The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (english novels for students .txt) 📕

journey nearer one to the other. But now it would plan no more.

“He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,” explained the family physician; “but I had not anticipated a fatal termination so soon. I was called about two o’clock this morning, and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition. I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for. But shortly before his arrival the patient expired.”

“I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery for angina pectoris?” I said.

“Yes,” was the reply, “for some months.”

“You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent with a death from that cause?”

“Certainly. Do you observe anything unusual yourself? Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me. There is surely no room for doubt?”

“No,” said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear. “We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir.”

The physician seemed puzzled.

“But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?” asked the physician.

“Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,” answered Smith. “But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent questions as confidential.”

As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused, detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.

“You were Lord Southery’s valet?”

The man bowed.

“Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?”

“I was, sir.”

“Did you see or hear anything unusual⁠—anything unaccountable?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?”

The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.

“Perhaps this business is making me imaginative,” he said; “but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder⁠—something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible death-mark of Fu-Manchu.”

“You are right, Smith!” I cried. “I hesitated to mention the matter, but I, too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor’s presence. Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he has brought about Lord Southery’s death as if I had seen him strike the blow.”

It was in that torturing frame of mind⁠—chained, helpless, in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman’s supernormal genius⁠—that we lived throughout the ensuing days. My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever. Yet, we could not act.

In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale outside a secondhand bookseller’s in New Oxford Street. One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.

I turned around rapidly⁠—and was looking into the darkly beautiful eyes of Karamanèh! She⁠—whom I had seen in so many guises⁠—was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.

She glanced about her apprehensively.

“Quick! Come round the corner. I must speak to you,” she said, her musical voice thrilling with excitement.

I never was quite master of myself in her presence. He must have been a man of ice who could have been, I think, for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity; she was a mystery⁠—and mystery adds charm to a woman. Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would have risked much to save her from it.

As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:

“I am in distress. You have often asked me to enable you to capture Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so.”

I could scarcely believe that I heard right.

“Your brother⁠—” I began.

She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.

“You are a doctor,” she said. “I want you to come and see him now.”

“What! Is he in London?”

“He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

“And you would have me⁠—”

“Accompany me there, yes.”

Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes. Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling eastward in a closed cab. Karamanèh was very silent, but always when I turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there was something else⁠—something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing. The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road, the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination. Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road. In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.

I do not know that Karamanèh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me, and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully, hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back. But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings, so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask the cunning of a serpent.

I spoke to her.

“S-sh!” She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.

The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock building loomed above