. Kerrigan.” His thin lips barely parted. “I am well protected; in fact I was expecting you.”

He bluffed wonderfully, I told myself; I plunged for my automatic.

“Stand still!” he hissed; “don’t stir, you fool!”

And so tremendous was the authority in that sibilant voice, in the swiftly opened magnetic eyes, that even as my hand closed upon the weapon I hesitated.

“Now, slowly—very slowly, I beg of you, Mr. Kerrigan—move your head to the left. You will see from what I have saved you!”

Strange it may sound, strange it appears to me now, but I obeyed, moving my head inch by inch. In that position, glancing out of the corner of my eye, I became again stricken motionless.

The blade of a huge curved knife resembling a sickle was being held motionless by someone who stood behind me, a hair’s breadth removed from my neck! I could see the thumb and two fingers of a muscular brown hand which clutched the hilt. One backward sweep of such a blade would all but sever a man’s head from his body. In that instant I knew how Sergeant Hythe had died.

“Yes”—Dr Fu Manchu’s voice was soft again; and slowly, inch by inch, I turned as he began to speak—”that was how he died, Mr. Kerrigan: your doubts are set at rest.”

Even before the astounding fact that he had replied to an unspoken thought had properly penetrated, he continued:

“I regret the episode. It has seriously disarranged my plans: it was unnecessary and clumsily done—due to overzealousness on the part of one of my bodyguards. These fellows are difficult to handle. They are Thugs, members of a religious brotherhood specializing in murder—but long ago stamped out by the British authorities as any textbook will tell you. Nevertheless I find them useful.”

I was breathing hard and holding myself so tensely that every muscle in my body seemed to be quivering. Dr Fu Manchu did not stir, his eyes were half closed again, but their contemplative gaze was terrifying.

“I can only suppose,” I said, and the sound of my own voice muffled in the little room quite startled me, “that much learning has made you mad. What have you or your cause—if you have a cause—to gain by this indiscriminate murder? Let me draw your attention to the state of China, to which country I believe you belong. There is room there for your particular kind of activity.”

This speech had enabled me somewhat to regain control of myself, but in the silence that followed I wondered how it would be accepted.

“My particular activities, Mr. Kerrigan, are at the moment directed to the correction of certain undesirable menaces to China. You are thinking of the armies who clash and vainly stagger to and fro in my country. I assure you that the real danger to China lies not within her borders, but outside. The surgeon seeks below the surface. Muscles are useless without nerves and brain. My concern is with nerves and brain. However, these details cannot interest you, as I fear you will not be in a position to impart them to Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Had your talents been outstanding I might have employed you—but they are not; therefore I have no use for you.”

Following those softly spoken words came a high, guttural order.

A cloth was whipped over my mouth and secured before I fully realized what had happened. In less time than it takes to write of it I was lashed wrist and ankle by some invisible expert stationed behind me! The curved blade of the knife I could see out of the corner of my left eye.

Dr Fu Manchu never stirred a muscle.

I longed to cry out but could not. Another guttural order—and the blade disappeared. He who had held the knife stepped forward, and I saw a thick-set, yellow-faced man dressed in an ill-fitting blue suit. Immediately I recognized him for one of the pair who had attacked me on the night that I first saw and spoke to Ardatha. Although short of stature he was immensely powerful, and without ceremony he stooped, hoisted me upon his shoulder and carried me like a sack from the room!

My last impression was one of that dreadful, motionless figure upon the settee . . .

Down the stairs I was borne, helpless as a trussed chicken. Considering my weight it was an astonishing feat on the part of the man who performed it. Past the rush curtain of the bar we went and along the passage. Dread of my impending death was almost swamped by loathing of the blood-lustful creature who carried me. Another of Dr Fu Manchu’s evil-faced thugs held a door open, and a damp smell, the ringing sound of footsteps on stone paving, told me that I was being taken down into the cellars. Something like a scream arose to my lips—but I stifled it, for I knew, not for the first time since I had met the Chinese doctor, stark terror’s icy hand.

From those cellars I should never come out alive.

In The Wine Cellars

The cellars of the Monks’ Arms were surprisingly equipped. They reminded me of those of a well-known speak-easy in New York which I had once explored. Beyond the cellar proper, the contents of which looked innocent enough, other cellars, altogether more extensive, lay concealed. By means of manipulating hidden locks seemingly solid walls could be opened.

In the light of a hurricane lamp carried by one of the Thugs, I saw casks of brandy and bins of French wines which certainly were never intended for the clientele of the Monks’ Arms. As Sergeant Weldon had more than hinted, this ancient inn was a smugglers’ base. Its subterranean ramifications suggested that at some time the building above had been larger.

At what I judged to be the end of the labyrinth, I was carried up several well-worn steps into a long, rectangular room. I noticed a stout door set in the thickness of the wall, and then I was dumped unceremoniously upon the paving stones. The place contained nothing but lumber: broken fishing tackle, nets, empty casks, old furniture and similar odds and ends. Among these was the dismantled frame of a heavy iron bedstead. Hauling out what had been the headpiece—it had cross bars strong enough for a prison window—the two yellow men laid it on the floor and stretched me upon it.

From first to last they worked in silence.

Deftly they lashed me to the rusty bars until even slight movement became almost impossible and the pain was all I could endure. At first their purpose remained mysterious, then with a new pang of terror I recognized it . . .

Dr Fu Manchu was determined that a second body should not be found in the neighborhood of the Monks’ Arms. Secured to the heavy iron framework I was to be taken out and thrown into the river!

When at last the two had completed their task and one, standing up, raised the lantern from the floor, the horror of the fate which I felt was upon me reached such a climax that again I stifled a desire to scream for help. A sound, faint but just discernible, which came through a grating up in one corner of the wall, told me that the stream beside which the inn was built passed directly outside the door.

Perhaps I had little cause for it, but when the yellow men turned, and he carrying the lantern leading, went back by the way they had come, I experienced such a revulsion from despair to almost exultant optimism that I cannot hope to describe it.

I was still alive! My absence could not fail to result in a search party being sent out. My chances might be poor but my position was no longer desperate!

Why had I been left there?

Dr Fu Manchu’s words allowed no room for doubt regarding his intention. Why then this delay? And—an even greater mystery—what had brought him to the Monks’ Arms and why did he linger? Overriding my own peril, topping everything, was the maddening knowledge that if I could only communicate what I knew to Nayland Smith, it might alter the immediate history of the world.

Audacity is an outstanding characteristic of all great criminals, and that Dr Fu Manchu should calmly recline in that room upstairs while the district all about him was being combed for the murderer of Sergeant Hythe, illustrated the fact that he possessed it in full measure. The clue was perhaps to be found in his words that something had seriously disarranged his plans. I wondered feverishly if happy chance would lead Nayland Smith to the inn. Even so, and the thought made me groan, he would probably go away again never suspecting what the place contained!

Now came an answer to one of my questions—an answer which sent a new chill through my veins.

Dimly I heard the sound of oars. I knew that a boat was being pulled along the creek in the direction of the oak door close to which my head rested.

Of course I was to be transported to some spot where the water was deep, and thrown in there!

I listened eagerly, fearfully, to the creak of the nearing oars; and when I knew that the invisible boat had reached those steps which I divined to be beyond the door, I gave myself up for lost. But my calculations were at fault.

The boat passed on.

I could tell from the sound that an oar had been reversed and was being used as a punt pole. The swish of the rushes against the side of the craft was clearly discernible. I doubted if the little stream was navigable far above that point, but as those ominous sounds died away I knew at least that I had had a second reprieve.

Breathing was difficult because of the bandage over my mouth, and my heart was beating madly. Through the grating a sound reached me—that bumping and scraping which tells of someone entering or leaving a boat. Then I knew that poling had recommenced, but never once did I hear a human voice.

The boat was coming back. I heard the faint rattle of an oar set in a rowlock, the drip of water from the blade; but until the rower had crept past outside the oak door I doubt if I breathed again.

What did it all mean?

Someone, I reasoned, had been brought from the inn and was being rowed downstream to the larger river of which it was a tributary.

Dr Fu Manchu!

Yes, it must be. The monstrous Chinaman, having lain within the grasp of the law, almost under the very nose of Nayland Smith, was escaping!

I tugged impotently at my lashings, but the pain I suffered soon checked my struggles. In fact this, with the damp silence of the cellar and the difficulty which I experienced in breathing, now threatened to overcome me. Clenching my teeth, I fought against the weakness and lay still.

How long I lay it is impossible to say. Those moments of mental and physical agony seemed to stretch out each into an eternity, and then . . .

I heard the boat returning.

This time there could be no doubt. Dr Fu Manchu had been smuggled away—doubtless to some larger craft which awaited him—and they were returning to deal with me.

Yes, I was right. I heard the boat grating against the stone steps, a stumbling movement and a key being inserted in the lock above and behind me. The door, which opened outward, was flung back. A draught of keen air swept into the cellar.

Shadowy, looking like great apes, the yellow men entered. One at my head and one at my feet, they lifted the iron framework to which I was lashed. I have an idea that I muttered a sort of prayer, but of this I cannot be certain, for there came an interruption so unexpected, so overwhelming, that I must have given way to my mental and physical agony. I remember little more.

A series of loud splashes, as though a number of swimmers had plunged into the water—the bumping and rolling of a boat—a rush of footsteps—a glare of light . . .

Finally, a voice—the voice of Nayland Smith:

“In you go, Gallaho! Don’t hesitate to shoot!”

The Monks’Arms (Concluded)

“All right, Kerrigan? Feeling better?”

I stared around me. I was lying on a sofa in a stuffy little sitting room which a smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke told me to be somewhere at the back of the bar of the Monks’ Arms. I sat up and finished what remained of a glass of brandy which Smith was holding to my lips.

“Gad!” I muttered, “every muscle in my body will be stiff for twenty-four hours. It was mostly the pain that did it. Smith.”

“Don’t apologize,” he returned drily, and looking at his blanched face as he stood beside me, I could read a deep anger in his eyes. “We were only just in time.”

“Doctor FuManchu?”

He snapped his fingers irritably.

“A motor launch had crept up in the mist and his yellow demons got him aboard, only a matter of minutes before our arrival. Take it easy, Kerrigan; you can tell us your story later. I found this in your pocket, so I gather that you had succeeded where we failed.” He held up the little notebook which I had found in the eel fisher’s hut. “It tells the story of poor Hythe’s last hours. It was traces of oil on the water that gave him the clue. He selected a hiding place which evidently you found, and watched from some point nearby. He saw the motor craft arrive. It was met by a boat which belongs to the inn. Someone was rowed ashore. He seems to have waded or swum out to the deserted motor launch, and apparently he made a curious discovery—”

“He did.” I stood up gingerly, to test my leg muscles. “He found a mandarin’s cap.”

“Good for you, Kerrigan. So he reports in his notes. He took this back to his hiding place as some evidence in case his quarry should escape him. His last entry says that the boat could only have been making for the Monks’ Arms. The rest we have to surmise, but I think it is fairly easy.”

He dropped the notebook back into his pocket.

“I assume that he crept up to the inn to learn the identity of the new arrival or arrivals. Having satisfied himself in some way, he then set out across country for the A.A. call box. Unfortunately he had been seen—and someone was following him. At a stone bridge which spans the stream the follower overtook him. Yes—I have found the bloodstains. As he received the fatal stroke he toppled over the parapet. A slow current carried his body down to the point at which it was found.”

He ceased speaking and stood staring at me in a curious way. I was seated on the sofa, rubbing my aching leg muscles.

“There’s one thing, Smith,” I said, “for which I owe thanks to heaven. Whatever brought you to my rescue in the nick of time?”

“I was about to mention that,” he snapped. “Someone called up the police (I had just returned from my visit to the scene of the crime) begging us to set out without a moment’s delay—not for the inn itself, but for a stone boathouse which lies twenty yards further down the creek. We had come provided to break the door in, but as luck would have it, Constable Weldon, who was leading us, detected the sound made by those Thugs in the boat. You know the rest.”

He continued to stare at me and I at him.

“Was it a man’s voice?”

“No: a woman—a young woman.”

A medley of emotions had me silent for a moment, and then:

“Did you find anyone here?”

“My party, with Gallaho, found the pair of Thugs, as you know. Inspector Derbyshire, who entered from the front, discovered the man Pallant bathing a deep cut in his forehead. There’s a fellow who combines the duties of stable lad and bartender, but he’s off duty . . . There was no one else.”

“I am glad—although perhaps I shouldn’t be.”

After ten minutes’ rest I was fit to move again.

Apart from the fact that the secret cellars were packed with contraband, nothing of value bearing upon the matter which had brought the police there was discovered in the Monks’ Arms. Both yellow men remained imperturbably dumb. The ex-pugilist, under a grueling examination by Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho, pleaded guilty to smuggling but denied all knowledge of the identity or activities of his Chinese guest. He said that from time to time this person whom he knew as Mr. Chang, stayed at the inn, usually accompanied by two colored servants, and sometimes by a lady. He flatly denied all knowledge of the tragedy, and finally:

“Take him away,” Gallaho growled, “we’ll find enough evidence later. Book him in on a charge of smuggling.”

The Si-Fan

Many hours had elapsed, hours of bitter disappointment, before Nayland Smith and I found ourselves at his flat in Whitehall.

Fey had nothing to report. Smith glanced significantly at the television set which in some unaccountable manner Dr Fu Manchu had converted to his private uses.

“No sir.” Fey shook his head.

When he had gone out:

“It seems almost incredible,” said Smith, beginning to pace up and down the carpet, “that this man whom I held in the hollow of my hand has slipped away! Every point of egress was watched, every officer afloat and ashore notified for miles around.”

“Perhaps he doubled back?”

Nayland Smith began to tug at the lobe of his left ear.

“Impossible to predict his movements. I am beginning to wonder if it is time I retired from the unequal contest. It is many years since Doctor Fu Manchu first crossed my path. It was in a swampy district of Burma and I was nearly counted out in the first round.” He suddenly pulled up his sleeve and rolled back his shirt cuff, revealing a wicked-looking wound upon the forearm. “A primitive weapon, but a deadly one. An arrow, steeped in snake’s venom.”

He rolled his sleeve down again.

“You should never be alone, Smith. You need a bodyguard.”

“I assure you I rarely go about alone. Why do you suppose I drag six feet of newspaper correspondent about with me? You are my bodyguard, Kerrigan! But Fu Manchu’s methods are of a kind from which no bodyguard could protect me. I am saved by my utter futility. I believe he is laughing at me.”

“He has small cause for laughter. Although you have failed to destroy him you have foiled him all along.”

Nayland Smith’s grim face relaxed in a smile.

“Then I can’t account for it. He must enjoy the sport, or I shouldn’t be alive!”

“Do you think he was making for the open sea?”

“I have a strong suspicion that he was. It has occurred to me that this mysterious radio plant which he controls may be on some vessel.”

“Such a vessel would require a pretty tall mast.”

“Not at all. Fu Manchu is probably half a century ahead of what we call modem radio. However, I can do no more. We can hang the Thugs, no doubt, but like Fu Manchu, what we want to do is to strike at the ‘nerves and brain.’“

He dropped into an armchair and began to load his pipe; then, looking up, he stared across at me.

“Judging from what you told me in the train,” he said, “I gather that your feelings about this girl Ardatha remain the same. Am I right?”

I felt acutely uncomfortable under that piercing scrutiny, but I replied:

“Yes, I am afraid you are, Smith. You see, although a criminal, she doesn’t realize that she is a criminal. In any case she has certainly saved my life. No one else could have given the warning.”

Nayland Smith nodded, proceeded with the filling of his pipe and lighted it carefully.

“A cunning scheme,” he muttered, standing up and walking about again. “Dictatorships with their ruthless methods have brought in crowds of willing recruits. Don’t you see it, Kerrigan? There are thousands! perhaps hundreds of thousands, living today, embittered by injustice, willing, eager, to enter into a blood feud against those who have destroyed husbands, children, families, wrecked their homes. The Si-Fan, always powerful, working for a dimly seen end, an end never appreciated by the West, today has become a mighty instrument of vengeance - and that flaming sword, Kerrigan, is firmly held by Doctor Fu Manchu.”

He stared from the window awhile, and I watched the grim outline of his features.

“One thing, and it looks as though the clue had eluded me,” he said suddenly, “is this: What was Fu Manchu doing in Essex? Assuming, as the radio experts believe, that this mysterious interference came from somewhere in that area, even that it came from a vessel lying off the Essex shore—we still come back to the same point. What was Fu Manchu doing there?”

He turned and stared at me fixedly.

“That problem is worrying me badly,” he added.

Frankly, it had not occurred to me before, but so stated I saw the significance of the thing. I was considering it while Nayland Smith resumed his restless promenade, when, preceded by a gentle rap, Fey opened the door and entered.

“Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho.”

Hot on the words came Gallaho, wrenching his tightly fitting bowler from his close-cropped skull and leaving a mark like a scar around his brow.

“Yes?” snapped Smith and took a step forward. “What is it? You have news!”

“News, yes!” the detective answered bitterly—”but has it come too late?”

He pulled out his pocket case and withdrew a slip of paper which he tossed on to the desk in front of Smith. As Smith picked it up I sprang to my feet and hurried forward. Over his shoulder I read—it was written in pencil, in plain block letters—the following:

Final notice

The Council of Seven of the Si-Fan grants you twelve hours in which to carry out its orders.

PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL

Nayland Smith’s expression had something wild in it as he turned to Gallaho.

“To whom was this sent?” he snapped

“Doctor Martin Jasper.”

Smith’s expression changed; his face became almost blank.

“Who the devil is Doctor Martin Jasper?”

“I have looked him up, sir. He has a row of degrees; he’s a research man and for some time was technical director of the great Caxton armament factory up in the north.”

“Armament factory? I begin to understand. Where does he live?”

“That’s the significant thing, sir. It may account for the presence of Doctor Fu Manchu where we found him—or rather, where we lost him. This Doctor Martin Jasper lives at a house called Great Oaks just on the Suffolk border, not ten miles, as the crow flies, from the Monks’ Arms.”

Great Oaks

It was a cross-country journey and the night was misty and moonless; but although unknown to us by name clearly enough Dr Martin Jasper was someone of importance in the eyes of the Si-Fan.

Smith attacked the matter with feverish energy.

A special train was chartered. The railway officials were given twenty-five minutes in which to clear the line. Arrangements were made for a car to meet us at our journey’s end. And at about that hour when after-theatre throngs are congesting the West End thoroughfares, we set out in the big Rolls, Fey at the wheel.

Nayland Smith’s special powers (which enabled him to ignore traffic regulations) and the wizard driving of Fey, resulted in a dash through London’s crowded streets which even I, who had known so many thrills, found exciting.

Smith uttered scarcely a word either to myself or to Gallaho, until arriving at the terminus he was assured by a flustered stationmaster that the special was ready to start. Once on board and whirling through that dark night, he turned to the inspector.

“Now, Gallaho, the full facts!”

“Well sir”—Gallaho steadied himself against the arm rest, for the solitary coach was rocking madly—”I have very little to add.” He pulled out his notebook. “This is what I jotted down during the telephone conversation.”

“The local police are not in charge then?” Smith snapped.

“No sir, and I took the step of requesting that they shouldn’t be notified.”

“Good.”

“It was a Mr. Bailey, the doctor’s private secretary, who called up the Yard.”

“When?”

“At ten-seventeen—so we’ve wasted no time! This was what he told me.” He consulted his notes. “The doctor, who is engaged upon experiments of great importance in his private laboratory, had alarmed his secretary by his behavior—that is in the last week or so. He seemed to be in deadly fear of something or someone, so Mr. Bailey told me. But whatever was bothering him he kept it to himself. It came to a head though last Wednesday. Something reduced Doctor Jasper to such a state of utter panic that he abandoned work in his laboratory and for hours walked up and down his study. Today he was even worse. In fact Mr. Bailey said he looked positively ill. But somewhere around noon as the result, it seems, of a long telephone conversation—”

“With whom?”

“Mr. Bailey didn’t know—but as a result, the doctor resumed work, although apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He worked right on up till tonight, refusing to break off for dinner. His behavior so alarmed his secretary that Mr. Bailey took the liberty of searching the study to see if he could find any evidence pointing to the cause of it.”

“And he found…”

“The original of the message I showed you.”

“No other message?”

“No other.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing that he could in any way connect with the remarkable behavior of his employer. He went to the laboratory, which is separate from the house, but Doctor Jasper refused to unlock the door and said that on no account was he to be disturbed. Very wisely, Mr. Bailey called up Scotland Yard, and that’s about all I know.”

Onward we raced through the black night, at one point passing very near to the scene of my last meeting with Ardatha. Within me I fought desperately to solve the mystery of those enigmatic eyes. Even when she looked at me with scorn, mocked me, fought with me, they seemed to mirror a second Ardatha, submerged, all but hidden perhaps from herself—a frightened soul who appealed, appealed for help—protection.

The whistle shrieked wildly. We went through stations at nightmare speed. Once we roared past a sidetracked express. I had a fleeting glimpse of lighted windows, staring faces.

A useful-looking Daimler met us at the station where we were received with some ceremony by the stationmaster. But brushing all inquiries aside. Smith climbed into the car followed by myself and Gallaho, and we set out for Great Oaks. Once on the way Smith glanced at his watch.

“I take it you don’t know, Gallaho, at what time the original of this message was received?”

“No, Mr. Bailey couldn’t tell me.”

Then having followed a high and badly kept yew hedge for some distance, the car was turned in between twin stone pillars and began to mount a drive which ascended slightly through a grove of magnificent oaks. I saw the house ahead. A low-pitched, irregular building, the characteristics of Great Oaks were difficult to discern, but the place was evidently of considerable age.

“Hullo!” muttered Smith; “what’s this? Some new development?”

Light streamed out into the porch and I could see that the front door was open.

As our car swung around and was pulled up before the steps two men ran down. They evidently had been awaiting us.

Smith sprang out to meet them. Gallaho and I followed. One of the pair was plainly a butler; the other, a youngish, dark-haired man with a short military moustache, whom I assumed normally to be of healthy coloring but who looked pale in the reflected light, stepped forward and introduced himself.

“My name is Horace Bailey,” he said in an agitated voice. “Do you come from Scotland Yard?”

“We do,” said Gallaho. “I’m Detective Inspector Gallaho—this is Sir Denis Nay land Smith, and Mr. Kerrigan.”

“Thank God you’re here!” cried Bailey, and glanced aside at the butler, who nodded sympathetically.

Both faces, I saw as we all entered Great Oaks, were stamped by an expression of horrified amazement.

“I have a foreboding,” said Smith, glancing about the entrance hall in which we found ourselves, “that I come too late.”

Mr. Bailey slowly inclined his head and something like a groan came from the butler.

“Good God, Kerrigan! A second score to the enemy!”

He dropped down on a leather-covered couch set in a recess over which hung a trophy of antlers. For a moment his amazing vitality, his electrical energy seemed to have deserted him, and I saw a man totally overcome. As I stepped towards him he looked up haggardly.

“The facts, Mr. Bailey, if you please.” He spoke more slowly than I remembered ever to have heard him speak. “When did it happen? Where? How?”

“I discovered the tragedy not five minutes ago.” Bailey spoke and looked as a man distraught. “You must understand that Doctor Jasper has been locked in his laboratory since noon and at last I determined to face any rebuff in order to induce him to rest. I beg, gentlemen, that you will return there with me now! Hale, the chauffeur, and Bordon, the doctor’s mechanic, are trying to cut out the lock of the door!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The overstrung man, waving us to follow, already was leading the way along a passage communicating with the rear of the house.

“When I reached the laboratory” he cried back, now beginning to run, “through the grille in the door I saw the doctor lying face downwards . . . I immediately returned for assistance . . . It was hearing the approach of your car that brought me to the porch to meet you.”

A somewhat straggling party, we followed the hurrying figure through a dim garden and along a path which zigzagged, sloping slightly upwards to a coppice of beech trees. He knew the way but we did not. Inspector Gallaho, stumbling and growling, produced a flashlamp for our guidance.

The laboratory was some two hundred yards removed from the house, a squat brick building with a number of high-set windows, screened and iron-barred. The entrance was on the further side, and as we approached I heard a sound of hammering and wrenching. Onto a gravel path and around the corner we ran, and there, where light shone out through a grille in a heavy door, I saw two men at work with chisels, hammers and crowbars.

“Are you nearly through?” Bailey panted.

“Another two minutes should do it, sir.”

“Surely there is more than one key!” Smith snapped.

“I regret to say there is only one. Doctor Jasper always held it.”

We crowded together to look through the thick glass behind the grille.

I saw a long, narrow workroom, well lighted. It resembled less a laboratory than a machine shop, but I noticed chemical impedimenta, mostly unfamiliar. That which claimed and held my attention was the figure of a short, thick-set man wearing a white linen coat. He lay face downward, arms outstretched, some two paces from the door. Owing to his position, it was impossible to obtain more than a glimpse of the back of his head. But there was something grimly significant in the slump of the body.

The workmen carried on unceasingly. I thought I had heard few more mournful sounds than those of the blows of the hammer and splintering of stout wood as they struggled to force a way into the locked laboratory.

“This is ghastly,” Smith muttered, “ghastly! He may not be dead. Have you sent for a doctor?”

“I am myself a qualified physician,” Bailey replied,”and following Inspector Gallaho’s advice, I have not notified the local police.”

“Good,” said Gallaho.

“I am still far from understanding the circumstances,” snapped Nayland Smith, with the irritability of frustration. “You say that Doctor Jasper has been locked in his laboratory all day?”

“Yes. His ways have become increasingly strange for some time past. Something—I can only guess what—evidently occurred which threw him into a state of nervous tension some ten days or a fortnight ago. Then again, last Wednesday to be exact, he seemed to grow worse. I have come to the conclusion, Sir Denis, that he had received two of these notices. The third—I dictated its contents to the inspector over the telephone—must actually have come by the second post this morning.”

“Are you certain of this?”

“All his mail passes through my hands, and I now recall that there was one letter marked ‘Personal & Private’ which naturally I did not open, delivered at eleven forty-five this morning.”

“Eleven forty-five?”

“Yes.”

I saw Smith raise his wrist watch to the light shining out from the grille.

“Two minutes short of midnight,” he murmured. “The message gave him twelve hours. We are thirteen minutes too late.”

“But do you realize. Sir Denis,” the secretary cried, “that he is alone, and locked in? This door is of two-inch teak set in an iron frame. To batter it down would be impossible—hence this damnable delay! How can the question of foul play arise?”

“I fear it does,” Smith returned sternly. “From what you have told me I am disposed to believe that the ultimate result of these threats was to inspire Doctor Jasper to complete his experiments within the period granted him.”

“Good heavens!” I murmured, “you are right. Smith!” The chauffeur and the mechanic labored on the door feverishly, their hammer blows and the splintering of tough wood punctuating our conversation.

“He doesn’t move,” muttered Gallaho, looking through the grille. “Might I ask, Mr. Bailey,” Smith went on, “if you assisted Doctor Jasper in his experiments?”

“Sometimes, Sir Denis, in certain phases.” “What was the nature of the present experiment?” There was a perceptible pause before the secretary replied. “To the best of my belief—for I was not fully informed in the matter—it was a modified method of charging rifles—” “Or, one presumes, machine guns?”

“Or machine guns, as you say. An entirely new principle which he termed ‘the vacuum charger.’“

“Which increased the velocity of the bullet?”

“Enormously.”

“And, in consequence, increased the range?”

“Certainly. My employer, of course, is not a medical man, but a doctor of physics.”

“Quite,” snapped Smith. “Were the doctor’s experiments subsidized by the British government?” “No. He was working independently.”

“For whom?”

“I fear, in the circumstances, the question is rather an awkward one.”

“Yet I must request an answer.”

“Well—a gentleman known to us as Mr. Osaki.”

“Osaki?”

“Yes.”

“You see, Kerrigan”—Smith turned to me—”here comes the Asiatic element! No description of Mr. Osaki (an assumed name) is necessary. Descriptions of any one of Osaki’s countrymen sound identical. This Asiatic gentleman was a frequent visitor, Mr. Bailey?”

“Oh yes.”

“Was he a technician?”

“Undoubtedly. He sometimes lunched with the doctor and spent many hours with him in the laboratory. But I know for a fact that at other times he would visit the laboratory without coming through the house.”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“There is a lane some twenty yards beyond here and a gate. Osaki sometimes visited the doctor when he was working, entering by way of the gate. I have seen him in the laboratory, so this I can state with certainty.”

“When was he here last?”

“To the best of my knowledge, yesterday evening. He spent nearly two hours with Doctor Jasper.”

“Trying, no doubt, to set his mind at rest about the second notice from the Si-Fan. Then this morning the third and final notice arrives. But Mr. Osaki, anxious about results, phones at noon—”

“Binns, the butler, thinks the caller this morning was Osaki—” “Undoubtedly urging him to new efforts,” jerked Smith. “You understand, Kerrigan?”

“For heaven’s sake are you nearly through?” cried Bailey to the workmen.

“Very nearly, sir. It’s a mighty tough job,” the chauffeur replied. To the accompaniment of renewed hammering and wrenching:

“There are two other points,” said Bailey, his voice shaking nervously, “which I should mention, as they may have a bearing on the tragedy. First, at approximately half past eleven, Binns, who was in his pantry at the back of the house, came to me and reported that he had heard the sound of three shots, apparently coming from the lane. I attached little importance to the matter at the time, being preoccupied about the doctor, and assuming that poachers were at work. The second incident, which points to the fact that Doctor Jasper was alive after eleven-thirty, is this:

“A phone call came which Binns answered. The speaker was a woman”

“Ah!” Smith murmured.

“She declined to give her name but said that the matter was urgent and requested to be put through to the laboratory. Binns called the doctor, asking if the line should be connected. He was told, yes, and the call was put through. Shortly afterwards, determined at all costs to induce the doctor to return to the house, I came here and found him as you see him.”

A splintering crash announced that the end of the task of forcing the door was drawing near.

“Had the doctor any other regular visitors?” jerked Smith.

“None. There was one lady whom I gathered to be a friend although he had never spoken of her—Mrs. Milton. She lunched here three days ago and was shown over the laboratory.”

“Describe Mrs. Milton.”

“It would be difficult to describe her. Sir Denis. A woman of great beauty of an exotic type, tall and slender, with raven black hair—”

“Ivory skin,” Smith went on rapidly, “notably long slender hands, and unmistakable eyes, of a quite unusual color, nearly jade green—”

“Good heavens!” cried Bailey, “you know her?”

“I begin to believe,” said Nayland Smith, and there was a curious change of quality in his voice, “that I do know her. Kerrigan”—he turned to me—”we have heard of this lady before?”

“You mean the woman who visited General Quinto?”

“Not a doubt about it! I absolve Ardatha: this is a zombie—a. corpse moving among the living! This woman is a harbinger of death and we must find her.”

“You don’t suggest,” cried Bailey, “that Mrs. Milton is in any way associated—”

“I suggest nothing,” snapped Smith.

A resounding crash and a wrenching of metal told us that the lock had been driven through. A moment later and the door was flung open.

I clenched my fists and for a moment stood stock still.

An unforgettable, unmistakable, but wholly indescribable odor crept to my nostrils.

“Kerrigan!” cried Smith in a stifled voice and sprang into the laboratory—”you smell it, Kerrigan? He’s gone the same way!”

Bailey had hurried forward and now was bending over the prone body. In the stuffy atmosphere of this place where many queer smells mingled, that of the strange deathly odor which I must always associate with the murder of General Quinto predominated to an appalling degree.

“Get those blinds up! Throw the windows open!”

Hale, the chauffeur, ran in and began to carry out the order, as Smith and Bailey bent and turned the body over . . .

Then I saw Bailey spring swiftly upright. I saw him stare around him like a man stricken with sudden madness. In a voice that sounded like a smothered scream:

“This isn’t Doctor Jasper,” he cried; “it’s Osoki!”

In The Laboratory

“The green death! The green death again!” said Nayland Smith.

“Whatever is it?” There was awe in my voice. “It’s ghastly! In heaven’s name what is it?”

We had laid the dead man on a sort of day bed with which the laboratory was equipped, and under the dark Asiatic skin

already that ghastly greenish tinge was beginning to manifest itself.

The place was very quiet. In spite of the fact of all windows being opened that indescribable sweetish smell—a smell, strange though it may sound, of which I had dreamed, and which to the end of my life I must always associate with the assassination of General Quinto—hung heavily in the air.

Somewhere in a dark background beyond the shattered door the chauffeur and mechanic were talking in low voices.

Mr. Bailey had gone back to the house with Inspector Gallaho. There was hope that the phone call which had immediately preceded the death of Osaki might yet be traced.

The extension to the laboratory proved to be in perfect order, but the butler was in so nervous a condition that Gallaho had lost patience and had gone to the main instrument.

“This,” said Smith, turning aside and staring down at a row of objects which lay upon a small table, “is in many ways the most mysterious feature.”

The things lying there were those which had been in the dead man’s possession. There was a notebook containing a number of notes in code which it would probably take some time to decipher, a wad of paper money, a cigarette case, a railway ticket, a watch, an ivory amulet and a bunch of keys on a chain.

But (and this it was to which Nayland Smith referred) there were two keys—Yales—unattached, which had been found in the pocket of the white coat which Osaki had been wearing.

“We know,” Smith continued, “that both these keys are keys of the laboratory, and Mr. Bailey was quite emphatic on the point that Doctor Jasper possessed only one. What is the inference, Kerrigan?”

I sniffed the air suspiciously and then stared at the speaker.

“I assume the inference to be that the dead man also possessed a key of the laboratory.”

“Exactly”

“This being the case, why should two be found in his possession?”

“My theory is this: Doctor Jasper, for some reason which we have yet to learn, hurried out of the laboratory just before Osaki’s appearance, and—a point which I think indicates great nervous disturbance—left his key in the door. Osaki, approaching, duplicate key in hand, discovered this. Finding the laboratory to be empty he put on a white jacket—intending to work, presumably—and dropped the key in the pocket in order to draw Doctor Jasper’s attention to this carelessness when the doctor returned.”

“No doubt you are right, Smith!”

“You are possibly wondering, Kerrigan, why Osaki, finding himself being overcome by the symptoms of the Green Death, of which we know one to be an impression of beating drums, did not run out and hurry to the house.”

“I confess the point had occurred to me.”

“Here, I think, is the answer. We know from the case of General Quinto that the impression of beating drums is very real. May we not assume that Osaki, knowing as he certainly did know that imminent danger overhung Doctor Jasper and himself, believed the menace to come from the outside—believed the drumming to be real and deliberately remained in this place?”

“The theory certainly covers the facts, but always it brings us back to —”

“What?”

“The mystery of how a man . . .”

“A man locked in alone,” Smith snapped, “can nevertheless be murdered and no clue left to show what means has been employed! Yes!” the word sounded almost like a groan. “The second mystery, of course, is the extraordinary behavior of Doctor Jasper . . .”

He paused. From somewhere outside came the sound of running footsteps, a sudden murmur of voices, then—I thought Hale, the chauffeur, was the speaker:

“Thank God, you’re alive, sir!”

A man burst into the laboratory, a short, thick-set, dark man, hair disheveled and his face showing every evidence of the fact that he had not shaved for some time. His eyes were wild—his lips were twitching, he stood with clenched hands looking about him. Then his pale face seemed to grow a shade paler. Those staring eyes became focused upon the body lying on the sofa.

“Good God!” he muttered, and then addressing Smith:

“Who are you? What has happened?”

“Doctor Martin Jasper, I presume?”

“Yes, yes! But who are you? What does this mean?”

“My name is Nayland Smith; this is Mr. Bart Kerrigan. What it means. Doctor Jasper, is that your associate Mr. Os.aki has died in your place!”

Dr. Martin Jasper

“You are indeed a fortunate man to be alive.” Nayland Smith gazed sternly at the physicist. “You have been preparing a deadly weapon of warfare—not for the protection of your own country, but for the use of a belligerent nation.”

“I am entitled,” said Dr Jasper, shakily wiping his wet brow, “to act independently if I choose to do so.”

“You see the consequences. As he lies so you might be lying. No, Doctor Jasper. You had received three notices, I believe, from the Si-Fan.”

Dr Jasper’s twitching nervousness became even more manifest.

“I had—but how do you know?”

“It happens to be my business to know. The Si-Fan, sir, cannot be ignored.”

“I know! I know!”

The doctor suddenly dropped on to a chair beside one of the benches and buried his disheveled head in his hands.

“I have been playing with fire, but Osaki, who urged me to it, is the sufferer!”

He was very near to the end of his resources; this was plain enough, but:

“I am going to suggest,” said Nayland Smith, speaking in a quiet voice, “that you retire and sleep, for if ever a man needed rest, you do. But first I regret duty demands that I ask a few questions.”

Dr Jasper, save for the twitching of his hands, did not stir.

“What were the Si-Fan’s orders?”

“That I deliver to them the completed plans and a model of my vacuum charger.”

“This invention, I take it, gives a great advantage to those employing it?”

“Yes.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “It increases the present range of a rifle rather more than fifty per cent.”

To whom were you to deliver these plans and model?”

“To a woman who would be waiting in a car by the R.A.C call box at the comer of the London Road.”

“A woman!”

“Yes. A time was stated at which the woman would be waiting at this point. Failing my compliance, I was told that on receipt of a third and final notice at any hour during the twelve which would be allotted to me, if I cared to go to this call box, I should be met there by a representative.”

“Yes?” Smith urged gently “Go on.”

The speaker’s voice grew lower and lower.

“I showed these notes to Osaki.”

“Where are they now?”

“He took them all. He urged me, always he urged me, to ignore them. By tonight I thought that my experiments would be completed, that I should have revolutionized the subject. He was to meet me here in the laboratory, and we both fully anticipated that the charger would be an accomplished fact.”

“He had a key of the laboratory?”

“Yes.”

Nayland Smith nodded to me.

“Just before half past eleven an awful dread possessed me. I thought that the price which I should receive for this invention would be useless to a dead man. Just before Osaki was due I took my plans, my model—everything, slipped on a light coat, in the pockets of which I placed all the fruits of my experiments, and ran—I do not exaggerate—ran to the appointed spot.”

“What did you find? By whom were you met?” Smith snapped.

‘There was a car drawn up on the north side of the road. A woman was just stepping into it—”

“Describe her.”

“She is beautiful—dark—slender. I know her as Mrs. Milton. I know now she is a spy!”

“Quite enough. What happened?”

“She seemed to be much disturbed as I hurried up. Her eyes—she has remarkable eyes—opened almost with a look of horror.”

“What did she do—what did she say?”

“She said: Doctor Jasper, are you here to meet me?’ I was utterly dumbfounded. I knew in that awful moment what a fool I had been! But I replied that I was.”

“What did she say then?”

“She enumerated the items which I had been ordered to deliver up - took them from me one by one . . . and returned to the car. Her parting words were,”You have been wise.’“

Then your invention, complete and practical, is now in the hands of the Si-Fan?”

“It is!” groaned Dr Jasper.

“Some deadly thing,” said Nayland Smith bitterly, “was placed in the laboratory during the time that your key remained in the door—for in your nervous state you forgot to remove it. A few moments later Osaki entered. Someone who was watching mistook Osaki for you. The shots heard by the butler were a signal to that call box. The phone call is the clue! It was Osaki who took it . . .”

Inspector Gallaho dashed into the laboratory.

“I have traced the call,” he said huskily—”the local police are of some use after all! It’s a box about half a mile from here, on the London Road.”

“I know,” said Smith wearily.

“You know, sir!” growled Gallaho, then suddenly noticing Dr Martin Jasper: “Who the devil have we here?”

The doctor raised his haggard face from his hands.

“Someone who has no right to be alive,” he replied.

Gallaho began chewing phantom gum.

“I said the local police were of some use,” he went on truculently, staring at Nayland Smith. “What I mean is this: They have the woman who made the call.”

“What!”

Smith became electrified; his entire expression changed.

“Yes. I roused everybody, had every car challenged, and luckily got a description of the one we wanted from a passing A.A. scout who had seen it standing near the box. The village constable at Greystones very cleverly spotted the right one. The woman is now at police headquarters there, sir! I suggest we proceed to Greystones at once.”

Constable Isles’s Statement

When presently Smith, Gallaho and I set out in the police car for Greystones, we had succeeded in learning a little more about the mysterious Mrs. Milton. A police inspector and the police surgeon we had left behind at Great Oaks; but as Nayland Smith said, what expert opinion had failed to learn in regard to the death of General Quinto local talent could not hope to find out.

Mrs. Milton, Dr Jasper had told us before he finally collapsed (for the ordeal through which he had passed had entirely sapped his nervous energy), was a chance acquaintance. The doctor, during one of his rare constitutionals in the neighboring lanes, had found her beside a broken-down car and had succeeded in restarting the engine. Quite obviously he had been attracted. They had exchanged cards and he had invited her to lunch and to look over his laboratory.

His description of Mrs. Milton tallied exactly with that of the woman who had visited General Quinto on the night before his murder!

My excitement as we sped towards Greystones grew ever greater. With my own eyes I was about to see this harbinger of death employed by Dr Fu Manchu, finally to convince myself that she was not Ardatha. But indeed little doubt on this point remained.

“Unless I am greatly mistaken,” said Nayland Smith, “you are going to meet for the first time, Kerrigan, an example of a dead woman moving among the living, influencing, fascinating them. I won’t tell you, Inspector Gallaho”—he turned to the Scotland Yard officer—”whom I suspect this woman to be. But she is someone you have met before.”

“Now that I know Doctor Fu Manchu is concerned in this case,” the inspector growled in his husky voice, “nothing would surprise me.”

We passed along the main street of a visage in which all the houses and cottages were in darkness and pulled up before one over which, dimly, I could see a tablet which indicated that this was the local police headquarters. As we stepped out:

“Strange,” murmured Nayland Smith, looking about him—”there’s no car here and only one light upstairs.”

“I don’t like this,” said Gallaho savagely, marching up the path and pressing a bell beside the door.

There was some delay which we all suffered badly. Then a window opened above and I saw a woman looking out.

“What do you want?” she called: it was a meek voice.

“I want Constable Isles,” said Gallaho violently. “This Is Detective Inspector Gallaho of Scotland Yard. I spoke to the constable twenty minutes ago, and now I’m here to see him.”

“Oh!” said the owner of the meek voice, “I’ll come down.”

A minute later she opened the door. I saw that she wore a dressing gown and looked much disturbed.

“Where’s the woman,” snapped Nayland Smith, “whom the constable was detaining?”

“She’s gone, sir.”

“What!”

“Yes. I suppose he must have been satisfied to have let her go. My husband has had a very hard day, and he’s fast asleep in the parlor. I didn’t like to disturb him.”

“What is the meaning of this?”

Nayland Smith spoke as angrily as he ever spoke to a woman. Accompanied by the hastily attired Mrs. Isles, we stood in a little sitting room. A heavily built man who wore a tweed suit was lying on a couch, apparently plunged in deep sleep. Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho chewed ominously and glared at the woman.

“I think it’s just that he’s overtired, sir,” she said. She was a plump, dark-eyed, hesitant sort of a creature, and our invasion seemed to have terrified her. “He has had a very heavy day.”

“That is not the point,” said Smith rapidly. “Inspector Gallaho here sent out a description of a car seen by an A.A. man near a call box on the London Road. All officers, on or off duty, were notified to look out for it and to stop it if sighted. Your husband telephoned to Great Oaks twenty minutes ago saying that he had intercepted this car and that the driver, a woman, was here in his custody. Where is she? What has occurred?”

“I don’t really know, sir. He was just going to bed when the phone rang, and then he got up, dressed, and went out. I heard a car stop outside, and then I heard him bring someone in. When the car drove away again and he didn’t come up I went to look for him and found him asleep here. When he’s like that I never disturb him, because he’s a bad sleeper.”

“He’s drugged,” snapped Smith irritably.

“Oh no!” the woman whispered.

Drugged he was, for it took us nearly ten minutes to revive him. When ultimately Constable Isles sat up and stared about I thought that I had rarely seen a more bewildered man. Smith had been sniffing suspiciously and had examined the stubs of two cigarettes in an ash tray.

“Hello, Constable,” he said, “what’s the meaning of this? Asleep on duty, I’m afraid.”

Constable Isles sat up, then stood up, clenched his fists and stared at all of us like a man demented.

“I don’t know what’s happened,” he muttered thickly. “I don’t know!”

He looked again from face to face.

“I’m Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho. Perhaps you know what’s happened now! You reported to me less than half an hour ago. Where’s the car? Where’s the prisoner?”

The wretched man steadied himself, outstretched hand against a wall.

“By God, sir!” he said, and made a visible attempt to pull himself together. “A terrible thing has happened to me!”

“You mean a terrible thing is going to happen to you,” growled Gallaho.

“Leave this to me.” Nayland Smith rested his hand on Isles’s shoulder and gently forced him down on to the couch again. “Don’t bother about it too much. I think I know what occurred, and it has occurred to others before. When the general order came you dressed and went out to watch the road. Is that so?”

“Yes sir.”

“You saw what looked like the car described, coming along this way. You stopped it. How did you stop it?”

“I stood in the road and signaled to the driver to pull up.”

“I see. Describe the driver.”

“A woman, sir, young—” The speaker clutched his head. Obviously he was in a state of mental confusion. “A very dark young woman; she was angry at first and glared at me as though she was in half a mind to drive on.”

“Do you remember her eyes?”

“I’m not likely to forget them, sir—they were bright green. She almost frightened me. But I told her I was a police officer and that there was a query about her car. She took it quietly after that, left the car at the gate out there and came in. That was when I telephoned to the number I had been given and reported that I had found the wanted car.”

“What happened after that?”

“Well sir, I could see she was a foreigner, good looking in her way, although”—glancing at his buxom wife—”a bit on the thin side from my point of view. And she was so nice and seemed so anxious not to want to wake the missus, that I felt half sorry for her.”

“What did she say to you? What did she talk about?”

“To tell you the truth, sir,” he stared pathetically at Nayland Smith, “I can’t really remember. But while we were waiting she asked me to have a cigarette.”

“Did you do so?”

“Yes. I lighted it and one for her at the same time, and we went on talking. The reason I remember her eyes, is because that’s the last thing I do remember—” He swallowed noisily. “Although there was nothing, I give you my word, there was nothing to give me the tip in time, I know now that that cigarette was drugged. I hope, sir”—turning to Gallaho—”that I haven’t failed in my duty.”

“Forget it,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Men far senior to you have failed in the same way where this particular woman has been concerned.”

A Modern Vampire

“There are certain features about this case, Kerrigan,” said Nayland Smith, “which I have so far hesitated to mention to you.”

Alone in the police car we were returning to London. The night remained mistily gloomy, and I was concerned with my own private thoughts.

“You mean perhaps in regard to the woman known as Mrs. Milton?”

“Yes!” He pulled out his pipe and began to load it. “She is a phenomenon.”

“You referred to her, I remember, as a zombie.”

“I did. A dead woman moving among the living. Yes, unless I am greatly mistaken, Kerrigan, Mrs. Milton is a modern example of the vampire.”

“Ghastly idea!”

“Ghastly, if you like. But there is very little doubt in my mind that Mrs. Milton is the woman who was concerned—although as it seemed at the time, remotely—in the death of General Quinto. Those descriptions which we have had unmistakably tally. Stress this point in your notes, Kerrigan. For there is a bridge here between life and death.”

Tucked into one comer of the car as it raced through the night, I turned and stared at my companion.

“You think you know her?”

“There is little room for error in the matter. The facts we learned from Constable Isles go to confirm my opinion. That so simple a character should fall victim to this woman is not surprising. She is as dangerous to humanity at large as Ardatha is dangerous to you.”

I did not reply, for he seemed to have divined that indeed I had been thinking about Ardatha. Of one thing I was sure: Ardatha was not the harbinger of death employed by Dr. Fu Manchu in the assassination of General Quinto and in that of Osaki.

Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho had been left in charge of the inquiry in Suffolk. Among his duties was that of obtaining a statement from Dr Martin Jasper regarding the exact character of the vacuum charger and the identity of the man known as Osaki. That he, with local assistance, would come upon a clue to the mystery of the Green Death was unlikely, since London experts had failed in an earlier case.

Nayland Smith had worked himself to a standstill in the laboratory. The mystery of why Osaki, locked in there alone, should have died remained a mystery. I began to feel drowsy but became widely awake again when Nayland Smith, striking a match to light his pipe, spoke again.

“Whoever was watching that laboratory, Kerrigan, must have been prepared with some second means of dealing with Doctor Jasper.”

“Why?”

“Well, they could not have known that he would open the door. They must have assumed when he did open the door that he was returning to the house and would come back.”

“Why should they suppose that he would come back?”

“Obviously they knew of his appointment with Osaki.”

“Why not have just removed the model and the plans?”

“They knew that neither model nor plans were of any avail if their inventor still defied the Si-Fan. Doctor Fu Manchu’s object, Kerrigan, was not to steal the plans of the vacuum charger, but to prevent those plans falling into the hands of the Power represented by Mr. Osaki. I am convinced that Osaki’s death was an accident, but it probably suited the Si-Fan.”

In the bumping of the car over a badly paved road I seemed to hear the beating of drums.

The Red Button

“Sir Denis evidently detained, sir. Expect any moment.”

It was the evening of the following day and I had called at Smith’s flat iri Whitehall by appointment. I looked at the expressionless face of the speaker.

“That’s all right. Fey. I’ll come in and wait.”

As I crossed the lobby and entered the sitting room which contained the big radio and that television set upon which miraculously once Dr Fu Manchu had manifested himself I heard the phone ringing. Staring at the apparatus, I took out a cigarette. I could detect Fey’s monosyllables in the lobby. A few moments later he entered.

“Going out, sir,” he reported. “Whisky-soda? Buffet at disposal. Sir Denis at Yard with Inspector Gallaho. Will be here inside ten minutes.”

He prepared a drink for me and went out.

I sipped my whisky and soda and inspected some of the pictures and photographs which the room contained. The pictures were landscapes, almost exclusively Oriental. A fine photograph of a handsome grey-haired man I was able to identify as that of Dr Petrie, Nayland Smith’s old friend who had been associated with him in those early phases of his battle with Fu Manchu, of which I knew so little. Another, a grimly humorous, square-jawed, mustached face, I was unable to place, but I learned later that it represented Superintendent Weymouth, once of the Criminal Investigation Department, but now attached to the Cairo police.

There were others, not so characteristic. And on a small easel on top of a bookcase I came across a water color of an ethereally beautiful woman. Upon it was written:

“To our best and dearest friend from Karamaneh.” I stared out of a window across the embankment to where old Father Thames moved tunelessly on. A reluctant moon, veiled from moment to moment, sometimes gleamed upon the water. For many years, as Nayland Smith had told me, the Thames had been Dr Fu Manchu’s highway. His earliest base had been at Limehouse in the Chinese quarter. London River had served his purpose well.

Nothing passed along the stream as I watched and my thoughts wandered to that Essex creek on the banks of which stood the Monks’ Arms. How hopelessly they wandered there!

Ardatha!—a strange name and a strange character. To me, lover of freedom, it was appalling to think that in those enigmatical amethyst eyes I had lost myself—had seen my philosophy crumble, had read the doom of many a cherished principle. Almost certainly she was evil; for how, otherwise, could she be a member of so evil a thing as the Si-Fan?

I tried to cease contemplating that bewitching image. Crossing to an armchair, I was about to sit down when I heard the phone bell in the lobby. I set my glass on a table and went out to answer the call.

“Hello,” said a voice, “can I speak to Sir Denis Nayland Smith?”

“Sir Denis is out. But can I take a message?”

The speaker was a man who used good but not perfect English—a foreigner of some kind.

“Thank you. I will call again.”

I returned to the armchair and lighted a cigarette.

What was the mystery of the Green Death? Where medical analysis had failed, where Nayland Smith had failed, what hope had I of solving it? It was an appalling exhibition of that power possessed by the awful man I had met out on the Essex marshes. A monster had been reborn—and I had stood face to face with him.

Closing my eyes I lay back in the chair . . .

“If you will be good enough to lower the light, Mr. Kerrigan”—the voice was unmistakable—”and sit closer to the screen. There is something important to yourself and to Sir Denis which I have to communicate.”

I sprang up—I could not have sprung up more suddenly if a bomb had exploded at my feet. The screen was illuminated, as once before I had seen it illuminated . . . And there looking out at me was Dr Fu Manchu!

Perhaps for a decimal moment I doubted what course to take; and then (I think almost anyone would have done the same) I extinguished the light.

The switches were remote from the television screen; and I confess, as I turned and stood in darkness before that wonderful evil face which apparently regarded me, I was touched by swift fear. In fact I had to tell myself that this was not the real Dr Fu Manchu but merely his image before I summoned up courage enough to approach and to watch.

“Will you please touch the red button on the right of the screen, 7 the sibilant voice went on, “merely to indicate that you have observed my wishes.”

I touched the red button. My heart was beating much too rapidly; but sitting down on an ottoman, I compelled myself to study that wonderful face.

It might have been the face of an emperor. I found myself thinking of Zenghis Khan. Intellectually the brow was phenomenal, the dignity of the lined features might have belonged to a Pharaoh, but the soul of the great Chinese doctor lay in his eyes. Never had I seen before, and never have I seen since, such power in a man’s eyes as lay in those of Dr Fu Manchu.

Then he spoke, and his voice, too, was unforgettable. One hearing its alternate sibilants and gutturals must have remembered every intonation to the end of his days.

“I regret, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said, “that you are still alive. Your rescue meant that an old and useful base is now destroyed. I suspect that some member of the Si-Fan has failed me in this matter. If so, there will be retribution.”

His words chilled me coldly.

Ardatha!

She had defied me, jeered at me, fought with me, but in the end she had saved me. It was a strange romance but I knew that on my side it was real. Ardatha was my woman, and if I lost her I should have lost all that made life worth-while. I think, except for that unreadable expression which seemed to tell me that her words did not mean all they conveyed, I had had but little hope, in spite of my masculine vanity, until I had realized that she had risked everything to rescue me from the cellars of the Monks’ Arms.

I was watching the image of those strange eyes as this thought flashed through my mind.

Good Good! Did he suspect Ardatha?

“In the absence of Sir Denis”—the words seemed to reach me indistinctly—”I must request you, Mr. Kerrigan, to take my message. It is very simple. It is this: Sir Denis has fought with me for many years. I have come to respect him as one respects an honorable enemy, but forces difficult to control now demand that I should act swiftly. Listen, and I will explain what I mean to do.”

That forceful voice died away unaccountably. My brain suggested that the instrument, operated by an unknown principle, had failed. But then conscious thought petered out altogether, I suppose. The eyes regarding me from the screen, although the image was colorless, seemed, aided by memory, to become green . . . Then they merged together and became one contemplative eye. That eye grew enormous—it dominated the picture—it became a green lake—and a remorseless urge impelled me to plunge into its depths . . .

I stood up, or so I thought, from the ottoman on which I had been seated and walked forward into the lake.

Miraculously I did not sink. Stepping across a glittering green expanse, I found myself upon solid land. Here I paused, and the voice of Dr Fu Manchu spoke:

“Look!—this is China.”

I saw a swamp, a vast morass wherein no human thing could dwell, a limitless and vile corruption . . . I saw guns buried in the mud; in pools I saw floating corpses: the fetid air was full of carrion, and all about me I heard wailing and lamentations. So desolate was the scene that I turned my head aside until the Voice spoke again:

“Look! It is Spain.”

I saw a waste which once had been a beautiful village: the shell of an old church; ruins of a house upon whose scarred walls bougainvillea bloomed gaily. People, among them women and children, were searching in the ruins. I wondered for what they were searching. But out of the darkness the Voice came again:

“Look! This is London.”

From my magic carpet I looked down upon Whitehall. Almost that spectacle conquered the magic of the Voice. I fought against mirage, but the mood of rebellion passed . . . I saw the cenotaph partly demolished. I heard crashes all around me, muted but awful. Where I thought familiar buildings should be there were gaping caverns. Strange figures, antlike as I looked down upon them, ran in all directions.

“Your world!” said the Voice. “Come, now, into mine . . ,”

And Ardatha was beside me!

It was a rose garden, the scent of the flowers intoxicating. Below where the roses grew I saw steps leading down to a marble pool upon the cool surface of which lotus blossoms floated. Bees droned amid the roses, and gaily plumaged birds darted from tree to tree. An exquisite sense of well being overcame me. I turned to Ardatha—and her lips were irresistible.

“Why did you ever doubt what I told you?” she whispered.

“Only because I was a fool.”

I lost myself in a kiss which realized all the raptures of which I had ever dreamed . . .

Ardatha melted from my arms . . . I sought her, called her name—”Ardatha! Ardatha!” But the rose garden had vanished: I was in darkness—alone, helpless, though none constrained me . . .

Flat on the carpet of Nayland Smith’s apartment, as I had fallen back from the ottoman, I lay!—fully alive to my environment, but unable to speak—to move!

Living Death

The screen, the magical screen, was black. Faint light came through the windows. Something—some damnable thing—had happened. I had gone mad—or been bewitched. That power, suspected but now experienced, of the dreadful Chinese doctor had swept me up.

With what purpose?

There seemed to be nothing different about the room—but how long had I been unaware of what was going on? Most accursed thing of all, I could think, but I couldn’t move! I lay there flat on my back, helpless as one dead. My keen mental activity in this condition was a double agony.

As I lay I could see right into the lobby—and now I became aware of the fact that I was not alone!

A small, dark man had opened the outer door quietly, glanced in my direction, and then set down a small handbag which he had seemed to carry with great care. He wore thick-rimmed glasses. He opened the bag, and I saw him doing something to the telephone.

I tried to command nerve and muscle—I tried to move. It was futile.

My body was dead: my brain alone lived . . .

I saw the man go. Even in that moment of mental torment I must watch passively, for I could not close my eyes!

Here I lay at the point from which my journeys to China to Spain, to an enchanted rose garden had begun, and so lying, unable to move a muscle, again I heard a key inserted in the door . . . The door opened and Nayland Smith dashed into the room. He looked down at me.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, and bent over me.

My eyes remained fixed: they continued to stare towards the lobby.

“Kerrigan! Kerrigan! Speak, old man! What happened?”

Speak! I could not stir . . .

He placed his ear to my chest, tested my pulse, stood up and seemed to hesitate for a moment. I heard and partly saw him going from room to room, searching. Then he came back and again fully into view. He stared down at me critically. He had switched up all the lights as he had entered. He walked across to the lobby, and I knew that he was about to take up the telephone!

His intentions were obvious. He was going to call a doctor.

A scream of the spirit implored me to awake, to warn him not to touch that telephone. This was the supreme moment of torture . . .

I heard the faint tinkling of the bell as Nayland Smith raised the receiver.

* * *

I became obsessed with the horrible idea that Dr Fu Manchu had in some way induced a state of catalepsy! I should be buried alive! But not even the terror caused by this ghastly possibility would make me forget that small, sinister figure engaged in doing something to the telephone.

That it was something which meant death, every instinct told me.

Yet I lay there, myself already in a state of living death!

Smith stood, the receiver in his hand, and I could see and hear him dialing a number.

But it was not to be . . .

A crashing explosion shook the entire building! It shattered several panes of glass in one window, and it accomplished that which my own brain had failed to accomplish. It provided a shock against which the will of Dr Fu Manchu was powerless.

I experienced a sensation exactly as that of some tiny but tough thread which had held the cells of my brain immured in inertia being snapped. It was a terrifying sensation—but its terrors were forgotten in the instant when I realized that I was my own master again!

“Smith!” I cried and my voice had a queer, hysterical ring—”Smith! Don’t touch that telephone!”

Perhaps the warning was unnecessary. He had replaced the receiver on the hook and was staring blankly across the apartment in the direction of the shattered window.

“Kerrigan!”

He sprang forward as I scrambled to my feet.

“I can’t explain yet,” I muttered (the back of my head began to ache madly) “except that you must not touch that telephone.”

He grabbed me by the shoulders, stared into my eyes.

“Thank God you’re all right, Kerrigan! I can’t tell you what I feared—but will tell you later. Somewhere down the river there has been a catastrophe.”

“It has saved us from a catastrophe far greater.”

Smith turned, threw a window open (I saw now that he had been deeply moved) and craned out. Away downstream black smoke was rising over a sullen red glow.

Police whistles shrieked and I heard the distant clangor of a fire engine . . . Later we learned—and the tragedy was front-page news in the morning—of that disastrous explosion on a munition barge in which twelve lives were lost. At the moment, I remember, we were less concerned with the cause of the explosion than with its effect.

Smith turned from the window and stared at me fixedly.

“How did you get in, Kerrigan? Where is Fey?”

“Fey let me in, then he was called up by Inspector Gallaho from Scotland Yard to meet you there.”

“I have not been there—and I have reason to know that Gallaho is not in London. However, go on.”

“Fey evidently had no doubt that Gallaho was the speaker. He gave me a drink, told me that you would return directly he, Fey, reached Scotland Yard, and went out.”

“What happened then?”

“Then the incredible happened.”

“You are sure that you feel perfectly restored?”

“Certain.”

Smith pushed me down into an armchair and crossed to the buffet.

“Go on,” he said quietly.

“The television screen lighted up. Doctor Fu Manchu appeared.”

“What!”

He turned, his hand on a syphon and his expression very grim.

“Yes! You wondered for what purpose he had caused the thing to be installed here, Smith. I can give you an example of one use he made of it! Perhaps I am particularly susceptible to the influence of this man. I think you believe I am, for you observed on a former occasion that I was behaving strangely as I watched those awful eyes. Well this time I succumbed altogether. I had a series of extraordinary visions, almost certainly emanations from the brain of Doctor Fu Manchu. And then I became fully conscious but quite incapable of movement!”

“That was your condition when I returned,” Smith snapped. He crossed to me with a tumbler in his hand.

“I had been in that condition for some time before your return. A man admitted himself to the lobby with a key.”

“Describe him.”

“A small man with straight black hair, who wore what seemed to be powerful spectacles. He carried a bag which he handled with great care. He proceeded to make some adjustment to the mouthpiece of the telephone, and then with a glance in my direction—I was lying on the floor as you found me—he went out again as quietly as he had come.”

“Clearly,” said Smith, staring into the lobby, “your unexpected appearance presented a problem. They did not know you were coming. It had been arranged for Fey to be lured away by this unknown mimic who can evidently imitate Gallaho’s voice; but you, the unexpected intruder, had to be dealt with in a different manner. I am wondering about two things now, Kerrigan. Do you feel fit to investigate?”

“Perfectly”

“First: how long you would have remained in that state in which I found you, failing the unforeseen explosion which shocked you into consciousness; and second: what the small man with the black hair did to the telephone.”

“For heaven’s sake be careful!”

He crossed to the lobby and very gently raised the instrument. I stood beside him. Apart from a splitting headache I felt perfectly normal. He tipped up the mouthpiece and stared curiously into it.

“You are sure it was the mouthpiece that he adjusted?”

“Quite sure.”

And now he turned it round to the light which was streaming through the doorway of the sitting room.

We both saw something.

A bead, quite colorless and no larger than a small pea, adhered to the instrument just below the point where a speaker’s lips would come . . .

“Good God!” Nayland Smith whispered. “Kerrigan! You understand!”

I nodded. I could not find my voice—for the appalling truth had come to me.

“Anyone speaking loudly would burst this bubble and inhale its contents! God knows what it contains—but we know at last how General Quinto and Osaki died!”

“The Green Death!”

“Undoubtedly. It was a subtle brain, Kerrigan, which foresaw that finding you unconscious, I should immediately call a doctor, that my voice would be agitated. The usual routine, as you must see now, was for someone to call the victim and complain that his voice was not audible, thus causing him to speak close to the receiver and to speak loudly.”

Very gently he replaced the instrument.

At this moment the door was partly opened and Fey came in. He glanced from face to face.

“Glad, sir! Frightened! Something funny going on!”

“Very funny. Fey. I suppose when you got to the Yard you found that the summons did not come from there?”

“Yes sir.”

The phone bell rang. Fey stepped forward.

“Stop! On no account are you to touch the telephone. Fey, until further orders.”

“Very good, sir.”

Tremors Under Europe

“Doctor Fu Manchu evidently is losing his sense of humor,” said Nayland Smith with a smile.

It was noon of the following day, and he stood in my room. He was seated at the desk and was reading my notes. Now he laid them down and began to fill his pipe.

“What do you mean. Smith?”

“I mean that two things—your unexpected appearance, and that explosion on the powder barge—together saved my life. By the way, here is an addition to your notes.”

“What is it?”

“The home office analyst’s report. You know the difficulty we had to remove the mouthpiece of the telephone without breaking the bubble. However, it was done, and you will see what Doctor O’Donnell says.”

I took up the report from the home office consultant. It was not his official report but one he had sent privately to Nayland Smith.

“The construction of the small globe or bubble,” I read, “is peculiarly delicate. Examination of the fragments suggests that it is composed of some kind of glass and is probably blown by an instrument which at the same time fills the interior with gas. The effect of breaking the bubble, however, is to leave no trace whatever, apart from a fragment of powder which normally would be indiscernible. It was attached to the mouthpiece by a minute speck of gum, and I should imagine the operation required great dexterity. As to its contents:

“My full report may be consulted, but briefly I may say that the composition of the gas which this bubble contained is unknown to me. It belongs to none of the groups with which I am familiar. It is the most concentrated poison in gaseous form which I have ever encountered. In addition to the other experiments (see report) I smelled this gas—but for a moment. The result was extraordinary. It induced a violent increase of blood pressure, followed by a drumming in my ears which created such an illusion of being external that for a time I was persuaded someone was beating a drum in the neighborhood . . .”

As I laid the letter on the table:

“Have you considered,” Nayland Smith asked, “what revolutionary contributions Doctor Fu Manchu could make to science, particularly to medicine, if he worked for heaven and not for hell?”

“Yes, it’s a damnable thought.”

“The greatest genius living—perhaps as great as has ever been born—toiling for the destruction of humanity!”

“Yet, at the moment, he seems to be working for its preservation.”

“But only seems, Kerrigan. Its preservation for his own purposes—yes! I strongly suspect, however, that his recent attempt upon me was dictated by an uncanny knowledge of my movements.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am being shadowed day and night. There have been other episodes which I have not even bothered to mention.”

“You alarm me!”

“Fortunately for myself, the doctor has his hands full in other directions. If he once concentrated upon me I believe I should give up hope. You see, he knows that I am watching his next move, and with devilish cunning, so far, he has headed me off.”

“His next move . . .” I stared questioningly.

“Yes. In his war against dictators. At the moment it is concentrated upon one of them—and the greatest.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I mean Rudolf Adion! In view of the way in which he is guarded and of the many attempts by enemies to reach him which have failed, it seems perhaps absurd that I should be anxious because one more man has entered the lists.”

“But that man is Doctor Fu Manchu!”

“Not a doubt about it, Kerrigan. Yet, officially, my hands are tied.”

“Why?”

“Adion has refused to see me, and I cannot very well force myself upon him.”

“Have you definite evidence that Adion has been threatened?”

Nayland Smith lighted his pipe and nodded shortly.

“I am in the difficult position of having to keep an eye on a number of notable people—many of them, quite frankly, not friends of Great Britain. With a view to doing my best to protect them, the legitimate functions of the secret service up to a certain extent have been switched into this channel, and I had information three days ago that Adion had received the first notice from the Si-Fan!”

“Good heavens! What did you do?”

“I immediately advised him that whatever he might think to the contrary, he was in imminent peril of his life. I suggested a conference.”

“And he refused to see you?”

“Exactly. Whatever is pending—and rest assured it will affect the fate of the world—it is clearly a matter of some urgency for I am informed that a second notice has reached Adion.”

“What do you make of it? What is he planning?”

Nayland Smith stood up, irritably snapping his fingers.

“I don’t know, nor can I find out. Furthermore, for any evidence to the contrary, there might be no such person as Doctor Fu Manchu in the world. Do you think it conceivable that such a personality is moving about among us—as undoubtedly he is—and yet not one clue fall into the hands of a veritable army of searchers?”

I watched him for some time as he paced nervously up and down the carpet, then:

“Having met Doctor Fu Manchu,” I replied slowly, “I am prepared to believe anything about him. What is bothering me at the moment. Smith, is this: On your own admission he knows that you are trying to protect Adion.”

Nayland Smith sighed wearily.

“He knows every move I make, Kerrigan. Almost, I believe, those which I am likely to make but upon which I have not yet decided.”

“In other words your own danger is as great, if not greater, than that of the chancellor.”

He smiled wryly.

“Since one evening in Burma, many years ago—an evening of which I bear cherished memories, for it was then that I first set eyes on Doctor Fu Manchu—I have gone in hourly peril of assassination. Yet, here I am—thanks to the doctor’s sense of humor! You see”—he began to walk up and down again—”I doubt if ever before have I had the entire power of the Si-Fan directed against me. And so this time, I am wondering . . .”

A Car in Hyde Park

An unavoidable business appointment called me away that afternoon. My personal inclination was never to let Nayland Smith out of my sight although heaven knows what I thought I could do to protect him. But as he never went about alone and rarely failed to notify me of any move in the game in order that I might be present, we parted with an understanding to meet at dinner.

My business took me to Westminster. Fully an hour had passed, I suppose, when I began to drive back, and I found myself in the thick of the afternoon traffic. As I made to cross towards Hyde Park I was held up. Streams of vehicles coming from four different directions were heading for the gate. I resigned myself and lighted a cigarette.

Idly I inspected a quantity of luggage strapped on the rack of a big saloon car. It was proceeding very slowly out of the Park in that pent-up crawling line of traffic and had just passed my off-side window. There were new labels over many old ones, but from my position at the wheel I could read none of them, except that clearly enough this was the baggage of a world traveller, for I recognized the characteristic hotel designs of Mount Lavinia in Colombo, Shepheard’s in Cairo and others East and West which I knew.

The constable on the gate had apparently become rooted just in front of me with outstretched arms. Curious for a glimpse of these travellers who were presumably bound for Victoria Station, I leaned back and stared out at the occupants of the car. A moment I glanced—and then turned swiftly away.

A chauffeur whose face I could not see was driving. There were two passengers. One was a darkly beautiful woman. She was smoking a cigarette, and I could not fail to note her long ivory hand, her slender, highly burnished fingernails. In fact, except for their smooth beauty, those hands reminded me of the hands of Dr Fu Manchu. But it was that one glimpse of her compardon which had urged me to turn aside, praying that I had not been recognized . . .

It was Ardatha!

Useless to deny that nay heart had leapt at sight of her. She wore a smart little hat crushed down on her coppery curls, and some kind of fur-collared coat. I had seen no more, had noticed no more. I had eyes for nothing but that bewitching face. And now, as I stared at the broad, immovable back of the constable, I was thinking rapidly and hoping that he would remain stationary long enough for me to rearrange my plans.

Somehow, I must follow that car!

Once at Victoria it should not be difficult for a man with newspaper training to learn the destination of the travelers. If I failed to do so I could never face Nay land Smith again with a clear conscience. But here was a problem. I must enter the Park now for I was jammed in the traffic stream, and the car which contained Ardatha was leaving or waiting to leave! It meant a detour and I had to plan quickly. I must bear left, leave by the next gate (I prayed I might not be held up there) and make my way to Victoria across Knightsbridge.

This plan was no sooner formed than the constable moved and waved me on.

I proceeded as fast as I dared in the direction of the next gate—and I was lucky. Oncoming traffic was being let out, that from the opposite direction being held.

Last but one, I got through.

I was lucky on the rest of the way, too, and having hastily disposed of my car I went racing into the station. I knew that (a) I must take care not to be seen; that (b) I must find out what trains were about to depart and swiftly make up my mind for which I wanted a platform ticket.

A Continental boat train was due to leave in five minutes.

This struck me as being quite the likeliest bet. The next departure, seven minutes later, was for Brighton, and somehow I felt disposed to wash this out as a possibility. Turning up the collar of my topcoat and pulling my hat well forward, I took a platform ticket and strolled among departing passengers and friends, porters, refreshment wagons and news vendors.

I glanced at the luggage van, but doubted if I should recognize the particular baggage I had seen upon the tail of the car. Then, time being short, I walked along the platform. I could see no sign of two women, and I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. I started back again, scrutinising all the compartments and staring into the Pullman cars.

But never a glimpse did I obtain of Ardatha or her companion. I was almost in despair and was standing looking right and left when a conversation taking place near by arrested my attention.

“I’ve got an old lady going through to Venice. I noticed you had a party of two for Venice, so I wondered if you could arrange to give them adjoining places in the car. They might strike up an acquaintance—see what I mean?”

“You mean the two good-lookers—the red head and the dark one—in D? Yes, they’re booked for Venice but I don’t know if they’re going direct. Where’s your passenger?”

“D. Number eleven. Do what you can, Jack.”

“Right-o!”

I glanced quickly at the speakers. One was a Cook’s man and the other the chief Pullman attendant. It was perhaps a forlorn hope, but I had known equally unlikely things to come off. I turned back and went to look at coach D.

One glance was enough!

Ardatha was seated in a corner reading. Her companion was standing up and placing something upon the rack, for I had a momentary impression of a tall, slender, almost serpentine figure. I turned away quickly and hurried back to the barrier.

The beautiful dark mystery was undoubtedly the woman associated with the death of General Quinto—with the death of Osaki! The woman who had drugged Constable Isles and who had escaped with the model and plans of the vacuum charger! Although perhaps not blood guilty, Ardatha was her accomplice. It was an unhappy, a wildly disturbing thought. Yet, I must confess, so profound was my dread of the Chinese doctor, that I rejoiced to know she lived! His words about retribution had haunted me . . . But one thing I must do and do quickly:

I must advise Nayland Smith.

Here were two known accomplices of Dr Fu Manchu. My duty to my friend—to the world—demanded that steps should be taken to apprehend them at Folkestone. There was no room for sentiment; my conscience pointed the straight road to duty.

The Brain Is Dr Fu Manchu”

“Dinner’s off, Kerrigan! We shall have to get what we can on the way.”

“What!”

“Accident has thrown the first clue of many weary days and nights in your way Kerrigan, and you handled it very cleverly.”

“Thank you.”

“My latest information, just to hand, explains why Doctor Fu Manchu’s attention has become directed upon Rudolf Adion. Adion is on his way to Venice for a secret meeting with his brother dictator, Monaghani!”

“But that’s impossible. Smith!” I exclaimed. I was still figuratively breathless from my dash to Victoria. “It’s in the evening papers than Adion is reviewing troops tomorrow morning.”

Smith was pacing up and down in an old silk dressing gown and smoking his pipe. He paused, turned, and stared at me with raised eyebrows. His glance was challenging.

“I thought it was common knowledge, Kerrigan,” he said quietly “that Adion has a double.”

“A double!”

“Certainly. I assumed you knew; almost everybody else knows. Stalin of Russia has three.”

“Three doubles?”

“Three. He knows that he is likely to be assassinated at almost any moment and in this way the odds are three to one in his favour. On such occasions as that which you have mentioned, when the director of his country stands rigidly at the salute for forty minutes or so while troops march by with mechanical accuracy, it is not Rudolf Adion the First who stands in that painful position. Oh no, Kerrigan: It is Rudolf Adion the Second! The Second will be there tomorrow, but the First, the original, the real Rudolf Adion, is already on his way to Venice.”

“Then you think that the fact of these two women proceeding to Venice means—, ,

“It means that Doctor Fu Manchu is in Venice, or shortly will be! Throughout his career he has used the weapon of feminine beauty, and many times that weapon has proved to be double-edged. However, we know what to look for.”

“Surely you will take steps to have them arrested at Folkestone?”

“Not at all.”

“Why?”

He smiled, paused.

“Do you recall Fu Manchu’s words on striking at the heart, the brain? Very well. The heart is the Council of Seven—the brain is Doctor Fu Manchu. It is at the brain I mean to strike, therefore we are leaving for Venice immediately.”

He had pressed the bell and now the door opened and Fey came in.

“Advise Wing Commander Roxburgh that I shall want the plane to leave for Venice in an hour. He is to notify Paris and Rome and to arrange for a night landing.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Stand by with the car.”

Fey went out.

“You are sure, Kerrigan, you are sure”—Nayland Smith spoke excitedly—”that you were not recognized?”

“Sure as it is possible to be. Ardatha was reading. I am practically certain that she could not have seen me. The other woman doesn’t know me.”

Nayland Smith laughed aloud and then stared in an amused way.

“You have much to learn yet,” he said,”about Doctor Fu Manchu.”

Venice

Of those peculiar powers possessed by Nayland Smith, I mean the facilities with which he was accredited, I had a glimpse on this journey. And if confirmation had been needed of the gravity of the menace represented by Dr Fu Manchu and the Council of Seven, I should have recognized from the way in which his lightest wishes were respected that this was a very grave menace indeed.

We had travelled by a Royal Air Force plane which had performed the journey in little more than half the time of the commercial service!

As we entered the sitting room allotted to us in the Venice hotel, we found Colonel Correnti, chief of police, waiting.

Smith, dismissing an obsequious manager with a smile and wave of the hand, turned to the police officer.

He presented me.

“You may speak with complete confidence in Mr. Kerrigan’s presence. Has Rudolf Adion arrived?”

“Yes.”

Smith dropped into an armchair. He had not yet removed hat or Burberry, and groping in a pocket of the latter he produced that dilapidated pouch in which normally he carried about half a pound of tobacco. He began to load his pipe.

“This is a great responsibility for you?”

“A dreadful responsibility!” the colonel nodded gloomily. “The greater because Signer Monaghani is expected on Tuesday morning.”

“Also incognito?”

“Alas, yes! It is these visits of which so few are aware which make my life a misery. Our task is far heavier than that of Geneva. Venice is the favourite rendezvous of some of the greatest figures in European politics. Always they come incognito, but not always for political reason! Why should Venice be selected? Why should this dreadful onus be placed upon me?”

His Latin indignation was profound.

“Where is the chancellor staying?”

“At the Palazzo da Rosa, as guest of the baron. He has stayed there before. They are old friends.”

“Are there any other of Herr Adion’s friends in Venice at present?”

“But yes! James Brownlow Wilton is here. He leases the Palazzo Brioni on the Grand Canal, at no great distance from this hotel. His yacht Silver Heels is in the lagoon.”

“Will he be entertaining Herr Adion?”

“I believe there is to be a small private luncheon party, either at the Palazzo or on board the yacht.”

Nayland Smith crushed tobacco into the big cracked bowl of his pipe. Only once he glanced at me. But I knew what he had in mind and thrilled with anticipation, then:

“You have arranged to have agents on board. Colonel?”

“Certainly. This was my duty.”

“I appreciate that. No doubt you can arrange for Mr. Kerrigan and myself to be present?”

For a moment Colonel Correnti was taken aback. He looked from face to face in astonishment.

“Of course.” He endeavored to speak easily. “It could be arranged.”

Nayland Smith stood up and smiled.

“Let it be arranged,” he said. “I have an appointment to meet Sir George Herbert who is accompanying me to see Herr Adion. I shall be free in an hour. If you will be good enough to return then we can make all necessary plans . . .”

During the next hour I was left to my own devices. That Dr Fu Manchu, if not there in person certainly had agents in Venice, had made me so intensely nervous that I only let Nayland Smith leave the hotel when I realized that a bodyguard in the form of two plain-clothes police accompanied him.

I tried to distract myself by strolling about those unique streets.

This was comparatively new territory. I had been there but once before and only for a few hours. Night had long fallen touching Venice with its magic. Lights glittered on the Grand Canal, shone from windows in those age-old palaces, and a quarter moon completed the picture.

Somewhere, I thought, as I peered into the faces of passers-by, Ardatha might be near to me. Smith was of opinion that they would have flown from Paris, avoiding Croydon as at Croydon they were likely to be recognized. Assuming a fast plane to have been awaiting them, they were probably in Venice now.

Automatically, it seemed, and in common with everyone else, I presently drifted towards St. Mark’s. Despite the late hour it seemed that all Venice took the air. Had my mind been not a boiling cauldron but normally at peace I must have enjoyed the restfulness of my surroundings.

But feverishly I was thinking,”Ardatha is here! At any moment she may become involved in a world tragedy from which I shall be helpless to extricate her.”

One who, whatever his faults, however right or wrong his policy, was yet the idol of a great country, stood in peril of sudden death. Perhaps only one man could save him—Nayland Smith! And upon that man’s head, also, a price had been set by the dreadful Chinese doctor.

I found it impossible to relax. I recalled Smith’s words:

“Do as you please, Kerrigan, but for heaven’s sake don’t show yourself.”

It was impossible, this walking in shadow, distrusting the moonlight, avoiding all places where people congregated, and slinking about like a criminal who feared arrest. I went back to the hotel.

The lounge appeared to be deserted, but I glanced sharply about me before crossing it, making my way to the suite reserved for Smith and myself.

I found the sitting room in darkness, but an odor of tobacco smoke brought me up sharply as I was about to cross the threshold.

“Hello!” I called,”is anyone there?”

“I am here,” came Smith’s voice out of the darkness.