The Trail of Fu Manchu

The Trail of Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

CHAPTER

I

THE GREAT FOG

“Who’s there?”

P.C. Ireland raised his red lantern, staring with smarting eyes through moving wreaths of yellow mist. Visibility was nil. This was the great fog of 1934—the worst in memory.

No one replied—there was no sound.

The constable shook himself, and settled the lantern down at his feet, flapped his arms in an endeavour to restore circulation. This chilliness was not wholly physical. Something funny was going on—something he didn’t like. He stood quite still again, listening.

Three times he had heard that sound resembling nothing so much as the hard breathing of some animal. Quite close to him in the fog—some furtive thing that crept by stealthily. . . . And now, he heard it again.

“Who’s there?” he challenged, snatching up the red lamp.

None answered. The sound ceased—if it had ever existed.

Traffic had been brought to a standstill some hours before; pedestrians there were none. King fog held the city of London in bondage. The silence was appalling. P.C. Ireland felt as though he was enveloped in a wet blanket from head to feet.

“I’ll go and have another look,” he muttered.

He began to grope his way up a short, semicircular drive to the door of a house. He had no idea what danger threatened Professor Ambrose, but he knew that he would be in for a bad time from the inspector if any one entered or left the professor’s house unchallenged. . . .

His foot struck the bottom of the three steps which led up to the door. Ireland mounted slowly; but not until his red lamp was almost touching the woodwork, could he detect the fact that the door was closed. He stood there awhile listening, but could hear nothing. He groped his way back to his post at the gate.

The police ‘phone box was not fifty yards away; he would have welcomed any excuse to call up the station; to establish contact with another human being—to be where there was some light other than the dim red glow of his lantern, which, sometimes when he set it down, resembled, seen through the moving clouds of mist, the baleful eyes of a monster glaring up at him.

He regained the gate and put the lantern down. He wondered when, if ever, he would be relieved. Discipline was all very well, but on occasions like this damned fog, when men who ought to have been in bed were turned out, a quiet smoke was the next best thing to a drink.

He groped under his oilskin cape for the packet, took out a cigarette and lighted it. He felt for the coping beside the gate and sat down. The fog appeared to be getting denser. Then in a flash he was on his feet again.

“Who’s there?” he shouted.

Stooping, he snatched up the red lantern and began to grope his way towards the other end of the semicircular drive.

“I can see you!” he cried, slightly reassured by the sound of his own voice—”don’t try any funny business with me!”

He bumped into the half-open gate, and pulled up, listening. Silence. He had retained his cigarette, and now he replaced it between his lips. It was the blasted fog, of course, that was getting on his nerves. He was beginning to imagine things. It wouldn’t do at all. But he sincerely wished that Waterlow would come along to relieve him, knowing in his heart of hearts that Waterlow hadn’t one chance in a thousand of finding the point.

“Stick there till you’re relieved,” had been the inspector’s order.

“All-night job for me,” Ireland murmured, sadly.

What was the matter with this old bloke, Ambrose? He leaned against the gate and reflected. It was something about a valuable statue that somebody wanted to pinch, or something. Ireland found it difficult to imagine why anyone should want to steal a statue. The silence was profound—uncanny. To one used to the bombilation of London, even in the suburbs, it seemed unnatural. He had more than half smoked his cigarette when—there it was again!

Heavy breathing and a vague shuffling sound.

Ireland dropped his cigarette and snatched up his lantern.

He made a surprising spring in the direction of the sound.

“Come here, damn you!” he shouted. “What the hell’s the game?”

And this time he had a glimpse of—something!

It rather shook him. It might have been a crouching man, or it might have been an animal. It was very dim, just touched by the outer glow of his lantern. But Ireland was no weakling. He made another surprising leap, one powerful hand outstretched. The queer shape sprang aside and was lost again in the fog.

“What the hell is it?” Ireland muttered.

Aware again of that unaccountable chill, he peered around him holding the lantern up. He had lost his bearings. Where the devil was the house? He made a rapid calculation, turned about and began to walk slowly forward. He walked for some time in this manner, till his outstretched hand touched a railing. He had crossed to the verge of the Common.

He was on the wrong side of the road.

His back to the railings, he set out again. He estimated that he was half-way across, when:

“Help!” came a thin, muffled scream—the voice of a woman. “For God’s sake help me!”

The cry came from right ahead. P.C. Ireland moved more rapidly, grinding his teeth together. He had not been wrong— there was something funny going on. It might be murder. And, his heart beating fast, and all his training urging “hurry—hurry!” he could only crawl along. By sheer good luck he bumped into the half open gate of the semicircular drive.

Evidently that cry had come from the house.

He moved forward more confidently—he was familiar with the route. Presently, a dim light glowed through the wet blanket of the fog. The door was open.

Ireland stumbled up the steps and found himself in a large lobby, brightly lighted. Fog streamed in behind him like the fetid breath of some monstrous dragon. There were pictures and statuettes; thick carpet on the floor; rugs and a wide staircase leading upwards. It was very warm. A coal fire had burned low in an open grate on one side of the lobby.

“Hello there!” he shouted. “I’m a police officer. Who called?”

There was no answer.

“Hi!” Ireland yelled at the top of his voice. “Is there anyone at home?”

He stood still, listening. A piece of coal dropped from the fire onto the tiled hearth. Ireland started. The house was silent—as silent as the fog-bound streets outside, and great waves of clammy mist were pouring in at the open door.

The constable put down his red lantern on a little coffee table, and then he began to look about him apprehensively. Then he walked to the foot of the stairs and trumpeted through cupped hands:

“Is there anyone there?”

Silence,

He was uncertain of his duty. Furthermore, this brightly lighted but apparently empty house was even more perturbing than the silence of the Common. A telephone stood on a ledge, not a yard from the coffee table. Ireland took up the instrument.

A momentary pause, during which he kept glancing apprehensively about him, and then:

“Wandsworth police station—urgent!” he said. “Police calling.”

CHAPTER

2

THE PORCELAIN

VENUS

That phenomenal fog which over a great part of Europe heralded and ushered in the New Year, was responsible for many things that were strange and many that were horrible. Amongst the latter the wreck of the Paris-Strasbourg express and the tragic crash of an Imperial Airways liner. The triumphant fog demon was responsible, also, for the present predicament of PC. Ireland.

A big car belonging to the Flying Squad of Scotland Yard, and provided with special fog lights, stood outside Wandsworth police station. And in the divisional-inspector’s office a conversation was taking place which, could PC. Ireland have heard it, would have made that intelligent officer realize the importance of his solitary vigil.

Divisional-inspector Watford was a grey-haired, distinguished looking man of military bearing. He sat behind a large desk looking alternately from one to the other of his two visitors. Of these, one, Chief-inspector Gallaho, of the C.I.D., was well known to every officer in the Metropolitan police force. A thick-set, clean-shaven man, of florid colouring and truculent expression, buttoned up in a blue overcoat and wearing a rather wide-brimmed bowler hat. He stood, resting one elbow upon the mantelpiece and watching the man who had come with him from Scotland Yard.

The latter, tall, lean, and of that dully dark complexion which tells of long residence in the tropics, wore a leather overcoat over a very shabby tweed suit. He was hatless, and his close-cropped, crisply waving grey hair excited the envy of the district inspector. His own hair was of that colour but had been deserting him for many years. The man in the leather overcoat was smoking a pipe, and restlessly walking up and down the office floor.

The divisional inspector was somewhat awed by his second visitor, who was none other than ex-Assistant Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Something very big was afoot.

Suddenly pulling up in front of the desk, Sir Denis took his pipe from between his teeth, and:

“Did you ever hear of Dr. Fu Manchu?” he jerked, fixing his keen eyes upon Watford.

“Certainly, sir,” said the latter, looking up in a startled way. “My predecessor in this division was actually concerned in the case, I believe, a number of years ago. For my own part”—he smiled slightly—”I have always regarded him as a sort of name—what you might term a trade-mark.”

“Trade-mark?” echoed Nayland Smith. “What do you mean? That there’s no such person?”

“Something of the kind, sir. I mean, isn’t Fu Manchu really the name for a sort of political organization, like the Mafia—or the Black Hand?”

Nayland Smith laughed shortly, and glanced at the man from Scotland Yard.

“He is chief of such an organization,” he replied, “but the organization itself has another name. There is a Dr. Fu Manchu—and Dr. Fu Manchu is in London. That’s why I’m here to-night.”

The inspector, stared hard for a moment, and then:

“Indeed, sir!” he murmured. “And may I take it that there’s some connection between this Fu Manchu and Professor Ambrose?”

“I don’t know,” Nayland Smith snapped, “but I intend to find out to-night. What can you tell me about the professor? He lives in your area.”

“He does, sir.” The inspector nodded. “He has a large house and studio on the North Side of the Common. We have had orders for several days to afford him special protection.”

Nayland Smith nodded, replacing his pipe between his teeth.

“Personally, I’ve never seen him, and I’ve never seen any of his work. He’s a bit outside my province. But I understand that although he’s an Italian by birth, he is a naturalized British subject. What he wants protection for, is beyond me. In fact, I should be glad to know, if anyone can tell me.”

Sir Denis glanced at the Scotland Yard man.

“Bring the inspector up-to-date,” he directed; “he’s evidently rather in the dark.”

Watford, resting his arms on the table, stared at the celebrated detective, enquiringly.

“Well, it’s like this,” Gallaho began in a low, rumbling voice. “If it means anything to you, I’ll begin by admitting that it means nothing to me. Professor Ambrose has been abroad for some time supervising the making of a new kind of statue at the Sevres works, outside Paris. It’s a life-sized figure, I understand, and more or less life coloured. Since the matter was brought to my notice, I have been looking up newspaper reports and it appears that the thing has created a bit of a sensation in artistic circles. Well, the professor took it down to an international exhibition held in Nice. This exhibition closed a week ago, and the figure, which is called ‘The Sleeping Venus’, was brought back to Paris, and from Paris to London.”

“Did the professor come along too?”

“Yes. And in Paris he asked for police protection.”

“What for?”

“Don’t ask me—I’m asking you. The French sent a man down to Boulogne on the train in which the thing was transported—then we took over on this side. There’s a man on duty outside his house now, isn’t there?”

“Yes. And the fog’s so dense it’s impossible to relieve him.”

Nayland Smith had begun to walk up and down again; but

now:

“He can be relieved when the other car arrives,” he jerked, glancing back over his shoulder. “I should have pushed straight on, but there is someone I am anxious to interrogate. I have arranged for him to be brought here.”

That the speaker was in a state of high nervous tension none could have failed to recognize. He was a man oppressed by the cloud of some dreadful doubt.

“That’s the story,” Gallaho added. “The professor and his statue arrived by Golden Arrow on Friday evening, just as the fog was beginning. He had two assistants, or workmen—foreigners, anyway, with him—and he had hired a small lorry. A plain-clothes man covered the proceedings, and the case containing the statue arrived at the professor’s house about nine o’clock on Friday night, I understand.” Then, unconsciously he echoed the ideas of Police Constable Ireland. “What the devil anybody wants to steal a statue for, is beyond me.”

“It’s so far beyond me,” Nayland Smith said rapidly, “that I am here to-night to inspect that work of art.”

Watford’s expression was pathetically blank.

“It doesn’t seem to mean anything,” he confessed.

“No”, said Gallaho, grimly, “it doesn’t. It will seem to mean less when I tell you that we had a wire from the Italian police this evening—advising us that Professor Ambrose had been seen in the garden of his villa in Capri yesterday morning.”

“What?”

“Sort that out,” growled Gallaho. “It looks as though we’ve been giving protection to the wrong man, doesn’t it?”

“Good Lord!” Watford’s face registered the blankest bewilderment. “Is it your idea, sir——?” he turned to Nayland Smith—”I mean, you don’t think that Professor Ambrose——”

“Well,” growled Gallaho—”go ahead.”

“No, of course, if he’s been seen alive! Good Lord!” But again he turned to Sir Denis, who was pacing more and more rapidly up and down the floor. “Where does Fu Manchu come in?”

“That’s a long story,” Smith replied, “and until I have interviewed the professor, or the person posing as the professor, I cannot be certain that he comes in at all.”

There was a rap on the door, and a uniformed constable came in.

“The other car has arrived, sir,” he reported to Watford, “and there’s a Mr. Preston here, asking for Sir Denis Nayland Smith.”

“Show him in,” said Watford.

A few moments later a young man came into the office bringing with him a whiff of the fog outside. He wore a heavy tweed overcoat and white muffler, and carried a soft hat. He had a fresh-coloured face and light blue, twinkling eyes—very humorous and good-natured. He sneezed several times, and smiled apologetically.

“My name is Nayland Smith,” said Sir Denis. “Won’t you please sit down?”

“Thank you, sir,” and Preston sat down. “It’s a devil of a night to bring a bloke out, but I’ve no doubt it’s very important.”

“It is,” Nayland Smith snapped. “I will detain you no longer than possible.”

Gallaho turned in his slow fashion and fixed his observant eyes upon the newcomer. Divisional-inspector Watford watched Nayland Smith.

“I understand that you were on duty,” the latter continued, “at Victoria on Friday when the Paris-London service known as the Golden Arrow, arrived?”

“I was, sir.”

“It is customary on this service to inspect baggage at Victoria?”

“It is.”

“One of the passengers was Professor Pietro Ambrose, accompanied by two servants or workmen, and having with him a large case or crate containing a statue. Did you open this case?”

“I did.” Preston’s merry eyes twinkled. He sneezed, blew his nose and smiled apologetically. “There was a detective on special duty who had travelled across with the professor, and who seemed anxious to get the job over. He suggested that examination was unnecessary. “But—” he grinned—”I wanted to peep at the statue. The professor was inclined to be peevish, but——”

“Describe the professor,” snapped Nayland Smith.

Preston stared in surprise for a moment, and then:

“He’s a tall old man, very stooped, with a white beard and moustache. Wears pince-nez, a funny black, continental cape coat, and a wide-brimmed black hat. He speaks with a slight Italian accent, and he’s very frightening.”

“Admirable thumb-nail sketch,” Nayland Smith commented, his penetrating stare fixed almost feverishly upon the speaker. “Thank God for a man who can see straight. Do you remember the colour of his eyes?”

Preston shook his head, suppressing a sneeze.

“He seemed half blind. He peered, keeping his eyes nearly closed.”

“Good. Go on. Statue.”

Preston released the pent-up sneeze. Then, grinning in his cheerful way:

“It was the devil of a game getting the lid off,” he went on.

“But I roped off a corner to keep the curious away, and had the thing opened. Whew!” he whistled. “I got a shock. The figure was packed in on a sort of rest—and there was a second glass lid. I had the shock of my life!”

“Why?” growled Gallaho.

“Well, I’d read about the ‘Sleeping Venus’ in the papers. But I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw. Really—it’s uncanny, and if I may say so, a bit shocking.”

“In what way?” jerked Nayland Smith.

“Well, it’s the figure of a beautiful girl, asleep. It isn’t shiny, as I expected, hearing that it was made of porcelain—it looks just like a living woman. And it’s coloured, to represent nature. I mean, finger nails and toe-nails and everything. By gosh!”

“Sounds worth seeing,” growled Gallaho.

Nayland Smith dived into some capacious pocket within the leather overcoat, and produced a large mounted photograph. He set it upright on the inspector’s desk, right under the lamp. Preston stood up and Gallaho approached the table. Wisps of fog floated about the room, competing for supremacy with the tobacco smoke from Nayland Smith’s briar. The photograph was that of a nude statue, such as Preston had described; an exquisite figure relaxed, as if in sleep.

“Do you recognize it?” jerked Nayland Smith.

Preston bent forward, peering closely.

“Yes,” he said, “That’s her—I mean, that’s it. At least, I think so.” He peered closer yet. “Damn it! I’m not so sure.”

“What difference do you notice?” Nayland Smith asked, eagerly.

“Well . . .” Preston hesitated. “I suppose it was the colouring that did it. But the statue was far more beautiful than this photograph.”

There came a rap on the door, and the uniformed constable came in.

“The third car has arrived, sir,” he reported to Watford, “and a Mr. Alan Sterling is here.”

CHAPTER

3

STERLING’S STORY

Alan Sterling burst into the room. He was a lean young man, marked by an intense virility. His features were too irregular to be termed handsome, but he had steadfast Scottish eyes, and one would have said that tenacity of purpose was his chief virtue. His skin was very tanned, and one might have mistaken him for a young Army officer. His topcoat flying open revealing a much-worn flannel suit, and, a soft hat held in hand, he was a man wrought-up to the verge of endurance. His haggard eyes turned from face to face. Then he saw Sir Denis, and sprang forward:

“Sir Denis!” he said, “Sir Denis——” and despite his Scottish name, a keen observer might have deduced from his intonation that Sterling was a citizen of the United States. “For God’s sake, tell me you have some news? Something— anything! I’m going mad!”

Nayland Smith grasped Sterling’s hand, and put his left arm around his shoulders.

“I am glad you’re here,” he said, quietly. “There is news, of a sort.”

“Thank God!”

“Its value remains to be tested.”

“You think she’s alive? You don’t think——?

“I am sure she’s alive, Sterling.”

The three men in the room watched silently, and sympathetically. Gallaho, alone, seemed to comprehend the inner significance of Sterling’s wild words.

“I must leave you for a moment,” Nayland Smith went on. “This is Divisional-inspector Watford, and Chief Detective-inspector Gallaho, of Scotland Yard. Give them any information in your possession. I shall not be many minutes.” He turned to Preston. “If you will give me five minutes’ conversation before you go,” he said “I shall be indebted.”

He went out with Preston. Sterling dropped into the chair which the latter had vacated, and ran his fingers through his disordered hair, looking from Gallaho to Watford.

“You must think I am mad,” he apologized. “But I’ve been through hell—just real hell!”

Gallaho nodded, slowly.

“I know something about it, sir,” he said, “and I can sympathize.

“But you don’t know Fu Manchu!” Sterling replied, wildly. “He’s a fiend—a demon—he bears a charmed life.”

“He must,” said Watford, watching the speaker. “It’s a good many years since he first came on the books, sir, and if as I understand he’s still going strong—he must be a bit of a superman.”

“He’s the Devil’s agent on earth,” said Sterling, bitterly. “I would give ten years of my life and any happiness that may be in store for me, to see that man dead!”

The door opened, and Nayland Smith came in.

“Give me the details quickly, Sterling,” he directed. “Action is what you want—and action is what I’m going to offer you.”

“Good enough, Sir Denis.” Sterling nodded. He was twisting his soft hat between his hands. It became apparent from moment to moment, how dangerously over-wrought he was. “Really—there’s absolutely nothing to tell you.”

“I disagree,” said Nayland Smith, quietly. “Odd facts pop up, if one reviews what seemed at the time to be meaningless. We have two very experienced police officers here and since they are now concerned in the case, I should be indebted if you would outline the facts of your unhappy experience.”

“Good enough. From the time you saw me off in Paris?”

“Yes.” Nayland Smith glanced at Watford and Gellaho. “Mr. Sterling,” he explained, “is engaged to the daughter of an old mutual friend, Dr. Petrie. Fleurette—that is her name—spent a great part of her life in the household of that Dr. Fu Manchu, whom you, Inspector Watford, seem disposed to regard as a myth.”

“Funny business in the south of France, some months ago,” Gallaho growled. “The French press hushed it up, but we’ve got all the dope at the Yard.”

“Sir Denis and I,” Sterling continued, “went to Paris with Dr. Petrie and his daughter, my fiancee. They were returning to Egypt—Dr. Petrie’s home is in Cairo. Sir Denis was compelled to hurry back to London, but I went on to Marseilles and saw them off in the Oxfordshire of the Bibby Line.”

“I only have the barest outline of the facts, sir,” Gallaho interrupted. “But may I ask if you went on board?”

“I was one of the last visitors to leave.”

“Then I take it, sir, you waved to the young lady as the ship was pulling out?”

“No,” Sterling replied, “I didn’t, as a matter of fact, Inspector. I left her in the cabin. She was very disturbed.”

“I quite understand.”

“Dr. Petrie was on the promenade deck as the ship pulled out, but Fleurette, I suppose, was in her cabin.”

“The point I was trying to get at, sir, was this,” Gallaho persisted, doggedly, whilst Nayland Smith, an appreciative look in his grey eyes, watched him. “How long elapsed between your saying good-bye to the young lady in her cabin, and the time the ship pulled out?”

“Not more than five minutes. I talked to the doctor—her father—on the deck, and actually left at the last moment.”

“Fleurette asked you to leave her?” jerked Nayland Smith.

“Yes. She was terribly keyed-up. She thought it would be easier if we said good-bye in the cabin. I rejoined her father on deck, and—”

“One moment, sir,” Galllaho’s growling voice interrupted again. “Which side of the deck were you on? The seaward side, or the land side.”

“The seaward side.”

“Then you have no idea who went ashore in the course of the next five minutes?”

“No. I am afraid I haven’t, sir.”

“That’s all right, sir. Go ahead.”

“I watched the Oxfordshire leave,” Sterling went on, “hoping that Fleurette would appear; but she didn’t. Then I went back to the hotel, had some lunch, and picked up the Riviera Express in the afternoon, returning to Paris. I was hoping for a message at the Hotel Meurice but there was none.”

“Did Petrie know you were staying at the Meurice?”

“No, but Fleurette did.”

“Where did you stay on the way out?”

“At the Chatham—a favourite pub of Petrie’s”

“Quite. Go on.”

“I dined, and spent the evening with some friends who lived in Paris, and when I returned to my hotel, there was still no message. I left for London this morning, or rather—since it’s well after midnight—yesterday morning. A radio message was waiting for me at Boulogne. It had been despatched on the Oxfordshire . . .” Sterling paused, running his fingers through his hair. . . . “It just told me that Fleurette was not on board; urged me to get in touch with you, Sir Denis, and finally said the doctor was hoping to be transferred to an incoming ship.”

“A chapter of misadventures,” Nayland Smith murmured. “You see, we were both inaccessible, temporarily. I have later news, however. Petrie has affected the transference. He has been put on to a Dutch liner, due into Marseilles to-night.”

The telephone bell rang. Inspector Watford took up the instrument on his table and:

“Yes,” he said, listened for a moment, and then: “Put him through to me here.”

He glanced at Nayland Smith.

“The constable on duty outside Professor Ambrose’s house,” he reported, a note of excitement discernible in his voice.

Some more moments of silence followed during which all watched the man at the desk. Smith smoked furiously. Sterling, haggard under his tan, glanced from face to face almost feverishly. Chief Detective-inspector Gallaho removed his bowler, which fitted very tightly, and replaced it at a slightly different angle. Then:

“Hello, yes—officer in charge speaking. What’s that? . . .” The vague percussion of a distant vocie manifested itself. “You say you are in the house? Hold on a moment.”

“The officer on duty heard a cry for help,” he explained;

“found his way through the fog to the house; the door was open, and he is now in the lobby. The house is deserted, he reports.”

“We are too late!” It was Nayland Smith’s voice. “He has tricked me again! Tell your man to stand by, Inspector. Gather up all the men available and pack them into the second car. Come on, Gallaho. Sterling, you join us!”

CHAPTER 4

PIETRO AMBROSO’S STUDIO

Even the powerful searchlights attached to the Flying Squad car failed to penetrate that phenomenal fog for more than a few yards. Progress was slow. To any vehicle not so equipped it would have been impossible. A constable familiar with the districts walked ahead, carrying a red lantern. A powerful beam from the leading car was directed upon this lantern, and so the journey went on.

P.C. Ireland in the lobby of Professor Ambrose’s house learned the lesson that silence and solitude can be more terrifying than the wildest riot. His instructions had been to close the door but to remain in the lobby. This he had done.

When he found himself alone in that house of mystery, the strangest promptings assailed his brain. He was not an imaginative man, but sheer common sense told him that something uncommonly horrible had taken place in the house of Professor Ambrose that night.

The fire was burning low in the grate. There were some wooden logs in an iron basket, and Ireland tossed two on the embers without quite knowing why he took that liberty. Red tape bound him. Furtively he watched the stairs which disappeared in shadows, above. He was a man of action; his instinct prompted him to explore this silent house. He had no authority to do so. His mere presence in the lobby—since he could not swear that the cry actually had come from the house—was a transgression. But in this, at least, he was covered; the divisional inspector had told him to stay there. How did they hope to reach him, he argued. They would probably get lost on the way.

Now that the fog was shut out, he began to miss it. The silence which seemed to speak and in which there were strange shapes, had been awful, out there, on the verge of the Common, but the silence of this lighted lobby was even more oppressive.

Always he watched the stair.

Mystery brooded on the dim landing, but no sound broke the stillness. He began to study his immediate surroundings. There were some very strange statuettes in the lobby—queer busts, and oddly distorted figures. The paintings, too, were of a sort to which he was unused. The entire appointments of the place came within the category which P.C. Ireland mentally condemned under the heading of “Chelsea”.

One of the logs which he had placed upon the fire, and which had just begun to ignite, fell into the hearth. He started, as though a shot had been fired.

“Damn!” he muttered, “this place is properly getting on my nerves.”

He rescued the log and tossed it back into place. A cigarette was indicated. He could get rid of it very quickly, if the inspector turned up in person, which he doubted. He discarded his oilskin cape, and produced a little yellow packet, selecting and lighting a cigarette almost lovingly. There was company in a cigarette when a man felt lonely and queer. Always, he watched the stair.

He had finished his cigarette and reluctantly tossed the stub into the fire which now was burning merrily, when the sharp note of a bell brought him to his feet at a bound. It was the door-bell. P.C. Ireland ran forward and threw the door open.

A man in a leather overcoat, a grey-haired man, with piercing steely-blue eyes, stood staring at him.

“Constable Ireland?” he rapped.

There was unmistakable authority about the new arrival, and:

“Yes, sir,” Ireland replied.

Nayland Smith walked into the lobby, followed by Inspector Gallaho, a figure familiar to every officer in the force. There was a third man, a young, very haggard looking man. But Ireland barely noticed him. The presence of Gallaho told him that in some way which might prove to be profitable to himself, he had become involved in a case of major importance. Fog swept into the lobby. He stood to attention, recognizing several familiar faces, of brother constables, peering in out of the darkness.

“You heard a cry for help?” Nayland Smith went on. His mode of speech reminded the constable of a distant machine gun. “You were then at the gate, I take it?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?” growled Gallaho.

“There was someone moving about in the fog, sir. When I challenged him, he didn’t answer—he just disappeared. At last, I got a glimpse of him, or it, or whatever it was.”

“What do you mean by ‘it’?” Gallaho demanded. “If you saw something—you can describe it.”

“Well, sir, it might have been a man crouching down on his hands and knees—you know what the fog is like—”

‘You mean,” said Nayland Smith, “that you endeavoured to capture this thing—or person—who declined to answer your challenge?”

“Thank you, sir; yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Did you touch him or it?” Gallaho demanded.

“No, sir. But I lost my bearings trying to grab him. I found myself nearly on the other side of the road by the Common, when I heard the cry.”

“Describe this cry,” snapped Nayland Smith.

“It was a woman’s voice, sir; very dim through the fog. And the words were ‘Help! For God’s sake help me!’ I thought it came from this house. I groped my way back, and when I reached the door, found it open. I’ve been here in the lobby, ever since.”

“You say it was a woman’s voice,” Sterling broke in. “Did it sound like a young woman or an old woman?”

“Judging from what I could make out through the fog, sir, I should say, a young woman.”

Sterling clutched his hair distractedly. He felt that madness was not far off.

Gallaho turned to Sir Denis.

“It’s up to you, sir. Do you want the house searched? According to regulations, we are not entitled to do it.”

His tone was ironical.

“Search it from cellar to attic,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Post a man at each end of the drive and split the others up.”

“Good enough, sir.” Gallaho returned to the open doorway. “How many of you have got lanterns—torches are no good in this blasted fog.”

“Two,” came a muffled voice, “and Ireland has a third.”

“The two men with lanterns are to stand at the ends of the drive. Anybody coming out—get him. Jump to it. The rest of you, come in.”

Four constables came crowding into the lobby.

“Isn’t there a garage?” snapped Nayland Smith.

“Yes, sir,” Ireland replied. “It opens on to the left side of the drive-in. But nothing has gone out of it tonight.”

“Have you any idea where the studio is?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been on day duty here. It’s behind the garage—but probably, there’s a way through from the house.”

“Join me, Sterling,” said Nayland Smith. “Gallaho, allot a man to each of the four floors. Close the door again, and post a man in charge here, in the lobby.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Come with me, Ireland. You say the studio lies in this direction?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come on, Sterling.”

They crossed the lobby, approaching a door on the left of the ascending staircase. Chief Detective-inspector Gallaho was re-adjusting his bowler. Police constables were noisily clattering upstairs, their torches flashing as they ran. The door proved to open on to a narrow corridor.

“Find the switch,” snapped Nayland Smith.

Ireland found it. And in the new illumination, queer paintings assailed their senses from the walls. There was a door at the further end of the passage. They opened it and found themselves in some dark, lofty place.

“There’s a switch, somewhere,” Nayland Smith muttered.

“I’ve found it, sir.”

The studio of Pietro Ambrose became illuminated.

To one not familiar with the Modern Art movement it must have resembled a nightmare. Those familiar with the phases of the celebrated sculptor could have explained that his mode of expression, which, for a time—indeed, for many years—had conformed to the school with which the name of Epstein is associated, had, latterly, swung back to the early Greek tradition—the photographic simplicity of Praxiteles. All sorts of figures and groups surrounded the investigators. That deplorable untidiness which seems to be inseparable from genius characterised the studio.

There were one or two earlier examples of ceramic experiments—strange figures in porcelain resembling primitive goddesses. But Nayland Smith’s entire attention was focussed upon a long, narrow box, very stoutly built, which lay upon the floor. In form, it bore an unpleasant resemblance to a coffin. Its lid was propped against the wall near by, and a sheet of plate glass, obviously designed to fit inside the crate, lay upon the floor. Quantities of cotton wool were scattered about. Nayland Smith bent and peered at the receptacle.

“This is the thing described by Preston,” he said.

“Look——” He pointed. “There are the rests which he mentioned—not unlike those used in ancient Egypt for the repose of the mummy.”

He stared all around the studio.

“I know what you’re thinking, Sir Denis,” said Sterling, hoarsely.

“Where is the porcelain Venus?”

There was a momentary silence, and then:

“That Customs officer,” came Gallaho’s growling voice—he had just come in—”didn’t seem to be quite sure that what he saw was the porcelain Venus.”

“I quite agree, Inspector,” said Nayland Smith.

His manner, his voice, indicated intense nervous tension. From an inner pocket he extracted a leather case, and from the leather case, a lens. He bent, peering down into the crate designed to contain the celebrated work of art.

Gallaho watched him silently, respectfully. Sterling, fists clenched, knew that sanity itself depended upon what Nayland Smith should find. Sir Denis completed his examination of the box and then turned his attention to the wooden rests designed to support the figure. This quest, also, seemed to yield no result. Dim voices sounded about the house. The search party was busy. Demon Fog had penetrated to the studio. He could be seen moving in sinister coils about the electric lights. Finally, Sir Denis addressed himself to the cotton-wool packing, and suddenly:

“Ah!” he cried. “By God! I was right. Sterling! I was right....”

“What, Sir Denis? For heaven’s sake, tell me, what is it you have found?”

Nayland Smith moved to a bench littered with fragments of plaster, wire frames and other odds and ends, and laid something tenderly down immediately under an overhanging light.

“A wavy, Titian red hair,” he said, in a low voice. “Study it closely, Sterling. You know the colour and texture of Fleurette’s hair better than I do.”

“Sir Denis . . .”

Sterling was electrified.

“Don’t despair, Sterling. I suggest that the beautiful figure which Preston saw in his crate, was not constructed at the Sevres factory to the design of Professor Ambrose, but was . . . Fleurette.”

CHAPTER

5

P.O. IRELAND IS

UNEASY

“This blasted fog is blotting everything out again,” said Nayland Smith irritably: “already I can’t see the river. By dusk it will be as bad as ever.”

He turned from the window and stared across the room in the direction of a leather couch upon which his visitor was extended. Alan Sterling, his keen, tanned face very haggard, summoned up a smile.

A log fire burned in the open hearth. Red leather was the predominant note in the furniture, and there were some fine, strong oil paintings on the wall. The big lofty room was under-furnished, but homely and habitable. One might have supposed its appointments to have been dictated by somebody long resident in the East, and therefore used to scanty furniture. Some of the paintings were of Eastern subjects, and there was some good jade on top of a bookcase which seemed to be filled with works of a medico-legal character, with a sprinkling of Orientalism.

“You know, Sir Denis,” said Alan Sterling, sitting upright, “you are like a tonic to me. I am keen enough about my own job, which happens to be botany; but if I may say so, for an ex-Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police to select a residence right in Whitehall—next door, as it were, to Scotland Yard—indicates an even greater keenness.”

Nayland Smith glanced swiftly at the speaker. He knew the tension under which Sterling was labouring; how good it was to distract his mind from those torturing queries:—Where is she? Is she alive, or dead?

“You are quite right,” he replied, quietly. “I have been through the sort of fires which are burning you now Sterling, and I have always found that work was the best ointment for the burns. It was fate, I suppose, that made me an officer of Indian police. The gods—whoever the gods may be—had selected me as an opponent for——”

“Dr. Fu Manchu,” said Sterling.

He brushed his hair back from his forehead: it was a gesture of distraction, almost of despair. Nayland Smith crossed to the buffet and from a tobacco jar which stood there, began to load his briar.

“Dr. Fu Manchu. Yes. I know I have failed, Sterling, because the man still lives. But he has failed, too; because, thank God I have succeeded in checking him, step by step.”

“I know you have, Sir Denis. No other man in the world could have done what you have done.”

“That’s open to question.” Nayland Smith stuffed broad cut mixture into the cracked bowl; “but the point is that if I can’t throw him—I can hold him.” He struck a match. “He’s here, Sterling. He’s here, in London.”

Alan Sterling clenched his fists and Nayland Smith watched him, as he lighted his pipe. Passivity threatened Sterling, that Eastern resignation with which Smith was all too familiar. It must be combated: he must revivify the man;

awaken the fiery spirit which he had good reason to know burned in him.

“Let’s review the facts,” he went on, briskly, his pipe now well alight. He began to walk up and down the Persian carpet. “You will find, Sterling, that they are not as unfavourable as they seem. To arrange them in some sort of order: (a)” —he raised a lean forefinger—”Dr. Fu Manchu, hunted by the police of Europe, succeeds in reaching England disguised as Professor Ambrose. You and I know that he is an illusionist unrivalled since the death of the late Harry Houdini. Very well; (6)”—he raised his second finger—”Fleurette Petrie, incidentally, your fiancee, was smuggled off the Oxfordshire by means of some trick which we may never solve, and taken to Nice: (c)”—he raised his third finger—”doubtless in that state of trance which Dr. Fu Manchu is able to induce, she travelled from Nice to London as the ‘Sleeping Venus’ of Professor Ambrose, and duly arrived at the house on the North Side of the Common.”

“She is dead,” Sterling groaned. “They have killed her.”

“I emphatically deny that she is dead,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Definitely, she was not dead last night,”

“What do you mean, Sir Denis?”

A pathetic light of hope had sprung into the haggard eyes of Sterling.

“A dead girl—foully murdered—her spirit silently appealing to a stolid London policeman.”

“But the appeal was not silent. Ireland heard the cry for help.”

“Exactly—therefore the girl was not dead.”

Alan Sterling, his hands clutching his knees, watched the speaker as, of old, supplicants might have watched the Cumsen Oracle.

“It’s an old move of the master schemer; I recognize it. Whilst he holds Fleurette, he holds the winning card. His own safety is bound up in hers. Don’t you see that? Let us proceed to (d).” He held up his little finger: “Pietro Ambrose is either a dupe or an accomplice of Fu Manchu—it doesn’t matter much one way or the other. But the desertion of his entire household is significant. We have the evidence of PC. Ireland—an excellent officer—that no car approached or left the house prior to the time of our arrival. Consider this fact. It has extraordinary significance.”

“I am trying to think,” Sterling murmured.

“Keep on trying, and see if your thoughts run parallel with mine. Look at the blasted fog!”—he jerked his arm towards the window. “There’s going to be another blanket to-night. Have you grasped what I mean?”

“Not entirely.”

“They can’t have taken her far, Sterling. Ireland and his opposite number have been on that point all night and all day”

“My God!” Sterling sprang up, his eyes shining. “You’re right, Sir Denis. I see what you mean.”

“Dr. Fu Manchu, for the second time in his career, is on the run. You don’t know, Sterling, but I have clipped his wings pretty severely. I have cut him off from many of his associates. I am getting very near to the heart of the mystery. He is financially embarrassed. He’s a hunted man. Fleurette is his last hope. Don’t imagine for one moment that she is dead. Dead— she would be useless; alive, she’s a triumph for the doctor.”

A muffled bell rang. Nayland Smith crossed to a side table and took up a telephone.

“Yes,” he said; “put him through to me, please.”

He turned around to Sterling.

“Police constable Waterlow,” he said, “on duty outside Professor Ambrose’s house. Hello!—yes?” He spoke into the mouthpiece. “Here . . .”

Police constable Waterlow proved to be speaking from a call-box somewhere in Brixton.

“After P.O. Ireland relieved me, sir, and I went off duty, I began thinking. I don’t know if I should have reported it—my orders were a bit vague-like. But talking it over with the missis, I came to the conclusion that you ought to know, sir. Divisional-inspector Watford gave me permission to speak to you, and gave me your number.”

“Carry on, Constable. I’m all attention.”

Well, sir, the inspector didn’t seem to think there was anything in it. But he said that you might like to know. There was a funeral next door to Professor Ambrose’s house this after

noon——

“What!”

From a ground-floor flat, sir, in the next house. I can’t tell you much about it, because I don’t know. But it was a Miss Demuras—has been living there for about a month, I understand. I never thought of mentioning it to Ireland when he took over from me, but my missis says, ‘This is a murder case, and here’s a funeral next door: ring up the inspector.’ I did it, and he said he had instructions to put me straight through to you.”

“Who was in charge of the funeral, Constable?”

Alan Sterling sprang to his feet; fists clenched, quivering, he stood watching Nayland Smith at the telephone.

“The London Necropolis Company, sir.”

“At what time did it take place?”

“At four o’clock this afternoon.”

“Were there any followers?”

“Only one, sir. A foreign gentleman.”

“You don’t know who was attending the patient?”

“Yes, sir; as it happens, I do. A Dr. Norton, who lives on South Side. He was my own doctor, sir, when I lived in Clapham.”

“Thanks, Constable. I wish you had reported this earlier. But it’s not your fault.”

Nayland Smith turned to Sterling.

“Don’t look like that,” he pleaded. “It may mean nothing or it may be a red herring. But whilst I pick up one or two things that I want in the other room, get Gallaho at Scotland Yard, and ask him to join us here with a fast car.”

CHAPTER

6

DR. NORTON’S PATIENT

Dr. Norton was surprised, somewhat annoyed and obviously perturbed by the invasion of Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Chief-inspector Gallaho and Alan Sterling. His consultations were finished, and he had hastily changed into evening kit. Clearly, he had a dinner appointment. He was a man approaching middle age, of sanguine complexion—West Country, as Nayland Smith recognized at a glance, and clever without being brilliant.

As his three visitors were shown into the upstairs study and made themselves known to Dr. Norton, Nayland Smith’s behaviour was somewhat peculiar. Watched by the others, he walked around the room inspecting the bookcases, the pictures, and even the window, smiling in a manner that was almost sad.

“This is the first time I have had the pleasure of meeting you, Sir Denis,” said Dr. Norton, “but we have a mutual friend.”

“I know,” Nayland Smith turned and stared at him. “You bought this practice from Petrie.”

“I’ve stuck it ever since, although it isn’t particularly profitable.”

Nayland Smith nodded and glanced at Gallaho. The celebrated detective-inspector, on this occasion, had removed his bowler, revealing a close-cropped head, and greying, dark hair.

“You must have observed, Inspector, during your great experience of human life, that things move in circles.”

“I have often noticed it, sir.”

“Many years have elapsed, and much history has been made since Dr. Fu Manchu first visited England. But it was in this very room—” he turned to Dr. Norton—”that the Mandarin Fu Manchu made his second attempt on my life.”

“What!”

Dr. Norton could not conceal his astonishment. “I know something, but very little, from Petrie, of the queer matters to which you refer, Sir Denis, but I hadn’t recognized——”

“You hadn’t recognized the existence of the circle,” snapped Nayland Smith. “No, I suppose we have to live many lives before we do. It’s a law, but it always strikes me as odd when I come in contact with it. It was here, in this very room, that Petrie, from whom you bought this practice, came to an understanding with the beautiful woman who is now his wife. It was here that Dr. Fu Manchu endeavoured to remove me by means of the Zayat Kiss. Ah——” he looked about him, and then pulled his pipe and his pouch from the pocket of his tweed jacket. “The circle narrows, I begin to hope again.”

Dr. Norton’s interest in his dinner engagement was evidently weakening. The magnetic personality of Nayland Smith was beginning to dominate.

“Of course, Sir Denis, one has heard of Fu Manchu. I haven’t seen Petrie since he settled in Cairo; but odd things crop up in the Press from time to time. Am I to understand that you gentlemen have called this evening with regard to this mythical monster?”

“That’s it,” said Gallaho; “the circle to which Sir Denis referred has roped you in now. Doctor.”

“I am afraid I don’t understand.”

“Naturally,” rapped Nayland Smith.

“May I suggest whiskies and soda,” said the physician. “It doesn’t run to cocktails.”

“It’s a suggestion,” Gallaho replied, “that doesn’t leave me unmoved.”

Dr. Norton dispensed drinks for his unexpected visitors, and then:

“My recognition of the fact,” said Nayland Smith, “that fate had brought me back to Petrie’s old quarters, with their many associations, rather took me off the track. The point of our visit is this, Doctor——” He fixed his penetrating eyes upon their host: ‘You have been attending a Miss Demuras, who lived on the North Side of the Common——”

‘Yes.” Dr. Norton visibly started. “I regret to say that she died yesterday, and was buried to-day.”

“Without recourse to your case-book,” Nayland Smith went on, “what roughly were the symptoms which led to her end?”

Dr. Norton passed his hand over his face, and then brushed his fair moustache. He was considering his reply, but finally:

“It was a case of pernicious anaemia,” he replied. “Miss Demuras had resided in the tropics. She was practically alone in the world, except for a brother—with whom she requested me to communicate, and who appeared in time to take charge of the funeral arrangements.”

“Pernicious anaemia,” Nayland Smith murmured. “It’s a rather obscure thing, isn’t it, Doctor?”

“As its name implies, and I have used its popular name, it is—pernicious. It’s difficult to combat. She was in an advanced stage when I first attended her.”

“She occupied a ground-floor flat?”

“Yes.”

“Had she any personal servants?”

“No; it was a service flat.”

“I see. When did she actually die, doctor?”

“Just before dawn yesterday. A popular hour for death, Sir Denis.”

“I know. There was a nurse in attendance, of course.”

“Yes. A very experienced woman from the local Institute.”

“She called you, I take it, to the patient, fearing that she was in extremis?”

“Yes. It was a painful surprise. I hadn’t expected it. . .”

“Quite. But her sudden death was consistent with her symptoms?”

“Undoubtedly. It happens that way in certain cases.”

“Had you taken any other opinion?”

“Yes. I called in Havelock Wade only last week.”

Gallaho was following the conversation eagerly, his sullen-looking eyes turning from speaker to speaker. Sterling, sitting in an armchair, had abandoned hope of mastering his intense anxiety. He didn’t know, and couldn’t grasp, what this inquiry portended. But wholly, horribly, his mind was filled with the idea that Fleurette was dead and had been burried.

“Forgive me if I seem to pry into professional secrets,” Nayland Smith went on; “but would you mind describing your late patient.

“Not at all,” Dr, Norton replied. He began again to brush his moustache. His expression, Nayland Smith decided, was that of an unhappy man. “She was, I think, a Eurasian. I don’t know very much of the East; I have never been there. But she was some kind of half-caste—there was Eastern blood in her. Her skin was of a curiously dull, ivory colour. I may as well say, Sir Denis, that she was a woman of great beauty. This uniform ivory hue of her skin was fascinating. To what extent this characteristic was due to heredity, and to what extent to her ailment, I never entirely determined. . . .”

CHAPTER 7

LASH MARKS

“I quite understand, Sir Denis,” Dr. Norton said. “Please regard any information I can give you as yours. I venture to believe you are wrong in supposing that Miss Demuras was an associate of this group, to which you refer, but I am entirely at your disposal. I will admit here and now, that I was growing infatuated with my patient. Her death, which I had not anticipated, was a severe blow.”

Nayland Smith walked up and down, tugging at the lobe of his ear, glancing at the titles of the books, staring about the room; then:

“I suggest that Miss Demuras’s eyes were long, narrow and very beautiful?”

“Very beautiful.”

“Of a most unusual green colour, at times glittering like emeralds?”

“It occurs to me that you were acquainted with her?” said Dr. Norton, staring hard at the speaker.

“It occurs to me,” Nayland Smith replied grimly, glancing at Alan Sterling, “that both Mr. Sterling and I from time to time have come in contact with Miss Demuras! Do you agree, Sterling?”

The young American botanist fixed a pathetically eager gaze upon the face of Nayland Smith; it was taut, grim, a fighting glint in deep-set eyes.

“My God! The net’s closing in on us again!” he whispered. “You seem to have an extra sense, Sir Denis, where this man and his people are concerned. It’s uncanny . . . but it may be a coincidence.”

Inspector Gallaho had resumed his favourite pose. He was leaning on the mantleshelf, moving his thin-lipped mouth as if chewing phantom gum. He was out of his depth, but nothing in his expression revealed the fact.

“I suggest that Miss Demuras was tall, and very slender?” Nayland Smith continued. “She had exquisite hands, slenderfingered and indolent—patrician hands with long, narrow, almond nails, highly varnished?”

“You are right. I see you knew her.”

“Her voice was very soothing—almost hypnotic?”

Dr. Norton started violently, and stood up.

“This is either clairvoyance,” he declared, “or you knew her better than I knew her. The implication is that Demuras is not her real name. Don’t tell me that she was a criminal. . . .”

“There still remains a margin of doubt,” said Nayland Smith, rapidly. He suddenly turned and stared at Sterling. “I have just recalled something that you told me—something that you witnessed in Ste. Claire de la Roche. . . . When the Chinese punish, they punish severely. There’s just a chance.”

He twisted about again, facing Dr. Norton. But the latter had construed the meaning of his words. His sanguine colour had ebbed; he was become pale.

“Ah!” cried Nayland Smith. “I see that you understand me!”

Norton nodded, and dropped back into his chair.

“There is no further room for doubt,” he acknowledged. “Whoever my patient was, clearly you knew her. Throughout the time that I attended her, nearly two weeks, she defiantly declined to permit me to make a detailed examination. By which I mean that she objected to exposing her shoulders. In this she was adamant. My curiosity was keenly aroused. She had no other physical reticences. Indeed her mode of dress and her carriage, might almost be described as provocative. But she would never permit me to apply my stethoscope to her back. By means of a trick, as I frankly confess, and which need not be described, I succeeded in obtaining a glimpse of her bare shoulders. She was unaware of this. . . .”

He paused, looking from face to face. He was beginning to regain his naturally fresh colour. He was beginning to realize that his beautiful patient had not been what she seemed.

“There were great weals on her delicate skin—healed, but the scars were still visible. At some time, and not so long ago, she had been lashed—mercilessly lashed.”

He clenched his fists, staring up at Nayland Smith.

The latter nodded, and resumed his restless promenade of the carpet; then:

“Do you understand, Sterling?” he snapped.

Sterling was up—his restlessness was feverish.

“I understand that Fah Lo Suee is dead—that she died alone, in that flat.”

“Dead!”

“Sir Denis!” Dr. Norton stood up. “I have been frank with you: be equally frank with me. Who was this woman?”

“I don’t know her real name,” Nayland Smith replied, “but she is known as Fah Lo Suee. She is the daughter of Dr. Fu Manchu.”

“What!”

“And it was he, her father, who exercising his parental prerogative left the scars to which you refer.”

“My God!” groaned Dr. Norton—”the fiend!—the merciless fiend! A delicate, tenderly nurtured woman!—and an ailing woman at that!”

“Possibly,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Delicately nurtured— yes. I am anxious, doctor, to protect your professional reputation. Your certificate was given in good faith. There is no man on the Register who would not have done the same in the circumstances. Of this I assure you. But——” he paused—”I must have a glimpse of the body of your patient.”

“Why?”

“I think it can be arranged, sir,” growled Gallaho. “I put a few inquiries through this evening after Mr. Sterling ‘phoned me at the Yard, and I found that the deceased lady has been buried in a family vault in the old part of the Catholic Cemetery.”

“That is correct,” Dr. Norton interrupted. “Her only surviving relative, a brother, Manoel Demuras, with whom she had requested the nurse to get into communication, came from Lisbon, as I understand, and the somewhat hurried funeral was due to his time being limited.”

“Can you describe this man?” snapped Nayland Smith.

“His ugliness was almost as noticeable as his sister’s beauty. The yellow streak was very marked.”

“You mean he might almost have passed for a Chinaman?”

“Not a Chinaman. . . .” Dr. Norton stroked his moustache and stared up at the ceiling. “But perhaps a native of Burma—or at least, as I should picture a native of Burma to look.”

“There was Eastern blood of some sort in the Demurases,” growled Gallaho. “They settled in London nearly a century ago, and at one time had a very big business as importers of Madeira wine. The firm has been extinct for twenty years. But there’s a family vault in the old Catholic Cemetery, and that’s where the body lies.”

“I see.”

And thereupon Nayland Smith did a singular thing. . . .

Crossing the room, he jerked a curtain aside, and threw up the window!

All watched him in mute astonishment. Waves of fog crept in, like the tentacles of some shadowy octopus. He was staring down in the direction of the street. He turned, reclosed the window and readjusted the curtain.

“Forgive me, Doctor,” he said, smiling; and that rare smile, breaking through the grim mask, almost resembled the smile of an embarrassed schoolboy. “A liberty, I admit. But I had a sudden idea—and I was right.”

“What?” growled Gallaho, ceasing the chewing operation, and shooting out his jaw.

“We’ve been followed. Somebody is watching the house. . . .”

CHAPTER 8

FOG IN HIGH PLACES

That phenomenal fog was getting its grip upon London again when the party set out. But in the specially equipped car, fair headway was made. At the mysterious, deserted house of Professor Ambrose, Gallaho and Sterling were dropped. The detective had certain important inquiries to make there relative to the accessibility of the adjoining ground-floor flat from the studio of Pietro Ambrose. Nayland Smith went on alone.

He had established contact by telephone from Dr. Norton’s house with the man he was going to see. He knew this man, his lack of imagination, his oblique views of life. He knew that the task before him was no easy one. But he had attempted and achieved tasks that were harder.

The slow progress of the car was all but unendurable. Nayland Smith snapped his fingers irritably, peering out first from one window, then from another. In the brightly lighted West End streets better going was made, and at last the car pulled up before a gloomy, stone-porched house a few paces from Berkeley Square.

In a coldly forbidding library, a man sat behind a vast writing-table. Its appointments were frigidly correct. His white tie, for he was in evening dress, was a miracle of correctness. He did not stand up as Sir Denis was shown in by a butler whose proper occupation was that of an undertaker.

“Ah! Smith.” He nodded and pointed to an armchair.

“Just in time.” He glanced at a large marble clock. “I only have five minutes.”

Nayland Smith’s nod was equally curt.

“Good evening, Sir Harold,” he returned, and sat down in the hard, leather-covered chair.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s relations with His Majesty’s Secretary for Home Affairs had never been cordial. Indeed it is doubtful if Sir Harold Sims, in the whole course of his life, had ever known either friendship or love. Nayland Smith, staring at the melancholy face with its habitual expression of shocked surprise, thought that Sir Harold’s scanty hair bore a certain resemblance to red tape chopped up. From a pocket of his tweed suit, Nayland Smith took out several documents, opened them, glanced at them, and then, standing up, placed them on the large, green blotting pad before Sir Harold Sims.

“You know,” said the latter, adjusting a pair of spectacles, and glancing down at the papers, “your methods have always been too fantastic for me, Smith. I mean, they were when you were associated with the Criminal Investigation Department. This thing, which you are asking me to do, is irregular— wholly irregular.”

Nayland Smith returned to the armchair. A man of vision and dynamic energy, he always experienced, in the proximity of Sir Harold Sims, an all but unconquerable urge to pick up His Majesty’s Secretary and to shake him until his teeth rattled.

“There are times, Sir Harold,” he said, quietly, “when one can afford to dispense with formalities. In this case, your consent is necessary; hence my intrusion.”

“You know—” Sims was scanning the documents suspiciously—”this bugbear of yours, this obsession with the person known as Fu Manchu, has created a lot of unpleasant feeling.”

This was no more than a statement of fact. Sir Denis’s retirement from the Metropolitan Police had coincided fairly closely with the appointment of Sir Harold to the portfolio which he still held.

“You may term it an obsession if you like—perhaps it is. But you are fully aware, Sir Harold, of the extent of my authority. I am not alone in this obsession. The most dangerous man living in the world to-day is here, in England, and likely to slip through our fingers. Any delay is dangerous.”

Sir Harold nodded, setting one document aside and beginning to read another.

“I shall be bothered by the Roman Catholic authorities,” he murmured; “you know how troublesome they can be. If you could give me two or three days, in order that the matter might be regularised. . . .”

“It is to-night, or never,” snapped Nayland Smith, suddenly standing up.

“Really. . . .”

Sir Harold began to shake his head again.

“It is perhaps unfair of me to remind you that I can bring pressure to bear.”

Sir Harold looked up.

“You are not suggesting that you would bother the Prime Minister with this trivial but complicated affair?” he asked pathetically.

I am suggesting nothing. I only ask for your signature. I should not be here if the matter were as trivial as you suppose.”

“Really—really, Smith. . . .”

The light-blue eyes peering through spectacle lens were caught and arrested by the gaze of eyes deep-set, steely and penetrating. Sir Harold hated this man’s driving power— hated his hectoring manner, the force of a personality which brooked no denial. . . .

Five minutes later the police car was stealing through a mist, yellow, stifling, which closed in remorselessly, throttling London.

CHAPTER 9

THE TOMB OF THE DEMURASES

“You are sure there is no other means of access to the cemetery?”

“Quite, sir.”

The quavering voice of the old attendant was in harmony with his venerable but wretched appearance. He seemed to belong to the clammy mist; to the phantom monuments which peered through it. He might have been an exhalation from one of the ancient tombs. His straggling grey beard, his watery, nearly sightless eyes, his rusty black garb. A mental vision of Fleurette appeared before Alan Sterling—young, tall, divinely vigorous, an exquisite figure of health and beauty; yet perhaps she lay here, stricken down inscrutably in the bloom and fullness of spring, whilst such shadowy, unhappy beings as this old mortuary keeper survived, sadly watching each fallen bud returning to earth, our common mother, who gives us life, in whose arms we sleep.

“I’ve got men at both gates, sir,” Gallaho growled, “and two more patrolling. Anybody suspicious, they have orders to hold. A rather queer thing has been reported: may have no bearing on the case, but——”

“What?” Nayland Smith asked.

“A small head-stone has been stolen!”

“A small head-stone?”

“Yes, Sir Denis. From a child’s grave. Seems a useless sort of theft, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly not!” he snapped. “I’m glad you mentioned this, Inspector.”

He nodded to the old man.

A dim light shone out from the door of the lodge. It was difficult to imagine the domestic life of this strange creature whose home was amongst sepulchres; all but impossible to believe that he knew anything of human happiness; that joy had ever visited that ghastly habitation.

“Mr. Roberts?”

A young man wearing a dark, waisted overcoat an a muffler conceived in Eton colours, stepped languidly forward out of veiling mists. He wore a soft black hat of most fashionable shape; his small, aristocratic features registered intense boredom. From a pocket of his overcoat he produced a number of documents, and handed them to the old man, gingerly, as if offering a fish to a seal.

“Everything is in order,” he said; “you need not trouble to look them over.”

“There’s no need to waste time,” growled Gallaho. “Let’s have the key.” He raised his voice. “Dorchester!” he shouted.

A uniformed constable appeared, carrying a leather bag, as:

“I suppose it’s all right,” quivered the old mortuary keeper, looking down blindly at the papers in his hand. “But I shall have to enter it all up, you know.”

“You can do that while we’re on the job,” said Gallaho. “The keys.”

When, presently, led by a constable carrying a red lantern they proceeded in silence along a narrow path around which ghostly monuments clustered, it might have been noted, save that the light was poor, that Mr. Roberts, Sir Harold Sims’ representative, looked unusually pale. To the left they turned, along another avenue of tombs, and then to the right again, presently penetrating to the oldest part of the cemetery. Grey and awesome, fronted by sentinel cypress trees, ill-nourished and drooping, a building resembling a small chapel loomed out of the fog. There was a little grassy forecourt fronted by iron railings, and a stained glass window right and left of a massive teak door intricately studded with iron nails. A constable in plain clothes was standing there.

“This is the Demuras vault, sir,” he reported.

The company pulled up and stood for a moment looking at the building. Despite the chill of the night, Alan Sterling became aware of the fact that perspiration was trickling down his ribs. He glanced at Gallaho who held a bunch of keys in his hand, one separated from the others. The pugnacious face of the detective registered no emotion whatever. Nayland Smith turned to the plain clothes officer, and:

“There may be someone hiding among the monuments,” he said, sharply. “You have seen nothing?”

“No, sir.”

“If you see or hear anything, while we are inside—sing out, and do your best to make a capture.”

“Very good, sir; you can leave it to me.”

“Go ahead, Gallaho.”

Gallaho opened the little gate, which was not locked, and advanced up three steps to the massive teak door. He inserted the key in the lock and turned it. It was very stiff; it creaked dismally, but responded—and the detective pushed the door open. . . .

When at last the party stood in the vault of the Demuras, dimly lighted by two police lamps and a red lantern, the fog had entered behind them, touching every man with phantom fingers. The dweller amongst the tombs arrived, belated, coming down the stone steps pantingly, and seeming a fitting occupant of this ghastly place.

“I understand,” snapped Nayland Smith, “that this is the one we want.” He pointed, then turned to Mr. Roberts. “Is it quite in accordance with the wishes of the Home Office that I should open this shell?”

Mr. Roberts drew a handkerchief from an inner pocket and delicately wiped his forehead. He had removed his black hat.

“Quite all right, Sir Denis. This is really rather distressing.”

“I am sorry, but much is at stake.”

Constable Dorchester came forward. He had discarded his helmet, revealing a closely cropped head of brilliantly red and vigorously upstanding hair. His hazel eyes glittered excitedly.

“Shall I start, sir?”

“Yes, carry on . . .”

Inspector Gallaho, twirling his wide-brimmed bowler in stubby muscular hands, chewed phantom gum. The old sexton stood at the foot of the steps in an attitude which might have been that of prayer. Alan Sterling turned aside, looking anywhere but at the new and brightly polished sarcophagus which had been removed from its niche and which might contain . . .

A cracked bell in the mortuary chapel dimly chimed the hour.

“Do you mind if I wait outside?” said Mr. Roberts. “The fog seems to be settling in this place. It’s following us in—look— it’s coming down the steps in waves.”

“Quite alright,” growled Gallaho; “everything is in order, sir.”

Mr. Roberts ascended the steps, brushing almost hastily past the ancient warden who stood head bowed, at their foot.

The squeak of the screws was harrowing. Long trailers of mist wavered fantastically in the dim opening. Generations of Demurases seemed to stir in their happy vineyards and to look down upon the intruders. It was a desecration of their peace—Nayland Smith knew it. By what means, he was unable to guess, but by some means, Dr. Fu Manchu had secured access to this mausoleum.

“Do you mind lending me a hand, sir?”

Constable Dorchester, the handyman of the party, addressed Alan Sterling. The latter turned, clenched his teeth, and:

“O.K.” he replied. “How can I help?”

“Just get hold of that end, sir, and ease it a bit. I’ll get hold of this.”

“Right.”

Nayland Smith seemed to be listening for sounds from above. The watcher of the dead, hands clasped, was apparently praying. Chief-inspector Gallaho, from time to time, jerked out words of advice, and then resumed his phantom chewing.

The lid was removed. Sterling dropped back, raising his arms to his eyes.

“Steady!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Keep your grip, Sterling.”

“May God forgive them, whoever they were,” came the sepulchral voice of the old sexton.

The leaden shell had been sawn open and its top removed. . . .

“Who lies there?” Sterling whispered: “who is it?”

None answered. Complete silence claimed the tomb of the Demurases, until:

“Look!” said Nayland Smith . . .

CHAPTER 10

THE MARK OF KALI

“Shall l lock the door?” Inspector Gallaho inquired, jangling the keys.

Nayland Smith had been last to leave the tomb of the Demurases. That great fog which with brief intervals was destined to prevail for many days, already had claimed this city of the dead. They were a phantom company enveloped in a mist which might have been smoke of the Ultimate Valley. Alan Sterling was restraining an intense excitement.

Mr. Roberts, the Home Office representative, loomed up out of darkness.

“I understand that the shell was empty, Sir Denis?”

Nayland Smith came down the three steps.

“Not empty” he replied. “It was weighted with a head-stone stolen from near by!”

The old guardian of sepulchres stood by the open door. Bewilderment had lent that grey and sorrowful face a haunted expression, which might have belonged to the spirit of some early Demuras disturbed in the mausoleum.

Thereupon, Nayland Smith did a very odd thing. He stooped and began to remove his shoes!

“I say, Sir Denis——”

An upraised hand checked Alan Sterling at those first few words.

“Shut up, Sterling!” Sir Denis snapped., “Listen, everybody.” He discarded his leather coat. “I am going back down there.”

“Alone?” Gallaho asked.

“Yes.”

“Good God!”

“As soon as I’ve slipped in, partly close the door. Sing out in a loud voice, ‘Here are the keys, Sir Denis’, or anything you like to convey the idea that I am with you. Understand?”

“Yes,” Gallaho answered gruffly. “But if you suspect there’s anybody hidden there, it’s rather a mad move, isn’t it, sir?”

“I can think of no other. Don’t really lock the door,” said Nayland Smith in a low voice. “Turn the key, but leave the door slightly ajar——”

“Very good, sir.”

Soft-footed, Nayland Smith re-entered the tomb, turned and signalled with his hand. Gallaho began to close the heavy teak door.

“This is ghastly,” Mr. Roberts muttered. “What does he expect to find?”

Gallaho rettled the keys, and:

“Shall I lock up, Sir Denis?” he said in his deep, gruff voice, paused a moment, and then: “Very good, sir. You go ahead; I’ll follow.”

He shot the lock noisily. The door was not more than an inch ajar.

“Silence!” he whispered. “Everybody stand by.”

Beyond that ghostly door, guarded by sentinel cypresses, Nayland Smith was creeping down the stone steps, silently, stealthily. Gallaho had played his part well. All too familiar with red tape, Smith knew that short of sand-bagging the man from the Home Office, to have attempted to disturb the repose of another Demuras would have resulted in an adjournment of the investigation. Alone, and uninterrupted, he must convince himself that that queer impression of something which lived and moved in an ancient shell in a stone niche, must be confirmed or disproved by himself alone.

He reached the vault without having made a sound. His feet were chilled by the stone paving. Imagination charged the fog-laden atmosphere with odours of mortal decay. The darkness was intense. Looking up the steps down which he had come, no more than a vague blur indicated the presence of the stained glass windows. On hands and knees he moved cautiously, right, and then crouched down against the wall and directly beneath the niche which contained the mortal remains of Isobel Demuras—or so the inscription stated.

Complete silence prevailed for fully a minute. He could detect no repetition of that furtive movement which he had heard, or imagined he had heard. Turning slowly and cautiously, he looked up ...

He saw a thing which for a moment touched him with awe.

The stone recess above had become vaguely illuminated, as if some spiritual light were thrown out from the shell of Isobel Demuras!

There came a vague shuffling—the same which he had detected when, last to leave, he had paused for a moment at the foot of the steps. Then ... a ray of light shot across the vault, touching the further wall, where it rested upon a brass plate. The inscription upon this he remembered to have read:

here lay Tristan Demuras, founder of the English branch of the family.

The noise above became louder. To it was added a squeaking sound. The ray disappeared from the opposite wall, but the niche above became more brightly illuminated. Nayland Smith on hands and knees crept to the corner of the vault. He had not vacated his former position more than three seconds when light poured down upon the pavement. He was just outside its radius.

The light disappeared; complete darkness fell. There came a renewed and a louder creaking, then a soft thud upon the floor beside him.

In that instant Nayland Smith sprang. . . .

“Gallaho!” he shouted. “Sterling!”

The teak door was opened with a crash. Gallaho shining his torch ahead of him came cluttering down the steps, Sterling close behind.

“The light. . . here, Gallaho—quick!” Nayland Smith spoke hoarsely. “Get his knife!”

“My God!”

Sterling sprang forward.

A lithe yellow man, his eyes on fire with venomous hatred, was struggling in Nayland Smith’s grasp! Sir Denis had him by the throat, but with his left hand he clutched the man’s lean, muscular wrist. A knife, having a short, curved blade, was grasped in the sinewy fingers. For all Nayland Smith’s efforts, its point was creeping nearer and nearer, driven by the maniacal strength which animated the tigerish body. The left arm of the yellow man was thrown around his captor, seeking to drag him down upon the quivering blade . . .

Gallaho twisted the weapon from the man’s grasp, and Nayland Smith stood up, breathing heavily. Two constables had joined them now, their lamps reinforcing the illumination.

“Who’s got bracelets?” growled Gallaho.

None of the party had handcuffs, but Constable Dorchester, of the spiky red hair, grabbed the prisoner and ran him up the steps.

Outside, held by Dorchester and another, his back against the teak door, he grinned fiendishly, but uttered no word whilst Nayland Smith resumed his shoes and put on his leather overcoat. Gallaho shone the light of a torch on to the face of the captive.

The man wore a soft shirt and no tie; a cheap flannel suit;

his ankles were bare, and his lean feet were encased in rubber-soled shoes. His teeth gleamed in that fixed grin of hatred; his sunken eyes held a reddish smouldering fire. Disordered oily black hair hung down over his forehead. He was panting and wet with perspiration.

Nayland Smith raised the damp hair from the man’s brow, revealing a small mark upon parchment-like skin.

“The mark of Kali,” he said. “I thought so ... One of the Doctor’s religious assassins.”

“What ever is the meaning of all this?” Mr. Roberts demanded in a high, quavering voice.

Nayland Smith turned in the speaker’s direction, so that from Sterling’s point of view, the keen, angular profile was clearly visible against the light of a lamp held by one of the constables.

“It means,” Sir Denis began . . .

Something hummed like a giant insect past Sterling’s ear, missed Nayland Smith by less than an inch as he sprang back, fists clenched, glittered evilly in the lantern light, and . . . the man whose brow was branded with the mark of Kali gurgled, and became limp in the grip of his two big captors.

A bloody foam appeared upon his lips.

He was pinned to the door by a long, narrow-bladed knife, which had completely pierced his throat and had penetrated nearly an inch into the teak against which he stood!

CHAPTER 11

SAM PAK OF LIMEHOUSE

Nayland Smith walked up and down his study in Whitehall. Heavy blue curtains were drawn before the windows. Alan Sterling from the depths of an armchair watched him gloomily.

“I am satisfied that the other shells in that vault were occupied by deceased Demurases,” said Sir Denis. “How long the group has had access to that mausoleum, is something we are unlikely ever to know. But doubtless it has served other purposes in the past. The supposed sarcophagus of Isobel Demuras, as I showed you, was no more than a trick box or hiding-place, having a spy-hole by means of which one concealed there could watch what was going on below. It is certain that I have been covered closely for some days past. We were followed to Dr. Norton’s house this evening, and later I was followed to the Home Secretary’s. To make assurance doubly sure, the Doctor planted a spy in the mausoleum.”

He paused, knocking out his pipe in the hearth.

“That knife was meant for me, Sterling,” he said grimly, “and Dr. Fu Manchu’s thugs rarely miss.”

“It was an act of Providence—the protection of heaven!”

“I agree. The reign of the Mandarin Fu Manchu is drawing to a close. The omens are against him. He smuggled Fleurette from Ambrose’s studio to the cemetery. The device seems elaborate; but consider the difficulty of transporting an insensible girl!”

Sterling jumped up, a lean but athletic figure, clenching and unclenching his sunburned hands.

“Insensible—yes!” he groaned. “How do we know she isn’t— dead... .”

“Because all the evidence points the other way. Dr. Fu Manchu is a good gambler; he would never throw away an ace. Consider the sheer brilliance of his asking police protection for Professor Ambrose—that is, for himself!”

“He had not anticipated that it would be continued in London.”

“Possibly not.”

He pressed a bell. A tall, gaunt manservant came in. A leathery quality in his complexion indicated that he had known tropical suns; his face was expressionless as that of a Sioux brave; his small eyes conveyed nothing.

“Set out a cold buffet in the dining-room, Fay,” Nayland Smith directed.

Fay, seeming to divine by means of some extra sense that this completed his instructions, slightly inclined his close-cropped head and went out as silently as he had come in.

The telephone bell rang. Sir Denis took up the instrument, and:

“Yes,” he said; “please show him up at once.” He replaced the receiver. “Gallaho is downstairs. I hope this means that the deceased thug has been identified.”

Sterling’s restlessness was feverish.

“This waiting,” he muttered, “is damnably trying.”

Nayland Smith unscrewed the top of a tobacco jar.

“Get out your pipe,” he snapped. “We’ll have a drink when Gallaho arrives. You don’t have to be jumpy—there’s work ahead, and I’m counting on you.”

Sterling nodded, clenched his white teeth, and plunged into a pocket of his suit for his pipe. At which moment, a bell rang. Sir Denis opened the door, crossed the lobby and faced Chief detective-inspector Gallaho at the very moment that the silent Fay admitted him. He could not wait for the Scotland Yard man to cross the threshold, but:

“Who was he?” he snapped; “do you know?”

“Got his history, sir, such as it is.”

“Good.”

The fog had penetrated to the lift-shaft of the building;

wisps floated out on the landing and aleady were penetrating the lobby. When the inspector had come in:

“Have you had any dinner?” snapped Nayland Smith.

“No, sir. I haven’t had time to think about eating.”

“I thought not. There’s a cold buffet in the dining-room, as I gather we may be late to-night. Am I right?”

“Quite probably, sir.”

“Excellent.”

Sterling had charged his pipe from the tobacco jar, and now Nayland Smith pulled out a tangle of broad-cut mixture and began stuffing it into the hot bowl of his own cracked briar.

“Help yourself to whisky and soda, Inspector,” he said; “it’s on the side table there. Please go ahead.”

Gallaho nodded, took a glass and helped himself to a modest drink, then:

“The dead man has been identified by Detective-sergeant Pether, ofK Division,” he went on. “What Pether doesn’t know about the Asiatics isn’t worth knowing. Can I help you, sir?” indicating the decanter.

“Thanks, Inspector—and one for Mr. Sterling while you’re there.”

Gallaho, officiating as butler, continued:

“His real nationality, Pether doesn’t know, but he’s probably Burmese. He always passed for a lascar at Sam Pak’s——”

“Sam Pak’s?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“You’re a bit out of touch with Limehouse, sir,” said Gallaho, handing a tumbler to Sir Denis and one to Sterling. “But Sam Pak’s is a small restaurant frequented by seamen from ships docking in the river. It’s generally known that opium and hashish can be got there. But as its use seems to be confined to the Asiatics, we have never moved. There have been no complaints. Well—” he took a sip of his whisky and soda—”It seems that the dead man was known as ‘Charlie’— apparently he had no other name; and sometimes he used to act as a waiter for Sam Pak.”

“Highly important,” murmured Nayland Smith, beginning to walk up and down. “A very strong link. Gallaho. The doctor’s on the run. His available servants are few, and he’s back in his old haunts. Very significant. Could you give me a brief character sketch of this Sam Pak?”

“I can try, sir. Pether knows him better than I do, but I didn’t bother to bring him along. Let me see . . .” He chewed imaginary gum, staring up at the ceiling, then: “Sam Pak is a small, old, very wrinkled Chinaman. He might be any age up to, say, a hundred. He has a voice like a tin whistle, and speaks pidgin English.”

“Stop!” snapped Nayland Smith. “Detective-sergeant Fletcher of K Division retired some years ago didn’t he?”

“He did, sir,” Gallaho replied, rather startled. “He’s landlord of the George and Dragon in Commercial Road. I happen to know him well.”

“Get through to the George and Dragon,” Nayland Smith directed. “Find out if Fletcher is home, and if so ask him to come on the line.”

“Very good, sir. . . . Now?”

“You might as well; I want to think. You can use the telephone in the lobby.”

“Very good, sir.”

Inspector Gallaho went out, carrying his tumbler, and:

“You know,” said Nayland Smith, turning and staring at Sterling, “I have an idea that I know Sam Pak. I believe he is a certain John Ki, who disappeared from Chinatown some years ago. He was one of Fu Manchu’s people, Sterling. I should like to be sure.”

Sterling had lighted his pipe and had dropped back into the big armchair, but his mood was far from restful. He sat there, clutching the arms, watching Sir Denis pacing up and down the carpet. Suddenly:

“On your word of honour, Sir Denis,” he said, “do you think she’s alive?”

Nayland Smith turned and fixed an unflinching gaze upon the speaker.

“On my word of honour,” he replied, “I do.”

“Thank God!” Sterling murmured. “You’re a rock of refuge!”

“He’s well on the run,” Sir Denis continued, grimly, the cold grey-blue eyes alight with suppressed excitement. “He has doubled back to his riverside haunts. He’s finding it difficult to raise funds. The police of Europe are on his tail. He’s a cornered rat, and dangerous. The Mandarin Prince has become the common criminal. I wonder if it’s to be his fate, Sterling, that having threatened the safety of nations, he is to fall. That would be poetic justice, indeed. In the past, he has shown them scant mercy.”

Sterling watched the speaker fascinatedly. He radiated vitality; the force within him vibrated through one’s nerves. Only a man who had known Dr. Fu Manchu, as Sterling knew him, could have doubted that the Chinaman’s fate was sealed. But knowing, and appreciating, the genius of the great Eastern physician, Sterling, with optimism crying out for recognition in his heart, was forced to admit that the betting was even. Sir Denis Nayland Smith would have been an impossible adversary for any normal man to pit himself against, but Dr. Fu Manchu was not a normal man. He was a superman, Satan materialized, and one equipped with knowledge which few had ever achieved: a cold, dominating intellect, untrammelled by fleshly ties, a great mind unbound by laws of man.

The silence which fell was only broken by faint ringings of a telephone bell and the distant rumbling of the voice of Inspector Gallaho. Nayland Smith walked up and down. Sterling smoked, and clutched the arms of the chair. Then, Gallaho, still carrying his glass which now was empty, returned.

“I’ve found him, sir,” he reported, “and by great good luck, got him on the ‘phone.”

CHAPTER

12

LONDON RIVER

A constable patrolling the Embankment pulled up and stared suspiciously at a pair of dangerous-looking loafers, possibly sailors, of a type rarely seen in the Westminster area; very dark-skinned fellows wearing greasy caps and smoking cigarettes. To that lurching walk that belongs to the sea, a certain furtive quality seemed to have been added. Some of these foreign sailormen had other jobs when they were ashore, and the officer didn’t like the way in which this pair kept staring up towards a certain lighted window in a block of expensive residential flats.

A strong westerly breeze had sprung up, driving banks of fog before it, so that in certain areas, temporarily, the night was clear enough. Such a lucidity prevailed now in this part of Westminster. The face of Big Ben was clearly visible, no great distance away, and the many lighted windows of New Scotland Yard. But whereas most of the windows in the block of flats were shaded, that one which seemed to interest the pair of watchers, a large, bay window, had neither curtains nor blinds drawn.

From time to time a man, apparently tall and thin, who might have been in evening dress, appeared in this window. One would have supposed that he was pacing up and down the room to which it belonged. He was smoking a pipe.

Yes, the officer was certain, it was this window or this man, or both, that the loafers were watching. He determined upon action. Quickly retracing his steps:

“What are you two up to?” He demanded, gruffly.

The shorter of the pair started and turned. He had deep-set, very bright eyes, and a truculence of manner which the constable regarded as suspicious. His companion grasped his arm, and:

“Leitak sa’ida,” he said.

The officer could not be expected to know. that the man had wished him good-night in Arabic.

The pair moved off slouchingly.

“Don’t hang about here,” the constable continued, following them up. “Gei a move on.”

“Khatrak!” replied the taller man.

The constable watched them lurching away, unaware that the word meant “good-bye”. They did not loiter again, but went on their way. The officer, retracing his steps, glanced up at the lighted window. The tall man smoking a pipe became visible for a moment, then turned and disappeared.

As the two foreign sailormen whose language was presumably Arabic proceeded on their way:—

“Comedy interlude with policeman?” snapped the taller. “Do you think Fay looks the part?”

“I should never have suspected it wasn’t you up there, Sir Denis,” the other replied. “But, except the constable, did you notice anyone watching?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“A man apparently asleep on the stone steps nearly opposite my window, with a tray of matches on the pavement before him.”

“Good God! Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then we’ve thrown them off this time?”

“I think so, Sterling. We must be careful how we join Gallaho and Forester. This is a case where a return of the fog would be welcome. Is there anyone behind?”

Sterling glanced back.

“No, not near enough to count.”

“Good. This way, then.”

He gripped Sterling suddenly, pulling him aside.

“Duck under here! Now, over the wall!”

A moment later they stood at the foot of some stone steps. A dinghy lay there, occupied by one rower, a man who wore the uniform of the River Police. As the pair appeared:

“Careful how you come aboard, sir,” he said; “those lower steps are very slimy.”

However, they embarked without accident, and ten minutes later were inside the dingy little office of the River Police depot. Chief Detective-inspector Gallaho was leaning against the mantelpiece chewing phantom gum, his bowler worn at that angle made famous by Earl Beatty in the Navy. Forester, a thick-set man who looked more like a Mercantile skipper than a police officer, stood up as the hang-dog couple entered.

“Do you think you’ve covered your tracks, sir?” he asked, addressing Sir Denis.

“I hope so,” snapped the latter. “But anyway, we have to go on now. Too much valuable time has been wasted already.”

Big Ben chimed the hour. A high pall of fog still overhung the city, and the booming notes of the big clock seemed to come from almost directly overhead.

“Eleven o’clock. Is it fairly clear down-river, Inspector?”

“It was clearing when I came up, sir,” Forester replied. “A lot of shipping is on the move, now. Some of them have been locked up for twenty-four hours. But I’m told it’s still very thick in the Channel.”

“Sam Pak’s I take it, does not close early?”

Inspector Forester laughed.

“To the best of my knowledge it never closes,” he replied. “Cigarettes and drinks, of a sort, can be had there all night by anyone in the know.”

“Habitual law-breakers?” Nayland Smith suggested.

Exactly, sir. But he’s a safety-valve.”

“I quite understand. No news from Fletcher?”

“No, sir. I have been expecting it for the last half-hour.”

Nayland Smith glanced at a gun-metal watch strapped to his wrist, and:

“I’ll give him five minutes,” he said, rapidly. “Then, we’ll start. The fog may develop at any moment if this breeze drops. You can arrange for any news to be passed down?”

“Certainly, sir.”

At which moment, the ‘phone bell rang.

“Hello!” the Inspector’s voice was eager. “Yes, speaking. He’s here—hold on.” He turned. “Fletcher on the line, sir.”

Nayland Smith took the instrument from the Inspector’s hand, and:

“Hello, that you, Fletcher?” he asked.

“Fletcher speaking, sir, and it’s like old times to hear your voice. I’ve been out of touch with Limehouse for some years, but I was really glad of to-night’s job. I dropped into this man’s place to buy a packet of cigarettes, and managed to stay long enough to get a glimpse of the old boy.”

“Well?”

“You’re right, sir. It’s John Ki, formerly keeper of the Joy Shop, now known as Sam Pak.”

“Good.” Nayland Smith’s eyes shone like burnished steel in the mulatto mask of his face. “You didn’t arouse his suspicions, of course?”

“Certainly not, sir. I didn’t even speak to him—and he couldn’t be expected to remember me.”

“Good enough, Fletcher. You can go home now. I’ll get in touch with you to-morrow.”

He replaced the receiver and turned.

“That seems to clinch it,” growled Gallaho. “With any luck we ought to make a capture to-night.”

Nayland Smith was walking up and down the linoleum covered floor, twitching at the lobe of his left ear.

“Give me some brief idea of your arrangements, Gallaho,” he snapped.

“Well . . .” Gallaho closed one eye and cocked the other in the direction of the ceiling: “Inspector Forester, here, has got a cutter tucked away within easy call, with a crew of six. They’re watching the place from the river side. Nobody can get out that way. I sent eight men, picked them myself, who are used to this sort of work. You won’t see a sign of them when you arrive, but they’ll see you, sir.”

“Anybody inside?” snapped Nayland Smith.

“Yes,” said Gallaho, grinning. “Detective-sergeant Murphy. Fast asleep in the ‘club-room’. He’s the most wonderful ‘drunk’ in the C.I.D.”

“Good. It’s time we started.”

chaptee 13 A TONGUE OF FIRE

the port of london had suddenly come to life. A big liner, fogbound for a day and a night, was bellowing her warning to all whom it might concern as she crept slowly from her dock into the stream. Tugs towing strings of barges congested the waterway. The shipping area was a blaze of light, humming with human activity. That narrow stretch of waterfront behind which lies the ever-dwindling area of Chinatown, alone seemed to remain undisturbed under these new conditions.

Here, a lazy tide lapped muddily at ancient piles upholding pier and wharf and other crazy structures of a sort long since condemned and demolished in more up-to-date districts. The River Police launch lay just outside a moored barge. From this point of vantage the look-out had a nearly unobstructed view of a sort of wooden excrescence which jutted out from a neighbouring building.

It overhung a patch of mud, covered at high tide, into which it seemed to threaten at any moment to fall. It boasted two windows: one looking straight across the river to the Surrey bank and the other facing up-stream. There was a light in this latter window, and the River Police were watching it, curiously.

From time to time a bent figure moved past it—a queer, shuffling figure. For fully ten minutes, however, this figure had not re-appeared.

Each warning of the big steamer reached them more faintly. One of the police crew, who had been a ship’s steward, shivered slightly; picturing the warmly lighted cabins, the well-ordered life on board the out-going liner; sniffed in imagination the hot, desert air of Egypt; glimpsed the palm groves of Colombo, and wondered why he had ever joined the police. A tow-boat passed very close to them, creating a temporary swell in which they rocked and rolled violently. The breeze carried some of her smoke across their bows, making them blink and cough. When, suddenly:

“There it is again,” muttered the ex-steward.

“What are you talking about?” growled the officer in charge, heartily fed-up with this monotonous duty.

“That blue light, Sergeant.”

“What blue light?”

“Nearly over the roof of Sam Pak’s. It’s the fourth time I’ve seen it.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“No. It’s just gone again.”

“You’re a bit barmy, aren’t you?”

“I’ve seen it too, Sergeant,” came another voice. “Not tonight for the first time, either.”

“What?”

“I first saw it early last week. I was with the four o’clock boat. It sort of dances in the air, high up over the roof.”

“That’s right,” said the other man.

“Something like a gasworks,” the sergeant suggested facetiously.

“That’s it, Sergeant, only not so bright, and it doesn’t stay long. Just comes and goes.”

The tide lapped and sucked and whispered all around them. The deep voice of the liner moaned down-stream. Metal crashed on metal in the dockyard, and the glare of a million lights created the illusion of a tent stretched overhead; for that high pall still floated above London, angrily, as if waiting to settle again at the first opportunity.

A bent figure moved slowly past the lighted window.

“Tell me if you see it again,” said the sergeant.

Silence fell upon the watchers . . .

“Hello!—who’s this?” the sergeant growled.

The creaking of oars proclaimed itself, growing ever nearer. Hidden in shadows, the River Police watched the approach of a small rowboat. The rower had all the appearance of a typical waterman. He had two passengers.

“What’s this?” muttered the sergeant. “I believe he’s making for Sam Pak’s . . . Ssh! Quiet!”

The crew of six watched eagerly; any break in the monotony of their duty was welcome. The sergeant’s prediction was fulfilled. The boat was pulled in close to rotting piles which at some time had supported a sort of jetty. At the margin of mud and shingle, the two passengers disembarked, making a perilous way along slippery wooden girders until they reached the sloping strand. The crunch of their heavy boots was clearly audible; and as the boatman pulled away, the two mounted a wooden stair and disappeared into a dark opening.

“H’m!” said the sergeant. “Of course, they may not be going to Sam’s. People are often ferried across here. It’s a short cut to the ‘bus route. Hello!”

He stood suddenly upright in the bows of the launch, and might have been seen staring upward at a point high above the roof of Sam Pak’s establishment.

“There you are, Sergeant. . . that’s what I meant!”

A curious, blue light played there against the pall above. At one moment it resembled a serpent’s tongue, or rather, the fiery tongue of a dragon; then it would change and become a number of little, darting tongues; suddenly, it disappeared altogether.

“Well—I’m damned!” said the sergeant. “That’s a very queer thing. Where the devil can it come from?”

CHAPTER 14

AT SAM PAK’S

The exterior of Sam Pak’s presented the appearance of a small and unattractive Chinese restaurant, where also provisions might be purchased and taken away.

As one entered, there was a counter on the left; the air was informed with an odour of Bombay duck and other Chinese delicacies. Tea might be purchased or drunk on the establishment, for there were two or three cane-topped tables on the other side of the shop. Although midnight had come and gone, lights were still burning in this shop, and a very fat woman of incalculable nationality was playing some variety of patience behind the counter, and smoking cigarettes continuously.

A curious, spicy smell, mingling with that of the provisions indicated that joss-sticks might be purchased here; rice, also, and various kinds of cold eatables, suitable for immediate consumption. Excepting the fat lady, there was no one else in the shop at the moment that Nayland Smith and Sterling entered.

They had been well schooled by a detective attached to K Division, and Nayland Smith, taking the lead, leaned on the counter, and:

“Cigarette please, Lucky Strike,” he said, his accent and intonation that of one not very familiar with English.

The lady behind the counter hesitated for a moment, and then put another card in place. Laying down those which she still held in her hand, she reached back, abstracted a packet of the desired cigarettes from a shelf, and tossed it down before the customer, without so much as glancing at him.

He laid a ten shilling note near to her hand.

“Damn thirsty,” he continued; “got a good drink?”

Piercing black eyes were raised instantaneously. Both men recognized that at that moment they were being submitted to a scrutiny as searching as an X ray examination. Those gimlet eyes were lowered again. The woman took the note, dropping it into a wooden bowl, and from the bowl extracted silver change.

“Who says you get a drink here?” she muttered.

“All sailors know Sam Pak keeps good beer,” Nayland Smith replied rapidly, in that Shanghai vernacular which sometimes passes for Chinese.

The woman smiled; her entire expression changed. She looked up, replying in English.

“How you know Chinese?” she asked.

“Live for ten years in Shanghai.”

“You want beer or whisky?”

“Beer.”

The woman pushed a little paper pad forward across the counter, and handed the speaker a pencil.

The paper was headed “Sailors’ Club.”

“Please, your name here,” she said; then, glancing at Sterling, “your friend too.”

Nayland Smith shrugged his shoulders as if helplessly, and then, laboriously traced out some characters to which no expert alive could possibly have attached any significance or meaning.

“Name of ship, please, here.”

A stubby finger, with a very dirty nail, rested upon a dotted line on the form. They had come prepared for this, and Nayland Smith wrote, using block letters in the wrong place “s.s. Pelican”.

“Now you, please.”

The beady eyes were fixed on Sterling. He wrote what looked like “John Lubba” and put two pencil dots under Smith’s inscription—s.s. Pelican.

“One shilling each,” said the woman, extracting a two shilling piece from the change and dropping the coin into the wooden bowl. “You members now for one week.”

She pressed a bell-button which stood upon the counter near to her hand, and a door at the end of the little shop was opened.

Nayland Smith, carefully counting his change, replaced it in a pocket of his greasy trousers, and turned as a very slender Chinese boy who walked with so marked a stoop as to appear deformed, came into the shop. He wore an ill-fitting suit and a red muffler, but, incongruously, a small, black Chinese cap upon his head. Perhaps, however, the most sin gular item of his make-up, and that which first struck one’s attention, was an eye-patch which obscured his left eye, lending his small, pale yellow features a strangely sinister appearance. To this odd figure the stout receptionist, tearing off the form from the top of the block, passed the credentials of the two new members, saying rapidly in Chinese:

“For the files.”

Sterling did not understand, but Nayland Smith did; and he was satisfied. They were accepted.

The one-eyed Chinese boy signalled that they should follow, and they proceeded along a short, narrow passage to the “club”. This was a fair-sized room, the atmosphere of which was all but suffocating. Ventilation there was none. A velvet-covered divan, indescribably greasy and filthy, ran along the whole of one wall, tables being set before it at intervals. At the farther end of the place was a bar, and, on the left, cheap wicker chairs and tables. The centre of the floor was moderately clear. It was uncarpeted and some pretence had been made, at some time, to polish the deal planks.

The company present was not without interest.

At a side table, two Chinamen were playing Mah jong, a game harmless enough, but interdict in Limehouse. At another table, a party, one of whom was a white girl, played fan-tan, also illegal in the Chinese quarter. The players spoke little, being absorbed in their games.

Although the fog had cleared from the streets of Limehouse and from the river, one might have supposed that this stuffy room had succeeded in capturing a considerable section of it. Visibility was poor. Tobacco smoke predominated in the “club”, but with it other scents were mingled. Half a dozen nondescripts were drinking and talking—mostly, they drank beer. One visitor seated alone at the end of the divan, elbows resting on the table before him, glared sullenly into space. He had a shock of dark hair, and his complexion was carrot-coloured. His prominent nose was particularly eloquent.

“Gimme another drink, Sam,” he kept demanding. “Gimme another drink, Sam.”

Save for two chairs set before the table upon which the thirsty man rested his elbows, there was no visible accommodation in the “Sailors’ Club”.

“Go ahead!” Nayland Smith whispered in Sterling’s ear. “Grab those two chairs.”

No one took the slightest notice of their entrance, and walking towards the bar, they seated themselves in the two vacant chairs. The one-eyed boy stood by for orders.

“Two pints beer,” said Nayland Smith in his queer broken English.

The boy went to the bar to give the order. And the barman to whom he gave it was quite easily the outstanding personality in the room. He was a small Chinaman, resembling nothing so much as an animated mummy. His chin nearly met his nose, for apparently he was quite toothless; and there was not an inch of his skin, nor a visible part of his bald head, which was not intricately traced with wrinkles. His eyes, owing to the puckering of the skin, were almost invisible, and his hands when they appeared from behind the counter resembled the talons of some large bird.

“Gimme another drink, Sam,” hiccupped the man on the divan. “Never mind those blokes—gi’ me another drink.”

One elbow slipped and his head fell right forward on the table.

“O.K. sir,” came a low whisper. “Detective-sergeant Murphy. Something funny going on here to-night, sir.”

Nayland Smith turned to the aged being behind the bar.

“Give him another drink,” he said rapidly in Chinese. “Charge me. He is better asleep than awake.”

The incredible features of Sam Pak drew themselves up in a ghastly contortion which may have been a smile.

“It is good,” he whistled in Chinese—”a sleeping fool may pass for a wise man.”

The one-eyed boy was bending over the counter, placing the mugs on a tray. Sterling watched, and suddenly:

“Sir Denis,” he whispered—”look! That isn’t a boy’s figure.”

“Gimme a drink,” blurted Murphy; then, in a whisper: “It isn’t a boy, sir—it’s a girl...”

CHAPTER

15

A LIGHTED WINDOW

Forester of the River Police had taken charge of the party covering Sam Pak’s from the Thames. His presence, which was unexpected, had infused a new spirit into the enterprise. The fact that he was accompanied by the celebrated Inspector Gallaho of the C.I.D., caused a tense but respectful silence to fall upon the party. Everyone knew now that some very important case lay behind this monotonous duty.

A sort of rumour hitherto submerged, now ran magically from man to man, the presence of the famous detective lending it wings.

“If s the Fu Manchu business—I told you so. . .”

“He’s been dead for years. . . .”

“If you ever have the bad luck to meet him, you’ll . . .”

“Silence on board!” said Forester, in a low but authoritative voice. “This isn’t a picnic: you’re on duty. Listen—isn’t one of you an able-bodied seaman?”

The ex-steward spoke up.

“I was an A.B., sir, before I became a steward.”

“You’re the man I want. You see that lighted window—the one that belongs to Sam Pak’s?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It isn’t more than three feet below the roof and there’s plenty of foothold. Do you think you could climb it?”

There was a moment of silence, and then:

“To the roof, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I could try. There wouldn’t be much risk if the tide was in, but I’m not so sure of the mud.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“I’ll take a chance.”

“Good man,” growled Gallaho. “Inspector Forester has brought a rope ladder. We want you to carry a line up to make the ladder fast. The idea is to get a look in at that lighted window. Bear it in mind. But for the love of Mike, don’t make any row. We are taking chances.”

Merton, the ex-sailor, rather thought that he was the member of the party who was taking chances. He was endeavouring to find suitable words in which to express this idea, when:

“That’s a good man, Inspector,” snapped a voice from the barge. “Always keep your eye on a man who volunteers for dangerous duty.”

Merton looked up as two men who resembled Portuguese deck-hands dropped from the barge into the tail of the cutter. But the speaker’s voice held an unmistakable note. Rumour had spoken truly.

The presence of Inspector Gallaho had started tongues wagging; here was someone vastly senior to Gallaho, and masquerading in disguise. The attitude of the famous C.I.D. detective was sufficient evidence of the seniority of the last speaker.

The River Police craft was eased alongside the rotting piles which supported that excrescence of Sam Pak’s restaurant. Merton swarmed up without great difficulty towards a point just below the lighted window. Here he paused, making signs to the crew below.

“Push out,” snapped Nayland Smith in a low voice.

The little craft was eased away, and Merton, carrying the line, proceeded to the second and more difficult stage of his journey, watched breathlessly by every man aboard the River Police launch. Twice he faltered, and, once, seemed to have lost his hold. But at last a sort of sympathetic murmur ran around the watching party.

He had reached the roof of the wooden structure. He waved, and began to haul in the line attached to the rope ladder.

A stooping figure passed behind the lighted window. . .

Merton, in response to signals from Gallaho, moved further left, so that when the ladder was hauled up it just cleared the window. Some delay followed whilst Merton, disappearing from the view of those below, sought some suitable stanchion to which safely to lash the ladder. This accomplished, he gave the signal that all was fast, and:

“As soon as I’m on the ladder,” said Nayland Smith, “get back to cover. The routine, as arranged, holds good.”

He began to climb . . . and presently he could look in at the lighted window.

CHAPTER16

A BURNING GHAT

A woman attired in scanty underwear was pulling on high-heeled, jade green shoes. She was seated on a cheap dilapidated wooden chair. Depended upon a hanger on the wall behind this chair, was a green frock, which Nayland Smith guessed to be probably a creation of Worth. A dressing-table of a kind which can only be found in the second-hand stores appeared at one end of the small rectangular room. It was set before a window, and this was the window of the wooden superstructure which looked out towards the Surrey bank of the Thames. A flannel suit, a pair of shoes, a muffler, and a Chinese cap, lay upon the floor.

Fascinated and unashamed, Nayland Smith watched the toilet of the woman who squeezed tiny feet into tiny jade green shoes.

She stood up, walked to the mirror, and smeared her face with cream from a glass jar which once had contained potted meat. The features of the one-eyed Chinese waiter became obliterated.

The classic features of Fah Lo Suee, daughter of Dr. Fu Manchu, revealed themselves!

Fah Lo Suee, having cleansed her skin, hurriedly carried the one chair to the dressing-table, and seating herself before a libellous mirror, set to work artistically to make up as a beautiful woman; for that she was.a beautiful woman Nayland Smith had never been able to deny.

Silently, cautiously, he began to descend. The River Police craft was pulled up beneath him. Forester and a member of the crew hung on to the end of the ladder as Nayland Smith came aboard.

“Put me ashore,” he snapped. “Gallaho! Sterling! Then stand by for Merton.”

Sterling grabbed the speaker’s arm. His grip was violent in its intensity.

“Sir Denis!” he said—”for God’s sake tell me—who is up there? What did you see?”

Nayland Smith turned. They were alongside the barge, across the deck of which they had come, and by the same route were returning.

“Your old friend Fah Lo Suee! When I gave the sign to Murphy and came out, I thought you had recognized her, too. I was interested in the fact that she seemed to have a base somewhere upstairs.”

“Fah Lo Suee,” Sterling muttered. “Good heavens! now that you point it out, of course, I realize it was Fah Lo Suee.”

“The Doctor is using her remorselessly: every hour of her day is fully occupied. Late though it is, she has some other duty to perform. She must be followed, Sterling.”

They were crossing the deck of the barge, Gallaho at their heels, his bowler hat jammed on at a rakish angle, when:

“Look!” said Nayland Smith.

With one hand he grabbed the C.I.D. man, with the other he grasped the arm of Sterling.

A wavering blue light, a witch light, an elfin thing, danced against the fog mantle over the house of Sam Pak.

“Good Lord!” Gallaho muttered. “I heard of it for the first time to-night, but I’m damned if I can make out what it is.”

All watched in silence for a while. Suddenly, the mystic light disappeared.

“It looks like something out of hell,” said Gallaho.

“Very possibly it is,” Nayland Smith jerked. He turned to Sterling. “Did you notice anything curious about the air of the Sailors’ Club?”

“It had the usual fuggy atmosphere of places of that kind.”

“Certainly it had, but did anything in the temperature strike you?”

“Temperature . . .?”

“Exactly”

“Now, that you mention it, it was certainly very hot.”

“Exactly.”

“Now that you mention it, it was certainly very hot.”

“Undoubtedly it was, and twice as hot at the bar end as at the other.”

“Maybe it’s central heated,” said Gallaho. “I’ll ask Murphy about it.”

“Nothing of the kind,” snapped Nayland Smith. He was still staring up at that spot above the roof of Sam Pak’s where the queer, spirituous flame had appeared. “Certain sects in India burn their dead on burning ghats. Were you ever in India, Gallaho?”

“No sir. But whatever do you mean?”

“You would know what I meant if you had ever seen a burning ghat at night. . . .”

CHAPTER 17

THE GAME FLIES

WEST

“Whichever way the dame comes out,” said Gallaho, “she’s got to pass this corner to get on to the main road. It’s a pound to a penny there’s another way out into that yard which adjoins the restaurant, and I’m told that a car is sometimes garaged there. It may be there to-night.”

“Evidently it is,” said Nayland Smith. “Listen.”

Gallaho ceased speaking and he and Sterling listened intently. Someone had started a car at no great distance away.

“Quick!” snapped Nayland Smith. “Your man’s standing by?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll wait here. I want to see who is in the car. Directly it has passed, pick me up. ...”

Gallaho and Sterling set off down a side-turning. In a narrow opening between a deserted warehouse and the adjoining building, the Flying Squad car was hidden, all lights out. They had no more than reached it, when the car from the yard beside Sam Pak’s passed the head of the street.

The Scotland Yard driver pulled out smartly. On the corner he checked and Nayland Smith jumped in.

“Fah Lo Suee!” he said simply.

Sam Pak’s remained under cover. Anyone leaving would be shadowed to his destination, but Smith’s instructions were urgent upon the point that the suspicions of the old Chinaman must not be aroused. . .

Deserted Commercial Road East reached, the police car drew up closer to the quarry—for at one point a curtain of fog threatened to descend again. Beyond, however, it became clearer.

“What car is it, Gallaho?” Nayland Smith asked. “I can’t quite make out.”

“It’s a Morris, sir, and they’re making it shift a bit.” Nayland Smith laughed shortly.

“Once, it would have been at least a Delage,” he murmured.

Silence fell again as they proceeded along one of the most depressing thoroughfares in Europe. Occasional lorries bound dockward constituted practically the only traffic: pedestrians were very few indeed. The occasional figure of a policeman wearing his waterproof cape brought the reflection to Sterling’s mind that the duties of the Metropolitan Police force would not appeal to every man. Entering the City boundaries, the driver pulled up much closer to the pursued car. By the Mansion House the fog had disappeared altogether. Sterling glanced aside at Sir Denis. The bright light of a street lamp was shining in. He started, then laughed aloud. Shadow came again.

“What is it?” snapped Sir Denis.

“I had forgotten what you looked like,” Sterling explained , “and your appearance was rather a shock.”

“Anyone seeing us,” growled Gallaho, “would take it for granted that I had one of you chained to each wrist.”

He turned to Sir Denis. “I don’t quite understand, sir, why you have handed the Limehouse end of the inquiry over to Forester. You have got definite evidence that it’s the base of this Fu Manchu. Why not raid it? There’s every excuse, if ever we want to do it. It’s only necessary to find a single opium pipe on the premises!”

“I know,” Nayland Smith replied, speaking unusually slowly. “But in dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu, I have found it necessary to follow certain instincts. These may be the result of an intimate knowledge of the Doctor’s methods. But having been inside Sam Pak’s to-night, I am prepared to assert with complete confidence that Dr. Fu Manchu is not there. I think it highly probable that his beautiful and talented daughter is leading us to him now, however.”

“Oh, I see,” Gallaho growled. “You don’t think by any chance that this fly dame spotted you through your disguise, and is making a getaway?”

“I don’t think so. But it is a possibility, nevertheless.”

“I mean,” the detective went on doggedly, “it isn’t clear to me what she was doing down there, unless her job was that of a lookout. You tell me she’s very much the lady, so that her idea of fun wouldn’t be serving beer to drunken sailormen?”

“Quite,” murmured Nayland Smith.

After which staccato remark he fell into a reverie which he did not break until the great bell of St. Paul’s boomed out from high above their heads.

“Two o’clock,” he murmured, and peered ahead. “Hello! Fleet Street. The game flies West, Gallaho.”

The Street of Ink was filled with nocturnal activity, in contrast to the deserted City thoroughfares along which, hitherto, their route had lain. Into the Strand, across Trafalgar Square and on to Piccadilly, the hunt led; then the Morris turned into Bond Street, and Gallaho broke a long silence.

“I’ve just remembered,” he remarked, “that they’ve got an extension at the Ambassadors’ Club to-night. Funny if that’s where she’s going.”

“H’m!” and Nayland Smith, glancing aside at Sterling, as the light from the window of a picture dealer’s shone into the car. “We sha’n’t be able to obtain admittance!”

“Just what I was thinking,” growled Gallaho. “Yes—look, sir! That is where she’s going!”

The Morris pulled up before the door of the club, and a commissionaire assisted a slender, fur-wrapped figure to alight. Fah Lo Suee, her jade coloured shoes queerly reflected upon the wet pavement, her gossamer frock concealed beneath a white wrap, went in at the lighted doorway.

“I can soon find out who she’s with and what she’s up to,” growled Gallaho. “You two gentlemen had better stay out of sight.”

He stepped out and proceeded in the direction of the club.

By the entrance he paused for a moment as another car pulled up and the be-medalled commissionaire sprang forward to the door. A distinguished looking gentleman who might have been a diplomat, who affected a grey, pointed beard and who wore a monocle, stepped out hurriedly, discarded a French cape and, tossing it back into the car, nodded to the commissionaire and went in. He vibrated nervous energy.

“H’m!” muttered Gallaho, watching the long, fawn and silver car disappearing in the direction of Bruton Street. “Sir Bertram Morgan!”

The last arrival was the newly appointed governor of the Bank of England.

Gallaho was about to turn to the commissionaire, with whom he was acquainted, when, following from the tail of his eye the slim, debonaire figure of the banker, he saw a slender woman dressed in jade green rise from a settee in the lobby and advance with extended hand to meet Sir Bertram.

In the brief glimpse which he had of her, Gallaho recognized the fact that she was the woman they had followed from Limehouse—according to Sir Denis Nayland Smith, the daughter of Dr. Fu Manchu. She was exotically beautiful. The strange pair disappeared.

Gallaho changed his mind.

“Good evening, sir,” said the commissionaire, and was about to salute; then grinned broadly and nodded instead.

“Good,” said Gallaho. “I am glad you remembered. Never salute a plain clothes officer.”

“No, sir.”

“Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

Gallaho walked on as though his presence there had been merely accidental. Within his limitations he was an artist. It was no uncommon thing for the tracker to be tracked; keen eyes might be watching his every movement.

He crossed to Grafton Street, stood on the corner for a while, and looked back. Accustomed to the ways of spies, he was satisfied that no one was on his trail. He retraced his steps—but on the other side of Bond Street.

CHAPTER 18

“I BELONG TO CHINA”

Sir Bertram Morgan was deeply intrigued with Madame Ingomar. He had met her three years before at the villa of a mutual friend in Cairo. Anglo-Egyptian society is not exactly Bohemian, and Sir Bertram, at first, had been surprised to find an obvious, if beautiful, half-caste a guest at this somewhat exclusive establishment.

She was, it appeared, the widow of a physician. But this alone was not enough. And noting the patrician elegance, almost disdain, which characterized the beautiful widow, Sir Bertram had not been surprised to learn later, that on her father’s side there was royal Manchu blood.

An experienced man of the world is the adventuress’s easiest quarry. Sir Bertram, a widower of almost illimitable means, naturally knew much of women; he thought there was no design whose pattern he had not met with at some time. He distrusted Madame Ingomar. But she attracted him in a way that was almost frightening.

They met again on the Riviera a year later.

Discreetly, and as if telling an Oriental fairy tale, she had spoken of the existence of an hereditary secret in her family, smilingly pointing out that the widow of a brilliant, but penniless physician, could not otherwise dress as she dressed.

Other explanations occurred to Sir Bertram at the time, but just when he had been sharpening his wits to deal with this dazzling cocotte, she had disappeared.

It seemed to be a habit of hers.

Now, she was in London. They had met accidentally, or apparently accidentally, and he, anxious to test her, because she was so desirable, had challenged the claims which she had made in France. The challenge, lightly, had been accepted.

The life of Madame Ingomar was a fascinating mystery. Her appointment at a fashionable dance club, made for two o’clock in the morning, was odd. Sir Bertram was in the toils—he knew it; he was prepared to believe that royal blood of China ran in this woman’s veins; prepared to believe that she was really the widow of a distinguished physician; but he had no means of testing these claims. One, however—the hereditary secret—he could test: it came within his special province. And to-night she had offered him an opportunity.

“My dear Madame Ingomar,” he said, and kissed her hand, for his courtly manners were famous throughout Europe. “This is indeed a very great privilege.”

The maitre d’hotel led the way to that table which was always reserved for Sir Bertram whenever he required it. Madame Ingomar declined supper, but drank a glass of wine.

Sir Bertram having draped her white fur wrap across the back other chair, ivory shoulders and perfectly modelled arms were revealed by a gossamer green frock. She smoked almost continuously, not as other women of his acquaintance smoked, but, and it seemed almost a custom of a bygone generation, using a long jade holder.

Her hands were exquisite, her exotic indolence conjured up visions of vanished empires. She talked brilliantly, and Sir Bertram, watching her, decided she was quite the most attractive woman he had ever known. He sighed. He was uncertain other; and he had reached an age, and a position in the world, when the worst thing that could befall him would be to become laughable.

Madame Ingomar caught his glance, smiled, and held it. Her long, narrow eyes, were brilliantly green. He had never seen such eyes. This was their second meeting since her appearance in London and he had noticed as a man who took an interest in women, that whereas most of those upon the dance floor wore dresses which exposed their backs, in some cases to the waist, Madame Ingomar’s frock was of a different pattern.

She had an uncanny trick—it disturbed him—of answering one’s unspoken thoughts; and:

“My frock is not quite the mode,” she murmured smilingly— her voice had the most soothing quality of any voice to which he had ever listened—”you wonder why?”

“Really, my dear Madame Ingomar, you embarrass me. Your dress is completely charming—everything about you is perfect.”

She placed her cigarette-holder in an ash-tray, glancing swiftly about the room.

“I do not live the sheltered life of other women,” she said tensely; “perhaps you would understand me better if you knew something of the things I have suffered.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

She smiled again, and taking a cigarette from Sir Bertram’s open case, fitted it to the jade holder.

“I belong to China,” she murmured, lowering her dark lashes, “and in China, women are treated as ... women.”

This was the kind of conversation which at once intrigued and irritated Sir Bertram. It was her hints at some strange, Oriental background into which from time to time she was absorbed, which first had thrown a noose about his interest. But always ... he doubted.

That she had Chinese blood in her, none could deny. But that she belonged in any other sense to the Far East he was not prepared to admit. These odd references to a mode of life divorced from all ideals of Western culture, were part and parcel with that fabulous story of the hereditary secret.

As Sir Bertram lighted her cigarette. Madame Ingomar glanced up.

Those wonderful eyes held him.

‘You have always mistaken me for an adventuress,” she said. And the music of her voice, because it was pitched in so curious a key, reached him over the strains of the dance band. “In one way you are right, in another you are very wrong. Tonight, I hope to convert you.”

Believe me, I require no conversion; I am your most devoted friend.”

She touched his hand lightly; her long, slender fingers, with extravagantly varnished nails, communicated to Sir Bertram a current of secret understanding which seemed to pulse through his veins, his nerves, and to reach his brain.

He was in love with this Eurasian witch. Every line and curve of her body, every wave of her dark hair, her voice, the perfume of her personality, intoxicated him.

Silently, he mocked himself:—There is no fool like an old fool.

“You are neither old nor a fool,” she said, and slipped slen der fingers into his grasp. ‘You are a clever man whom I admire, very, very much.”

He squeezed those patrician fingers almost cruelly, carried away by the magnetism of this woman’s intense femininity; so that for fully half a minute the uncanny character of those words did not dawn upon him.

Then, it came crashingly. He drew his hand away—and stared at her.

“Why did you say that?” he asked. He was more than startled; he was frightened. “I did not speak.”

‘You spoke to me,” she said, softly. ‘You understand me a little bit, and so I can hear you—sometimes.”

“Good God!”

Madame Ingomar laughed. Her laughter, Sir Bertram thought, was the most deliciously musical which had ever fallen upon his ears.

“In the East,” she said, “when we are interested, we know how to get in touch.”

He watched her in silence. She had turned her glance away, lolling back in her chair, so that she seemed to emerge like an ivory goddess from the mass of white fur, for she had drawn her wrap about her shoulders. She was watching the dancers, and Sir Bertram saw her as an Oriental empress, watching, almost superciliously, a performance organized for her personal entertainment.

Suddenly, she glanced aside at him.

“I promised that to-night I would prove my words,” she said, slowly. “If you wish it, we will go.”

Sir Bertram started. She had called him back from a reverie in which he had been a guest at a strange Eastern banquet.

“I am very happy, here, with you,” he replied. “But what you wish is what I desire to do.”

“Let us go, then. My father has consented to see you.”

For anyone to “consent” to see the great Sir Bertram Morgan was a novelty in that gentleman’s life. Yet, oddly enough, the phrase did not strike him as insolent, or even curious. One of the greatest powers in the world of finance, he accepted this mysterious summons.

CHAPTER

19

ROWAN HOUSE

Sir Bertram’s fawn and silver Rolls, familiar in many of the capitals of Europe, was brought up to the door of the club, and the courtly financier handed his beautiful companion to her seat.

“I warn you, Sir Bertram, we have some distance to go.”

“How far?”

“Fourteen or fifteen miles into Surrey.”

“The journey will pass very quickly with you.”

“If you will tell your man to go to Sutton By-pass I will direct him when we get there how to find Rowan House.”

“Rowan House? Is that where you are going?”

“It’s a very old house—a sort of survival. It came on the market some years ago. It was once the property of Sir Lionel Barton, the famous explorer.”

“Barton?” Sir Bertram got in beside Madame Ingomar, having given rapid instructions to the chauffeur. “I have met Barton—a madman, but brilliant. He nearly brought about a rising a year or two ago, in Afghanistan, or somewhere, by stealing the ornaments from a prophet’s tomb. Is that the man you mean?”

The car started smoothly on its way.

“Yes,” said Madame Ingomar, leaning back upon the cushions and glancing in the speaker’s direction. “It is the same man. The house was very cheap, but in many ways suitable.”

Madame Ingomar turned her head again, staring straight before her, and Sir Bertram, studying that cameo-like profile, groped for some dim memory which it conjured up. Bending forward he pulled down the front blind.

“The lights of approaching cars are so dazzling,” he said. “That is more restful.”

“Thank you, yes,” she murmured. . . .

The big Rolls, all but silently, quite effortlessly, was devouring mile after mile of London highway. The Flying Squad car, close behind, at times was fully extended by the driver to keep track of the quarry. Chief detective-inspector Gallaho had twice removed his hat since they had left Bond Street, on each occasion replacing it at a slightly different angle, which betokened intense excitement, Sterling was silent, as was Nayland Smith. . . .

Madame Ingomar touched Sir Bertram’s hand. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them rapturously.

“Please, please,” she pleaded. “I will not allow you to make love to me, while you doubt me so much. If I did, I should feel like a courtesan.”

Sir Bertram drew back, watching her. She dropped her wrap and turned away from him, glancing back over her right shoulder.

“You are a man of honour,” she said, the gaze of those magnetic eyes fixed upon him suddenly, overpoweringly. “I need your assistance; but you will never understand me until you know something of the dangers of my life.”

She slipped her shoulders free of the green frock. Sir Bertram suppressed an exclamation.

That ivory back was wealed with the marks of a lash!

He stared fascinatedly, fists clenched. With a graceful, almost indolent movement of her slender arms Madame Ingomar readjusted her dress, pulled her fur wrap about her, and lay back in the corner, watching him under lowered lashes.

“What fiend did that to you?” he muttered. “What devil incarnate could deface that ivory skin?”

He was bending over her, one knee upon the floor of the car, a supplicant, literally at her feet. But she stared straight before her. When he seized her hands, they lay listless in his grasp.

“Tell me!”—the hoarseness of his own voice surprised him:

“I want to know—I must know.”

“It would be useless,” she replied, her tones so low that he could only just catch the words. “In this you cannot assist me. But—” she looked down at him, twining her fingers in his—”I wanted you to know that what I have told you of my life is not a lie.”

Sir Bertram kissed her hands, kissed her arms, and quite intoxicated by the beauty of this maddening, incomprehensible woman, would have kissed her lips, but a slender hand, two of the fingers jewelled, intervened between his lips and hers.

Gently, she thwarted him, for her half-closed eyes were not unkind.

“Please . . . not yet,” she said. “I have told you that you make me feel like a wanton.”

Sir Bertram recovered himself. Seated, staring straight ahead, his teeth very tightly clenched, he tried to analyse his emotions.

Was he in the toils of the most talented adventuress who had ever crossed his path? Did these waves of insane passion which from time to time swept him away, mean that where Madame Ingomar was concerned, self-control had gone? If she was what she claimed to be, what were his intentions about her?

He taxed himself—was he prepared to marry her?

Beside him, she remained silent. He was conscious of the strangest urges. Not since his Oxford days had he experienced anything resembling these. Undeterred by that gentle rebuff, he wanted to grasp Madame Ingomar in his arms and silence her protests with kisses. He wanted to demand, as a lover’s right, the real explanation of those marks upon her shoulders. He wanted to kill the man who had caused them, and it was his recognition of this homicidal desire which checked, in a measure, the tumult of his brain.

Was it possible, that he, at his age, holding his place in the world, could be driven quite mad by a woman? He wrenched his head aside and looked at her.

She lay back against the cushions. Through half-closed eyes she stared before her abstractedly, and Sir Bertram captured that fugitive memory.

It was the profile of Queen Nefertiti, that exquisite mystery whose portrait by an unknown artist has been the subject of so much dispute.

Deserted streets offered no obstacles to the chauffeur. The outskirts of London reached, the police car behind had greater difficulty in keeping Sir Bertram’s Rolls in sight.

“I can’t make this out at all,” growled Gallaho. “Where the devil is she going?”

“I haven’t been in this neighbourhood for some time,”

snapped Nayland Smith. “But it brings back curious memories. It was in an ancient house in a sort of back-water near Sutton, that I first met Sir Lionel Barton.”

“The explorer?”

“Yes. He inherited a queer old place somewhere in this neighbourhood. It was the scene of very strange happenings at the beginning of the Fu Manchu case. And ... by heaven, as I live, that is just the direction we are heading now!”

In the leading car, the blind having been raised again, Madame Ingomar was giving instructions to the chauffeur. And presently, so guided, the Rolls turned into a darkly shadowed avenue which in summer must have been a veritable tunnel. At the end of it, through the temporary clearness of the night, one saw Rowan House, a long, squat building, hemmed in by trees and shrubs.

When presently Sir Bertram found himself in the entrance hall, he recognized the hand of the brilliant, but eccentric explorer and archeologist who had been the former owner of Rowan House. The place was a miniature Assyrian hall, and the present occupier had not disturbed this scheme. Animal skins and one or two exotic rugs alone disturbed the expanse of polished floor; and in the opening hung curtains of some queerly figured material which resembled that represented in ancient wall paintings.

The exterior of the house, Sir Bertram had noted, presented an unpleasantly damp and clammy appearance. And now as he stood looking about him, but glancing from time to time at the Oriental servant who had opened the door, he became aware at once of a curious perfume, almost like that of incense, yet having an overpowering quality about it which gave him the impression that Rowan House was not exactly a healthy abode.

Madame Ingomar was speaking rapidly to the butler who had admitted them, a squat Burman, dressed in white, and possessing an incredible width of shoulder. They spoke in a language which Sir Bertram did not understand.

CHAPTER

20

GOLD

The room to which Madame Ingomar presently conducted Sir Bertram was astonishing in many respects.

“I will tell my father you are here,” she said—and he found himself alone.

From the lacquer armchair in which he sat, Sir Bertram surveyed his surroundings. He saw a room Orientally elegant, having entrances closed with sliding doors. Two shaded lanterns swung from the ceiling, illuminating the room warmly, and a number of brightly coloured cushions were strewn about the floor. There were tapestries in which red and gold ran riot, so that one lost the head of a dragon and failed to recover it again in endeavouring to trace his tail. Rich carpets and cushioned divans; a number of handsome cabinets containing fine pottery, a battalion of books in unfamiliar bindings arranged upon shelves which, conforming to the scheme of the room, were of dull red lacquer.

At the end remote from that where Sir Bertram sat, in a deep tiled hearth, a small chemical furnace threw its red glow into the room. On a shelf just above this furnace there was a row of jars which contained preserved lizards, snakes and other small reptiles; there was a large table, apparently of Italian workmanship, magnificently inlaid, upon which were some open faded volumes and a number of scientific instruments.

One of the lacquer doors slid noiselessly open and a man came in. Sir Bertram hesitated for a moment and then stood up.

The newcomer was a singularly tall Chinaman who wore a plain yellow robe which accentuated the gaunt lines of his figure. A black cap surmounted by a bead crowned his massive skull. Introductions were superfluous: Sir Bertram Morgan knew that he stood in the presence of the Marquis Chang Hu.

The man radiated authority. He was impressive to a degree exceeding Sir Bertram’s experience. Perhaps the similarity of the profile of Madame Ingomar to that of the long-dead, beautiful Egyptian queen subconsciously prompted the image, but Sir Bertram thought, as others had thought before him, that the aged, ageless, majestic face of the man in the yellow robe resembled the face of the Pharaoh Seti I whose power, unex-ercised for four thousand years, may still be felt by anyone who bends over the glass case in Cairo which contains the mummy of that mighty king.

“You are welcome, Sir Bertram.” The tall Chinaman advanced, bowing formally. “Please be seated. I honour my daughter for arranging this interview.

“It is a pleasure to me, too, sir.”

Sir Bertram spoke sincerely. He was used to nobilities and to the off-shoots of imperial trees, but this survivor of the royal Manchus was a Prince indeed.

He wondered what he was doing in England. Knowing something of the situation in China, he wondered if the charming and promising adventure with Madame Ingomar had been no more than a lead-up to this; an attempt to enlist him in some hopeless campaign, financially to readjust the hopeless muddle which had taken the place of the once great Chinese Empire.

The Marquis Chang Hu seated himself behind the Italian table and Sir Betram dropped back into his armchair. He had never heard a voice quite like that of Chang Hu. It was harsh, but imperious. He spoke perfect English. Long after this strange interview, Sir Bertram recognized that the impres-siveness of the Marquis’s lightest words was due to one peculiarity:— Sir Bertram was old enough to have heard John Henry Newman speak; and in the diction of this majestic Chinaman he recognized later, the unalloyed beauty of our language as the poet-cardinal had spoken it.

“It is not my wish, Sir Bertram,” said his strange host, “to detain you any longer than is necessary.”

Sir Bertram’s chair was set very near to the big table, and Chang Hu, bending courteously across that glittering expanse, placed an ingot of metal in his visitor’s hand.

“You will have observed that I have some small facilities here. If you wish to make any tests, I shall be happy to assist you.”

Sir Bertram glanced at the ingot and then looked up. He closed his eyes swiftly. He had met a glance unlike any he had ever known. The eyes of Madame Ingomar were fascinating, hypnotic; the eyes of the Marquis, her father, held a power which was shattering.

Looking down again at the ingot in his hand:

“In the case of a man of my experience,” he replied, “tests are unnecessary. This is pure gold.”

CHAPTER 21

GALLAHO AND STERLING SET OUT

“Stop!” snapped Nayland Smith through the speaking tube. “Back into the lane we have just passed on the right.”

The driver of the C.I.D. car checked immediately, stopped and reversed. There was no trace of fog on this outskirt of London. The night was limpidly clear. The big car was backed into the narrow lane which Nayland Smith had indicated.

“Good,” growled Gallaho; “but what’s the next move, sir?”

“It’s almost certain,” said Sterling excitedly, “that this is Dr. Fu Manchu’s new base. It’s almost certain . . . that Fleurette is here.”

“Go easy.” Sir Denis grasped his shoulder. “We must think. A mistake, now, would be fatal.”

“I am wondering,” said Gallaho, “what madness brought Sir Bertram Morgan here to-night?”

“The madness,” Smith replied, “which has brought many men to disaster ... a woman.”

“Yes,” Gallaho admitted; “she’s a good looker. But I should have thought he was getting past it.”

“Sir Denis . . .” Sterling’s voice trembled. “We’re wasting time.”

They tumbled out of the car. They had sponged the makeup from their faces, but were still in the matter of dress, two rough-looking citizens. Smith stood there in the dusk of that silent by-way, tugging at the lobe of his left ear; then:

“I am wondering” he murmured. “Including the driver, Gallaho, we are only a party of four. . . .”

“What have you got in mind, sir?”

“I have this in mind. I propose to raid Rowan House.”

“While Sir Bertram Morgan is there?”

“Yes. Unless he comes out very soon.”

“You think . . . ?”

“I think nothing. I know. Dr. Fu Manchu is in that house! If Sir Bertram Morgan is in danger or not I cannot say, but the man we want is there. I take it you have the warrant in your pocket, Inspector?”

Chief detective-inspector Gallaho coughed loudly.

“You may take it that I have, sir,” he replied.

Nayland Smith grasped his arm in the darkness.

“I didn’t mean what you’re thinking, Inspector,” he said, “but we are so tied by red tape that any absurd formality overlooked might mean the wreck of the case.”

Gallaho replied almost apologetically.

“Thank you, sir; I entirely agree with you. Perhaps I was rather forgetting the fact that you have suffered from red tape as much as I have. But I take it you mean, sir, that we may meet with opposition.”

Sterling, clenching and unclenching his fists, was walking up and down in a fever of excitement, and:

“Sir Denis!” he exclaimed, “why are we delaying? Surely, with a woman’s life at stake . . . ?”

“Listen, Sterling,” snapped Sir Denis. “I understand and sympathize—but I’m in charge of this party, and you belong to it.”

“I am sorry,” said Sterling hoarsely.

The driver of the car, seated at the wheel, was watching the trio expectantly, and then:

“Listen, Gallaho,” said Nayland Smith, rapidly: “how far are we from a call-box?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, sir. This is rather outside my area. Do you know?” addressing his question to the driver.

“No, sir. The last one we passed was at the crossroads.”

“Drive back,” Nayland Smith instructed. “It’s your job to put a call through to local headquarters.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I want a raid squad here within twenty minutes. When you know where to go, drive there to pick ‘em up.”

“Very good, sir.”

Silently and smoothly the big car moved out of the lane.

“In moments of excitement,” said Nayland Smith, “I am afraid I relapse into Indian police terms, Do you think your man can manage it, Gallaho?”

“Certainly, sir.” Gallaho replied. “The Flying Squad’s pretty efficient. We shall have all the men you want inside twenty minutes.”

“My fault,” said Nayland Smith, “not to have had a radio car.”

“They’re all on duty, sir.”

“One could have been recalled. We had time.”

“What now, sir?”

“We must look for vulnerable points, and keep well under cover. I don’t want Sir Bertram’s driver to see us. I trust nobody where Dr. Fu Manchu is concerned. Come on!”

He led the way towards the tree-shadowed drive of Rowan House. Their cautious footsteps seemed loudly to disturb the damp silence of the avenue, but they pressed on till the lights of Sir Bertram’s Rolls, drawn up before the porch of the squat residence, brought them to a halt.

“Sterling!” Nayland Smith’s voice was low, but urgent. “Through the shrubbery here, and right around that wing on the left. You are looking for a way in, preferably a French window, of course. But any point where an entrance can be made quickly. If you meet anybody, tackle him, and then sing out. Are you armed?”

‘Yes; it’s become a habit since I met Dr. Fu Manchu.”

“Good. Walk right around the house until you meet Gallaho, then return by the more convenient route, and this point is to be our meeting place. And now, you, Gallaho, stick to the shadow of that lawn, there, and work around the right of the house till you meet Sterling. I am going to direct my attention to obtaining a glimpse of Sir Bertram’s chauffeur. His appearance and behaviour will tell me much. We meet here in five minutes.”

Gallaho and Sterling set out.

CHAPTER

22

GALLAHO RUNS

Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho started his voyage of exploration under conditions rather more difficult than those which confronted Sterling.

The west wing of the house was closely invested by shrubbery; and although there were a number of windows, some of which were lighted, it was impossible to approach near enough to take advantage of any chink in the curtains. Some of the shrubs, which were of varieties unfamiliar to the inspector, remained in full leaf, others displayed flowers; and there was a damp, sweet, but slightly miasmatic smell about the place.

He remembered that the house had belonged for some years to the eccentric explorer, archeologist and author, Sir Lionel Barton. No doubt this freak vegetation had been imported by him. Gallaho, who was no floriculturist, did not quite approve of shrubs which flowered in mid-winter.

Pressing on, walking on wet grass, he presently reached a gate in a wall which threatened to terminate his journey. He tried the gate—it was unlocked; he opened it. It communicated with a paved yard. Out-buildings indicated that this had formerly been the stables of Rowan House.

Gallaho stood still, looking about him suspiciously.

He was satisfied that no horses were kept; the place was very silent. In the windows of the main building visible from where he stood, no light showed. This was not surprising at such an hour in the morning. The domestic staff might be expected to have retired. It was the sort of place, however, in which an experienced man expected to meet a watch-dog.

Gallaho, holding the door ajar, assured himself that there was no dog, before proceeding across the yard. He examined doors and windows, and came out presently into a neglected garden. He pulled up to take his bearings.

From somewhere a long way off came the wail of a train whistle; and . . . was that a muffled crash?

He had made a half-circuit of the house, which was not large. Sterling should have met him at about this point.

Gallaho stood still, listening.

Except for that vague murmuring which makes London audible for twenty miles beyond the city’s boundaries, the night was still.

It was very queer.

Gallaho had noted that all windows in the domestic quarters were fastened. The ideal point of entrance had not presented itself. He pushed on. What had become of Sterling?

Weed-grown flower beds bordered the wall of the house. There was nothing of interest to tempt him to approach nearer.

Suddenly, he stopped, fists clenched.

Somewhere—somewhere inside the house, he thought . . . a woman had screamed!

He began to run. He ran in the direction of an out-jutting wing. It was very dark here, but Gallaho found gravel beneath his feet. He raced around the abutment and found himself staring at a French window.

There was no light in the room to which it belonged. Gallaho could see that heavy curtains were drawn. But there was no indication that the interior was illuminated. Nevertheless—from that room the cry might well have come.

He ran forward.

His first discovery was a dramatic one. A glass pane immediately above the lock had been shattered!

The absence of Sterling was now becoming inexplicable. Gallaho could only suppose that he had made some discovery which he had felt to be of such importance as to justify his returning and reporting to Sir Denis. Otherwise, palpably they must have met some considerable time before this.

Gallaho slipped his hand through the opening in the glass, encountering velvet draperies, groped about and found the lock.

There was no key in it.

Yet there was something very sinister about this broken window—that dim scream.

Searching his memory, he seemed to recall that at one point in his fruitless journey, just after he had crossed the stable yard, at about the same time that a distant train whistle had disturbed the silence, he had imagined that he heard a muffled crash. Here, perhaps, was the explanation.

But where was Sterling?

He ran on to the corner of this wing of the house; and now, through close growing but leafless trees, could see the tunnel-like drive along which they had come. Sterling was not in sight, nor could he see Sir Denis. . . .

CHAPTER

23

FLEURETTE

Alan Sterling was fully alive to the selfishness of his own motives. Nayland Smith was working for the welfare of humanity, striving to defend what we call Civilization from the menace which Dr. Fu Manchu represented. Gallaho officially assisted him. But he, Sterling, hard though he might fight to thrust personal interest into the background, to seek the same goal, knew in his heart that his present objective was the rescue ofFleurette—if she lived—from the clutches of the Chinese doctor.

Through long days and all but unendurable hours of sleepless nights, since the message of Dr. Petrie, her father, had reached him, he had known this yearning for the truth, dreadful though it might be. Was she dead or alive? If alive, to what condition of mindless slavery—to what living death—had she been subjected by the brilliant devilish master other destiny?

He forced his way through damp shrubbery; thorny bushes obstructing his path. He was anxious to avoid making any unnecessary noise. Frequently he glanced towards the porch of Rowan House before which the long, lithe outlines of Sir Bertram’s Rolls glittered dimly in reflected light. The headlamps had been turned off, but the sleek body was clearly visible.

Scratches were not to be avoided. At last he was clear of the shrubbery, and found himself upon the damp soil of a flowerbed. He ploughed forward, aiming for a dimly seen path, reached it and felt hard gravel beneath his feet. He was now out of sight from the porch. Glancing back swiftly, he crossed the path and found himself in shelter from the point of view of anyone watching from the front of the house.

He became aware of an oppressive, sickly sweet perfume. He saw a long, dead wall upon which some kind of creeper grew, despite the wintry season, bearing small yellow flowers. Heavy of limb, it climbed almost to the eaves of this wing of Rowan House.

One dark window he saw, high above his head, marked it, but knew that it could only be reached by means of a ladder. He pressed on.

In all directions vegetation hemmed the place in; until, through a chink in heavy curtains drawn behind a French window having small leaded panes, a spear of light shot across the damp gravel path, revealing many weeds, and was lost in shadowy shrubbery. Sterling crept forward cautiously, step by step, until at last he could peer into the room to which this French window belonged.

He found himself looking into a sort of small library. At first, all that he could see was shelf upon shelf laden with faded, well-worn volumes. Cautiously, he moved nearer to the pane, and now was able to enlarge his field of vision.

Intensely he was excited, so excited that he distrusted himself. He was breathing rapidly.

He saw more bookshelves, and, craning his neck still further, saw a floor plainly carpeted. There was little furniture in the place. He could not see the source of the illumination: he could see books, books, books: one or two Oriental ornaments; a coffee table with an open volume upon it; and a number of cushions.

A shadow fell across the carpet.

Sterling watched intently, fists clenched.

The shadow grew more dense, shortened—and then the person who occasioned it walked slowly into view, head lowered in the act of reading a small, very faded-looking volume.

It was Fleurette—his Fleurette! Petrie’s daughter!

Sterling experienced a wave of exultation which swept everything else from his mind. Nayland Smith’s instructions were forgotten—the chief purpose of the expedition, the apprehension of Dr. Fu Manchu, was forgotten . . . Fleurette was alive—only a few panes of glass separated them.

And how beautiful she was!

The hidden light, gleaming upon her wonderful hair, made it glow and shimmer in living loveliness. She was so slender— so divinely graceful; that rarest creation of nature, as the Chinese doctor had once declared, a perfect woman.

He rapped urgently upon the window.

Fleurette turned. The book dropped from her hand. Her eyes, opened widely, were fixed upon the gap in the curtains.

Sterling’s heart was beating wildly as he pressed his face upon the glass. Surely in the light shining out from the room she could see him?

But she stood motionless, startled, gazing, but giving no sign.

“Fleurette!” Sterling spoke in a low voice, yet loudly enough for the girl in the room to hear him. “It’s Alan. Open the window, darling—open the window!”

But she gave no sign.

“Fleurette! Can you hear me? It’s Alan. Open the window.”

He had found the handle. The strangeness of his reception by this girl who only a few days before had lain trembling in his arms because three or four weeks of separation pended, was damping that glad exultation, chilling the hot blood dancing through his veins.

The window was locked, as he had assumed it would be. He could see the key inside.

“Fleurette, darling! For God’s sake open the window. Let me in. Don’t you understand? It’s Alan! It’s Alan!”

Fleurette shook her head, and turning, walked across the room.

Surely she had recognized him? In spite of his rough dress, could Fleurette, his Fleurette, fail to recognize him?

Pressing his face against the glass, Sterling, astounded, saw her take up a pencil and a writing-block from a dimly seen bureau. He could endure no more. Premature action might jeopardize the success of Nayland Smith’s plans, but there were definite limits to Sterling’s powers of endurance. These had been reached.

Stepping back a pace he raised his right foot, and crashed the heel of his shoe through the small leaded pane of glass just above the lock of the French window.

He had expected an echoing crash; in point of fact the sound made was staccato and oddly muffled. He paused for a second to listen . . . Somewhere in the distance a train whistle shrieked.

Thrusting his hand through the jagged opening, he turned the key, pushed the French window open and stepped into the room. Three swift strides and he had Fleurette in his arms.

She had turned at the crash of his entrance—eyes widely opened, and a look of fear upon her beautiful face.

“My darling, my darling!”—he crushed her against him and kissed her breathlessly. “What has happened? Where have you been? Above all, why didn’t you open the window?”

Fleurette’s eyes seemed to be looking through him—beyond him—at some far distant object. She made a grimace of pain— good God! Of contempt. Leaning back, continuing to look not at him, but through him, and wrenching one arm free, she brushed it across her lips as if something loathsome had touched them!

Sterling released her.

He had read of one’s heart growing cold, but was not aware that such a phenomenon could actually occur. Where there had been mystery—there was mystery no more. Fleurette’s love for him was dead. Something had killed it.

With a tiny handkerchief she was wiping her lips, watching him, watching him all the time. There was absolute silence in the room, and absolute silence outside. He found time to wonder if Gallaho had heard the crash, if those inside the house had heard it.

But this thought was a mere undercurrent.

All of him that was real, all of him that lived, was concentrated upon Fleurette. And now, looking him up and down, with a glance of such scornful anger as he had never sustained in his life from man or woman:

“You are just a common blackguard, then?” she said, in that musical voice which he adored, and yet again raised the fragment of cambric to her lips. “I hate you for this.”

“Fleurette, darling!”

His own voice was flat and toneless.

“If you ever had a right to call me Fleurette, you have that right no longer.”

Her scorn was like a lash. Alan Sterling writhed under it. But although she stared straightly at him, he could not arrest that strange, far-away gaze. She turned suddenly, and walked towards the bureau. Over her shoulder:

“Get out!” she said. “I am going to call the servants, but I will give you this chance.”

“Fleurette, dear!” he extended his arms distractedly. “My darling! What has happened? what wrong have I done?”

He followed her, but she turned and waved him away, fiercely.

“Leave me alone!” she cried, her eyes flashing murderously. “If you touch me again, you will regret it.”

She picked up a pencil and began to write.

Sterling, quivering in muscle and nerve, stood close beside her. Whoever had interfered between himself and Fleurette, upon one point he was determined. She should not remain here, in this house. Explanations could come later. But he proposed to pick her up, regardless of protests, and carry her out to the police car. Slowly he moved nearer, making up his mind just how he should seize her. There was a silk-shaded lamp on the bureau and in its light he was able quite clearly to read the words which Fleurette was writing upon the pad.

As he read, he stood stock still, touched by a sort of supernatural horror. This is what he read:-

“Alan darling. If you touch me I shall try to kill you. If I speak to you I shall tell you I hate you. But I can write my real thoughts. Save me, darling! Save me! ...”

Came a flash of inspiration—Alan Sterling understood.

Fleurette was the victim of some devilish device of the Chinese physician. He had induced in her either by drugs or suggestion, a complete revulsion of feeling in regard to those she had formerly loved. But because of some subtlety of the human brain which he had over-looked, although, as in some cases of amnesia, she could not express her real thoughts in words, she could express them in writing!

“My darling!”

Sterling bent forward and tore the page from the writing-block.

Whereupon Fleurette turned, her face contorted.

“Don’t touch me! I detest you!”—she glared at him venomously; “I detest you!”

Sterling stooped, threw his left arm around her waist and his right under her knees. He lifted her. She screamed wildly and struck at him.

He forced her head down upon his shoulder to stifle her cries, and carried her towards the open window. . . .

CHAPTER 24

THE LACQUER ROOM

Gallaho by now very breathless pulled up, watching the porch of Rowan House.

The front door was open; this dimly, he could divine; but there seemed to be no light in the entrance hall.

The head lamps of Sir Bertram’s Rolls gleamed dimly but the inside lights were turned off. Evidently, Sir Bertram was leaving—after a very brief visit.

Why was there no light in the entrance hall?

Gallaho’s bewilderment was growing by leaps and bounds. To the problems of the scream, the broken window and Sterling’s absence now was added that of Sir Denis’s disappearance. Gallaho’s own inclination, for he was a man of forthright action, was to run up the drive quite openly to the porch, and to demand to see the occupier of the house.

But Sir Denis was in charge to-night. He could not act without his authority, and his last instruction had been:

“Do nothing, until I give the word.”

Between them, Gallaho thought bitterly, they were likely to make a mess of things.

A muted bang told him that the door of Sir Bertram’s car had been closed. Who had entered it he didn’t know. Suddenly the head lights cleaved a lane through darkness, illuminating the gravel drive, depicting trees of elfin shapes in silhouette, goblin trees. The entrance to Rowan House was transformed magically into a haunted forest.

The Rolls moved off, turned, and entered the drive. Gallaho darted half right into the shrubbery, crouched down, and watched. . . .

Someone was seated beside the chauffeur. The fleeting impression which Gallaho derived conveyed to his mind the idea of a native servant of some kind. This surely meant that Sir Bertram was not returning home, but was proceeding elsewhere?

And there was no means of following! The Flying Squad car was presumably at the local police station, picking up a party of men to raid Rowan House!

The Rolls purred swiftly by. Of its occupants, Gallaho had never a glimpse. But as it passed he sprang to his feet and stepped out on to the drive.

“Where in hell has everybody got to?” he growled.

The door of the house was open. He could see the black gap which it made in the dingy grey frontage of the pillared porch. Something very strange was happening here—had already happened; and now:

“Gallaho!” came a distant voice, “Gallaho!”

It was Nayland Smith!

“Where are you, sir?” Gallaho shouted.

He raced towards the porch of the house from which the cry had seemed to come, throwing precaution to the winds now, for there was urgency in Nayland Smith’s voice.

And as he reached the steps he saw him. . . .

Sir Denis was standing in the open doorway, the lobby behind him in darkness.

“He’s slipped us, I think, Gallaho. We’re too late. But my main concern at the moment is not with him. . . . show a light here. I am looking for the switch.”

Gallaho’s torch flashed in the darkness of that strange Assyrian hall.

“There it is, sir.”

The lights were switched on. It was a queer looking place, of pillars and bas-reliefs, a freak of the former eccentric owner of Rowan House. There was no sound. They might have been alone in the building.

“What the devil has become of Mr. Sterling?”

Gallaho’s face looked very lined and grim. “And I thought I heard a woman scream.”

“I did hear a woman scream,” snapped Smith. “I started around the house in the direction you had taken. Did you notice a door in a sort of archway which opens into the stable yard?”

“Yes, it was locked.”

“Not when I reached it,” Smith replied grimly. “I went in, venturing to use my torch. It communicated with an absolutely unfurnished passage, which I followed, and found myself here, looking out of the open front door—just as Sir Bertram’s car disappeared down the drive. Ssh! What’s that?”

From somewhere within the recesses of the silent house, a faint sound of movement had come. . . .

Slowly and with extreme caution, in order not to rattle the rings, Inspector Gallaho drew aside a curiously patterned curtain which hung in one of the square openings of the Assyrian hall. It was from behind this curtain that the slight sound had come.

A thickly carpeted passage appeared, dimly lighted. There was a door at the further end immediately facing them and one to the right. That at the further end—apparently a sliding door-was ajar . . . and light shone out from the room beyond.

Nayland Smith exchanged a significant glance with the detective, and the two tip-toed along the corridor. Their footsteps made next to no sound upon the thick carpet. Outside the door, both paused, listening.

In the room beyond, someone was walking up and down, restlessly, ceaselessly.

Gallaho displayed an automatic in his open palm. Smith nodded, and drew the door open.

He found himself in a fairly large room which was a combination of a library and a laboratory. It was a type of room with which he had become familiar during the long years that he had battled with Dr. Fu Manchu. There were preserved snakes and reptiles in jars upon a high shelf. Many queer looking volumes in orderly rows appeared behind a big table upon which, in addition to evidences of literary activity, there was a certain amount of chemical paraphernalia. Lacquer was the dominant note.

At the moment of Nayland Smith’s entrance, the man who had been promenading the room turned, startled, and stared at the intuders.

It was Sir Bertram Morgan, Governor of the Bank of England.

“Well I’m damned!”—the growling words came from Gallaho.

“Sir Bertram!” Nayland Smith exclaimed.

Sir Bertram Morgan experienced a not unnatural difficulty in recognizing Smith, whom he had met socially, in his present attire; but at last: “Sir Denis Nayland Smith, I believe?” he replied.

The financier had quite recovered his poise. He was a man of remarkably cool nerve. “The Marquis Chang Hu did not inform me that I should have the pleasure of meeting you here to-night.”

Gallaho exchanged glances with Sir Denis and then stood by the open door, listening—listening for the Scotland Yard car and the raiding party. Sir Denis twitched at the lobe of his ear, staring all about him, and then:

“I fear, Sir Bertram,” he said, “that you have been decoyed here under false pretences.

“Decoyed . . . ?”

Sir Bertram assumed his well-known expression which has appeared in so many Press photographs, his bushy eyebrows slightly raised in the centre.

“I said ‘decoyed’ advisedly. You came with a woman. She is half Chinese. By what name you know her I cannot say. I have known her by several.”

“Indeed! You probably refer to Madame Ingomar?”

Nayland Smith smiled, but without mirth.

“Fah Lo Suee’s invention is failing her,” he murmured;

“that was the name in which she crept into the good graces of Sir Lionel Barton in Egypt three years ago. However, all this is beside the point. You have taken a very grave risk, Sir Bertram.”

The banker, unused to that brusque mode of address which characterised Nayland Smith in moments of tension, stared rather coldly.

“Your meaning is not clear to me,” he replied. “I was invited to this house to discuss what I may term a purely professional matter with the Marquis Chang Hu.”

“Chang Hu? Will you describe Chang Hu?”

Sir Bertram was becoming definitely offended with Nayland Smith, largley because the latter’s force was beating him down.

“A tall, distinguished Chinese aristocrat,” he replied quietly.

“Correct. He is tall, he is distinguished, and he is an aristocrat. Pray proceed.”

“A member of a former Royal House of China.”

“Correct. He is.”

“A man, roughly, sixty years of age.”

“Say a hundred and sixty,” snapped Nayland Smith, “and you may be rather nearer the mark! However, I quite understand, Sir Bertram. May I ask you briefly to outline what occurred?”

“Certainly.” Sir Bertram leaned against a bookcase which contained works exclusively Chinese in character. “I met the marquis by appointment. His daughter, Madame Ingomar, had informed me (frankly, I didn’t believe her) that her father, an advanced student of mineralogy, had perfected a system for the transmutation of gold. I know something of gold . . .”

‘You should,” Nayland Smith murmured.

But his smile was so disarming—it was that delightfully ingenious smile which so rarely relieved the ruggedness of his features—that no man seeing it could have held antagonism.

Sir Bertram was mollified. He smiled in return.

“To-night,” he went on impressively, and pointed to the big table, “an ingot of gold was offered to me by the Marquis Chang Hu, together with the assurance that he was prepared to supply any quantity up to three hundred-weights in the course of the next few weeks!”

“What!”

“Sst!”

Gallaho at the open door had raised his hand in warning.

“Listen!”

The purr of an approaching car became audible.

“It’s Markham with the police,” said Gallaho.

He ran out.

Nayland Smith was staring curiously at Sir Bertram.

“It was pure gold?”

“Pure gold.”

“He claimed to be able to make gold,” murmured Smith. “I wonder ... I wonder. May I ask, Sir Bertram, how the interview terminated?”

“Certainly. Madame Ingomar, my host’s daughter, called out from somewhere in the house. The door was closed, and her cry was somewhat indistinct, but her father, naturally, was disturbed.”

“Naturally”

“He excused himself and went to see what had occurred, begging me to remain here.”

“He took the ingot of gold?”

“Apparently he did.”

“He closed the door behind him?”

“He did. I opened it recently, beginning to wonder what had become of the marquis.”

“It may surprise you to learn, Sir Bertram,” said Nayland Smith quietly, “that only three or at the outside four of the rooms in Rowan House are furnished.”

“What!”

“It was a plot. But by a miracle the plotters have been tricked. I regret to say that this is not the worst. I don’t know all the truth, yet, but when the police arrive, I hope to leam it.”

Detective-inspector Gallaho appeared in the open doorway, Sir Bertram’s chauffeur at his heels.

“Preston!” Sir Bertram exclaimed—”what’s this?”

“A very nasty business, sir, if I may say so,” the man replied.

He was an obvious ex-Service man, clean limbed and of decent mentality. His hazel eyes were very angry and his fists clenched.

“Tell me,” Sir Bertram directed, tersely.

“Well, sir,” Preston went on, looking from face to face. “that Burmese butler who opened the door when we arrived, you remember, came out about ten minutes ago, and I naturally thought you were leaving. As I went up to him in the dark he jabbed a pistol in my ribs, and invited me to jump to the wheel. I am sorry, sir, but I did it. . . .”

“Don’t blame you,” growled Gallaho.

“Several people got into the car, sir. I had an impression that one was carried in. Then, the coloured swine beside me gave the order to go.”

“Where did you go to?” asked Nayland Smith.

“To an old mews not three miles from here, sir, where I was told to pull up—and I pulled up. This blasted Burman sat with his gun in my ribs the whole time that the party in the car were getting out. But I had my eye on the reflector and I think there were two women and two men.”

“Any idea of their appearance?” Smith demanded.

“Not the slightest, sir. It was very dark. I’m not sure, even, of their number. But one of the men was very sick, the others seemed to drag him out of the car.”

The roar of the powerful engine of the Flying Squad proclaimed itself; voices were heard.

“Here they are!” said Gallaho.

“Quick!” Sir Denis directed Preston: “What happened then?”

“The Burman jumped off, keeping me under cover. He told me to drive back. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, sir.”

Uniformed police were pouring into Rowan House.

CHAPTER 25

CURARI

“Nothing here!” declared Nayland Smith.

They had searched every foot of the deserted mews.

“A sort of cache?” suggested Sir Bertram Morgan, who had accompanied them, now keenly interested in their quest. “No doubt they kept a car here.”

“There’s evidence that they did,” said Gallaho. “And we’ll know more about it to-morrow. But in the meantime,” he turned to Sir Denis, “what’s the next move, sir?”

Rowan House had proved to be a mere shell, a mockery: the greater part of it unfurnished. The library in Rowan House in which Dr. Fu Manchu had received Sir Bertram, and the corridor leading to it from the Assyrian hall, were the only properly furnished parts of the place. There was a small writing-room on the other side of the house, the glass in the French window of which had been smashed, containing a number of bookshelves, a bureau and one or two other odds and ends. But with the exception of fragmentary belongings of the former tenant, the eccentric Lionel Barton, the place was unfurnished from floor to attic—nor was there a soul in it, although the police had searched it foot by foot.

The property had been sold by Sir Lionel Barton, but the last tenant had left nearly a year before. The books and some of the ornaments in the two furnished rooms, unreadable volumes in Sanskrit, Chinese and Persian, had been left behind by the out-going tenant as they had been left behind by Sir Lionel. The Chinese library, with its sliding doors and lacquer fittings, had been a feature of Rowan House during the time that Barton had occupied it. The place had been baited for the evening; a mouse-trap. The caretaker had vanished.

“They’ve got Sterling!” groaned Nayland Smith. “God knows why they’ve taken him—but they’ve got him!”

Sir Bertram was now keenly interested, tuned up for the hunt; his sentiments in regard to Madame Ingomar had undergone a definite change, yet he knew in his heart, although he could not doubt the assurance of the ex-Assistant Commissioner, that if she beckoned to him again—he would follow. . . .

He wondered how far he would go, to what extent he would fall under the influence of those magnetic eyes, that compelling voice. He shuddered. Perhaps he had had a nearer escape than he realized. But the gold had been . . . gold.

The raiding party returned to the depot in the Yard car, and Sir Denis and Chief detective-inspector Gallaho accepted a lift home in Sir Bertram Morgan’s Rolls.

Fog met them in the London suburbs . . .

It was at some hour not far removed from that when dawn should have been breaking over London, that Nayland Smith prepared a whisky and soda for Gallaho and passing it to him raised his glass silently.

“I know sir,” said Gallaho; “it’s been a very bad show for us to-night.”

“A bad show all along,” snapped Sir Denis.

“Cramped, trammelled, cut off from his resources, Fu Manchu is still powerful. First, he gets Petrie’s daughter, a wonderful hostage, by one of the most amazing tricks in my experience. He smuggles her into England. And now . . .”

“That’s the devil of it, sir.”

“The devil indeed. He’s got Sterling.”

“Dead or alive?”

“Since he is a friend and a first-class type of man (I have worked with him in the past) I prefer to think, Inspector— alive. I doubt if Dr. Fu Manchu would burden himself with—”

“A corpse?”

“A corpse, yes.”

Nayland Smith’s gaze became abstracted, and plucking at his ear, he crossed the room and pulled a heavy curtain aside, gazing out upon the foggy Embankment.

There came a rap on the door.

“Come in!”

Fey entered, despite the approach of dawn, immaculate and unperturbed. Nayland Smith was still holding the heavy curtain aside, and:

“Have you noticed the window, sir?” Fey asked.

“No.”

Nayland Smith turned, and examined the window.

“By gad!” he rapped.

There was a neat, but slightly jagged hole an inch in circumference in one of the panes! He closed the curtains, and faced Fey. Gallaho, glass in hand, was staring from man to man.

“While I was walking up and down sir.” Fey went on coolly, “as you told me to do, earlier to-night, or rather, last night, sir, this came through the window—missed me by no more than an inch.”

He handed a small feathered dart to Nayland Smith.

The latter stepped to a lamp and examined it closely.

“Gallaho”, he said, “I should say that this thing had been fired from an air gun. But examine the point.”

The Scotland Yard man came forward, eagerly bending over the table.

“It seems to be covered in gum.”

“I won’t say curari, but a very brief analysis will settle the point. The cornered rat is showing his teeth . . . and they are poisoned teeth.”

CHAPTER 26

DR.

FU MANCHU

Alan Sterling looked around the cellar in which he lay.

It was brick-paved; its roof was formed by half an arch. There was a very stout looking door in the corner opposite that in which he found himself. An unshaded electric bulb hung on a piece of flexible cable from the roof. He could trace the cable down the sloping brickwork to a roughly hollowed gap through which it disappeared.

There was no furniture of any kind in the cellar, but the place was singularly hot, and it seemed to be informed by a ceaseless buzzing which, however, presently he identified with his own skull.

He had an agonizing headache. Raising his hand, he found a great lump immediately above his left ear.

The first idea which flashed through his bemused mind was a message of thanksgiving. He must have had a very narrow escape from death. Then came memories—chaotic, torturing.

He had had Fleurette in his arms: then, something had happened.

What had happened?

It was beyond him. He could recall nothing but the fact that she had screamed unnaturally, that he had struggled with her. Then there was a gap, and now . . . where was this place in which he found himself? Where had he been when he had struggled with Fleurette?

He clutched his throbbing skull, trying to force thought. Memories began to return to him in fragments; then, as a complete story.

He tried to stand up. The effort was too much for his strength. He dropped back again upon the stone pavement. By God! He had had a devil of a whack! Gingerly he touched the swelling on his skull, leaning back against the wall and still trying to think.

Fleurette was alive—thank God for that! But in some way, she had changed towards him. He was not quite clear about it. But for this he must be thankful: that she, whom he had thought was dead—was alive. The minor difficulty, no doubt, would resolve itself.

Nayland Smith! Of course! He had been with Nayland Smith! . . . And Gallaho? What had become ofGallaho?

Above all—where was he? Where was this unfurnished cellar located? He made another attempt to stand up; but it was not entirely successful. He was anxious to find out if that heavy door was locked, or bolted. But the journey, one of four paces, was too much for him.

He sank down on to the floor again, leaning back against the wall. The throbbing in his head was all but unendurable, and the heat was stifling—unless, like the buzzing, due to internal conditions.

Separate now from that buzzing, which he knew to belong to his injured skull, Sterling became aware of a muted roaring sound. It was somewhere beneath his feet. It was uncanny; when first he accepted the reality of its existence, he was dismayed; for what could it be? From where could it come?

He was about to make a third attempt to stand up, when the heavy door opened.

A very tall, gaunt man stood in the opening, looking at him. He wore a long, white linen coat, linen trousers, and white rubber-soled shoes. The coat, tunic fashion, was buttoned to his neck—a lean, sinewy neck supporting a head which might have been that of Dante.

The brow was even finer than the traditional portraits of Shakespeare, crowned with scanty, neutral coloured hair. The face of the white-clad man was a wonderful face, and might once have been beautiful. It was that of a man of indeterminable age, heavily lined, but lighted by a pair of such long, narrow, brilliant green eyes that one’s thoughts flashed to Satan—Lucifer, Son of the Morning: an angel, but a fallen angel. His slender hands, with long, polished nails, were clasped before him. Although no trace of expression crossed that extraordinary face, perhaps a close observer watching the green eyes might have said that the man motionless in the doorway was surprised.

Alan Sterling succeeded in his third attempt to stand up. He was very unsteady, but by means of supporting himself against the wall with his left hand, he succeeded in remaining upright.

So standing, he faced Dr. Fu Manchu.

“The fact that you are alive—” the words came sibilantly from thin lips which scarcely seemed to move—”surprises me.”

Sterling stared at the speaker. Every instinct in his mind, his body, his soul, prompted: “Kill him! Kill him!” But Sterling knew something of Dr. Fu Manchu, and he knew that he must temporize.

“I am surprised, too,” he said.

His voice shook, and he hated his weakness.

The green eyes watched him hypnotically. Sterling, leaning against the wall, wrenched his gaze away.

“It is not my custom,” the harsh voice continued, “to employ coarse methods. You were, to put it bluntly, bludgeoned in Rowan House. Your constitution, Alan Sterling, must resemble that of a weazel. I had intended to incinerate your body. I am not displeased to find that life survives.”

“Nor am I,” said Sterling, calculating his chances of a swift spring, and a blow over the heart of this Chinese fiend whom he knew to be of incalculable age; then a hook to that angular jaw—and a way to freedom would be open.

With the instinct of a boxer he had been watching the green eyes whilst these thoughts had flashed through his mind, and now:

“You could not strike me over the heart,” said Dr. Fu Manchu;

“I am trained in more subtle arts than the crudities of boxing have ever appreciated. As to your second blow aimed, I believe, at my jaw, this would not occur—you would be disabled.”

For a moment, a long moment, Alan Sterling hesitated; in fact, until the uncanny quality of these words had penetrated to his brain. Then he realized, as others had realized before him, that Dr. Fu Manchu had been reading his thoughts. He stood quite still; he was recovering from the effects of the assault which had terminated his memories of Rowan House, and now was capable of standing unsupported.

“There is a monastery in Thibet,” the cold voice proceeded;