The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (icecream ebook reader TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Sax Rohmer
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“Another fifty yards, Petrie,” breathed Nayland Smith, “and after that it’s unchartered ground.”
On we went through the rain and the darkness; then:
“Slow up! slow up!” cried Smith. “It feels soft!”
Indeed, already I had made one false step—and the hungry mire had fastened upon my foot, almost tripping me.
“Lost the path!”
We stopped dead. The falling rain walled us in. I dared not move, for I knew that the mire, the devouring mire, stretched, eager, close about my feet. We were both waiting for the next flash of lightning, I think, but, before it came, out of the darkness ahead of us rose a cry that sometimes rings in my ears to this hour. Yet it was no more than a repetition of that which had called to us, deathfully, awhile before.
“Help! help! for God’s sake help! Quick! I am sinking...”
Nayland Smith grasped my arm furiously.
“We dare not move, Petrie—we dare not move!” he breathed. “It’s God’s justice—visible for once.”
Then came the lightning; and—ignoring a splitting crash behind us—we both looked ahead, over the mire.
Just on the edge of the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea gull, he was gone!
That eerie light died, and in the instant before the sound of the thunder came shatteringly, we turned about... in time to see Cragmire Tower, a blacker silhouette against the night, topple and fall! A red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came booming through the caverns of space. Nayland Smith lowered his wet face close to mine and shouted in my ear:
“Kegan Van Roon never returned from China. It was a trap. Those were two creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu...”
The thunder died away, hollowly, echoing over the distant sea...
“That light on the moor to-night?”
“You have not learned the Morse Code, Petrie. It was a signal, and it read:—S M I T H... SOS.”
“Well?”
“I took the chance, as you know. And it was Karamaneh! She knew of the plot to bury us in the mire. She had followed from London, but could do nothing until dusk. God forgive me if I’ve misjudged her—for we owe her our lives to-night.”
Flames were bursting up from the building beside the ruin of the ancient tower which had faced the storms of countless ages only to succumb at last. The lightning literally had cloven it in twain.
“The mulatto?...”
Again the lightning flashed, and we saw the path and began to retrace our steps. Nayland Smith turned to me; his face was very grim in that unearthly light, and his eyes shone like steel.
“I killed him, Petrie... as I meant to do.”
From out over Sedgemoor it came, cracking and rolling and booming toward us, swelling in volume to a stupendous climax, that awful laughter of Jove the destroyer of Cragmire Tower.
CHAPTER XXIV. STORY OF THE GABLES
In looking over my notes dealing with the second phase of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress.
Inspector Weymouth called one morning, shortly after the Van Roon episode, and entered upon a surprising account of a visit to a house at Hampstead which enjoyed the sinister reputation of being uninhabitable.
“But in what way does the case enter into your province?” inquired Nayland Smith, idly tapping out his pipe on a bar of the grate.
We had not long finished breakfast, but from an early hour Smith had been at his eternal smoking, which only the advent of the meal had interrupted.
“Well,” replied the inspector, who occupied a big armchair near the window, “I was sent to look into it, I suppose, because I had nothing better to do at the moment.”
“Ah!” jerked Smith, glancing over his shoulder.
The ejaculation had a veiled significance; for our quest of Dr. Fu-Manchu had come to an abrupt termination by reason of the fact that all trace of that malignant genius, and of the group surrounding him, had vanished with the destruction of Cragmire Tower.
“The house is called the Gables,” continued the Scotland Yard man, “and I knew I was on a wild goose chase from the first—”
“Why?” snapped Smith.
“Because I was there before, six months ago or so—just before your present return to England—and I knew what to expect.”
Smith looked up with some faint dawning of interest perceptible in his manner.
“I was unaware,” he said with a slight smile, “that the cleaning-up of haunted houses came within the jurisdiction of Scotland Yard. I am learning something.”
“In the ordinary way,” replied the big man good-humoredly, “it doesn’t. But a sudden death always excites suspicion, and—”
“A sudden death?” I said, glancing up; “you didn’t explain that the ghost had killed any one!”
“I’m afraid I’m a poor hand at yarn-spinning, Doctor,” said Weymouth, turning his blue, twinkling eyes in my direction. “Two people have died at the Gables within the last six months.”
“You begin to interest me,” declared Smith, and there came something of the old, eager look into his gaunt face, as, having lighted his pipe, he tossed the match-end into the hearth.
“I had hoped for some little excitement, myself,” confessed the inspector. “This dead-end, with not a ghost of a clue to the whereabouts of the yellow fiend, has been getting on my nerves—”
Nayland Smith grunted sympathetically.
“Although Dr. Fu-Manchu has been in England for some months, now,” continued Weymouth, “I have never set eyes upon him; the house we raided in Museum Street proved to be empty; in a word, I am wasting my time. So that I volunteered to run up to Hampstead and look into the matter of the
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